Comic Book Creator #5 by TwoMorrows Publishing

Adults only!

™

No. 5, Spring 2014

82658 97073

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

in the USA

8.95

Cover art by Denis Kitchen

THE COMIX BOOK LIFE OF DENIS KITCHEN

™

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

Edited by JON B. COOKE, COMIC BOOK CREATOR is the new voice of the comics medium, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics—focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. It’s the follow-up to Jon’s multi-Eisner Award winning COMIC BOOK ARTIST magazine.

Subscribe at www.twomorrows.com 4 issues: $40 US, $54 Canada, $60 elsewhere Includes the DOUBLE-SIZE SUMMER SPECIAL!

No. 3, Fall 2013

01 1

82658 97073

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #1 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #3

Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured throughout his career, ALEX ROSS and KURT BUSIEK interviews, FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembering LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more!

JOE KUBERT double-size Summer Special tribute issue! Comprehensive examinations of each facet of Joe’s career, from Golden Age artist and 3-D comics pioneer, to top Tarzan artist, editor, and founder of the Kubert School. Kubert interviews, rare art and artifacts, testimonials, remembrances, portraits, anecdotes, pin-ups and miniinterviews by faculty, students, fans, friends and family! Edited by JON B. COOKE.

NEAL ADAMS vigorously responds to critics of his BATMAN: ODYSSEY mini-series in an in-depth interview, with plenty of amazing artwork! 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; classic cover painter EARL NOREM interviewed, a new ADAMS cover, and more!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(164-page FULL-COLOR mag) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $7.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

COMIC BOOK CREATOR #4 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #5 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #6 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #7 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #8

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)!

SWAMPMEN: MUCK-MONSTERS OF THE COMICS dredges up Swamp Thing, ManThing, Heap, and other creepy man-critters of the 1970s bayou! Features interviews with WRIGHTSON, MOORE, PLOOG, WEIN, BRUNNER, GERBER, BISSETTE, VEITCH, CONWAY, MAYERIK, ORLANDO, PASKO, MOONEY, TOTLEBEN, YEATES, BERGER, SANTOS, USLAN, KALUTA, THOMAS, and others. FRANK CHO cover!

BERNIE WRIGHTSON interview on Swamp Thing, Warren, The Studio, Frankenstein, Stephen King, and designs for movies like Heavy Metal and Ghostbusters, and a gallery of Wrightson artwork! Plus writer/editor BRUCE JONES; 20th anniversary of Bart Simpson's Treehouse of Horror with BILL MORRISON; and interview Wolff and Byrd, Counselors of the Macabre's BATTON LASH, and more!

MIKE ALLRED and BOB BURDEN cover and interviews, "Reid Fleming, World's Toughest Milkman" cartoonist DAVID BOSWELL interviewed, a chat with RICH BUCKLER, SR. about everything from Deathlok to a new career as surrealistic painter; Tales of the Zombie artist PABLO MARCOS speaks; Israeli cartoonist RUTU MODAN; plus an extensive essay on European Humor Comics!

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships May 2014

(192-page paperback with COLOR) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $8.95 • Ships August 2014

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Nov. 2014

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Feb. 2015

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

CBA Vol. 2 #1

CBA Vol. 2 #2

CBA Vol. 2 #3

CBA Vol. 2 #4

CBA Vol. 2 #5

CBA Vol. 2 #6

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

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

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

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

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

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

(128-page Digital Edition) $5.95

(112-page Digital Edition) $5.95

(112-page Digital edition) $5.95

(112-page Digital Edition) $5.95

(252-page Digital Edition) $9.95

TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • E-mail: store@twomorrows.com Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

Spring 2014 • The New Voice of the Comics Medium • Number 5

t HIPPIE W©©dy CBC mascot by J.D. King

About Our Cover Art by Denis Kitchen Color by Bryant Paul Johnson

Ye Ed’s Rant: Talking up Kitchen, Wild Bill, Cruse, and upcoming CBC changes............. 2 Comics Chatter Bob Fingerman: The cartoonist is slaving for his monthly Minimum Wage................... 3 Incoming: Neal Adams and CBC’s editor take a sound thrashing from readers.............. 8 The Good Stuff: Jorge Khoury on artist Frank Espinosa’s latest triumph...................... 12 Hembeck’s Dateline: Our Man Fred recalls his Kitchen Sink contributions................. 14 Coming Soon in CBC: Howard Cruse, Vanguard Cartoonist Announcement that Ye Ed’s comprehensive talk with the 2014 MOCCA guest of honor and award-winning author of Stuck Rubber Baby will be coming this fall...... 15

REmembering Wild BILL EVERETT The Last Splash: Blake Bell traces the final, glorious years of Bill Everett and the man’s exquisite final run on Sub-Mariner in a poignant, sober crescendo of life...... 16 Fish Stories: Separating the facts from myth regarding William Blake Everett............ 23

Denis Kitchen included three in-jokes on our cover that his observant close friends might recognize, but Ye Ed has no problem revealing. First, while many hats may be an apt metaphor for his career, in fact Denis never, ever actually wears a real hat. Never. Second, his demure assistant Conrad makes reference to a lunch break, but Denis is notorious for virtually never taking lunch breaks. The man works non-stop! He skips breakfast too. True! Finally, he drew himself as a left-handed artist. His politics may be lefty, but the man is most definitely right-handed. — Y.E. If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication,

PLEASE READ THIS: This is copyrighted material, NOT intended for downloading anywhere except our website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal download, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for them so we can keep producing ones like this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at

Cowan Considered: Part two of Michael Aushenker’s interview with Denys Cowan on the man’s years in cartoon animation and a triumphant return to comics............. 24 Dr. Wertham’s Sloppy Seduction: Prof. Carol L. Tilley discusses her findings of shoddy research and falsified evidence in Seduction of the Innocent, the notorious book that almost took down the entire comic book industry...................................... 28 SPECIAL DENIS KITCHEN SECTION The Comix Book Life of Denis Kitchen: An exhaustive interview with underground comix pioneer Denis Kitchen on the many hats he sports besides publisher — cartoonist, art agent, author, historian, free-speech crusader, postcard collector — plus his Nancy obsession, friendships with Eisner, Crumb, and Kurtzman, new life with Kitchen Sink Books, and much more.............. 34 Creator’s Creators: Colorist Supreme Tom Ziuko illuminates his hue-drenched life.... 79 Coming Attractions: Finally, out of the muck ’n’ mire, rises Swampmen!..................... 79 A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words: Pérez’s Man of Tomorrow gets flopped!.... 80 Right: Detail from Denis Kitchen’s surreal strip about working for Marvel Comics gracing the back cover of Kitchen Sink’s Mondo Snarfo #1 [1978]. ©2014 Denis Kitchen. Download the FREE CBC BONUS PDF containing goodies we couldn’t squeeze into this print edition!

www.twomorrows.com/freestuff Comic Book Artist Vol. 1 & 2 are now available as digital downloads from twomorrows.com!

www.twomorrows.com

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 ©2014 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING.

This issue is dedicated wishing the best of health to our friend & contributor SETH KUSHNER ™

The New Voice of the Comics Medium

JON B. COOKE

Editor/Designer

John Morrow

Publisher & Consulting Editor

MICHAEL AUSHENKER

Associate Editor

DENIS KITCHEN Cover Artist

Bryant Paul Johnson

Cover Colorist

JORGE KHOURY RICHARD ARNDT CHRISTOPHER IRVING TOM ZIUKO

Contributing Editors

Brian K. Morris Senior Transcriber

STEVEN THOMPSON STEVEN E. Tice Transcribers

J.D. KING

CBC Cartoonist

TOM ZIUKO

CBC Colorist Supreme

RONN SUTTON

CBC Illustrator

ROB SMENTEK CBC Proofreader

SETH KUSHNER Greg PRESTON

CBC Contributing Photographers

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK CHRISTOPHER IRVING JORGE KHOURY TOM ZIUKO

CBC Columnists

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 via snail-mail at CBC, P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892 or call (401) 932-1967 2

Kitchen Detail Talking up Denis, Wild Bill, and planning for too much stuff

Back home, we’re still getting We at Casa Cooke are especialthe swing of things at CBC, doing ly gratified to (finally!) produce our darnedest to produce this magthis Denis Kitchen issue of azine on a regular basis, balancing Comic Book Creator. The boring ol’ real life and this rewardmulti-talented man has been a ing comic-book stuff in a changing longtime pal of yours truly, helpmarketplace, and doing our best to ing out at crucial times (such as include everything promised. And when yours truly and my brother along with our esteemed partner Andrew were in need during the and publisher, John Morrow, we’ve production of our full-length feapondered long and hard about how ture film documentary, Will Eisner: things are progressing. Portrait of a Sequential Artist, To that end, we’ve decided about the life of Denis’s friend and to end (much as we love ’em) mentor) and Mr. Kitchen has althe summer double-size annuals ways being of support when called and instead increase the mag’s upon, never mind the fact the carfrequency to bi-monthly basis toonist-slash-publisher-slash-art starting soon (but, not to worry, agent-slash-historian (etc.) is a this begins after our knock-’emmore-than-deserving subject for out-of-the-park “Swampmen” a career-spanning retrospective. special coming next ish!). We Many thanks to Denis and his might do an occasional CBC better half, Stacey, for their Presents book, but that’ll be exhaustive efforts in all this! down the road, upon getting a Plus, we couldn’t be more bunch of issues under our belt. delighted to spotlight the great This issue’s massive comic book artist and writer interview with underground William Blake Everett in Blake comix pioneer and cartoonist Bell’s wonderfully engaging Denis Kitchen has unfortunately article on the man’s final shouldered out two features we years. As youngsters, we were had hoped to include — a look mesmerized by Wild Bill’s work at Johnny Lee Achziger and Joe during his final, early ’70s run Staton’s 1970s Gods of Mount on Sub-Mariner (augmented Olympus tabloid, as well as a by his Torch vs. Subby pin-up in discussion about the excellence Steranko’s History of Comics and Denis Kitchen by Ronn Sutton of John Romita Jr.’s craftsthe description of that pair’s epic battles in manship by Tom McWeeney — items we’ll include in All in Color for a Dime), and we were devastated at the future editions of our now more frequent periodical. Our time to hear of his passing, in 1973. Poignant, too, is the gratitude to Messrs. Achzinger, Staton, McWeeney, and discussion of Everett’s recovery from alcoholism, which to Richard Arndt and John Workman for their patience. enabled the creator to produce the best work of an amazingly accomplished career. Speaking of upping our output, Ye Ed is hoping

there’s a graphic designer out there who can help with the production of our humble pub, one with solid knowledge of comics, commendable InDesign skills, and a willingness — and patience — to assist in laying-out the magazine. We’d also love to hear from a Web-savvy soul who might be ambitious with ideas and elbow grease regarding CBC’s Web and social media presence. If you’ve got the fortitude to work hard for a mere pittance (but get tons of appreciation), we would love to hear from you. If interested, please drop us an email, okay?

We bet you’ll agree that the winter just passed was downright beastly but a bright spot for us at CBC was, despite the biting cold and endless snow, we braved a weekend visit to legendary underground cartoonist and gay culture pioneer Howard Cruse and partner Ed Sedarbaum’s northwest Massachusetts abode to catch up with Howard before his attendance at MOCCA Fest as this year’s guest of honor. We couldn’t include part one about the warm and friendly visit to the Eisner-winning author of Stuck Rubber Baby, so look for it in the fall!

cbc contributors Asbury Park Comic Con Steve Bryant Keith Chow Andrew D. Cooke Joshua T. Cooke Denys Cowan

Howard Cruse Frank Espinosa Wendy Everett Fantagraphics Bob Fingerman Cliff Galbraith Tim Hartin

Andy Hershberger J.D. King Denis Kitchen Stacey Kitchen Chris Knowles Kurt Komoda Seth Kushner

John Lind Kevin Lison Marvel Comics Mark Mazz Adam McGovern thenerdsofcolor.org Eric Reynolds

—Y e Crusading Editor jonbcooke@aol.com

Bill Schelly Ed Sedarbaum Cory Sedlmeier Linda Smith www.soti.org J.D. Spurlock L. Brian Stauffer

Ronn Sutton Prof. Carol L. Tilley The Time Capsule University of Illinois Patty Willett Alison Davis Wood Rob Yeremian

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

comic book zeitgeist

Slaving for Minimum Wage Cartoonist Bob Fingerman’s back with a new (old) Generation X comic book series

Interview conducted by JON B. COOKE

[Bob Fingerman may have ended the first regular run of Minimum Wage, his Eisner-nominated saga of twenty-somethings living a hand-to-mouth New York City existence, in 1999, but he hasn’t strayed too far from the comics field since those days. Oh yeah, sure, he’s tried his hand as prose novelist (Bottomfeeder, Connective Tissue, Pariah), but in the last decade, he has remained in the graphic side of things, be they horror or funny (sometimes both!). He is an excellent School of Visual Arts-trained cartoonist, after all. Bob has produced comics and graphic novels including From the Ashes and Recess Pieces. But the Queens, New York, native is now back with the Gen-X exploits of cartoon cartoonist Rob Hoffman (though now separated from the original series’ co-star, Sylvia Fanucci) in the rebooted Minimum Wage, today published by Image. Ye Editor caught up with the ambitious artist/writer to discuss the new monthly series, talking via telephone on Jan. 30 (on the same week, it needs to be noted, as President Obama’s State of the Union address, which discussed raising the minimum wage by executive order). Bob copy-edited the transcript, which was transcribed by Steven Thompson, for clarity and correction.—JBC.] Comic Book Creator: It’s been a real pleasure getting back into Minimum Wage, and the Maximum Minimum Wage collection is a beautiful production. It’s startling to see the evolution of your style from the very beginning. Then you made a major step and, if you ask me, now another major step, with the new series. Bob Fingerman: Thanks! CBC: How’s it come about? Are you constantly pushing yourself? Bob: Yeeeeeah… I can’t force it, so some of it is just, I hope, a natural progression. [laughs] But I think it’s mainly a natural progression. I mean, I don’t like to stagnate, so if the work develops, that’s ultimately what I’m striving for. I’m glad it shows. It’s a conscious desire to do better, but perhaps a not conscious effort to show how it actually transpires, if that makes any sense. CBC: You want your style to be recognized. You’re a freelance illustrator as well as a comic book artist, right? You want art directors and the public to say, “Yes, I recognize that as the certain style of a certain artist.” Bob: Right. That’s an interesting thing. To me, the art looks like my art and I can’t force people to say, “That’s Bob Fingerman’s style,” or whatever. But if I were to consciously say, “This is now officially my style and I have made a conscious decision to stop evolving as an artist,” I don’t think I could do that. I’d rather sacrifice recognizability for quality. CBC: It’s interesting to see such a transition. There are not Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

many artists who come to mind whose work has changed so drastically… I mean, you came on the scene fully mature with a distinct style you had at the time, which was certainly authentic and didn’t look amateur and yet now, it’s just… well, let me say I think it’s a remarkable transition that’s been made. Bob: Well, thank you. CBC: You’re welcome. Okay, Here’s the obvious question: minimum wage. It’s all the rage right now, Bob. It’s in all the newspapers! You couldn’t have picked a better time to come out with it! [laughter] Bob: Well, maybe. I don’t tweet that often but I actually kinda joke-tweeted yesterday that all the real news about “minimum wage” was making it hard for people to find my graphic novel when using a search engine. “Thanks, Obama! [laughter] Pulling a little attention away from my modest effort to talk about something that actually affects people! [laughter] You’ve got some nerve!” CBC: Onto the real subject here: The original Minimum Wage series ran in the 1990s, right? Bob: The initial run was 1995 to ’99. It was 10 regular comic books and it was launched with a graphic novella-length book — 72 pages — which was a stand-alone to test the waters and see if there’d be any demand to go further. That’s why I refer to that first book as the pilot — because that’s really the function it served. I’ve always thought of Minimum Wage in very TV terms. That’s why I’m referring to the new issues as the “new season.” To me, it’s always felt very much like episodic television, so why not embrace the terminology. CBC: We’re talking about quite a jump in between seasons! You had 10 issues from Fantagraphics and it ends with a major cliffhanger of sorts. I mean, he does say, “I do” marrying Sylvia, but we do get a sense that there’s a great deal of ambivalence about him getting married. Bob: Yeah, the way I describe it is that he says, “I do,” and then we open the new series with him realizing that he doesn’t. CBC: [Laughs] Within two pages of #1 of the new

Above: Cover for Minimum Wage #4 by Bob Fingerman. The series, last seen in 1999, has been revived 16 years later, now published monthly by Image Comics.

Inset left: Detail of Minimum Wage #6 cover by B.F.

Below: Taken by the man himself, portrait of Bob Fingerman at his light table. All courtesy of Bob.

Below: Seth Kushner’s exquisite photography captures a serious Dan Goldman, creator/writer/artist of Red Light Properties. 4

and all. I don’t think anybody comes off completely one-dimensional in the book. I hope they don’t. CBC: Sylvia was, to me, an optimistic, positive character who had her doubts at any given time. I made this assumption women may have liked the book for its generally realistic portrayal of a relationship between, basically, two geeks really into pop culture. Even though they weren’t of my generation, it rang true. The appeal of the book was it was a story about a man and a woman in love. And, here you go, I open up to the first few pages, not getting the major clue on the cover of the new series, and learn there ain’t no relationship! Is that audacious or what? Bob: I don’t know. To me, it’s realistic. Even though I am going to be giving myself a little more creative latitude as I go further into the series — to not just keep mining my own life for experience, you know — sometimes things may look like they’re going to work out and they actually do not. That’s part of life, too. I think there were enough clues in the first series that there was trouble in paradise, that their not being a couple anymore shouldn’t be a complete shock. It’s interesting. In terms of reader response, I felt I had done my job well with the end of the first series, because I had people tell me at the time with the “I do” ending just as many saying to me it’s nice that I went with the happy ending, and just as many saying, “Wow, that ending was so depressing.” [laughter] I thought, Good! That’s good. People aren’t just reading it one way. CBC: [Laughs] Count me in the latter group. Have you gotten any comment with the new series saying, “Why aren’t #5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Above: Trippy spread from Dan Goldman’s Red Light Properties, courtesy of the artist/writer, and currently in print from IDW.

series, he mentions that he’s divorced. So here we go: Season Two. Bob: I kinda wanted to dunk the reader right in, feet first, y’know? CBC: Actually the cover has the thumb covering a photo of Sylvia’s face. There’s a clue. Bob: Yeah, if people can’t gather from the cover that there’s something amiss with their relationship then I have completely failed as an artist! [laughter] CBC: I remember specifically picking up Minimum Wage for the first time because I was talking to the proprietor of a comic shop and just asked her what was there good to read at that time. She very enthusiastically recommended Minimum Wage and I took that to heart to indicate, right or wrong, that maybe there’s a good amount of female readers of the book. Is that true? Bob: I’ve always hoped there was and I’ve met quite a few female readers… It just sounds funny to say it that way. [laughs] It sounds dismissive. But, yes, I think there are a lot of women who’ve read the book over the years, enjoyed it, and found it portrays female characters realistically. My goal is to portray everyone realistically, very warts

Above: Courtesy of B.F., the wraparound cover art for the Italian collected edition of the ’90s Minimum Wage. Below: The “Wedding” ish, MW #10 [Jan. ’99]. Bottom: Maximum Minimum Wage cover.

we following Sylvia?” Bob: Maybe I will. It’s a little soon. Up to now I haven’t gotten that much feedback. I’m hoping to get a nice, lively letters column going but it’s always hard with the first couple of issues. So, yeah. Some people might say, “Why has this just suddenly become The Rob Show?” And yet it’s always been largely dominated by him. Now the focal point of this series has changed a bit. Right now my focus is on him making his way as a single guy, which we have not seen before. That’s why she is not a presence. ’Cause she’s out of his life. CBC: Have you gotten any comments of, “I liked her better?” Bob: [Laughs] Again, I don’t think I ever heard anyone tell me that they actually liked her better but I certainly had people say they liked her equally. CBC: Than I’ll have to be the first. I definitely did like her better. Reading it, I felt these guys are a bit self-absorbed. Reading it closely because I was going to talk to you, I had a no-brainer epiphany that I don’t have to like them. But I’m interested enough to keep turning the pages. When you offered to send me a comp copy of #2, I don’t want to have that taken away from me that there’s actually a title I’m looking forward to picking up once a month. Bob: Gotcha. That’s very flattering. CBC: That’s quite a jump in years between series. We were talking earlier and you mentioned the last issue had been 1999 but it didn’t feel that long. But it has been. It’s been long enough to have a teenager who’d be entering high school right now. Bob: In the real world, it has been 15 years, but in the comic’s world it’s only been three. I didn’t want to take him into middle age. That’s not the story I want to tell. This is the story of a young man who either hasn’t made it yet or hasn’t had life kick the shit out of him too much. CBC: Right, but why the jump of years? What made you want to go back and do Minimum Wage? Bob: Ummm… CBC: Why’d it end the first time? Bob: Well, there were a variety of reasons. One, I had kind of hit a wall both creatively and emotionally doing it and also just financially. It never had broken out big enough that it was practical to keep doing it. I wish it was a joke but the reality was I was making less than minimum wage doing that book and it was just not feasible. Also, my original intention going forward was to depict every brutal moment of their relationship coming to an end, and crashing and burning. And I found that such a depressing prospect to go through as an artist without even the idea that there’d be [laughs] any financial compensation for it. I can’t put myself through that! And I also realized the truth is that there were as many people — like you — who did like Sylvia so much, and I didn’t want to portray the relationship going completely sour. I thought that would be unpleasant for everyone. It was gonna be unpleasant for me to write and draw, and it was gonna be unpleasant for the readers to experience. So I thought, “Let me go away, think about this a while… ”— and there were also some other things I wanted to pursue at the time. I had started writing a prose novel at the time because I was very interested in writing novels. I thought, “Let me put Minimum Wage aside and I’ll come back to it when I figure it all out.” And then years went by and I thought that so much time had elapsed that I’d kind of missed the window to come back to it. I thought, “Well, you know, I’ve lost whatever momentum there was, so I guess it’s dead now.” No one’s more surprised than me to be back to work on new chapters of Minimum Wage and also I hope people are as happy as me that it’s back. But, for so many years, it seemed such an unlikely thing that I would ever be back to work on it. CBC: And you’re back quite ambitiously. What issue numComic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

ber are you currently on right at this moment? (This is before # 2 has been released.) Bob: Well, right at this moment, literally as we speak, I’m working on the cover to #6. Four issues are completely drawn, issues 5 and 6 are written and thumbnailed. Next week I will start drawing the guts of # 5, so everything is right on schedule and hopefully will remain so. CBC: The story is taking place three years after the wedding, right? Bob: Mm-hm. Yes. CBC: Do real world events at all come into play? Are the calendar years relevant in this? Bob: To a degree. How do I answer this because I don’t really want to give too much away? The story picks up in May of 2000. Fingers crossed, I’ll be doing this for the next few years. So, yeah, real world events will be making their way into the book. That’s also something I wanted to address because in a lot of ways the original series was about the microcosm of these characters. They were almost untouched by the real world. I would like to start broadening that. I think particularly the year 2000, which was a big year, an election year! One of the things I want to start playing with is Rob becoming more interested in the world around him. And, of course, some of that would involve getting involved in the world of politics, taking a broader interest in his world. CBC: And New York is his world and we’re less than a year-and-a-half away from a major event in the history of the United States, but significantly in New York City.

Bob: Yes. And it’s one that I’ve assiduously avoided in my own work, partly because it is so painful… but also it is so huge I didn’t want to ever address it without having proper perspective. It’s all well and good to do work in the heat of the moment when you’re experiencing things, but I think certain things are so huge, they require stepping back a little

Above: The evolving style of Bob Fingerman is blatantly obvious in this pairing of a 1995 Rob Hoffman and his 2013 version. This appeared as the end piece in Maximum Minimum Wage. Courtesy of B.F.

Above: Detail from the cover of Minimum Wage #1 — the 2014 version, that is — giving us a clue on how life’s changed for Rob in the 16 years since last we saw him (albeit three years his time). Art by Bob Fingerman. 5

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

they’ll do something where they’ll land on their feet but…. CBC: There I go just being an ignoramus. I wasn’t even thinking of that. Of course. That’s obvious. The people that don’t want to move to this… Bob: Yeah. Los Angeles doesn’t have sex appeal for everybody. [laughs] Some people can’t wait to get out and enjoy the beautiful weather, and all that. But a lot of people have their whole life here in New York. You don’t necessarily say, “Well I guess I’ll uproot my entire life just so I can keep editing whatever title.” CBC: I think there’s something to be said for The Tonight Show coming back to New York. Everyone was going to California in the late ’60s. Bob: [Laughs] I’m not sure if that counts as a fair trade, but, yeah, that’s an interesting point. Good for Jimmy Fallon. I approve. CBC: Just chatting with you belabors the obvious that you’re a New York cartoonist. You tread the streets of New York for freelance work, is that not so? Bob: Well, not anymore. I devote all my time to doing the comics. I gave up chasing freelance a while ago. Again, it’s an analogy I’ve used before but it became too dispiriting and too much like the scenes in Fantasia of the dinosaurs finding shrinking oases. [laughs] It was the same group of illustrators going around trying to find work and not finding any work. It was like The Grapes of Wrath. CBC: How’s it going? The sales, I assume, on the first issue of Minimum Wage are good? Bob: They’re encouraging. Again, the comics biz is going through many changes, but I’m not discouraged and I don’t think Image is discouraged. I mean, the goal is always to make the numbers go up and that’s obviously something that we’re working toward. CBC: One thing I’ve admired about you is you put yourself upfront. You have a good grasp of self-promotion. Cartoonists and comic book artists don’t often toot their own horns well enough. [Bob laughs] You’ve got tenacity! Bob: I’m sufficiently lacking in modesty? CBC: I call it tenacity! I think it’s a fine American trait. [laughter] Bob: I like to think I straddle the line between being immodest and being… I don’t know. Self-promotion is unfortunately… there’s something unseemly about it, but it is definitely a necessity at this point. Literally, for the first 20 years of my career, I labored under the misconception that if the work is good, people will find it. Guess what? They don’t, you know? [laughs] You really do have to be out there ringing your own bell and saying, “Look at me! Look at me!” CBC: Did you compile the Maximum Minimum Wage collection in anticipation of relaunching? What was the thinking there? Bob: No! It was completely independent! Again, here’s where on the one hand, you’ll say, “Okay, Bob has a healthy ego” and, on the other hand, I pretty much don’t because the last time it was collected, it was in that much smaller (I mean physically smaller) edition, Beg the Question. I thought, okay, it’s collected. It’s done. Onward. It was only last year that somebody else — an editor — planted the idea in my head. I thought, “Oh, okay. It kind of would be nice to collect it all between two covers of a nice big shiny deluxe edition. The idea really took root, yet even there I thought we’ll collect it and that’ll be that. But then, as I was working on putting together the Maximum Minimum Wage collection, that’s when the unexpected happened, which was me rekindling my interest in doing it again. ’Cause I thought, “Well, Image seems like they really like it and I do have an invaluable ally in [Image

and letting a little time go. So, when the time comes that I do address some of this in the book, I like to think that I will have had enough time go by that it will be done well. It requires a certain finesse and sensitivity. CBC: It’s still a major, major Below: Red Light Properties’ event. We haven’t even lead character Jude Tobin has a mentioned what the event is, conversation with his poltergeist but I think we all know what pop in this spread by Dan Goldman. we’re talking about. Bob: Yes! It’s like we don’t even want to say it ‘cause it is, for me, to this day, a raw nerve. There’s certain things Above: Bob and his wife, Michele where, in a way, it’s almost like I’ll take a very real world Cohen, in a 2010 photo, courtesy event and completely trivialize it and here I am saying not of Kurt Komoda. The pair appeared trivialize it. But it’s almost like that horror movie Candyman, in the IDW mini-series From The you know? I don’t want to say it out loud. It’s such a tainted Ashes (below is a detail from the date that I don’t like invoking it. Not cover of #1 [May 2009], drawn out of any superstition, just… well, by Bob, natch). Inset right is the you know. cover of the collected edition. Actually over the years I’ve Next page: Clockwise from top is avoided drawing big landmarks. This a panel from Minimum Wage #6 has always been a comic about the (check out the wall posters); detail minutiae and the micro, and not the of cover from MW #5; macro. I can’t really think of any big and a pic of the artist at New York landmarks that have ever his art table. shown up in Minimum Wage, even Self-portrait though I think it’s very authentically a by the man New York comic. And it’s funny, too, himself. because in the new chapters there All courtesy are all these establishing panels. I of Bob Fingerman. was telling a friend that I want to be to Rego Park what Philip Roth was to Newark [laughs]. Just kind of put Rego Park and Queens on the map a little bit with these little Rego Park landmarks. But you never see the Empire State Building or the Statue of Liberty. CBC: It’s interesting with what the looming future holds. You ain’t gonna be able to avoid it. Bob: Well… [laughs] watch me. CBC: New York is such a comic-book town. Bob: [Laughs] Well, not anymore! DC’s moving, I guess, later this year… I understand the pragmatism and the corporate thinking behind consolidation and all that. But it sucks they’re heading to Burbank. CBC: It’s an interesting point. I don’t know if I give a sh*t. Bob: I give a sh*t because I have enough friends who work there who are now gonna be out of work because of the move. Most of the people I know did not take the relocation. CBC: That’s a salient point. Bob: So that’s a very real-world event. What happens to the people who’ve been editing comic books for, in some cases, decades, when they suddenly find themselves out of work? It’s such a completely specific skill set I don’t know how you translate that into other fields. Most of these people I know are smart and capable so I’m sure

CEO] Robert Kirkman.” Kirkman was a fan back in the day, when it was coming out in the ’90s. Now his fortunes [as creator of the multi-media sensation The Walking Dead] have definitely changed over the years and he’s a luminary in the field, so when I contacted him about the idea of doing the big book, he was very enthusiastic. So I thought, “Might as well press my luck a little further and see if they’d like to resurrect the title.” In that case I spoke with the publisher, Eric Stephenson, and he also really liked the book so, between Stephenson and Kirkman, it all just kind of fell into place — much more easily than I had hoped. CBC: Do you have a story arc in mind for this? Bob: Yes. I’m certainly hoping it’s going to run two or three years. It would be nice if it goes even further than that. That’s one of the reasons I’ve decided to start pursuing more fictional arcs because there’s only so much of my own life that I can use for material before we wind up with, “Wow! A whole issue devoted to doing laundry!” (There could be comedy in that… hey, who knows? Maybe I just talked myself into an issue! I hope not.) I’m hoping that this is going to be, let’s just say, open-ended, but I have actually got the next three years’ worth of story outlined. It’s a flexible outline. That’s another reason I’m feeling much more optimistic about going forward with it because, when I was doing it originally, I really never worked with an outline. I worked issue to issue with some kind of notion in mind of a bigger picture, but it wasn’t particularly mapped out. And I think, going forward, it feels good this time around having a blueprint. Some of that discipline came from writing novels. I think my writing has improved over the years and it’s definitely become more disciplined, and that’s had a very positive effect on the new material. CBC: And how was the foray into prose writing? Bob: I loved it! I mean, it’s a brutal, totally dispiriting industry, and I wrote a lot more books than I ever actually sold. I set out to write novels, complete them, and get them published. Some people do that for years and years, and never sell anything, so the fact that I got two novels published, I take pride in that. I would love to come back to it and do some more at some point, but not to the detriment of pursuing comics work or to the exclusion of doing the comics like I did last time. I really did put comics on the shelf and say, “Oh, I’ll come back to that.” Because part of achieving the mindset to write the books was to say, “I am a writer now. I do not draw comics.” So I just didn’t draw for a while, which felt kinda weird. CBC: Did you come right back to it? Were you a different artist? That’s somewhat unusual to hang up your pen like that. Bob: I think so. I think among the reasons my art has changed over the years is having put it aside and then come back to it. Also, this might sound kind of funny. We won’t start getting into all the side projects I’ve done, but I did From the Ashes, in 2010, which was a post-apocalyptic thing. Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

Oh, and also, actually, I did a book called Recess Pieces. I’m just trying to trace back in my head where some of the big stylejumps happened. The truth is some of the style-jumps just came because they stopped making the pen I liked working with. Sometimes it’s just as simple a reason as that, where you’ve become comfortable with working with a certain tool and then they stop making it! You think, “Okay, I’d better radically rethink the way I work!” So, if I quit Minimum Wage again, it’s gonna be because they stop making the pen I like! [laughter] CBC: Has From the Ashes been collected? That was very funny. Bob: Yes, it did come out in trade. It’s out-of-print, though. CBC: Do you like the duotone colors in the new title? Bob: Yes! I love it! It’s kind of what I always hoped it would look like, but it wasn’t in the budget and I didn’t know how to do it production-wise. But that’s one thing, again, with the huge gap of time since I started doing it and doing it now. My work methods have changed and working digital… I mean, I still draw traditionally. It’s still drawn with a pen, It’s just doing digital post-production on it has enabled me to add some nice bells and whistles, like adding a second color. Back when I was doing this originally, who knows? I might have had to cut Rubylith or something! [laughter] It would have been horrendous. CBC: Right! Rubylith… good lord! [laughs] Bob: I’m sure only the old duffers reading the magazine know what Rubylith is. “Kids! Look it up on your iPad!” CBC: Along with X-acto blades and waxers. [Laughter] Bob: Exactly! There’s a whole generation working in comics now who will never know the joy of smelling the waxer. (That sounds like a euphemism for something dirty: “He’s smellin’ the waxer again.”) CBC: There’s a lot of material that I would assume a lot of comic book readers and fans of your work haven’t seen. Did you do a lot of material for Screw magazine? Bob: Well… yes. Probably more than I would ever be happy to admit. The thing is, though, I wised up. That was the beginning of writing prose, even though that was just a certain kind of unimaginative prose, but their writing rate was better than their art rate. So, at a certain point, I stopped drawing for them and started writing a column. I thought, “Why am I investing all this time drawing when I could be banging out a column in an hour or two and get paid more.” CBC: Is there anything else you specifically want to talk about or let people know, Bob? Bob: I don’t want to burden you with too much more, so the only thing I’d say is, “Tune into the new season of Minimum Wage.” And if there are any French readers of CBC: “Stay tuned for the French editions coming out later this year from Les Humanoïdes Associés!” CBC: Merci beaucoup, Monsieur Fingerman!

Above: Our intrepid photographer Seth Kushner confirms the photo shoot focusing on comics creator Dan Goldman was shot on location in New York City’s Grand Central Station. Kudos to Seth for these evocative images!

Above: Dan also serves as editor and consulting writer on AMC’s Walking Dead social game on Facebook, which he says, “Gives me the opportunity to form my own original gang of characters and set them loose in the iconic show’s zombie wasteland. Building character arcs and breaking them into gameplay-specific vignettes that try to break your heart as well as scare the sh*t out of you… it’s been a fantastic workout for my writer muscles…” 7

incoming

CBC Readers’ Odysseys Neal Adams & Ye Editor take heat from letter writers for the Batman Odyssey issue Thank you for reaching out to share your “Boswellian” tribute to my brother, Les Daniels. I share the poignant emotion of wishing for missed opportunities and regret over the loss. How well you captured not only the facts but the spirit of the man! Of all his many attributes, I must add the one that always stood out to me (beyond the obvious brilliance, humor, skill): his talent for making and keeping friends. Put yourself at a very high spot on the list of equally talented special people. I loved the photos and artwork you included, too. My favorite is [Beth Gwinn’s portrait] on pg. 29 of [CBC #3]. To me, it says it all. You are so gracious and kind to remember me. Thank you.

Adam Kubert Thank you, Jon. Beautiful issue [CBC #2, the Joe Kubert tribute]. I hope I can get through it someday.

Eduardo Duran In your latest CBC, in the Neal Adams interview, Neal states that no villain ever found the Batcave before Man-Bat. Hate to do this, but he is mistaken. In “The 1,001 Trophies Of Batman” from Detective Comics #158 [Apr. 1950], Dr. Doom (not the Marvel one) snuck in by hiding in a mummy casket. In “The 1,000 Secrets of the Batcave” from Batman #48 [Aug.–Sept. ’48], Wolf Brando finds the cave by breaking in to Wayne Manor and accidentally finds the entry. In both cases, both villains die at the end, but they did find the cave. Both stories are collected in Batman: The Secrets of The Batcave [2007] trade paperback. Just letting you know.

Jay Willson

Write to CBC: jonbcooke@ aol.com or P.O. Box 204, West Kingston RI 02892. 8

First off, let me congratulate you on creating a magazine that is actually superior to your two previous efforts. Comic Book Artist had no greater fan than me, but I actually prefer this new CBC magazine to the previous Cooke magazines. You seem to have a really good handle on the whole package with CBC and I’m excited to see where you go in future issues. Count me along for the ride! As to CBC #3, this was an issue that I was very much looking forward to reading. For one, Neal Adams is my all-time favorite comics artist, with Joe Kubert being a very close second. To have both of these creators spotlighted in your last two issues has been a thing of true joy for me. As I noted to you in a side e-mail, I believe that tribute issue that you did for Kubert is probably the best issue of a magazine that you’ve produced to date. Just an amazingly great representation of the life of a truly incredible artist. In Neal’s case, #3 was devoted primarily to giving Neal a chance to state his piece about what he intended with the “Odyssey” that he seems to have created with his Batman Odyssey series for DC Comics. No one can criticize the incredible effort that Neal put into this series, and his personal enjoyment of the work seems to show through in each page. He should be proud of what he has accomplished. However, as a lifelong fan of Neal’s and someone who really wanted to love this series, these are some of the issues that I believe he is missing:

1.) Neal continues to reference the work as a novel, as if that would explain the jumps in logic that exist throughout the story. A novel is just a longer story — the writer’s job is still to bring all of the elements involved in it together into a cohesive package. This series packs too many elements into the overall story to do that effectively. It’s just a giant jumbled mess of visual jambalaya. The book needs an editor badly — this is a good example of what can happen to creators who work by themselves, without any real outside influence or criticism. The work can run off into bad directions without any realization on their part that they are losing their audience. This situation happens throughout the “novel.” 2.) The story is not “true” to the Batman character. Sure, this is Neal’s “take” on the character, but there are amazing changes to Batman that are difficult to explain for longtime lovers of the character like myself. For one, the constant shots of Batman using guns (shooting guns in a closed train to get the attention of the innocent people inside? What kind of irresponsible action would that be with the potential of an accidental shooting? An inexplicable decision) just does not fit the characters motivations. Sure, it’s a cool image, but it’s used too much. Batman is also a character of force, and he is represented continuously in the story as a very passive character. He never seems to take charge. 3.) For much of the story, the Batman seems more observer than active participant. As the lead, he really doesn’t do a whole lot other than get shot and talk a lot. For the most part he moves throughout his “odyssey” by meeting character after character after character who throw him into new experiences, often without a lot of reasoning or cohesion. For many of the scenes, the only link is Bruce’s discussion about the stories. 4.) The idea that Bruce Wayne (who seems oddly thin and not the least bit imposing in his opening dialogue scenes) sits and drinks coffee with Clark Kent in the Batcave is also a bizarre creative decision (let alone that Wayne always drank tea, but I digress). In addition, if you read the dialogue that Bruce recites in those scenes, and then read your interview with Neal in CBC, you realize that the readers of Batman Odyssey are simply listening to Neal Adams talk in those scenes, not Bruce Wayne. Again, something that completely takes the reader out of the Batman adventure. That dialogue is just not coming from the Batman character. Neal would have been better off creating his own character based upon himself if he wanted to insert himself so thoroughly throughout the story as a character. Same for scenes of Batman drinking the waste from the hydrogen vehicle, etc. Those are just inexplicable moments in a Batman story; they only make sense in a Neal Adams adventure. 5) If you read back on the history of Ra’s Al Ghul, you realize the man is an eco-terrorist; he is attempting to save the earth by eliminating the people that are destroying it. Neal has turned the character against his basic goals in this story, and in many ways, has just made him into a bad James Bond villain. Again, the actions of the character are not true to his history. This is a story that is all about impact scenes. An artistic decision to delineate a great scene over carefully developing a good and involving story. Moments of visual impact with nary a story to hold them together. Neal seems to decide, “it would be cool to have Batman shoot a gun,” or “wow, what a jarring scene it would be to have Batman get shot #5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

TM & © DC Comics.

Diane Manning

through the arm right on the cover of the book,” etc. Visually arresting imagery throughout, no doubt, but many are so jarring or out of character that they result in taking the reader out of the story. Either that or Neal figures that he has written himself into a corner in attempting to wedge a dramatic visual moment into the scene, and loses control of the story in climbing out of it. This happens over and over again throughout. I will be the first to admit, however, that the artwork is terrific. Unfortunately, like the story, it is also inconsistent. This is really not due to Neal himself, but to Neal’s decision to use multiple inkers on the book. An inker like Scott Williams did these incredibly faithful inked pages over Neal’s stuff, while Bill Sienkiewicz inks a large part of the book in his sloppier, looser style. Add to that other inkers like Neal himself (who should have inked the whole book), Kevin Nowlan (who has a much tighter style of inking than Neal himself), Paul Neary, etc., the constantly changing artwork just adds another layer to the continuously-jumping storyline. Michael Golden does the best inking in the book, so his pages of sheer beauty often look very out of place when followed by someone with less talent than he possesses. It makes the entire package a big jumble of beautiful scenes and awkward story moments. Neal Adams is a great creator. What comes with greatness, however, is strong criticism. If you have reached the heights that Neal has reached in his career, then you must expect that readers will expect this level of quality from you every time that you produce. Neal needs to let the work speak for itself. If he is happy with it, then he doesn’t need to “explain” it. Creative work that needs to be “explained” is indicative of failed art and a lack of communication of the points intended by the artist. If Neal feels that he has done his job, then let the work speak for itself. Put the strong ego to use and go back to work. The irony of the situation is that I was so happy to see Neal draw Batman again that I purchased both the comics and the collected edition. I love looking at the book and love that DC had him create it, so I hope this is just the first of many projects of its kind. I just hope that Neal puts the ego aside and involves someone else in the storytelling next time around. By the way, Jon, the Mark Waid and Earl Norem articles were outstanding; can’t wait for round two about Waid, one of the more interesting creators working in comics today. A truly gifted writer of comics. Also, thanks for your heartfelt articles on Les Daniels, a creator that I knew of (due to the many books of his that I possess), but one that I knew very little about. Another great job on your part of writing tribute to a great creator of the past. Keep up the great work, amigo. It’s awesome to have you back in the editor chair.

[Great to have you continue as a reader. You’ve been a superb supporter over the years, Jay, and here’s hoping we can finally do that Don Newton issue together! — Ye Editor.]

Simon Bullivant Re: CBC #3 – “Neal Adams’ Odyssey.” Seriously? I paid good money for that magazine. I’ve been a long-standing reader of Comic Book Artist (both versions), Back Issue, and now CBC. I can honestly say that in all that time I don’t think I’ve ever read a more pointless, depressing, or indulgent waste of time and space as the Neal Adams interview. It’s sad to see such an accomplished artist reduced to the equivalent of a man ranting on a street corner that the world is full of fools. I shan’t attempt any critique of Batman Odyssey, except to say that Mr. Adams is an infinitely better artist than he is Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

a writer. Guns, hydrogen cars, salt domes — it’s all clear now. I expect it was just my fault for being so stupid. But having said that, Mr. Adams does need to recognize that if Batman Odyssey is a novel — a word he used repeatedly — then it has to be judged by the standards of a novel rather than a regular comic. I would suggest that in terms of plot, structure, characterization, and story development, it compares very badly. Mr. Adams has clearly been aggrieved by all the criticism. Like him, I too have discovered that the Internet is a playground for crackpots and people only too keen to express an opinion (ring any bells?). I have two words of advice for Mr. Adams: ignore them. But my argument is not so much with Mr. Adams — he’s entitled to his opinions — as with you, Mr. Cooke. While I appreciate that Neal Adams is a comic-book rock star, and that he has done you some favors in the past, that should not override your role as an editor. It is one thing to present Mr. Adams’ opinions as facts, quite another to encourage him to express them. I felt that you crossed this editorial boundary on several occasions. You owe it to the readers of CBC to understand this. I appreciate that this is the world of comic books here, but yours gives the impression of being a serious publication rather than a fanzine. It’s not slavish, fan-boy adulation that I am after. Denny O’Neil seems to have been written further out of the Superman vs. Muhammad Ali story than ever before. Was this not worth remarking upon? And elsewhere, when Mr. Adams referred to previous Batman chroniclers as a “rabble of writers” producing “a pile of refuse,” did it not occur to you to ask him to clarify his remarks? It struck me as an astonishingly disrespectful statement. I hope for your sake that this interview has not compromised your relationship with other comic book creators — Mr. Adams’ so-called rabble — though I suspect it probably has done. [Well, I trust that the CBC letter column is the place for retorts from aggrieved parties, Simon, and I’m loathe to speak for Neal’s peers. I am grateful for your prompting me to continue to ponder a question that’s been nagging me for many a year: Whether this is history, journalism, uncritical feature writing, or a mélange of all three in the pages of CBC. I hope you’ll keep reading, sir, because I do think the mag will be getting better. Thanks for commenting. — Y.E.]

Above: Our middle son, Joshua Thomas, traveled to Ireland for a month after Christmas, visiting a native of the Emerald Isle, and J.T. knew his old man would be tickled to discover there’s a chain of restaurants called “Captain Americas” there’bouts, so the lad sent his Pops this snapshot! Saints be praised: Kirby lives! Previous page: Publications mentioned in Eduardo Duran’s letter of comment. Detective Comics #158 [Apr. 1950], Batman #48 [Aug.–Sept. ’48], and the collection Batman: Secrets of the Batcave [2007]. Below: We haven’t given proper space to the recent release of The Secret History of Marvel Comics by our pals Blake Bell & Dr. Michael J. Vassallo (Doc V.!), a great tome with extraordinary illustrations! Visit http://tinyurl.com/ntcn3vj for info on this awesome Fantagraphics Book.

Department of Corrections Department: Ervin Rustemagic, who helped tremendously with the Kubert tribute issue, wrote: “This past weekend I finally found the time to carefully read the text in the four pages of ‘Fax from Sarajevo Postscript,’ and was a little confused by the caption on pg. 66: ‘Here the younger Edvin receives his diploma…’ Younger than who? Then you also wrote: ‘… only 25 years earlier than his namesake nephew.’ Who is a namesake of whom? Nobody in the family has the same name.” Good heavens, a major faux pas by yours truly. My mistake for mixing up the names Ervin and Edvin. Sorry! [That’s all for now, folks! See ya next time. — Y.E.] 9

THE ORIGINAL GOES DIGITAL!

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE with all print issues HALF-PRICE!

The forerunner to COMIC BOOK CREATOR, CBA is the 2000-2004 Eisner Award winner for BEST COMICS-RELATED MAG! Edited by CBC’s JON B. COOKE, it features in-depth articles, interviews, and unseen art, celebrating the lives and careers of the great comics artists from the 1970s to today. ALL BACK ISSUES NOW AVAILABLE AS DIGITAL EDITIONS FOR $3.95 FROM www.twomorrows.com!

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 E-mail: store@twomorrowspubs.com

Order online at www.twomorrows.com COMIC BOOK ARTIST COLLECTION, VOLUME 3 Reprinting the Eisner Award-winning COMIC BOOK ARTIST #7-8 (spotlighting 1970s Marvel and 1980s indies), plus over 30 NEW PAGES of features and art! New PAUL GULACY portfolio, MR. MONSTER scrapbook, the story behind MARVEL VALUE STAMPS, and more! New MICHAEL T. GILBERT cover! (224-page trade paperback) $24.95 • ISBN: 9781893905429

#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!

(80-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(76-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#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!

(60-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(116-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(100-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(96-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(128-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#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!

(108-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(108-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#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!

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(128-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#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!

(104-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(104-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#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!

(106-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(122-page magazine) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

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!

(76-page Digital Edition) $3.95

(112-page Digital Edition) $3.95

the good stuff

Bravo, Salvatore!

Rocketo’s Frank Espinosa produces a gorgeous story about a successful shoemaker

Above: Cover for Frank Espinosa’s Rocketo: Journey to the Hidden Sea [Image, 2007]. Rocketo was nominated for three Eisner awards. Below: The cartoonist in front of a Salvatore Ferragamo store window display featuring pages from his graphic novella, discussed herein!

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

There are some who seem to forget that, wherever we go, we are surrounded by art. At its purest, art is that thing, a connection and an awareness, inspiring us to see the best in everyone and everything in our lifetime. It motivates us all to think and endure when we’re convinced we can go no further. It is in our children, ones who embolden us to put our body and soul into our work, lessons, and love. It is in our parents, the people who taught us compassion and devotion. And it’s certainly in your partner, that muse who opened your eyes to truth and removed all inhibitions. All of them and more inspire us to soar and create something wonderful out of nothing. Salvatore Ferragamo was an artist. When he was nine years old, poverty could not stop him from crafting his first pair of shoes, a gift for his sister to wear on her confirmation because she had none for that sacred occasion. After that epiphany, shoemaking became his art, his voice, and his passion. When he was 16, talented Ferragamo left the old country and arrived in America, where he eventually found success as shoemaker of the stars in the spotlight of Hollywood’s Golden Age. The fashion icon became world-renowned for the unique character and care he placed into the creation of every shoe produced. Glamorous women like Marilyn Monroe, Audrey Hepburn, Eva Perón, Greta Garbo, and other influential personalities walked on air thanks to Ferragamo and his empowering brand of footwear. Until the end of his life, the artist within the Italian shoemaker always understood that the perfect pair of shoes could make anyone feel beautiful. Last year Frank Espinosa’s thoughtful and beautifully-rendered story entitled “Salvatore Ferragamo: Making of a Dream” saw publication in the lavish book entitled The Amazing Shoemaker and as a special one-shot comic (both published by Museo Salvatore Ferragamo and only available at Ferragamo stores). The 26 pages composed by Espinosa are a modern-day masterpiece lovingly capturing the life and gusto of the Italian maestro via gorgeous painting and heartfelt dialogue. The story’s artwork has adorned the shoe company’s prestigious store windows around the globe. The breathtaking tale represents Frank Espinosa’s finest work yet. Espinosa explains, “My research consisted of reading Ferragamo’s autobiography and getting a feel for the tone of his voice, his passion, and his emotions during the periods he wrote about. The Ferragamo Company was amazing to work with; they sent books with the shoe designs, and they made their library open to me in a digital way. Later, when the book was finished I did get the chance to go to the Museo [museum] in Florence, and get a real sense of the wonderful place and the amazing city it is in.” Ferragamo’s life journey obviously absorbed Espinosa, the creator of the beloved Rocketo series. Being himself the son of a shoemaker, his admiration and understanding of the

by JORGE KHOURY CBC Contributing Editor

Contact Jorge Khoury via Twitter @KhouryJorge late Italian fashionista’s moxie is betrayed in every stroke of his brush. “There is a point in any artist’s life when everything falls against you,” he said. “That is the point when the artist digs in deep and keeps going or stops. If that artist keeps going, they are heading into new ground, a new experience a territory undiscovered. Picasso, Van Gogh, etc... Ferragamo could have stopped when the going got tough, turned around and done what everyone else was doing and make a living out of it. Instead he created a new experience with shoes. One can feel it when looking at his creations, one after the other they are ground-breaking. The experimentation, the sense of design, the fearless nature of it, these are some of the marks of a great artist.” The story of Salvatore Ferragamo is a captivating scenario, one that everyone should see. It’s a tale that demonstrates that no job is too big or too small when we place amore and determination into our work. With pride in our art and hearts, no one will ever take away that sweet sense of accomplishment. Bravo, Salvatore! Bravo, Frank!

This page: Pages and panels from Frank Espinosa’s lovely comic book story on the life of famed shoemaker Salvatore Ferragamo, including a color study for a spread (upper right) and detail of the cover (right). The 28-page oversize comic is only available at Ferragamo shoe stores worldwide and can be previewed via Facebook at http://tinyurl.com/oakxzw4.

NEXT FOR FRANK ESPINOSA: The innovative comic book artist and illustrator is breaking new ground this year with the debut of Zum Zum iBooks, boutique publisher of i-Books. The company’s first entry, due out in early summer, will be a new version of the ever-popular Frankenstein by Mary Shelley (panel above). Search “Zum Zum ibooks” on Facebook. Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

Special thanks to Frank Espinosa, Adam McGovern, and Martina Santoro. — J.K. 13

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

coming soon in cbc

Howard Cruse

Vanguard Cartoonist Back in the mid-’70s, it was in the pages of the Denis Kitchen-edited (and Marvel Comics-published!) Comix Book where I first encountered the captivating, albeit cute as heck, stylings of Howard Cruse, who would thereafter be a cartoonist whose work I would seek out. Y’see, despite the cutsey veneer of “Barefootz,” which did have its surface appeal, Howard was talking about honest-to-God stuff, examining reality (and oft surreality) with the same crystal-clear vision as his hippie brethren in the underground comix realm. For me, it was another superb example — alongside my seminal, early exposure to Dan O’Neill’s Odd Bodkins and R. Crumb’s Head Comix — that attention had to be given to these new kinds of funny books coming out of San Francisco. This material was vital. My appreciation for Cruse’s work continued as the years went by, though I wouldn’t see enough of it, and while I wasn’t surprised to learn he had come out, as they say, as a gay man, I hadn’t a clue how to find copies of The Advocate to look at his Wendel strip and, frankly, few comic shops I frequented carried Gay Comix, of which he served as editor of the first issues.

But then Stuck Rubber Baby. That impactful graphic novel is an important work, worthy of sharing shelfspace with Persepolis, Jimmy Corrigan and, yes, Maus. I had big plans to feature Howard in this issue, to complement the Kitchen section — Denis was Howard’s first significant publisher. I visited the cartoonist in his Massachusetts home this past winter, enjoying the splendid hospitality of H.C. and husband Ed Sedarbaum (oh, and you, too, Molly!), spending an Saturday interviewing and poring over Cruse artwork. It was just wonderful. But, alas, the best laid plans oft go astray, and with health issues sidelining Yours Truly for a stretch and other concerns that arose, no time was left to compose a prose article on the artist and his work for this ish. With deepest apologies to Howard and Eddie (and Molly), we’ll have to wait until Fall for the Cruse feature. In the meantime, check out howardcruse.com and have a gander at his art for sale! — Ye Editor.

Above: Howard Cruse, kneeling with their rescued dog Molly, and Ed Sedarbaum at their Massachusetts home. Photo by Ye Editor.

amazing man

The Last Splash Those Final, Glorious Years of ‘Wild Bill’ Everett

Clean and sober after years of struggle, the Sub-Mariner creator goes out in style The greatest enemy of the creator, one of the earliest and most talented auteurs of the nascent days of the American comic book, wasn’t the dreaded deadline doom he perpetually stared down, or the comic book editors screaming over the phone for the late work, or even the competing freelancers enviously vying for the assignments he was chronically tardy in delivering. No, unlike his most famous creation, there wasn’t any nemesis of the stature of a flaming android or rival prince or super-powered quartet that threatened the legendary artist/writer. The man’s supreme foe wasn’t external; it was an inside job, as he, himself, proved the root of all of his problems. His name was Bill E., and he was an alcoholic. Thus after decades of wreckage wrought by his drinking and spiritual suffering that damaged family and friends — any and all who loved him — Bill Everett found a new, revitalized life by embracing a fellowship, surrendering the illusion he had power over his addiction and thus facing his affliction — and shambles he inflicted — head-on. And along the way, the man just happened to produce the best material of a long, storied career. His 1972 run on Sub-Mariner, appearing only two years after putting down the drink, proved to be the finest — and final — work of his life, fittingly on his most beloved and well-remembered character, Prince Namor, Scourge of the Seven Seas. Upon proving his sobriety and reliability to editors and peers long skeptical of false starts and broken promises, the artist/writer was given the helm of his enduring creation with the landmark “extra-special” Sub-Mariner #50 [June ’72], and Everett embarked on a sublime series of comic stories that were, in a word, wonderful. Filled with pathos, whimsy, and charm, it’s difficult not to look at those books, lasting only until #59 [Mar. ’73], as an overarching act of redemption. It would come just in the nick of time, as a bad heart, wounded by drink and tobacco, would take him from the surface world, in February 1973, at the all-too-young age of 55. One of mainstream comic books’ abiding features is its brief “pockets” in time when, thanks to the talents of a few individuals, what’s on the page endures beyond its intended destination in the dustbin of low-brow publishing history.

Everett’s last run on Sub-Mariner is one of those moments, heightened by the intriguing promise of what might have been, but also because the drama leading up to and surrounding it tells more about the man’s character than it does about the fictional character on the page. To fully understand the man at this late stage in his career, you have to journey back to the beginning. And the “Peter Pan” of comics was literally there at the beginning. Bill Everett’s professional odyssey spans the medium’s birth to its early stages of maturation as an art form, alongside a personal journey from deep in the miry clay of self-destruction to the lofty heights of salvation and redemption. This was a man who loved life, loved cigarettes and alcohol, hated authority and structure, and hated deadlines even more. Only his God-given talent kept him above sea-level, dragging the artist out of numerous valleys of failure, to leave a legacy of unforgettable creative peaks. First, the facts: Bill Everett started in the major leagues. Right from the get-go, in 1938, he was one of the first “five-tool players” in comic-book history: a creator who wrote, penciled, inked, lettered, and colored his own work. He didn’t need to be developed in the minors. Creating the “Sub-Mariner” strip in 1939, featured in the very first comic published by (what we know today as) Marvel Comics, is like pitching a no-hitter in your first big-league game — you stand out. The Sub-Mariner was the first “mutant” in comics, and the first four-colored anti-hero. His lineage can since be traced down through Wolverine and innumerable “against the grain” characters. Everett’s other famed creation is Daredevil, the Man Without Fear (devised in partnership with Stan Lee), who first appeared in early 1964. And the last of Everett’s career trinity is the horror material he drew for Marvel in the 1950s. Had Everett worked for E.C., the creative apex of horror comics, and not been such a “Marvel Man” (mostly because Stan Lee loved the talent enough to tolerate the “deadline smashing” work habits), his stature as one of the top artists in comic-book history would be unquestioned. But, as for creations that flowed from his pen, the aforementioned is but the tip of an iceberg. He began drawing adventure strips for Centaur Publications in early 1938, pre-dating even Superman’s debut in Action Comics. Back then the term “super-hero” wasn’t a part of cultural language. Everett spent the better part of the Golden Age of comics pumping out “action/adventure heroes” like lead from a Thompson submachine gun. #5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

by BLAKE BELL

Inset right: Bill Everett producing cover color guides for X-Men #80 and 81, and Special Marvel Edition #8 [all early 1973]. Below: Everett cover for Sub-Mariner #55 [Nov. ’72] and panel detail from same.

Amazing-Man, Hydroman, Skyrocket Steele, Dirk the Demon, the Chameleon, Bulls-Eye Bill, Sub-Zero Man, the Conqueror, Music Master, and Red Reed (undergrad adventurer) all sprang from Everett’s imagination in the years of 1938–42 before he entered the armed forces during World War II; all in addition to his peerless and prolific work on the Sub-Mariner. As for Everett himself, he was a “fiery young man” not unlike the personality of tempestuous Prince Namor and as wildly flamboyant as his own stellar and idiosyncratic artwork. He was a child prodigy, but life took a sideways turn early on that led to troubling — and ultimately deadly — addictions to liquor and cigarettes. Everett’s status as a marvel is supported by some famous genes. He is a descendant of 18th century poet, painter, and printmaker William Blake. In fact, Bill is short for Everett’s full name: William Blake Everett. He was born on May 18, 1917, into a 300-year-old New England family who had a town — Everett, Massachusetts — named for his great-grandfather, a president at Harvard University, governor of a commonwealth, as well as a U.S. Secretary of State. His father, Robert Maxwell, ran a successful trucking business, and the family lived an upper-middle class existence in Watertown, 15 miles west of Boston. Bill’s mother, Grace, proved a direct influence on his artistic nature. Fancying herself a poet, she was known in the community as a painter into her late 70s. Art adorning the family home was mostly from her brush, usually seascapes inspired by living in the compound of summer homes on the Massachusetts shore. Bill’s love of all things aquatic can be directly traced back to these surroundings. The wunderkind’s artistic acumen developed early. He was writing elaborate poetry and drawing detailed pencil work by the age of eight. A defining moment in his life arrived when 11-year-old Everett won top prize in the first talent contest he entered. But it was the year following when his life was truly defined. He contracted tuberculosis and, as was the therapy back in the ’20s to retreat to a warm, dry climate, Bill’s mother and sister pulled the boy from the sixth grade and took him to recuperate in Arizona. His fascination with the lives of real Western cowboys was immediate, and he spent a great deal of time with older companions. Unfortunately, already afflicted with an addictive personality, Bill not only wiled away time drawing, but also with drinking. Drunk for the first time at the age of 12, he became an alcoholic when but a teenager. He returned home after his 16th birthday and promptly dropped out of high school. He then quit Boston’s renowned Vesper George School of Art, leaving after a year-and-a-half. His father dies suddenly and Bill is immediately thrust into an art career, though one far from comics. Young Bill was hired onto the retail advertising art staff of the Boston Herald-Traveler (now the Boston Herald) and later landed a similar job at New York City sister newspaper, the Herald-Tribune. He soon arrived at Teck Publications as art editor for their popular magazine, Radio News, a job that changed his life. A clash with his boss (one of many throwdowns over the course of his life) found him back on the unemployment line, but a contact made during his short stint at the company was soon to pay dividends. Walter Holze had left the magazine to work at a small publisher and recommended Everett to boss Joe Hardie, who was about to begin a new venture publishing comic books as part of the Centaur Publications company. There Everett met editor Lloyd Jacquet, who eventually staged a coup and walked most of the staff out the door in early 1939 to start up his own shop, Funnies, Inc. The outfit produced comics for Manhattan publishers dipping their toes into the comics field after the stunning success of “Superman.” This page: Top is detail from Bill Everett’s Sub-Mariner #52 [Aug. 1972] featuring Sunfire, whose adversarial appearance echoes the great Namor versus Human Torch battles of the 1940s. Middle is original art page from Everett’s debut ish of the run, #50 [June ’72]. At right are three examples of Everett’s other Marvel work from the period, as an inker. Flanking a superb job rendering Barry Smith’s pencils on Astonishing Tales #6 [June ’71] are a pair of Gil Kane-penciled covers (right, Amazing Adventures #11 [Mar. ’72] and Rawhide Kid #96 [Feb. ’72]. Also memorable are Wild Bill’s inks on Jack Kirby’s Thor and over Ross Andru’s pencils on “The Defenders” in Marvel Feature #1 [Dec. ’71]. Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Everett returned to Sub-Mariner in late ’53 and it ran the longest of the Atlas super-hero revival — ten issues — into ’55. The artist/writer is credited by some as producing his best work on Namor during this run, but the title’s longevity may have had more to do with its development as a potential TV show than story quality. That, alas, never came to pass and Everett was back on anthology books until Atlas nearly collapsed in 1957, when Goodman’s distribution company imploded and many artists were suddenly put out on the street. The creator began a number of jobs outside comics during the first half of the 1960s but, while he and Gwenn previously were able to handle their actively alcoholic lifestyles, it began to get the better of both during that decade. Everett worked for Norcross Greeting Company, on Madison Avenue, and his freelancer’s life was put on hold. Inevitably, he was fired from every job he held during those years, owing to drinking and contemptuous view of authority. Daughter Wendy explains, “You can assume that if it was a regular 9-to-5 job, he got fired from it. My parents were raging alcoholics and they drank together, fueling each other. With Stan Lee and Martin Goodman at Marvel, he’d drink and then wouldn’t do his work. He was brilliant and talented enough that Stan and Martin would put up with him for a time, but then say, ‘Look, if you’re not turning your work in, we’re not giving you any more work.’ It was a real tragic flaw. His drinking escalated over time, but in the 1940s and ’50s, he was able to manage it better than he was later on.” Fired from Norcross, Everett came on as art director for the greeting card company Rust Craft Publishers. There he was also relieved of his duties, in May 1961, only a year after starting with the Dedham, Mass., firm. The artist uprooted family once again, this time moving to Pittsfield, Mass., to toil at the Eaton Paper Company. Comics were in his blood though and, in the summer of ’63, he called longtime former editor Stan Lee and was offered a shot at drawing a new title, Daredevil. The “Marvel Age of Comics” was picking up steam with the imaginations of Steve Ditko, Jack Kirby, and Lee dreaming up success after success. For the first issue of Daredevil, Everett worked all-nighters and then went to his day job in the mornings. He blew through deadlines that caused the comic to be delayed multiple times. Finally, Lee had to step in — late penalties from the printer are said to have caused the book to not make a dime in profit — and demand that Everett hand in whatever the artist had done to date. Fill-in artists Ditko and Sol Brodsky contribute some of the inking. Adding insult to injury, “He was fired from Eaton,” says Wendy. “He was such an acute alcoholic at this point, and had such difficulty with authority figures, that he couldn’t hold a job.” The next career step was triggered by a nostalgic retrospective in Playboy, Jules Feiffer’s 1965 article, “The Great Comic Book Heroes” (later expanded to a book), which mentioned the growing popularity of Marvel Comics. This prompted Everett to give Stan Lee one more call for work. Lee worried about Everett’s unreliability but the editor/writer needed artists for a growing line. The Jack Kirby “house style” of slam-bang action/adventure had taken over and Everett initially struggled to conform. Lee often had Kirby do layouts for a new title or to train incoming artists, which Jack did for Bill on the “Incredible Hulk” strip in the pages of Tales to Astonish. The character shared the title with a companion feature, Everett’s own creation, Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, only that series was drawn by Gene Colan (with a more round-headed version that Everett never appreciated). Lee wasn’t happy with Everett’s work on the green behemoth and shifted him to “Doctor Strange” in Strange Tales, just after co-creator Ditko had walked out on Marvel. An infamous episode about Everett’s attempts to cut corners to meet deadlines happened in his first issue on the title. Lee was not amused when the artist retained photographic reproductions of a previous issue’s Doctor Strange/Dormammu battle by Ditko and, instead of spending less time simply redrawing a flashback sequence, Everett wasted precious

Martin Goodman was one of those publishers and the Jacquet shop repurposed features (from a promotional comic done earlier in ’39, Motion Picture Funnies Weekly) for Marvel Comics #1. Most impressive among that material was Everett’s “Sub-Mariner” strip, which was expanded from eight to 12 pages for Goodman’s debut comic book title. Many believe Everett worked for Marvel — originally Timely — whilst producing his classic run on “Sub-Mariner,” but he never frequented the imprint’s offices, working instead at the Jacquet shop until his 1942 departure. Partly inspired by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem “The Rime of the Ancient Mariner,” the Sub-Mariner fit the gritty pulp sensibilities of Goodman’s collection of characters — outsiders, violently hostile, sometimes not even human — that contrasted the slick if bland super-heroes at rival DC Comics. Everett’s first tale includes, among other acts of mayhem, death by head-crushing, stabbing, and suffocation, while the aquatic prince plans revenge against the “white people” conducting explosive scientific experiments over the Antarctic underwater kingdom he calls home. The first dozen issues of Marvel Mystery Comics (Marvel Comics adding the middle Mystery appellation after the inaugural release) read like a modern-day graphic novel. It’s a sprawling narrative featuring the Sub-Mariner’s war on humanity, played against the internal conflict of a growing love for Betty Dean, a policewoman (and “white person”), all set amidst the backdrop of Hitler’s seizure of Europe. The artwork in the Sub-Mariner’s first appearance is quite polished, the main character portrayed with a very Top: Courtesy of his daughter, regal look. No doubt, in the next two issues, the demands of an early 1960s pic of Bill Everett in- producing multiple monthly strips, and owing to the inclusion scribed: “Wendy — Really, I’m not of “other hands” (i.e., artists at the Funnies, Inc. shop) in so grim! Love ya — Dad.” Above: finishing the artwork, took its toll on that polish. But, by #4, Marie Severin caricature the artist Everett achieves a cadence of craftsmanship that continues on the cover of Alter Ego #11 through, in the spring of 1941, to the first issue of Sub-Mari[1978]. Below: Another Everett ner’s own quarterly title. Additional “other hands” appear to portrait by Mirthful Marie. assist Everett in the small amount of remaining stories before the young creator leaves for the war, in April ’42. After his 1944 marriage to Gwenn Randall, Everett is on leave the following year for the birth of their first offspring, Wendy (legally blind as a child, inspiration for Daredevil’s affliction and hyper-senses), and then he is home for good in 1946. He returns to the Namor strip but, the war ended, super-heroes are without purpose and other genres quickly grab the category’s exiting readership. In 1949, Sub-Mariner is cancelled, along with the other Marvel super-characters. Everett dazzled during his horror foray in the early ’50s, doing his best work for Venus and Menace, both for Atlas, the latest name for Goodman’s comics company. “His 1950s horror work is, in every way, on par with E.C.,” says underground cartoonist Kim Deitch, “and I frankly prefer Everett’s. The heart and soul of Marvel was Kirby and Ditko — and I love both those guys — but I prefer Everett.” Goodman would chase any trend and the hit 1952 TV series Adventures of Superman prompted the publisher to believe he could revive his outfit’s most memorable characters — the Human Torch, Sub-Mariner, and Captain America — with an eye towards crossing over into television.

hours pasting up panels from the Photostats. An important figure in Everett’s life also joined the House of Ideas in late 1965: writer Roy Thomas. Everett bunked with Thomas and writer Gary Friedrich (creator of the ’70s motorcycle riding Ghost Rider) in their Bleeker Street apartment, in Greenwich Village, and they frequently collaborated. Roy was a huge fan of Everett’s 1940s and ’50s work. The bachelor lifestyle led to only more incidences of Everett being challenged to meet deadlines, due to his devil-may-care lifestyle of partying and carousing — in short, because of a life spiraling out of control because of alcohol. For example, after Everett was assigned to draw a feature in a Western anthology and he was late with the work, the artist claimed that ink had spilled over all the pages and were unusable. Calling his bluff, Thomas said Marvel would pay for the pages if he turned them in, but the artist insisted the work was completely doused in ink and wouldn’t be recognizable. Even on stories such as these, Everett cut corners by having his son Randy write the scripts. Everett lasted six issues on “Doctor Strange” and then Lee gave him another shot, in Tales to Astonish, at penciling his creation, the Sub-Mariner. But scripter Lee was disappointed in the first issues. There was a stiffness in the work and the artist’s imagination seemed to suffer; both Stan Lee and de facto assistant editor Roy Thomas were unimpressed, in particular by a scene between Namor and the Warlord Krang. Everett had returned to Marvel only to suffer a crisis of confidence in his penciling and, back in Massachusetts, life at home also suffered. The father and husband spent a great deal of time in Manhattan to keep the work steady. But tragically his wife, who endured two strokes years prior, passed away suddenly in Spring 1967. The family’s disintegration was nearly complete. Thereafter, Everett only inked and colored other people’s work, taking on

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

penciling assignments only for filler stories that had no deadlines. His drinking reached new extremes in 1967–68 and Wendy — then only in her early twenties — had to take charge of Everett’s two sons. She took a summer trip in 1968 to San Francisco but did not return home. Only older brother Randy remained in New Jersey to finish school. Everett finally bottomed out in 1969. In March, living alone in New Jersey, struggling to keep up with mounting debts and an out-of-control existence, Everett went on a three-day binge and nearly smashed open his skull on the pavement when coming out of a bar. He claimed to have been mugged, but that wasn’t the first time he used that excuse. Bill Everett finally had had his fill. That spring, in an effort to reverse course, he attends his first Alcoholics Anonymous meeting, This page: One of the most audacious prompted by the manager developments in Bill Everett’s brief of his apartment complex. but stupendous Sub-Mariner run was The artist would call his reintroduction of Venus, an Atlas that woman his saving Comics character he drew in the 1950s. grace, so much so that Upper left is his cover for #57 [Jan. ’73]. he placed her name Above is detail from the artist’s Marvel into an issue of Thor Spotlight #2 [Feb. ’72] pin-up. Bottom left is an Everett cover for Venus #15 [Aug. he inked that year. 1951]. Below are a trio of panels from That first meeting Sub-Mariner #57 featuring the Goddess was at Manhatof Love introducing herself to Prince tan’s Roosevelt Namor and demanding that her nemesis, Hospital and it the God of War, be defeated! was Dr. LeClaire Bissell, head of the addiction program, who pushed Everett hard to accept accountability for his actions and to vigilantly attend to his own sobriety. Everett moved from New Jersey in April 1969, and he eventually became renowned in the recovery program for being a sponsor, power of example, and mentor for many newcomers.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Top: Refigured panels from Sub-Mariner #54 [Oct. ’72] featured water-bound nymphet Namorita and in a delightful sequence. Above inset: Panel detail of Namor and Namorita from SM #52 [Aug. ’72]. Above: Everett worked occasionally for Skywald. Here’s his Heap pin-up from Psycho #4 [Sept. ’71]. More swamp monsters next ish!

“If it wasn’t for Bill helping me get sober,” confesses friend and renowned Marvel scripter Gary Friedrich, “I’d be long dead. Bill really had the fire and he really wanted to save me, God bless him. We had a party at [Marvel production artist] John Verpoorten’s one night. Bill had been sober for a good while and we’re standing there, talking to Bill and I’m drinking. He’s drinking a Coke and I’m drinking a rum and Coke. Somewhere in the conversation, he accidentally picked up my drink and took a sip, and those eyes just lit up. He said, ‘Oh, sh*t. I gotta get out of here.’ I said, ‘What did you do, pick up my drink?’ He said, ‘Yeah, I need to get to a meeting,’ and away he went.” Everett also met Joan Burdge at a meeting. She was an editor at Vogue and they moved in together in May 1972. And his personal salvation started manifesting itself in the work. He began to regain confidence in storytelling and pencils, and in very early 1972, the decision was made to bring back Everett to his signature character. “It may have been my decision to have Bill write and draw Sub-Mariner at that point,” says Roy Thomas, “but, if so, I’m sure I’d have gotten Stan’s approval, since it was a somewhat iffy situation. Bill had had so many deadline problems, and his writing was rather different from the usual Marvel style. But then, I wasn’t pushing guys like Gerber, McGregor, and Moench into that style past a certain point… so it was worth a shot. Sub-Mariner wasn’t going anywhere sales-wise and the chances are that [the title’s then-scripter] Gerry [Conway] was more valuable elsewhere.” Lee and Thomas must have been impressed by Everett’s recovery enough to allow him to pencil, ink, and write the book beginning with the 50th issue. “Everybody up there who was an editor was a sucker for Bill,” notes Thomas. “Even

Martin Goodman, who didn’t have a lot of sentimental streaks, would forgive Bill anything.” Goodman would pass the young editor/ writer in the hall and ask, “How’s Bill doing?” When Thomas would reply, “He’s making a comeback!” Goodman playfully shook his head and retorted, “He’s always making a comeback!” It’s important to note the context of the times. This wasn’t the salad days of Marvel Comics, when the outfit was dominated by the Lee, Kirby, and Ditko influence. The 1970s were the antithesis of the decade previous. The divide was marked spiritually by Kirby’s departure from the House of Ideas, and his debuting the Fourth World series at rival DC in 1971. And the style of comic-book narrative was changing, too. Led by Marvel second-in-command Thomas, the first generation of “writers who were collectors” looked to mature the medium beyond what they perceived as disposal kiddy fare. And the rise of young turk artists — Barry Windsor-Smith, et al. — were also a signpost for the now-adult fan from the ’60s that comics really were for “grown-ups.” For better or worse, the Kirbys and Ditkos of the field were now considered by many to be too “cartoony” and not “refined” enough for perceived modern sensibilities. The Comics Code Authority was also liberalized to allow more mature themes (or just more violent ones, with the acceptance of vampires, ghouls, and werewolves, and nuanced portrayals of criminals). Comic book fandom was organized, with the direct market beginning to take form as collectors became business owners, selling books directly, fan to fan, through specialty stores. As might be imagined, this was hardly the best environment for an old school artist like Bill Everett, one who entered comics just after the Great Depression, to make a comeback. But, remarkably, he turned in some of the best work of his career and found newly appreciative fans. The first three pages alone of Sub-Mariner #50 signal a return to a depth of detail in his linework long unseen, and there was a revitalized fluidity to his layouts and figures. Indeed, most of the stiffness plaguing his mid- to late ’60s work had vanished, and that delightfully frenzied pace was back, bolder than ever, especially evident in the underwater sequences. Not even Everett was sure of his re-emerging talents, but time spent in the Marvel Bullpen helped to bolster his spirits. “There were all these young guys my age,” remembers comics writer and friend Mike Friedrich, “trying to convince Bill that he was still a really good artist — I remember [fellow comics scribe] Steve Gerber trying to pump him up.” “I read [Everett’s stories] in the original art,” said the creator’s overseer, Roy Thomas. “I liked some of it, wasn’t so wild about other parts… but Bill had a sort of integrity about his work that made me want to let him run with it. Besides, in the back of my mind (or maybe in the front, sometimes) was not only the fact that he had created the character and

done some wonderful early work with him, but that I felt his 1950s Sub-Mariner work was head and shoulders above most comics writing and drawing, even when the stories were mostly trivial and rarely longer than six pages.” In his debut issue, Everett reintroduced the theme of the restless wanderer; searching, on a journey for serenity in strange, yet vaguely familiar surroundings. This was akin to Everett’s own existence at the time, surfacing to a sobriety not experienced since he was a 12-year-old boy. As if to represent that innocence lost, Everett introduced the vivacious Namorita, the Prince’s feisty pubescent cousin and daughter of the artist’s 1940s creation Namora. The teenage Atlantean, nicknamed Nita, would survive into the 21st century as a Marvel universe player, proof that the creator could still bring relevant, lasting material to the table late into his career. “Bill was especially heavily invested in the creation of Namorita,” says Thomas, “and that he liked the idea that she looked like a young girl, with smaller breasts than most comic book women. This was his chance to do something new with Namor, [re-introduced co-star, former policewoman] Betty Dean, et al.” With full artistic control, Everett felt at home with longer, continued stories. And, as did other creators from his generation, he didn’t waste many pages setting the stage and jumping into the main plot thrusts — the return of major Everett characters, including ’40s paramour Dean and villains Prince Byyrah and Lyyra, Empress of Lemura, and bringing in new guest stars echoing the past, such as the brilliant inclusion of Human Torch stand-in Sunfire. Everett’s health was not particularly strong in early 1972 and the pressure of 20 pages a month, on every chore in the book other than lettering, began to take its toll. Mike Friedrich stepped in the very next issue, helping with the scripting and he too noticed the vibrancy that had returned to Bill’s work, as well as the improvements in storytelling techniques. “If you go back and look at the ‘Doctor Strange’ pages,” notes Friedrich, “the page composition is not really strong compared to the later Sub-Mariner stories. Those have a flow to them, where your eye is drawn into a panel and how that connects it to the conjoining panel and on through the pages. That is really difficult to do, and very few people are really excellent at comic art because of design and composition. Another couple of years of that, and Bill would have become really very well recognized again.” Reaction to Bill’s return was reasonably well accepted. Part of the aforementioned 1970s demographic was not so enthralled by bug-eyed monsters and giant crustaceans. Perhaps what was unfamiliar to contemporaneous readers was that jubilant, joyful spirit that was a product of Everett’s comic-book upbringing in the ’40s. The strip was just damn fun again. Judging by the fruits of their labor, this went Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

against the grain of the small group of fans-turned-pros who were finding it challenging to remember that appealing to a younger demographic still held merit. (Peter Parker may have been a navel-gazer, but Spider-Man was fun — and never cynical.) Future X-Man Sunfire was also an inspired addition, reintroducing the fire-and-water dichotomy present when the Human Torch and Prince Namor battled to a standstill back in the days of World War II. But the fun wasn’t to last. After three full issues, #53 featured only 12 pages of new Everett art, with #54 having only 10. Reprints of his ’50s work and new fillers were used to buttress the book. “Bill’s health was failing,” notes Thomas, “and I wanted to spare him where I could and give him a shot at making a real comeback.” Sub-Mariner #55 featured a full 20 pages by Everett, but #56 was another filler. Issue 57 was a full 20 pages and a treat for Everett’s 1950s fans. He reintroduced the Venus character, who he has successfully turned from a 1948 fantasy/romance comic into a dark, chilling horror book by the ’50s. (Originally, the goddess Venus came to Earth to work as an editor/journalist for a beauty magazine, but ended up battling the undead and forces of the supernatural once Everett took over in ’51.) That story, alas, proved to be the last hurrah. In November of 1972, Everett had just finished running an AA meeting at Roosevelt Hospital when he suffered a massive heart attack. Had he not been walking through the emergency room at the time, he likely would not have survived. He was found to have severe coronary artery disease and needed bypass surgery. It was scheduled for February, but he continued to go through ups and downs with his health during that time. “Martin Goodman paid his health insurance, which was good all the way to the end,” says Mike Friedrich (modestly, as it was the writer who convinced Lee to persuade Goodman). “They went out of their way to treat him right.”

Inset left: The orange-hued Tamara, created by Bill Everett and featured in Sub-Mariner #58 [Feb. ’73]. Below: One of the creator’s final pieces, the rollicking cover art for the next issue. Bottom: Doubtless, Sub-Mariner cousin Namorita was introduced to remain as a regular in the Everett-helmed series and — yowza! — was she an adorable addition to the prince’s aquatic adventures! It strains us to think of a character from the 1970s, outside of Archie Comics, who is so quintessentially adolescent, with a refreshingly unexaggerated, normal-proportioned physique. Bill Everett Panels from Sub-Mariner #57 [Jan. ’73].

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

This page: The death of William Blake Everett, the Golden Age comic book legend who was just then making his most creative comeback ever in a career consisting of comeback after comeback, hit comic fans hard in 1973, among them Ye Ed, who today vividly remembers sitting in class during high school reading the heartbreaking news in Tales of the Zombie #2 [Oct. ’73]. The black-&-white horror mag (starring Simon Garth, Everett’s living dead character from his Atlas horror days), which also reprinted Jim Steranko’s remembrance from Comixscene (see left). Sub-Mariner #65 [Sept. ’73], in lieu of a letters page, poignantly featured a full-page memorial (seen top) penciled by Marie Severin and inked by Frank Giacoia. All of Marvel’s Sept. ’73 titles included the above yellow-highlighted notice of the artist’s passing in the Bullpen Bulletins page.

Steve Gerber picked up the scripting chores with Sub-Mariner #58, and comics veteran Sam Kweskin helped with some penciling. Issue 59 only featured Everett inking the cover. He plotted #60, and tried to do the pencils and inks for #61, but was too weak, and only worked on the first three pages. His last contribution was a plot used in #63. All things considered, Everett’s spirits were actually high during this time. He asked Joan to marry him just days before the medical procedure. They planned to get hitched right after he was released from the hospital and the couple spoke openly about rebuilding his life. But this was 1973 and bypass surgeries weren’t as common as they are today. Tragically, on February 27, 1973, Bill Everett passed away on the operating table. Above: The woman who “It was really the smoking that killed him,” says Mike Friedrich. first suggested that Bill Roosevelt Hospital’s auditorium was packed for the memorial attend Alcoholics Anonymous gathering. On stage, Stan Lee shared, and Marvel had a full-page was immortalized in the tribute to Everett in the issue of Sub-Mariner that followed his background of an Everettpassing [#65, Sept. ’73]; Marie Severin penciled and Frank Giacoia inked Thor #172 [Jan. ’70] inked his character standing over a gravestone. Jim Steranko’s panel (pencils by Jack Kirby). stirring remembrance appeared in Tales of the Zombie #2 [Oct. Courtesy of Heritage. ’73]. But the AA contingent at the service — folks he’d helped and who’d helped him — far outnumbered the comics’ people, fitting for a man who had turned his entire life around due to sobriety. “My favorite memories of him were when he’d come up to visit on weekends after his grandson, Randall Blake Everett, Jr., was born in 1971,” says Randy. “I used to go with him to AA meetings, to help him set up when he was in charge and had become a sponsor. He once told me that one guy thought he was Jesus Christ.” Upon Everett’s death, the Academy of Comic Book Arts (ACBA) renamed their assistance program “The Bill Everett Fund” in his memory. The fund helped artists “in need of temporary financial aid and for other personal needs.” This was of particular interest to Everett in his last months. A few years back, the Fund was rolled into the similarly mandated Hero Initiative. Mike Friedrich said, “His health took the turn for the worse just as, I think, he was starting to realize that maybe he was good after all. He never thought he was a good artist, and it was only in the last year or two that he began to accept the plaudits of fans and peers.” Imagine what might have occurred if he had survived, continuing to produce quality work and being revered as one of the greatest comic book creators of all. Bill left us too early to have his personal story and insights fully documented by comic book fandom. Significant retrospectives, in Comic Book Artist and Alter Ego, shined the spotlight onto Bill’s canon. The reprinting of his ’40s–50s super-hero and genre material by Marvel in the last decade, and Fantagraphics’ re-presentation of other work, has given Everett deserved examination. [The writer is too modest to also mention his Everett biography, Fire & Water, published by Fantagraphics. — Ye Ed.]. But people in the know are confident the brightest gem in Everett’s treasure chest is his last work on his signature creation, the Sub-Mariner. Thus far not reprinted [though a Marvel Masterworks volume is planned, MM guru Cory Sedlmeier confides… and yours truly has dibs on the intro! —Y.E.] but, at least, those few (albeit brilliant) issues now receive the attention that glorious run demands. Each one of us, every day, has a shot at redemption. Re-inventing oneself is always an option. And, sadly, too few take the opportunity to even try. Yet anyone knowing of the latter years and seeing the final work of William Blake Everett is compelled to appreciate that the creator took just that risk. He became renewed as a result of finding a true purpose in life, and he poured his spiritual rebirth into the art, an act as important to him as his daily reprieve from the hell of alcoholism. In a Mother’s Day letter to his mom, Everett wrote that while the fellowship had become vital to his very existence, so too did his art: “My life now centers on my work, AA, and a smattering of electronics… It’s hard to tell which is of most importance, my work or the AA bit, since without AA I wouldn’t be working (which I wasn’t), and without the work, I couldn’t live.” Gratitude for both flowed enthusiastically from the man and his pen in that fruitful final year, emanating from stunning art and story produced one page at a time, nearing the end of a life lived one day at a time.

fish stories

Culling the Facts from the Myths of

William Blake Everett [Read everything by Bill Everett, but don’t believe everything you’ve heard! Bill could spin a yarn outside of the comicbook page, too. Until his Fire & Water biography, sanctioned by and completed with the help of his family, many stories captured by comics fandom during his lifetime hung in the air as gospel. Here’s a few whoppers! — B.B.]

Myth: Born in Newton (recorded early in two short biographical pieces in Amazing Mystery Funnies v2 #11 [Nov. ‘39], and The Human Torch #2 ) or Cambridge, Mass. (referenced in The Steranko History of Comics, as does a profile in the 1970 New York Comic Art Convention souvenir book). Fact: Bill’s parents lived in Watertown, Massachusetts.

Myth: The concept for Sub-Mariner comes from a trip as a teenager on the water from Maine to Florida, when Bill’s boat is hit by a hurricane, and he has to climb up to the top of the mast to attach a loose wire. He slips on the perch, but is saved by a mysterious force that helps him back up, and the rest of the trip he’s haunted by Samuel Taylor Coleridge’s epic poem, “Rime of the Ancient Mariner” [related in the short biographical piece in The Human Torch #2, Fall ’40]. Fact: In Bill’s circa 1970 Alter Ego interview, the creator debunks this, saying it’s a complete fabrication.

Myth: At 15, joins the Merchant Marine for two years. Fact: The closest he comes to sea is a three-week voyage on a M.M. vessel at 15 on a visit to Norfolk, Virginia.

Myth: Comes up with the Sub-Mariner after Carl Burgos creates the Human Torch. Fact: According to payment records, Bill has already been paid for the first “Sub-Mariner” story in Motion Picture Funnies Weekly #1 [1939], when compensated for the four extra pages for Marvel Comics #1 [Oct. ’39] to pad the tale, at the same time Burgos is paid to create the Human Torch. Myth: Creates Hydroman with an alter ego named “Bob Blake” after Bill’s middle name and his brother’s first name. Fact: Bill has no brother, only a sister. Likely uses the first name of best friend and artist colleague, Bob Davis.

Myth: Graduates high school in Arizona. Fact: Returns to Mass. at 16 to attend high school, only to drop out. Myth: Completes schooling at Boston’s renowned Vesper George School of Art, which he starts attending in 1934. Fact: Quits in 1935, having completed only 18 months of the program. Myth: Leaves job at the Herald-Traveler in 1936 because he was put on the night shift. Fact: Is fired because on his habitual disdain for authoriAbove: Blake Bell (left), author of ty figures and party lifestyle. Myth: Terminated as a draftsman for a civil engineering firm because he refuses to chauffeur a company partner whose rancid cigar smoke makes Everett ill. Fact: Bill smokes three packs of cigarettes a day for his entire adult life! Canned for the same reasons listed above — disrespect and unreliability.

the Fire & Water biography of Bill Everett, and Bill’s daughter, Wendy, at the 2010 Comic-Con International: San Diego, where the pair promoted the book. Blake also edited two Everett collections for Fantagraphic Books in recent years.

The Bill Everett Story — and The Stories of Bill Everett! With his creation of the Sub-Mariner, Bill Everett became one of the founding fathers of American comic books. With his co-creation of Daredevil, he earned his place as one of the founders of the Marvel Age of Comics. Fire & Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics, reveals the story behind Everett’s artistic innovation and his real-life struggles behind the scenes. This gorgeous oversize biography/art book by Blake Bell also presents a cornucopia of Everett’s covers, comics pages, and original art, including originals from the first two issues of Marvel Comics. (9"x12", 192 pages.) Then see Everett’s imagination unleashed in a meticulously restored collection of stories stretching from the Golden Age through the 1970s (including rarely seen exploits of Skyrocket Steele, Amazing Man, and Hydroman) in The Bill Everett Archives. (2 volumes, 7.5"x10", 240 pages each.) See full details online. Fire & Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics • Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives Vol. 1 • Heroic Tales: The Bill Everett Archives Vol. 2 • $39.99 each

www.Fantagraphics.com

CALL TOLL FREE:1-800-657-1100 9AM–6PM Pacific Time Mon–Fri. Outside the US, call 206-524-1967

cowan considered

Of Cartoons & Comics Part two of our Denys Cowan interview: his animated life and return to comics by Michael Aushenker CBC Associate Editor Inset right: Photo of Denys Cowan at the Dec. 2013 opening of the Geppi’s Entertainment Museum exhibit “Milestones: African-Americans in Comics, Pop Culture, and Beyond,” courtesy of Andy Hershberger, associate curator/registrar of the museum. The artist suffered a brief but significant scare in early December when a package of original art he had sent to the museum was missing items. The art was subsequently returned. Below: Roughs and tight pencils of Cowan’s art in Vertigo’s Django Unchained #3 [June 2013], both courtesy of the artist. Inset is his cover for #3, inks by John Floyd.

[If you’re anything like this writer, a fan of Denys Cowan’s work since the artist’s early days penciling a glorified Road To… comedy starring Luke Cage and Daniel Rand and scripted with mirth by Mary Jo Duffy, and you’ve always wondered how Cowan detoured into animation, where he became a big-wig on the hit Emmy-lauded animated series Static Shock and The Boondocks…well, wonder no more, kindred spirit. Here’s where the details of Cowan’s second career in animation come into sharp relief. In part one of our interview, Cowan discussed his rise as one of a handful of few African-American artists working for the majors in the early 1980s — from his teen apprenticeship with Deathlok the Demolisher creator Rich Buckler to the young man’s breakthrough Power Man and Iron-Fist by his early 20s. Cowan also discussed his long runs on such series as DC’s The Question and the ’90s Deathlok revival at Marvel, as well as his formation with partners Michael Davis, Derek T. Dingle, and the late Dwayne McDuffie of Milestone Media, a subset universe of characters of color within the DC universe with the intent to level the racial playing field in super-hero comics. Here, picking up the thread where we left off in the early 1990s, Cowan is on the verge of relocating to California to pursue animation full-throttle, doing freelance work for a Wu-Tang Clan member’s solo project. — M.A.] ©2014 the respective copyright holder. Django Unchained TM & © 2014 Visiona Romantica, Inc.. TM & © DC Comics.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

If artist Denys Cowan looks familiar, it might be because of his appearance back in December in Martin Scorsese’s Oscar-nominated The Wolf of Wall Street, opposite Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill… Okay, so that’s not completely accurate. Truth to tell, one of the characters in the ’80s period movie is seen gazing at Cowan’s face on a Dewars ad he appeared in back then… but that detail does sum up the kind of year Cowan had in the comics biz in 2013, which began with his connection to another film starring DiCaprio, this one directed by Quentin Tarantino, as well as the making of a comeback after a long detour into TV and animation. Twenty years earlier, in 1993, Cowan leveraged a decadelong run for Marvel and DC as one of the industry’s most reliable draftsmen and storytellers to head, with Davis, Dingle, and McDuffie, a comic book line celebrating people of color. Milestone Media was unprecedented, both with the ethnic emphasis of its characters and its creator-owned and distribution deal under parent publisher DC Comics, all operating out of lively Manhattan studio on 23rd St. near Sixth Avenue. “It was the same building I had a studio in at the time,” Cowan said, explaining how Milestone wound up inhabiting office space that incidentally, the artist shares, “Used to be occupied before us by [filmmakers] the Coen Brothers.” With titles such as Static Shock, Hardware, Icon, and Blood Syndicate in its arsenal, Milestone truly became an industry milestone due to its bold content and unique arrangement with the House of Superman. The imprint, however, ultimately ran its course by 1998. “When Milestone went under,” Cowan says, “it wasn’t just Milestone collapsing, but the industry was collapsing at that time. We were fortunate to last as long as we did.” Yet despite the integration of Milestone’s characters into the DC universe, Cowan explains, “To this day, they don’t own them. There’s a shared arrangement with copyright and trademark.” In 1996, a couple years shy of the line coming to an end, Cowan moved to California. “I left to pursue opportunities with animation on the West Coast,” he said. “It was financially a really lucrative opportunity.” And, in Los Angeles, the young artist worked for an upstart animation house at Motown for about a year before moving on in 2000. It was at Nickelodeon and Klasky-Csupo where, Cowan says, “I was doing McDonald’s animation shorts… hamburger spots.” As Cowan touched upon in part one, a more unusual assignment happened when a comics-loving art director familiar with Cowan’s work contacted the artist to do some cover art for an album called Liquid Swords. The record was a solo project of GZA (a.k.a. The Genius), a member of the rap collective Wu-Tang Clan, which at the time was a mere two years into its career as one of music’s hottest acts. “[The art director] said the GZA wants you to do his album,” Cowan recalled. “I didn’t even know who the GZA was. I knew the Wu-Tang Clan, but I didn’t know some of the individual members.” So the Genius came by Cowan’s studio and explained his idea. “We sat down,” Cowan recalled. “He pitched me the concept. I did a number of sketches for the cover. He liked them so much, he also used some of the black-&-white sketches for the album’s interior. The only thing that was originally intended was the color cover.” “I have a gold record in my garage,” Cowan said excitedly, still in disbelief years later. Despite the big move West, Cowan clarifies that his Milestone adventure was not over. “I was never done with Milestone,” he said. “It was never not in my mind. I’m not sure it’s a job that you can finish. What we represented and what we’re doing is still vitally needed today. No, we weren’t finished.” Far from it. Static Shock was about to come back into the fore, in a bigger way than it ever did on paper… Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

Resituated in California, Cowan, now knee-deep in the world of TV animation, Cowan quickly found that Milestone Media had followed him out to his adopted home of L.A. “I was working for Klasky-Csupo and Alan Burnett had just pitched Static to WB Animation” Cowan recalled. “[The pitch was] “Chris Rock with superpowers.” Whoa, that’s high-concept and they liked it. Me and Alan met with the head of Kids’ WB [and] we basically talked them through the show in a breakfast meeting at Marmalade Café in Sherman Oaks. We all shook hands and, by the end of the afternoon, they called and wanted to put on the show.” At first, “Alan wanted to bring me in as a producer,” he said. Cowan became very involved with the project on both the artistic and script levels while the network scrutinized production. “They had to approve every script,” he remembers. “It was a strange kind of thing. But whatever issues we had [between the Milestone founders], all was put aside. Milestone had an impact on WB. It all worked out.” As a creative ambassador to the Static Shock cartoon, Cowan put his all into promoting the animated series, because, despite high ratings, he felt Warner Brothers was not doing all it could to hype it. “We did all that stuff. Conventions, interviews, B-roll [filming] showing us working,” he says. Cowan also felt that WB Animation was in the way. “They interfered with every show that they pay for,” Cowan says. “It’s their money. We got some notes and interference. That’s a part of that game. But it wasn’t a massive amount.” Static Shock charted very well. “The ratings were really, really good,” Cowan says. “In fact, they kept going up.” So why a lack of promotional support for the series? “The institutional problem,” Cowan continues, “may have been that Warner Brothers, in terms of promotion, was [bolstering] the characters that made them a lot of money — Batman, Superman, Wonder Woman. That’s all they’re looking at it from.” Despite any gripes and nitpicks he might have had with the network, Cowan makes it clear that it was all par for

Top: Denys Cowan album cover and interior work for Genius/GZA. Above: A recent Vertigo assignment was the mini-series Dominique Laveau: Voodoo Child, which featured Cowan pencils. Here’s Cowan’s variant #1 [May 2012] cover, with John Floyd inks. Below: Milestone promotional piece with inks by James Sherman. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

in syndicated comic strips: Aaron MacGruder, cartoonist behind The Boondocks. “I was always a fan of the strip,” Cowan says. “[MacGruder] tried to sell it [to television] a year or two before.”Interestingly, Cowan had also crossed paths with the cartoonist before MacGruder’s career had taken off.“I met Aaron when he pitched stuff to Milestone. Michael Davis actually told him, ‘You may want to focus on doing a strip.’ The rest with history. I don’t want to give myself credit; Aaron did that. Aaron was always a good writer.” In 2005, Cowan says, “I got together a bunch of storyboard artists, did an animatic with limited animation in color — two minutes of material — that was taken around on the hush-hush. So I helped out on this reconfigured package. [Hudlin and MacGruder] shopped it around town and sold it to Sony.” While The Boondocks has currently returned for a fourth season after a long hiatus, for Hudlin and Cowan, the association ended early in its run. Hudlin left the show two months after it began while Cowan stuck it out for a year. “When I left after that the first season, that was it,” he says. When asked why he departed the popular Cartoon Network Adult Swim program, Cowan replies, “It was Aaron’s show, he wanted to have more control of it. That was okay. It was his show.” Six months later, when Hudlin rose to president of Black Entertainment Television (BET), he brought Cowan in as head of its animation department. “He wanted new programming to refresh the network,” Cowan says. “He wanted to have animated shorts, animated shows.” Now executives with creative designs, Hudlin and Cowan developed a slate of shows, among them a pair of cartoon series based on Marvel’s Black Panther and on comic actor Orlando Jones. “The problem with animated shows is that they take a long time to do,” says Cowan. “Two years can go by like that.” Cowan remembers teaming up with the animation house Titmouse and putting together a five-minute short, an animatic/animation hybrid, for The Black Panther that was pitched to Marvel in 2008. “It was incredible what they saw [and] they wanted that show,” he said. “But it really didn’t come on the air until after I was gone [in 2011].” An executive shake-up at the top of BET’s chain of command drove Hudlin out, delayed the release of the Black Panther series, and killed BuFu, the Jones cartoon, even with 10 episodes completed. “Anytime they come in, they don’t want what’s come before it,” Cowan said. To top things off, Cowan was never credited for his work on the Black Panther series, which had followed John Romita, Jr.’s first story arc in the comics. “To this day, I don’t know if it was a personal thing against me or an overall company policy [whereas] the executives would not get credit.” The regime change at BET followed by Hudlin’s exit ushered the beginning

the course and not unusual in the animation business. In fact, Cowan would often commiserate with his buddy Bruce Smith, who at the same time was creating The Proud Family for another corporate parent, Disney. “It was frustrating and it was rewarding,” Cowan says of his experience on Static Shock, with an emphasis on rewarding. “People digging ditches every day have undue hardship, back-breaking work. We were making cartoons. We weren’t curing cancer.” Ultimately, he said, “The network wasn’t the enemy and, yes, it was the show we wanted to do. We had powerful people on our side. We had Alan Burnett, who was our exec producer. It was a shared great experience.” Static Shock ran for four seasons (2000-04) and won a 2004 Daytime Emmy Award (for Richard Wolf’s “Outstanding Music Direction and Composition”). “We were incredibly lucky to have our own character have his own TV show and get paid to have him on TV,” Cowan says. In fact, working on Static Shock proved an animation-career kick-starter for all the Milestone men involved. “Milestone was the thing that got us all into animation,” he explains, noting that for McDuffie, the cartoon series launched him into a thriving career as a writer on animated series such as Scooby-Doo, Ben 10, and Justice League Unlimited, before his untimely death at age 49, in 2011. As Cowan emerged from Shock, another major cartoon show with an African-American presence came into the fore out of Cowan’s long-running friendship with Reginald Hudlin, which went back to Hudlin’s early-1990s days as producer and writer-director of the original House Party comedy starring rap stars Kid ‘n’ Play. “I met him from comic book circles,” Cowan remembered. “I think Reggie started out wanting to draw comic books.” (Hudlin went on to write such comics as Black Panther for Marvel.) Hudlin had now aligned himself with one of the most explosive voices

of the end for Cowan’s career as a cable executive. Once Hudlin had left the fold, the joy of trying to create at BET ran out the door with the previous administration. Suddenly, Cowan found that, “A lot of it is not creative; it’s managerial, delegation, meetings, talking, egos, negotiation… nothing to do with being creative.” Cowan said he spent the last six to eight months, he says, “Trying to come up with stuff. Everything we started was looking wrong.” It was a hard time for the creator, “knowing you’re a lame duck, seeing people getting fired around you.” Cowan found himself dismissed by 2010. Despite that unfortunate turn, he describes the experience as invaluable. “It did a lot for my career,” he says today. “Not many people could say they were an executive at a network. It took me a while to recover from this experience. After [Hudlin] left, it was a hard experience. It was emotionally hard [to recover] because you spend four years doing something. It was a lot of frustration and [time and energy spent on] unrealized [projects].” But there was a bright side, Cowan says in retrospect. “It gave me an appreciation for what executives have to go through,” he said. Plus he enjoyed “simply being at a black network; a continuation of what I had done from my whole life, from Milestone to Boondocks.” Post-BET, the artist confesses,“I didn’t want to deal with animation for a while. I just wanted to focus on my art and rediscover why I was an artist in the first place. So I stayed home and started drawing for me.” Also, in 2008, Cowan, who has a teenage son, Miles, added (with the tremendous help of wife Kathy) the latest Cowan addition, Dashiell to his family, so his termination at BET crested perfectly with the opportunity to be a stay-at-home dad for Dash, today five years old. Getting back into comics, Cowan began to build steam again in the industry. “I had always kept my contacts,” Cowan said. “I knew people at Marvel, DC. They were kind, they kept giving me work.” Cowan followed a Captain America/Black Panther assignment with the Vertigo mini-series Dominque Laveau: Voodoo Child for editor Karen Berger, while Hudlin and Cowan created a Static Shock mini-series. More Vertigo assignments followed. “It felt great,” he said. “There was no money in comics. On the other hand, you’re left alone to do your thing. So that experience is great.” Cowan also believes he returned to the game a much better artist thanks to his work on cartoons. “Maybe the thing I got from animation was clarity of storytelling,” he said. “A clarity of information, drawing cleaner lines.” Again thanks to his long-running friendship with Hudlin, Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

Cowan landed another plum project: an adaptation of the 2012 Quentin Tarantino hit movie, Django Unchained, with the writer-director was very involved. The filmmaker, who had made no qualms about the fact that he founds inspiration in his salt-and-pepper duo of outlaws in an obscure early-’70s Marvel Western title starring Reno Jones and Kid Cassidy, The Gunhawks, relished the chance to bring his Django concept back home to mainstream comics. “It is challenging and different,” Cowan say of the Django Unchained mini-series, although he admitted that he never was a typical “super-hero artist,” given his career bringing odd ducks such as the cyborg Deathlok and Steve Ditko’s hat-and-coat vigilante The Question to life. A smash hit from issue one in early 2013, Django Unchained for DC went through multiple printings as Cowan watched his limited involvement in the book snowball. “Reggie and Quentin had asked me to do cover, then art inside for #3. Four and five came out, there was a situation with some deadline issues so they asked me to do #6. I did 40 pages of Django in about a month!” Cowan said. The mini-series has since been collected into a hardcover edition. The experience got even better when Tarantino went on Jay Leno’s Tonight Show solely to plug the collection and Leno opened the book up to a Cowan spread on national TV. “Drawing a new black hero to me was the most awesome thing,” he said. “If I can do Black Panther and Django for the rest of my career, I would be very happy. There’s nothing I love more than drawing the stories of my people.” Cowan, who says he has always embraced change in the industry and in technology, is currently very busy with such assignments as a motion comic for Mayfire (featuring a reality show within a comic about high-tech mercenaries in Seoul) and Paul Levitz-scripted Batman: Mortality, a mini-series he says he started a year-and-a-half ago, “Which I’m now picking up again.” He is also working, Cowan confides, “on some hot stuff I can’t talk about yet with some people who I’ve worked with before.” Overall, it’s been a sweet return to mainstream comics for Cowan. “I really needed that time to re-focus and really hold hands with the girl who brought me to the party in the first place. It was comics that really got me in there in the first place and it was comics that saved me.”

Previous page & this page top: Denys Cowan was among the luminaries who attended the Geppi’s Entertainment Museum exhibit opening, in Dec. 2013, honoring “Milestones: African-Americans in Comics, Pop Culture, and Beyond.” Panoramic photo courtesy of Keith Chow and thenerdsofcolor.org. The artist is the dude with the hand on his chin! Previous page left: Detail from Static Shock Special #1 [Aug. 2011]. Pencils by Denys Cowan, inks either by Rodney Ramos, Prentis Rollins, or John Stanisci. Previous page inset bottom: Promo image for The Boondocks TV show, on which Cowan served as a producer. This page above: Another recent Denys Cowan project was the mini-series Captain America/Black Panther: Flags of Our Fathers. Here’s the Cowan-penciled and Klaus Janson-inked cover for #1 [June 2010]. Below: We’re pretty sure Ye Ed snapped this pic of Denys (holding his youngest, Dash) and this feature’s writer, Michael Aushenker, taken at the 2013 Comic-Con International: San Diego, when we all confabbed about this two-part interview!

fast & loose facts

Sloppy Seduction Prof. Carol Tilley uncovers Dr. Fredric Wertham’s fabrications and distortions in SOTI Interview conducted by JON B. COOKE CBC Editor

Below: Asst. Prof. Carol L. Tilley has previously written papers for academic journals, but nothing she’s scribed has garnered the amount of attention as her article on Seduction of the Innocent, published in Information and Culture: A Journal of History [Vol. 47, #4, 2012] (inset). Photo by L. Brian Stauffer, courtesy of the University of Illinois Board of Trustees.

Comic Book Creator: What would you call your investigation, Carol? It’s a published paper, right? Carol Tilley: “Paper” is fine for now. Someday it will be something more than that. CBC: So, you are pursuing a book on this? Carol: Yes, but not just about Dr. Fredric Wertham. I’d really like to focus more on what it meant to be a kid reading comics in the 1930s, ’40s, and ’50s. Wertham is part of that story, but I absolutely want it to be more than just about him. I think he’s probably gotten enough mileage, enough of our attention over the last half-century, and it’s time to hear some other stories from along the way. CBC: Up front, you said within the paper that you had some sympathies for Wertham’s motives, correct? Carol: I do. I have some sympathies for him in general. And part of that is spending the time that I have looking through his papers. There’s something about doing historical research where you get really acquainted with your subject by reading their papers, by seeing and experiencing things through their perspective, and that certainly happened with me. Wertham was a very charismatic individual, very intelligent. He could be wickedly funny, so it’s hard not to kind of like that person. On top of that, the things that he did seem mostly, genuinely motivated by a desire to make the world a better place. CBC: What’s the background of your investigation into Wertham’s material? Carol: I am a professor of library and information science: I teach people who are becoming librarians. I started out a long time ago as a high school librarian and, before that, as a comics reader. So, in my own research over the last eight or nine years, I’ve been thinking a lot about how librarians understand comics and how that has changed over time. I’m especially interested in how librarians have served as gatekeepers to some respect, for kids’ reading and especially kids’ comic reading in the mid-century, and even before that with newspaper comics. Wertham has always been part of that interest because he, in many ways, encapsulates a lot of what it means to be a gatekeeper. He captured a lot of the objections people in the 1940s and ’50s — and to some extent today — have with comics. So I had been paying occasional attention to his papers and to when they might be open to the public for research. There had been some hemming and hawing at the Library of Congress as a result, I believe, of concerns raised by Wertham’s executor. The papers were going to be open and then they weren’t and then they were and then they weren’t… and finally they were! I decided to go as soon as I could, not because I had a #5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

[Just after Valentine’s Day last year, The New York Times reported a story that sent tremors through the world of comics. Its article by Dave Itzkoff, “Scholar Finds Flaws in Work by Archenemy of Comics,” shocked many (though surprised few) in addressing University of Illinois Assistant Professor Carol L. Tilley’s findings that Seduction of the Innocent, Dr. Fredric Wertham’s notorious book that nearly destroyed the comics business and will have its 60th anniversary in April, was riddled with fabrications, distortions, and misrepresentations of his own research. Having gained access to Wertham’s papers, Carol verified what many of us have long suspected: that the good doctor had played fast and loose with the truth. Ye Editor contacted the academic after her article, “Seducing the Innocent: Fredric Wertham and the

Falsifications that Helped Condemn Comics,” was published in Information and Culture: A Journal of History [Vol. 47, #4, 2012] and, after meeting at last year’s New York Comic Con, we finally had a chance to speak on Feb. 3, via the Internet. The interview was transcribed by Steven Thompson and copy-edited by Carol for clarification and correction. — Y.E.]

burning desire to spend time with Fredric Wertham through his papers, but because there were intimations in Seduction and in other things that he had written that he had heard from a fairly sizable number of librarians, teachers, and parents about children’s comics reading and I was really curious. I wanted to know what exactly those teachers, parents, and librarians were saying to him. So I went to look at his materials to find that stuff. Anything I might have found about him was really secondary to my interest in going. CBC: And what did you find? Carol: There’s a little bit of mythologizing in this as there is with a lot of discovery stories. But truly, as I was at the Library of Congress for a couple of hours and sorting through those first boxes — there are about 200 boxes of his papers available — that I looked at and I realized I was seeing chapter by chapter how he put together Seduction of the Innocent. I was seeing the notes, I was seeing his background materials, the case files, newspaper clippings, records of conversations he had with people. And the thing that I was struck by (besides the fact that this was a magnificent treasure horde in many ways) is that I was able to see the voices of these very real kids that he talked to, who were his patients in therapeutic groups that he and his colleagues supervised and facilitated, and I could see he had made notes on the very transcripts that served as the source material for Seduction. It was all very vivid and alive. I could read things in the source material — these transcripts from kids in the therapy sessions — and then recall those same quotes, or very similar quotes, in the book. I began first by writing down things that were especially memorable to me because I was kind of curious to see if they made it into the book in that form. I would go back to the hotel room each night and do some checking and I was finding that there were some inconsistencies that went beyond things I would say were incidental or accidental even, that seemed very deliberate. Very egregious. CBC: Quoting from your paper, you charge: “Wertham manipulated evidence to persuade readers of the ill effects of comic book reading on children’s behavior” [pg. 396]; “He created the illusion of dialogue and also emotion… he also distorted facts… Wertham not only fabricated content… but also elided and conflated comments… Wertham changed small details… Wertham’s characterization of his own research is also troubling” [pg. 399]. “Wertham’s failure to attribute the source of his material also demonstrates his willingness to alter details to fit his rhetorical need” [pg. 401]. I mean, these are really fundamental errors for any kind of investigation that purports to be science-based! Carol: Well, I think so! Certainly after I found this pattern and the pervasiveness of the inconsistencies, it does seem to be a problem. CBC: Did you read Seduction of the Innocent first, before going through his papers? Carol: Oh, yes, of course. Absolutely! And I went with my copy underlined and annotated — it’s now more underlined and annotated! I couldn’t take my copy of the book into the reading room because of security issues, but I had it in my backpack and I would sit on my Metro ride back to the hotel each night, and at the hotel, after I would get home after each of these trips, I would look at the notes I had transcribed, photocopied, or photographed, and I would look at Seduction and I would think, “You know, there’s something that’s just a little bit wrong here.” It doesn’t seem honest. It really did take me a while to identify the set of examples that I based the paper on in part because, even though Wertham did preserve the material in fairly sequential chapter order and he did seem to markup materials in a way that indicated how he had used them in the final text, it’s Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

still a laborious process to go through and to search for the passage in the book that corresponded most closely with what was in the paper, what was in the archival material or to be sure, in the cases of similar passages, that I was really looking at the correct one or the one that I could be most certain fit the child, the interviewee, that kind of thing. CBC: When you initially read Seduction, did it ring as authentic to you? Though I’ve been talking about the book and it’s been involved in my life as a life-long lover of comics — I first held a library copy of Seduction in my hands when I was probably about 12 years old, and have owned one for 20 years — I never actually read it. But I started to for our talk and, I’ll be honest with you — I could not finish it. [Carol laughs] It’s a laborious slog to go through because to me, as a layman, as a historian of sorts, it rings inauthentic. The voices of the children and the way they talk do not seem like the voices of real children and the way they really talk. Carol: You know, strangely, at least in the transcripts, Wertham didn’t really change the grammar or the syntax to make the kids sound more adult or more erudite or whatever. And that might be an artifact of the transcript itself, that whoever was taking those notes and making the typewritten copy was doing some grammatical changes in his or her head at the time. Kids actually sort of sound in the transcripts the way they do in the book. That part mostly fits. Which is weird. But there’s a lot about Seduction that on casual reading should set a lot of alarm bells off. [laughs] There is so much hyperbole. There’s so much bombast in what he has to say that you’re right to question, I think from the very beginning, how authentic or how truthful Wertham is being with us, the readers. CBC: Author David Hajdu discussed the human cost in The Ten-Cent Plague. How many people who had worked in the field never again worked in comics after the comics scare. Obviously we all know that comics went through a severe change, but to consider the damage to people that took place with this hyperbole, with this over-the-top rhetoric, blaming juvenile delinquency on comic-book reading. It’s all so egregious! [Sighs] I guess I’m just pontificating. Carol: It’s true! There are a few places in his accounting of names that I would question a little bit.

Above: Courtesy of Rob Yeremian and The Time Capsule, the book that almost destroyed an entire industry, Dr. Fredric Wertham’s scathing attack on comic books, Seduction of the Innocent. Below: Detail of Wertham publicity shot sent to newspapers prior to the release of Seduction of the Innocent (which, the print noted, was to occur on April 22, 1954). Photo by the multi-talented Gordon Parks, best recalled for his Life magazine photo essays and directing the motion picture Shaft.

newspaper comics. I don’t think he was a big newspaper comics reader, but those were still distinctive for him and the fact that some newspaper features crossed over into comics, just in terms of characters or in actual reprints, that didn’t really factor into his views on comics somehow. Or it just didn’t register. CBC: He was soft on Chester Gould? Is that what you’re saying? [laughter] Carol: Well, yeah, on newspaper comics generally. Because his idea was that newspapers had editors and so newspaper comics had editorial scrutiny that he felt was lacking in comic books even though comic books had editorial scrutiny of a sort, I suppose. It didn’t rise to the same level as he felt newspaper strips had. CBC: His cache really rose, correct? He was a star witness in New York, he was a star witness for the Kefauver hearings, correct? Carol: Well, yes, he was certainly one of the star witnesses. Wertham’s interest in comics had really started in the late 1940s and he had the opportunity to testify in a U.S. Postal Service obscenity trial in late 1947, in Washington, D.C. By the way, he was testifying for the defense. It was a trial about a nudist magazine and he was advocating that the nudist magazine was not obscene, but he used his several hours on the witness stand to launch into his first public diatribe against comics. That got picked up in The New York Herald-Tribune and, from Dec. ’47/Jan. ’48 on, Wertham was, more or less, all-comics all the time. When the Senate Interstate Crime trials were held in 1950, Wertham was not called as a witness for those, but his ideas about comics, his understanding of the comics industry, informed a lot of the questioning, a lot of the behindthe-scenes activities that took place in 1950, and then he was called as an actual witness in ’54. He spent quite a lot of time on the stand sharing his viewpoints with the Senate. It’s

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

For instance, Lauretta Bender is one of the people in his list and Lauretta Bender was a consultant — she was a psychiatrist and one of Wertham’s rivals. She was a consultant for DC Comics, but her livelihood wasn’t dependent on the comics industry. She made a good living outside of that. And, yes, she no longer consulted with the comics industry after the Comics Code was implemented. But there are little nitpicky things like that that I would say don’t work for me with his list, but, in general, I think he gives a really beautiful portrayal of the sort of uproar and the anti-comics fervor that was pervasive for a period of 10 to 15 years in the U.S. CBC: Just speculating, what do you think Wertham’s motives were? In general, the comics themselves DID have very graphic and violent content at the time, correct? Carol: Absolutely! I often tell people, as I go back and read comics from the 1940s and ’50s, there is stuff that I find groAbove: The cover from that same tesque, lurid, and disturbing as an adult. Would I have found issue of Ladies’ Home Journal. it grotesque, lurid, and disturbing as a 10- or 12-year-old? I don’t know because I’m not that person anymore. My 10- to 12-year-old self was fascinated with some of my neighbor’s mortuary and embalming textbooks that were quite gruesome. I would be repulsed by those now. But, yeah, the comics of that time did have a lot of sexism, racism, violence, crime… all of those things! Wertham, though, didn’t have a very finely tuned filter for any of those things. So he’d look at Classics Illustrated or Donald Duck or a fairly innocuous Western comic or a fairly innocuous teenage comic, and still see those as criminal, sinister, and unworthy of readership. CBC: The doctor had really an umbrella definition for crime comics, didn’t he? Carol: Right. To Wertham, something like 90–95% of all comics were crime comics. So, there wasn’t anything that fell outside that category for him, although he was very careful always to distinguish between comic books and

Above: Prior to its actual publication in April 1954, Dr. Fredric Wertham’s Seduction of the Innocent was excerpted in Nov. ’53’s Ladies’ Home Journal magazine. Here’s the opening spread of that article, featuring some notorious comic book panels, among them one from Jack Cole’s “Murder, Morphine and Me” [True Crime Comics #2, May 1947], a story that “could well be the most notorious comic-book tale in the history of the medium.” Or so says Marc Burkhardt’s online pop culture blog, The Time Bullet.

his testimony and [E.C. Comics publisher] Bill Gaines that are most popularly remembered today. CBC: Notoriously remembered. [laughter] Carol: Well, yeah. Maybe not “popularly.” CBC: I’m reading right here from your paper, it says, “Wertham shifted responsibility for young people’s behavioral disorders and other pathologies from the broader social, cultural, and organic physical contexts of these children’s lives to the recreational pastime of reading comics. Wertham often played fast and loose with the data he gathered on comics, even leading some of his contemporaries to raise concerns about the way in which he marshaled evidence in support of his assertions.” This is really important, right? Juvenile delinquency was actually on the decline at the time of this oppression of comics taking place, correct? Carol: I would have to double-check the data, but it was NOT the plague on the planet that certainly Wertham believed it was or that it was in the popular imagination. Wertham very effectively — though probably not always intentionally, — played into a lot of societal fears about juvenile delinquency. CBC: And that was also tied into the “Red Scare,” correct? Not politically, but in this creeping paranoia that was taking place in America during the “Atomic Age.” Carol: Yes, I think it’s fair to say that people were afraid of a lot of things. They were afraid things were going to undermine America and democracy and apple pie and baseball and mom and all of those things that we hold dear in this country. I think comics that were, in many ways, very honest and truthful, like the E.C. Comics — that were sort of broadly exposing the realities of the war in Korea, of race relations, relations between men and women — were very frightening to people, and I think Wertham was well aware of that. At the same time, Wertham was very much about improving race relations, improving relations between the sexes, creating what he viewed as a healthier social environment, and so one of his attacks was to get rid of comics. That would certainly go a long way toward making that environment better. CBC: Right. Do you think that this falsification of evidence was tied to a desire for celebrity? After all Seduction was almost selected as a Book of the Month. Carol: Almost! CBC: Les Daniels mounted in his book, Comix, in 1971, a rather scathing attack on Wertham and the Comics Code. He also criticized the mothers of America. Do you think there’s anything to that? After all, Seduction was excerpted — giving it the major publicity he received — in The Ladies Home Journal, obviously, a woman’s magazine. Carol: That and Reader’s Digest. Wertham did speak to women’s groups. I think it was Danny Fingeroth who told me about meeting a woman who had been around Wertham and she talked about how he was a nice dresser, charismatic, a very charming gentleman… so did he enjoy that attention that he got from mothers and women? Probably a certain Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

amount he did. Did it feed into his obsession with comics? I don’t think so. To be honest, I’m still trying to figure out the genesis of some of this. It really seemed to be something inside of him. It doesn’t even seem to be anything external that you can point to, no particular incident. A lot of it is just resonated and stuck in his gut and provoked him to do this. I’m working on this idea — I talked a little bit about it at New York Comic Con this past Fall — that part of Wertham’s continued antagonism against comics actually was the result of a bad children’s book review. A children’s author took a book idea of hers to the Child Study Association, which, at the time, had an active children’s book review committee that was fairly well known and had some clout, especially in the New York City publishing world. Sidonie Gruenberg, who was an advisor for Fawcett Comics, was the head of the Child Study Association at that time and she recommended against this particular book’s publication. This children’s author somehow came to be employed by Estes Kefauver and she is this linchpin. She’s the person who introduced Wertham and Kefauver in 1950, who encouraged their continued association, who seemingly helped Wertham get a little more riled up against the comics industry. And so I think that that seed was already in Wertham. I think that he already felt like he needed to be a crusader against comics but I think when this individual came into his life, that he had a little extra spur to take them on. CBC: Holy Sterling North! [laughter] It’s interesting that David Hajdu also was very strong in making the clarification not to align the comic book scare with the Red Scare. The Red Scare was coming from the right-wing conservatives’ fear of Soviet infiltration, while the comic book scare was really coming from the other side of the political spectrum, of being a kind of anti-anti-intellectualism. Carol: [Laughs] Well, I think the comic book scare was coming from lots of different circles, but yes, absolutely, it probably had a stronger focus among what we would think

Above and inset: Collier’s, a popular American magazine from yesteryear, included an article lambasting comic books by Judith Crist (later a renowned film critic for TV Guide), which included sensationalized depiction of kiddy crime, such as the above, which had the caption, “Telling how comic books affected his play, a boy described the scene here depicted by professional models: ‘My sister plays an actress getting captured. We… tie her up… then sit at a table and make plans how to get rid of her.’” Inset is the cover of that same March 27, 1948 issue of the magazine. Below: Caricature of Doctor Fredric Wertham, MD.

Above: This faux comic book cover, drawn by Steve Bryant, was commissioned by the University of Illinois as artwork for the Big10 Network video production, Carol Tilley: Comic Book Crusader (which can be found on YouTube). Courtesy of Steve Bryant, Tim Hartin, Alison Davis Wood, and Carol.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Above: This panel from Jungle Comics #98 [Feb. 1948], apparently drawn by John Celardo, appeared with this weird caption in Seduction of the Innocent.

makes him appear in dialogue with himself. I think Wertham needed to multiply him because he didn’t feel like he had enough examples to use, so he takes one individual and turns him into four, five, or six different people to try to intensify these concerns. CBC: Any others? Carol: I love the instance where the child mentions a headless Captain Marvel … well, Wertham takes off on this idea. The implication is that Captain Marvel is decapitated somehow and yet Captain Marvel in the comic itself that the kid was referring to has been treated with an invisibility potion, so it’s not that his head is gone from his body, it just isn’t visible, [Jon chuckles] but Wertham is very distressed over this. CBC: When I was young and looked at the illustrations in Seduction, I was, like, “Boy did I miss the good comics! Wow! Look there’s genitalia inna guy’s shoulder!” [laughter] Carol: I know! Everything right out there for all to see! CBC: Creepy! And one of the things that really stands out in reading what I’d read of Seduction and also other writing on it, he had a particular and also very strong dislike for Wonder Woman and Superman, probably two of the most wholesome characters in comic books! Did you ever contemplate that? Carol: You know, someone has asked me if his dislike for Wonder Woman might have been some sort of professional feud with [Wonder Woman creator] William Marston. I don’t know that they knew one another professionally or had any reason to have a feud. They just both happened to be psychiatrists. On Wonder Woman, he really didn’t like the whole bondage thing with the golden lasso. That was a very upsetting thing. And Superman was just overly fascist for Wertham. CBC: Superman? Really? Did not know that! Carol: Mr. Fascism. You know, it’s really interesting and something again I talked a little bit about it at New York Comic Con. He did have a handful of cartoonists who came to him unprovoked and shared with him their concerns. Most of these folks were fairly minor figures in the comics pantheon but he did have some real comics artists and writers who gave him insider information and I think that is important for a contemporary audience to know. It wasn’t just people outside the industry scolding what’s going on. There were some people saying, “We do this for our livelihoods and we don’t like it either.” CBC: Did you come across actual, recognizable names? Carol: One was Malcolm Kildale, who created the kinda goofy Speed Centaur character. Again, a lot of these folks were fairly minor comics artists but I can tell you that in his quest to avenge his reputation in his feud with Al Capp, Ham Fisher was one of the folks who came forward on multiple occasions. He wanted Wertham’s help to squash Al Capp but he also voiced some concerns about what was going on. CBC: So you are going to be utilizing the research you’ve uncovered beyond academic journals? Your findings caused a sensation. You received some good press on this last year! Carol: I did! This isn’t the only comics piece I’ve written, but this certainly is the one that’s made the biggest splash and I’ll ride it for as long as I can, I guess. [laughter] CBC: Well, it’s very important information. You actually saw his papers, went through his boxes at the Library of Congress, and all the underlining in his own handwriting…. Carol: I want to go back. There’s more there. I have been through what I consider a fairly small portion of the materials. Certainly not all 200 boxes in his collection at the Library of Congress are comics-related, but even the ones that aren’t overtly comics-related I’ve found often contain little tidbits that help understand who he was as a psychiatrist and as a man. There’s a lot more for me to go through. CBC: Great! And I hope you come back and tell us what you find… I feel like a radio show host! “Be sure to keep us updated, Professor Tilley!” Carol: I will! [laughter]

of as liberals today, the intelligentsia and intellectuals to a large extent. Groups like the General Federation of Women’s Clubs, the elite certainly among librarians and literary critics. Yet it was still fairly equal opportunity. You could look, for instance, at a lot of local Catholic women’s clubs, often comprised of women from working-class and middle-class families, and see that they were very active advocating against comics, too. There was no real partisanship in advocating against comics: it was an equal opportunity whipping boy. CBC: Do you think the intelligentsia, the critical thinkers, let us down? I mean, comics are a valid art form. I don’t think we need to argue that. They can be a form of literature. There’s this great deal of wonderful stuff and yes, thankfully, subversive stuff, but stuff that made people think was in the material along with all the salacious material that was very valid to condemn. Carol: Do I think they let us down? There were intellectuals who didn’t have a dislike or strong hatred of comics, but they also didn’t stand up to comics’ defense. To me, that’s what I see as the fault or the problem. I guess that’s how they let us down. Let’s put it that way. I see that especially with librarians who we think of today as defenders of the First Amendment, fighters against censorship, and if you go back to then late 1940s and early ’50s certainly, even though they were taking those stands with books that were then considered controversial for adult readers, they were not taking a stand against people who censored comics or would have legislated against comics in some way. Comics were considered sort of outside the realm of protection. They weren’t considered worth protecting for librarians of that time. As a librarian at heart, that makes me very sad. We failed. CBC: Can you give us a specific instance of patterns that “troubled and intrigued” you? Carol: To me, the one that stands out the most is this Carlisle, a young man who was multiplied and had his age changed in many instances by Wertham. CBC: What was most disturbing about that? Carol: I think that the fact that Carlisle was turned into more than just himself

TwoMorrows Apps!

ROY THOMAS PRESENTS The last new super-hero of the Golden Age

For Apple or Android devices

https://itunes.apple.com/us /app/id767332506?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store /apps/details?id=com. presspadapp.twomorrows publishingcomicbooks

https://itunes.apple.com/us /app/id739680744?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store /apps/details?id=com. presspadapp.alterego

https://itunes.apple.com/us/ app/id739028056?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store /apps/details?id=com. presspadapp.backissue

https://itunes.apple.com/us /app/id720724963?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store /apps/details?id=com.press padapp.jackkirbycollector

https://itunes.apple.com/us /app/id739698959?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store /apps/details?id=com. presspadapp.draw

https://itunes.apple.com/us /app/id739048849?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store /apps/details?id=com.press padapp.comicbookcreator

https://itunes.apple.com/us/ app/id739668659?mt=8

https://play.google.com/store /apps/details?id=com. presspadapp.brickjournal

BOOKS

C o l l e c t o r

Features New Intro By Roy Thomas Includes art by luminaries Mike Sekowsky & Mort Meskin

the

life of

cart0onist  publisher  art & literary agent  author  historian  collector There are few folks in American comic books as eclectic as Denis Lee Kitchen. After honing his chops as a cartoonist while at college in the late 1960s, the man became a pioneer underground comix publisher with his Kitchen Sink Press, headquartered not in hippie-central San Francisco or radical enclave New York City but in, of all places, white bread Milwaukee, Wisconsin. The quality of his debut effort, Mom’s Homemade Comics, impressed Jay Lynch and Robert Crumb, among other comix luminaries, and soon Kitchen was publishing Bijou Funnies for Lynch [1970] and Crumb’s Home Grown Funnies (which included the seminal “Whiteman Meets Big Foot,” 1971). KSP expanded and Kitchen released Bizarre Sex, Snarf, and Death Rattle, along the way establishing lifelong friendships with Will Eisner and Harvey Kurtzman. Briefly editor of the Marvel-published Comix Book, Kitchen survived the ’70s by selling pot paraphernalia via Krupp Mail Order, working on regional alternative tabloids, and going mainstream publishing The Spirit, as well as Dope Comix and Weird Trips. In the ’80s, Kitchen skillfully adapted to the direct sales marketplace, notably publishing Eisner, Kurtzman, Milton Caniff, and Al Capp, as well as Megaton Man, Gay Comix, Omaha the Cat Dancer, and Xenozoic Tales. The following decade brought the collapse of KSP after a disastrous merger with Kevin Eastman’s Tundra imprint, but not before releasing Bushmiller’s Nancy, Welz’s Cherry, and O’Barr’s The Crow, among many other top-shelf comics and books.

Above: Denis Kitchen, artisté, in a photo taken in his Wisconsin digs in the mid-1970s. At his right is friend and KSP chum Peter Poplaski’s unfinished portrait of Denis. Courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen. Next page: CBC’s expert shutterbug extraordinaire Seth Kushner snapped D.K. at the 2013 Baltimore Comic-Con.

Much of Kitchen’s efforts during the first decade of the new millennium were devoted to his art and literary agency clients, which included Will Eisner, and the respective estates of Al Capp and Harvey Kurtzman, as well as devoting considerable time to his creation, the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, which fights for freedom of speech in the realm of comics. Today the man is as busy as ever, co-authoring books on Capp, Kurtzman, and underground comix, and returning as publisher with the Dark Horse imprint Kitchen Sink Books. This interview took place at Kitchen’s home in central Massachusetts, which he shares with wife Stacey and teenage daughter Alexa, being conducted on Aug. 24–25, 2013. — JBC.

conducted by jon b. cooke transcribed by brian k. morris photography by seth kushner 



#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

first amendment champion  nancy & jukebox freak Comic Book Creator: Let’s jump right in. You’re from Irish-German stock, Denis? Denis Kitchen: Yeah, “Kitchen” is Irish, with some Scotch-Irish on my father’s side. My mother’s parents were Donauschwaben, German-speaking citizens of Hungary, who emigrated at the turn of the century. My maternal grandparents continued to speak German in Milwaukee where they lived. There were so many Germans there that my grandmother, Margaretha, lived to nearly 90 and never really had to learn to speak English. She spoke a little halting English, but all the conversations were in German. And so when she came to live with us, that was just the way it was. CBC: Did you speak German? Denis: I certainly understood my grandmother. I could comprehend her, but I wasn’t fluent speaking it. But even now, when I go to Germany, or when we had German guests last week, I retain a surprising amount of it. CBC: Did you have any relatives — parents, grandparents, or family, out of family — who were creative? Denis: My maternal grandfather, Franz, was an ornamental ironworker and a terrific artist. My mother remembers watching him draw designs for projects and said he was a remarkable draftsman. He suffered from neuralgia, causing chronic severe pain and, probably because of depression from that, he’d throw things away. None of his drawn art survives — he destroyed it all. The things that do survive are literally made of metal, and they’re beautiful. Some ornamental work survives in the Wisconsin state capitol building. He also made things like lamps, jewelry boxes, and ornate fireplace screens. My mother could also draw very well, too. She’s another one, the opposite of me, who wasn’t a saver. When I was young, I clearly remember she showed me drawings she did of Pinocchio. I remember it being very well done, but she didn’t save those things. She later went on to paint still lives: flowers and that sort of thing, but there’s definitely a creative streak on that side of the family. My brother, James, is now a professional sculptor, and pretty amazing. My sister can also draw very well, but she never pursued it. CBC: What’s your sister’s name? Denis: Gayle. James is a late bloomer. He worked for me for a good many years at Kitchen Sink Press and then, after the company went under, he reinvented himself as a metal sculptor and he’s actually achieved quite a bit of success, certainly regionally. If you go into the city of Springfield, Massachusetts, his sculptures all over that city and some are huge. He recently erected a birdshaped structure that’s 35 feet high. CBC: Wow. Denis: So there’s definitely something in the genes if such a thing is, in fact, inheritable. CBC: What were your parents’ names? Denis: My father’s name was Benjamin, after his father and my mother was Margaret — actually, Margaretha, after her mother.

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

BELOW: Even in high school, Denis Kitchen was publishing, this his monthly gossip sheet/ humor mimeograph ’zine, Klepto.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

CBC: And was there an appreciation for art at home when you were growing up? Denis: I wouldn’t say in a noticeable way. My dad was a blue-collar worker and we had very little in terms of things to hang on the wall [laughs]. We were quite poor, so I can’t say that art was something that surrounded us or was discussed. CBC: You were born in ’46? Denis: Right. CBC: And where were you in the lineup of siblings? Denis: I’m the oldest of three Kitchens. My dad died when I was only 13. My mother remarried another Irishman, George Riley, when I was 18. I inherited three younger siblings on the Riley side who I quickly became very close to. CBC: Were they creative at all? Denis: My late stepsister Doreen was an excellent photographer. But, growing up, the formative years, there was never any real steering of me toward the creative side. They didn’t discourage it, but as a practical matter the opposite occurred. My whole extended family was on the poor side of the fence and so, when I showed some scholastic ability and was getting strong grades, I was encouraged to be like my cousin Georgie who was an electrical engineer. He was the only college graduate in our entire family. There was no other professional role model, so I was constantly prodded by my mother and my aunts to “be like Georgie.” CBC: Practical and… Denis: Exactly. One of my favorite stories is that as sophomores in high

Above: A photo of Ben Kitchen, Denis’s father, in the service during the Second World War. Ben is second from right. Courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen.

school, we were assigned to research and write a paper on the profession we’d likely pursue. We were told to pick three options and for the primary one we had to interview a professional in that field. Of course, my number one choice, really, was to be a cartoonist. But at 14 or 15 I didn’t have a clue where the nearest cartoonist was. [chuckles] I was in a small rural town called Caledonia, and literally couldn’t fulfill the assignment with a cartoonist. So my fall back, of course, was, “Okay, I’ll interview my cousin.” I still have the report. On the cover are self-portraits: one drawing cartoons and the other half thinking of abstract numbers. I made an appointment visit Georgie in a suburb of Milwaukee. He had a really nice, well-kept backyard with a big garden. It was beautifully laid out, in symmetrical rows with lots of decorative flowers. I literally went into the garden with my notepad to interview him because he was weeding. I started asking him what must have been pretty uninspired questions. I knew next to nothing what he did and he picked up on that pretty quickly. He said, “You don’t really want to be an electrical engineer, do you, Denis?” And I said, kind of softly, “No, not really, Georgie.” I remember there a long pause. Then he put down his trowel and looked at me somberly. He said, “Listen, if I had it to do it all over again, I would be a gardener.” Then he said, “Follow your heart.” That was an amazing and liberating moment for me. After all the family pressure to be like my successful cousin, I realized he didn’t enjoy his day job and didn’t want to send me down that same road. He basically said, “Be what you want to be.” From the moment I walked away from his garden, I never looked back. CBC: Mmm. Where did you interest in cartooning start? Can you pinpoint it? Denis: It’s hard to pinpoint, Jon, other than I was a voracious reader of comics in both the daily newspaper and in comic books. And from a very early age I drew, but even more in the earliest years I “sculpted.” I had a lot of modeling clay. I used to get an allowance of fifty cents a week and in those days, at the dime store — when many things literally cost a dime — a box of modeling clay was 10¢ and a comic book was 10¢. So I would either buy five comics or five boxes of clay or some combination and that was my weekly obsession: those two things. At some point I was drawing cartoons. And was encouraged. The earliest specific memory I have is being at a bar with my Aunt Alma when I was quite young, and she used to take whatever I was drawing and pass it around the bar and say, “Look what my nephew can do.” And this particular time, I was drawing a woman. She picked up and she said, “Look at the boobs on this one!” I remember being mortified that she focused on these breasts that I drew, that I wasn’t, I don’t think, even conscious of being sexual. I was just drawing what a woman looked like. But to her, it was a lot earthier than I’m sure I intended and I remember having mixed feelings. I remember being embarrassed that people were laughing at my drawing, but at the same time feeling somehow rewarded, that what I created was being appreciated. They might have been laughing at me, or thinking it was precocious. Whatever it was, that’s a memory that’s vivid and had some meaning. Another recollection — when I was also quite young — the Milwaukee Journal was our daily newspaper, with an excellent comic section called “The Green Sheet.” They

held a contest for kids to mail in a drawing of their favorite local strip character. She said, “You love to draw cartoons. Why don’t you enter this contest?” My favorite strip was Li’l Abner, but try as I might, I couldn’t mimic the art properly. Of course then I didn’t know what a brush was. I was drawing with a pencil, trying to get Abner and Daisy Mae to look right and couldn’t. So I finally gave up and figured, “Okay, I’ll draw Nancy and Sluggo” because it looked the easiest. Whatever I did and sent in didn’t make the cut. The winner probably ended up being an engineer! [laughs] But I do remember being excited about emulating these famous strips in some semi-official way. The next thing I remember was in second grade illustrating short primitive stories — not assignments — and the teacher asked me to regularly read them in front of class, and then passed them around. That was very astute of her, I think. It greatly boosted my confidence. Later in grade school, I started what I’d loosely call a newsletter, where I would do illustrated snippets about the classroom and the school and surreptitiously pass it around and get guffaws from classmates, probably because I was typically making fun of the teacher or principal. Occasionally, they’d get confiscated and I’d get scolded, but I took perverse satisfaction in being able to get under the skin of the teacher. It was, I suppose, an early attempt at satire, although I probably wouldn’t have known what the word “satire” meant. But I knew how to make classmates laugh or snicker. There was also a grade school gang — using the term loosely — a gang of boys that hung out. They were the tougher kids and I wasn’t part of that group. I remember feeling left out. Whatever they called themselves — they had some flashy name — I thought, “I’m going to start a gang with a cooler name and we’re going to have membership cards.” So we called ourselves the Eagles or the Sharks or something, I really can’t remember, but I made individualized membership

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

cards. And so the three or four guys I recruited, we could say to the other kids, “Oh, yeah? Well, you don’t have a membership card.” And I remember they were just jealous enough to go, “Oh, man. You’re right.” And that made me, then, a little bit cooler because I could make something they couldn’t. It certainly didn’t make me tougher. If I pulled a stunt like that in a school today I’d get shot. It just made me feel like I had a slight edge. So little things like that cumulatively formed my early childhood. By the time I was 13, in eighth grade, those random “newsletters” formed into a thing called Cleptomaniac — initially with a “C.” It was three pages that I typed, then added original illustrations between the text, and sometimes snapshots were also glued on. I named it that because similar things I’d been doing for the class would often disappear after I put a lot of effort into them. They were supposed to be passed around and returned to me but, for whatever reason, they frequently weren’t. I learned that kleptomaniacs were people who stole things compulsively so I concluded that there was one in the classroom, never identified. I solved that problem with Cleptomaniac. This time instead of just passing it around, I rented it, one kid at a time. If you wanted to see it, you had to pay me a penny or 2¢. That way I knew who had it and they had to give it back. And, wow, if everybody read it, you know, I made 30, 40, 50¢. The strategy worked and something clicked in me then. They’re willing to pay for what I’m doing. I’m not only having fun, but there’s a financial reward. Back in 1960, you know, making an extra quarter, 50¢ — that was a big deal at 13. That bought a few comic books that didn’t come from having to mow somebody’s lawn. It came from drawing and writing, a revelation. So something very important to my future clicked then. CBC: Right. Denis: I had not the wildest dream that someday I would be making such things professionally. But for the moment, that one-of-a-kind broadsheet was a reward unto itself and then it grew. At a certain point, maybe around the tenth issue or so, word got around the school administration that I was doing this thing — now just called Klepto with a “K.” One of my classmates was Donna Bechtold, whose mother was secretary to the principal. Mrs. Bechtold pulled me aside one day and she said, “Donna said you’re doing making these little newspapers. Maybe you’d like to stay after school and use the …”

Above: Text to come.

Above: Two pix from 1968 of Denis Kitchen, University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee student. Courtesy of D. & S. Kitchen. Inset left: “Decay” (get it? “D.K.”?) drew his quandary over which career to choose on a school binder: art or brainy stuff? Courtesy of D. & S. Kitchen. BELOW & THROUGHOUT: In rough chronological order, we are featuring cover imagery of the jaw-droppingly eclectic publications produced by Kitchen Sink Press. It’s not everything they printed, mind you, but it is a solid sampling.

Inset right: Denis’s campaign button for his run as student body president on the Purity Party ticket. “I didn’t win,” he says, “though it was fairly close.” Below: Denis co-founded, in 1967, the University of Wisconsin–Milwaukee’s first humor magazine, Snide. All items on this page are courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Above: Denis seems to have a natural gift for generating newspaper publicity, one that reaches back into his collegiate days in the 1960s. The Milwaukee Journal clipping’s call-out shows the young man in the driver’s seat.

CBC: Mimeograph? Denis: Yes, though mimeograph might technically be the wrong word. I think it was properly called a spirit duplicator, or a ditto machine. I know the fumes were pretty potent. But before Xerox machines were in common usage it was a way of using a cylindrical device to run off 50 or so copies and you could even do it in multiple colors. She showed me how to do it and so I would stay after school once a month or whatever, running copies and stapling pages together. For the first time, I was mass-producing Klepto. It was quite a heady event! By that time, Klepto’s original meaning was, you know, a little lost. [laughs] It was just my brand. After eighth grade in the neighborhood school, I was bussed to a junior high in Racine. I continued Klepto there, and then at William Horlick High School, named after a malted milk magnate. One of the articles I skimmed before you arrived said Klepto’s circulation was 310. So in a high school with 2,000 kids about 15% bought Klepto. And at that point, it cost a nickel. So 300 nickels: that was 15 bucks. Again, in the early ‘60s, that was decent pocket money. CBC: Comics were a dime. [chuckles] Denis: Yeah, comic books were a dime for perspective. So, in retrospect, I see pretty clearly how this early entrepreneurial and creative experience was building toward an eventual career in comics and in publishing. What is surprising to me, I guess, in hindsight is just how early I had that business knack to decide to sell Klepto, to have the discipline to regularly produce it, and to keep the content just on that edge that didn’t make any school administration forbid it from being done or circulated. It could be edgy, but not offensive. It prepared me to become a cartoonist, a writer, an editor, a publisher, all in different ways that I wouldn’t have consciously been thinking about. Of necessity, I had to do all those things myself. I had one classmate named Bob who just helped me sell the paper. He didn’t do anything editorially, but he wanted a

title. So I remember saying, “All right, you’ll be Publisher.” So if you look at most back issues, it’ll say “Publisher, Bob Wilson.” He didn’t do sh*t. [laughs] I didn’t even know what a publisher was, that’s the truth. A publisher to me then just meant the guy who got it in people’s hands. It was a meaningless title so I gave it to him. But in actuality, unknowingly, what I was doing was publishing. I just didn’t know it. CBC: [Chuckles] Did you gain popularity with that? Denis: Yes and no. I certainly started to learn about school politics. If I poked fun at somebody, that could backfire. At the same time, people liked the notoriety, liked having their name in print. When I got to Horlick, I discovered that what really made the paper popular was the one thing I didn’t do: the gossip column. Keep in mind I’m a bus student. Bus students come in the morning, they leave right after the last class; they can’t stick around for extracurricular activities. They’re not the cool kids. The bus kids are the shlumps. And so I really had little clue what was going on in the social arena. But there was a classmate named Barbara who was already kind of the school gossip, so I approached her on the sly and I said, “Look, how’d you like to do an actual gossip column? You don’t have to use your real name. I’ll call you Miss X. Just feed me the stuff and I’ll run it,” and she loved the idea. So she’d write things like, “What cheerleader and football star were necking at The Point Saturday night?” Or “Which junior girl is late for more than Econ class?” Stuff that was a little risqué or insinuated more than it would actually say. That’s when the circulation shot up [laughter] and I realized, “Okay, I’d like to say they’re buying it for my cartoons and witticism, but really, they just want to know the school dirt.” But again, in retrospect, I was pragmatic enough to realize that could be a circulation booster. Harvey Kurtzman used to quote a playwright who said, “Satire is what closes on opening weekend.” So gossip kept my play going. Classmates tended to assume I was “Miss X.” But living in rural Caledonia was kind of like being in Lower Slobbovia. I wouldn’t know who was necking on weekends with whom, but I promised to keep Barbara’s identity secret. At one point, somehow, she was outed. So the next headline was “Miss X Exposed,” and a new secret Miss X continued it. So I guess on some level, I gained popularity, but at the same time a lot of potential friends kept their distance so I wouldn’t learn their deep, dark secrets [chuckles]. CBC: You’ll be damned if you’re going to lose your star columnist. [laughs] Denis: Yeah. And basically, that was the case. CBC: Did you ever go to high school reunions and discuss it with Barbara? Denis: Yeah, actually, we did. We had some good laughs over it. CBC: Did she enjoy the notoriety herself? Denis: I think so. Within that captive school audience it was a little power base. She could selectively make fun of enemies or insinuate or exaggerate things if she wished, while maybe flattering friends. It was a form of situational power she embraced, maybe a little too gleefully, but I didn’t care. I wasn’t worried about getting sued when I was 17! [chuckles] When I lampooned a teacher or classmate it was lighthearted stuff, never malicious. Well, I take it back. There was one teacher. The official high school paper, to me,

was a rag: a sterile, ugly little thing. Anyhow, it sponsored a poster contest to improve the quality of event posters. There was a $10 prize and I won. At that same time my art teacher, Mr. Clickner, was a man I grew to loathe because he hated cartoons. Hated them. And I was probably an obstinate, stubborn kid to him because with every assignment, I would try to twist it into a way to do a cartoon. Shortly after I won the ten-dollar prize, he confronted me. He said, “You think you’re hot sh*t because you won that poster contest, but you don’t know anything about art.” And that semester, he gave me an “F” in Art. I had been an almost straight-A student and suddenly, in the subject closest to my heart, I got an “F.” It was like my world fell beneath me! When my mother saw the report card she said, “Oh, Denis! An ‘F’ in Art?” I told her the teacher hated me, and I hated him. She marched into school and waved the card in his face and she said, “How dare you give my son an ‘F’? He’s a wonderful and talented artist.” As she relayed to me, he basically told her, “Maybe your son shows some promise, but he doesn’t know how to follow an assignment. He turns every assignment into a cartoon. That’s not how I run my class and that’s not the way life works.” He definitely got my attention with that “F.” And it was probably good because maybe my head was getting a little swelled because of the attention Klepto was getting, or winning that contest. I did have a lot to learn and he brought me down in a way that was humbling. I probably deserved it. CBC: [Chuckles] So you did an alternative newspaper and you had issues with authority pretty early on. You were pretty

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

well set to enter the counterculture, weren’t you? Denis: Hah! I guess so! But you know, in the early ’60s, there wasn’t yet a ’60s counterculture, at least in the Midwest. The year I graduated, 1964, is when The Beatles music hit America. So just as I was leaving high school, there was this whole British music invasion and the long hair look as I was transitioning from high school to college. It was kind of, you know, that American Graffiti moment? Dramatic changes were in the air with the music, fashion, hairstyles, and attitudes. Everything, it seemed, was in a major cultural flux. It was maybe the perfect time to be starting college. I entered the University of Wisconsin in Milwaukee in the fall of ’64. I wanted to go to Madison, the real state campus, but couldn’t afford it. I was able pull together the cost of tuition and books but Madison involved much bigger dormitory costs. I could commute to the Milwaukee campus. But when you say I had “authority issues,” in fact, I was still pretty darned straight and conventional when I started UWM. To give you a perfect example, virtually all universities in 1964 had a mandatory ROTC… CBC: Program? Denis: A program, I guess, yeah. All male freshman had to attend several orientation classes where an army officer would explain the benefits of ROTC [Reserve Officer Training Corps] and at the last session you could chose to join or not.

Above: How fortuitous the first issue’s ad revenue disappeared… else we wouldn’t have Denis Kitchen’s debut comic book, Mom’s Homemade Comics [June 1969]. Explains Kitchen, “The second issue of Snide was supposed to be the ‘all comics issue’… So that second Snide evolved into… my first self-published underground,” the humble beginning of the Kitchen Sink publishing empire. TOP LEFT: Some Kitchen-generated Mom’s publicity appears in an issue of the UWM Post. BELOW: Besides Steve Krupp, Ingrid the Bitch is as close as Kitchen got to depicting a continuing character. These from Mom’s Homemade Comics #3 [Feb. 1971].

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

The benefits included becoming a commissioned Lieutenant at the end, and the army would pay for, I think, part of your college costs, a big factor. In any event for probably 95% of the young men attending those compulsory sessions, it was, “Let this crap be over with. I don’t have the remotest desire to join.” But I went in with an open mind. My father, Ben, was a World War II veteran, and proud of it. So I had an innate pride in the fact that he had served in a noble cause. He had died four years before I went to college, but in my mind he would have been pleased to have an officer as a son. I was pretty straight arrow in terms of just being a… CBC: American kid? Denis: Yeah, a young patriot. And so I remember sitting through the orientation and being convinced that yes, this would be a good thing to do. In retrospect, I’m still kind of stunned, but I signed up for ROTC. A lot of my friends at the time were starting to grow their hair like the Beatles and smoking weed, but I was not. I was still a very straight shoot-

Above: Legendary Milwaukee Journal managing editor George Lockwood, a lifelong devotee of the comic strip, mentored Denis at UWM and subsequently encouraged the young cartoonist to develop a syndicated strip. Alas, Kitchen had less conventional aspirations. Still, during lean times in the late ’70s, D.K. pitched to Lockwood a feature concept, The Kitchen Sink, a weekly full-color strip. “He rejected it,” Denis writes in his Oddly Compelling book, “lectured me on my shortsightedness, and told me I was hopeless.” Courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen, here’s the rough of the proposed first installment.

er at that stage. When I joined ROTC, they were like, “Are you nuts?” Joining ROTC didn’t change being a full-time student but it meant simultaneously doing basic military training on campus, including marching drills. So for a few weeks, like every Tuesday and Thursday or whatever, I had to wear the official uniform, march with other recruits, and attend regular classes those days in uniform. My friends were just dumbfounded, rolling their eyes at me. Within a couple of months or so I abruptly quit ROTC. When they heard that, my hip friends were like, “Well, Denis finally saw the light. He got out of the military industrial complex and joined the right side.” But I was too ashamed to tell them the truth. The truth was that the uniform was made of wool. Those pants especially, against bare skin, itched like hell. We’re marching and these pants, and my legs, were just — [scratches legs] unbearable. I was constantly scratching my legs and I finally said, “I just can’t wear this anymore, I’m out.” That’s why I quit. It wasn’t a political epiphany. CBC: It’s an allergic reaction. Denis: Exactly. But I could never admit to my friends at the time, the real reason. Remember, those were the early days of the Vietnam War, not something I was quite caught up in yet, in terms of politics or concern about the draft. That definitely happened over the next year or two. But at the start of my freshman college year college, underscored by the ROTC experience, I was not exactly anti-authoritarian. CBC: So looking at these examples of Klepto, you drew on the … what did they used to call them?… the masters or whatever? Denis: Yeah, I think they were called masters. CBC: And this is an article about Klepto in what, a yearbook? Or no, that was a school paper. Denis: Yeah, that was The Horlick Herald. CBC: The rag. Denis: That was the rag, yeah. CBC: And here’s your gossip column, “by Miss X.” Denis: Yeah. CBC: [Laughs] Boy, you sure have a knack for getting people in trouble. When did the one “n” in “Denis” come in? Denis: You know, I asked my mother the same thing. CBC: Oh, you were actually born with one “n”! That’s on the birth certificate? Denis: Oh, yes. Did you think I made that up? CBC: Yes, of course. You’re an artist. [laughs] I thought it was an affectation. Denis: No, that’s my legal name. There were two “B” actors in the early ’40s that she liked, Jack Carson and Dennis Morgan. They made a movie she especially liked called Two Guys From Milwaukee. I know it sounds dopey but it actually had a cameo with Humphrey Bogart. Anyhow, I was named after Dennis Morgan, this B actor, who was also born in Wisconsin, but his first name was spelled the conventional way. She said, “I just wanted yours to be different.” So she dropped an “n.” That turns out to be the French spelling, so whenever I meet anyone from France, I’m “Duh-nee.” CBC: [Examining Klepto] You redrew the logo every time? Denis: Sure. Remember, the school ditto machine I used was pretty primitive technology. Everything on the master sheet had to be either typed or done with ballpoint pen to get a clear impression from the ink-covered second sheet and then attached to the cylinder.

Self-portrait jam ©2014 the respective artists. Bijou ©2014 Bijou Publishing Empire; cover art ©2014 R. Crumb. Nard ’n’ Pat TM & ©2014 Jay Lynch. Snappy Sammy Smoot TM & ©2014 Skip Williamson. All comics TM & ©2014 their respective copyright holders.

CBC: We’ve skipped over a major thing here. First, I’d like to talk a little bit about comic strips. So Li’l Abner was your favorite. Did you have the Milwaukee newspaper come in the house every day? Denis: Oh, yeah. We got the Milwaukee Journal, the afternoon paper back when larger cities had at least two competing papers. It was far superior to the morning Sentinel. George Lockwood, who later was a journalism professor of mine at UWM, and who recently wrote a book about comics, was the managing editor selecting its strips, and he had terrific taste. What I considered to be deficiencies in the Journal’s comic strip line-up were, I later learned, due to the much larger Chicago papers, 90 miles to the south, getting 100-mile radius exclusive deals with the syndicates. It’s always about the money and the power, isn’t it? The top strips the Journal had generally came from having a sharp eye when a strip was first offered. For example, at the inception of Li’l Abner in 1934, a mere eight papers signed it up. One was the Journal. They also had Prince Valiant and Pogo. George, I found out, was a very good friend of Walt Kelly. CBC: So you grew up with his selections? Wow. Denis: Yeah, and later, after he was my professor, as an editor he gave me some of my earliest professional assignments for the Journal’s Sunday magazine insert. But we’re all — at least those of us who grew up with newspapers — we’re all at the mercy of what strips our local paper bought, and that had an obvious impact on our favorites. So I never grew up with Peanuts, for example, or Dick Tracy, because of those Chicago exclusives. But I felt lucky to see Li’l Abner. What appealed to me back then was that strip’s cliffhangers. I remember feeling deliciously manipulated by Al Capp almost every day, and especially on Saturday where he would hold you in his grip until Monday. And then you’d have the Sunday with its separate continuity or one-shot. But I just felt caught up in Abner and emotionally invested in the characters’ plights. And also, very important, his drawing style held appeal from the beginning and, on some subliminal level, maybe it was the sexy women. As you mentioned before the tape was running, as a boy before even quite knowing what sex was about, you saw [Will Eisner’s femme fatale in The Spirit] Plaster of Paris and you knew there was something … CBC: Provocative. Denis: Yeah. I think it was the same way for me with Capp’s women. But at the same time, I read each and every strip in the Green Sheet, even if I didn’t necessarily like them or get them. I just — I was just studying them, I think. Even the soap operas like Mary Worth, I would read. And Rex Morgan,

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

M.D. And I’d read Pogo, even though it was often above my head as a youngster. I didn’t get what the politics were about and the language seemed too flowery and opaque, but I thought the art, the masterful feathering and lettering, was beautiful. So I would read it every day and I started to notice things in the background like the changing names on the swamp boat and the stuff that Kelly was putting in that — CBC: Devices. Denis: Right. I didn’t always understand what he was doing. But I began to gradually figure out, “Oh, those are little in-jokes, maybe.” CBC: Did you recognize that there were human beings who were doing this? Denis: Yes, absolutely, probably because early on, I was saving clippings about cartoonists. The Milwaukee Journal would run profiles about cartoonists periodically and I tried to save them. I have a large collection of such articles from all over, gathered over the years. In fact, given my fascination with Ernie Bushmiller, there was an article about him early on I’ll never forget. He called himself “the Lawrence Welk of cartoonists.” I thought that was

Above: A self-portrait jam for Funnyworld magazine. Back row (from left): Kitchen, Don Glassford, Jim Mitchell, and Skip Williamson. Front row: Jay Lynch, Bruce Walthers, and Wendel Pugh. Inset left: Early on, Chicago’s Bijou Funnies was published by KSP. Robert Crumb cover for #4 [’72]. Below: Bijou helmsmen Jay Lynch (Nard ’n’ Pat commission detail) and Skip Williamson (Snappy Sammy Smoot illo) work here courtesy of Heritage.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

hilarious because nobody could be as square as Welk, the hokey TV band leader. So here was Ernie proudly proclaiming his square-ness while, in that same article, he said when he was starting out and trying to be inventive with strip gags on Fritzi Ritz, the syndicate told him, “Dumb it down, Ernie. Dumb it down.” And so he did. That was an early inkling to me, that the syndicate would instruct a cartoonist to make a strip dumber. It was like, “Oh, I understand. They think the audience is dumb. Why else would you tell a guy to dumb down his strip?” Well, Nancy became highly popular, so I guess the syndicate guys knew what they were doing. It still bothered me that a cartoonist was discouraged from doing the smartest humor he could. CBC: It’s Miss X’s gossip column. [chuckles] Denis: That’s funny. Anyhow, early on, I didn’t hold Bushmiller’s gags in high regard on any intellectual level, but I was intrigued with his art style. There was a geometric perfection to his strip. I studied it carefully. Nancy’s head and the relationship of the top oval of her head to the bottom oval and the nose to the eyes and the mouth, they were perfectly proportional, and just the essential slits and dots as facial features. It appeared simple but it was deceptively simple. Every little stipple on Nancy’s hair was equidistant and a clone of the others. The junk piled in Sluggo’s yard. Everything in the strip could be simultaneously

Above: Inside front cover of Mom’s Homemade Comics #3 [Feb. ’71]. Match the straights with the hippies, kids! Below: Kitchen depicts a sinister capitalist shilling for the company. From early ’70s KSP house ad.

complex and yet reduced to the essence, the fewest number of lines. And the lines were precisely and steadily rendered. I was fascinated by that duality of simplicity and sharpness of detail. I think in some way it influenced my own style, consciously or not. There was also a real pride of craftsmanship. For example, Bushmiller could easily have used Photostats, or later Xeroxes, for many repetitive character heads, to save labor, but he drew everything as an original. Yet each geometrically perfect Nancy head has the same hundred or so hand-drawn stipples around the perimeter. Every day, day after day, like a Zen exercise. No ’stats for Ernie. CBC: You sneaked Nancy into your cover [for this issue of CBC], I noticed. Clearly there’s some significance. Denis: Yeah, there’s definitely a soft spot for that girl. I tried to track him down, you know. I tried to interview Bushmiller. I wanted him to do a self-portrait for my Famous Cartoonists Buttons series too, back in 1974 or ’75, but I could never get through. I talked to his wife on the phone, but couldn’t get past her. She kept telling me to talk to the syndicate. I said, “I don’t care about the syndicate, I want to talk to your husband.” But no dice, she was a tough gatekeeper. He never answered letters either, so his reclusiveness, or I should say elusiveness, probably added to the intrigue. To this day, have a fascination with Bushmiller and other people in the industry share it. Either they share it, or they look at me and start to move further away… because some people just think he’s — CBC: We’re worried, we’re worried. [chuckles] Denis: Yeah, yeah, worried. CBC: Then we’ll call it an obsession, perhaps. Denis: I prefer that term “fascination.” CBC: [Laughs] And were there other strips that intrigued you? Denis: Sure, to the degree I saw them. One paper was all our family could afford. My father was a staunch Democrat and the Chicago Tribune was a Republican paper, so I rarely got to read its comics, but they were unavoidable where I lived. Dick Tracy was so popular that the Tribune wrapped its Sunday comics featuring Tracy over the main section’s headlines on newsstands. Kind of hard to believe, huh? There’d be colorful stacks of these on Sundays and sometimes I got to read the Trib’s comics. Peanuts I would have liked daily, and Gasoline Alley. I appreciated years later when Harvey Kurtzman told me his parents subscribed to The Daily Worker. They were Communists and they didn’t want a capitalist apologist newspaper in their house and they didn’t have a high regard for the comic strips Harvey adored. So Harvey had to find the Hearst newspapers and other New York papers from, like, a neighbor who got the good comics papers and that’s where he fell in love with Flash Gordon and the other classic Hearst strips. I wished I had a neighbor, you know, who, like, got the Tribune or Sun-Times so I could see the ones I missed. It took me a while to understand the business reasons why — when you’re a kid, you don’t have a clue. CBC: You want what you want. Denis: Yeah. CBC: [Chuckles] Comics, did comic books come in at a young age? How young were you? Denis: My earliest memories are of reading comic books. I can’t say exactly what age — CBC: What were you reading? Denis: Anything and everything. I was omnivorous. It didn’t matter to me if it was a superhero or a humorous comic. On the funny side, I especially loved Little Lulu and Uncle Scrooge, but I wasn’t impressed with other Disney comics. Donald Duck and Mickey Mouse always seemed bland, but I loved Uncle Scrooge. I never liked the Archie line. Too cloying I think. But other than that, I was not terribly discriminatory. I think I mentioned earlier to you an adult babysitter where I would be dropped off. She had stacks and stacks of comics and I would just go through the piles when there. I was easy to sit. [laughs] I don’t think I favored science-fic-

tion or horror or super-hero or humor, I just took them off the top as they came and read-read-read-read-read, go on to the next. I appreciated all genres, but I was especially entranced by horror comics, mostly the pre-Code titles. So many were genuinely creepy. The parents who were concerned that these comics were psychologically damaging may have had a point [chuckles] because they could be pretty grim. The covers mesmerized me. I would just stare at some horror covers. I had thousands of comics from my youth that I recently sold but sentimentally saved some of the horror titles. One example from memory is an Atlas title, Spellbound, from the ’50s. Some kind of ray is melting the flesh off this guy and you’re seeing his skeleton emerge from the part of his body transfixed in this beam. Things like that, I would just stare at it and go, “Oh, my God. This is so weird.” The stories inside, you know, I certainly would read, too, but it was the covers that I never forgot. CBC: Were they compelling and disturbing at the same time? Denis: Yeah, absolutely. It was, “Oh, my God, that was creepy. I’ve gotta read another one. Oh, Jesus. I’m going to have a nightmare. I gotta read another one.” It was addicting… CBC: When did television come into play? Denis: In the mid-’50s I discovered TV and the first thing that really caught my imagination was Davy Crockett, serialized on Walt Disney’s show, the Fess Parker-Davy Crockett. There were maybe five, six, or so episodes and man, I was caught up in that. Of course, I also had to have the Dell Comics version of the series, which I’d read over and over. CBC: Was your mother and your father, were they encouraging with your creative — ? What did your father think of your little clay scenarios? Denis: I’m having a tough time recalling. He must have tolerated it, but I don’t think he exactly encouraged it. He died when I was 13 and my childhood ended pretty abruptly.

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

CBC: How did he die? Denis: He suffered a cerebral hemorrhage at work, in a factory. Basically, it was a stroke. CBC: How old was he? Denis: He was 45. CBC: Wow, good Lord. That must have been quite impacting. Was it? Denis: Oh, God, yes. It happened in the summer of 1960, so it happened during school vacation. My mother had a third-shift job so she would sleep mornings and I would be responsible for my younger brother and sister. They were about five and seven. The morning he died, two guys in suits came to the door and they said, “Is your mother here?” I said, “She’s sleeping.” And they said, “Well, wake her up. It’s important.” One handed me some coins and said, “Why don’t you take your brother and sister for a walk and get some candy?” And when we came back, our mother was sobbing uncontrollably. CBC: Wow. Were you close with your father? Denis: I think so, sure. But he was not a big talker, not comfortable being emotional. He took me to ballgames when the Braves were in Milwaukee. He loved

THIS PAGE: Don Dohler gifted the world his Wild fanzine creation ProJunior, who became a public domain character. Top right is Denis’s back cover art for KSP’s Projunior #1 [’71], courtesy of Heritage. Above is Jay Lynch’s cover art to same. Left inset is D.K.’s rendition of Juan Cristobel Valdez de ProJunior from same. Top left is R. Crumb’s version (with Honeybunch), from Bijou Funnies #4 [’70].

more interested in the pragmatic side of life, especially since life had not been particularly kind to him. He didn’t finish high school and without that diploma I guess he couldn’t take advantage of the GI Bill to attend college. He got jobs on oil rigs or factories as he could. At the time he died, he was an apprentice electrician and excited that he was on a path to become a full electrician. That would mean, finally, some decent pay, and maybe broader opportunities. He was always working on whatever car we had. It was always an older model, never very new. He was a skilled mechanic. I didn’t have a particular knack for that, but I had memorized the year and make of most every modern car and I remember him very pleased that on trips I could rattle off, “That’s a ’53 Studebaker, there’s a ’49 Nash, a ’52 Hudson Hornet,” etc. as we’d drive. Had he lived longer, I probably would have gotten more into working on cars like other boys growing up then. But I didn’t. So it was easier for me to pursue things like Klepto and more creative things instead of maybe overhauling engines. Who knows? CBC: [Imitates older man] “Denis!” [chuckles] Denis: Because that’s what other boys in our blue-collar neighborhood were doing. Most dads where I lived were always under their hoods. Across the street from us lived another mechanic, and his sons were friends of mine. One was Doug Stone, one of my clay world buddies [See bonus PDF—Y.E.]. Whenever I‘d walk over there, Doug’s dad seemed to be working on a car. One particular time, Mr. Stone was underneath this car and saw me coming and — he had always called me “Kitch” — he said, “Kitch, hand me that wrench,” one that was just out of his reach. So there was this greasy wrench in the driveway and I picked it up with just my thumb and my forefinger because I don’t want to get all greasy. I handed it to him like that and he was appalled. He said, “Well, next time you come, bring your white gloves.” He had a nickname for everyone so he said, “From now on, you’re ‘White Gloves Kitchen.’” I didn’t care about the new nickname but I remember thinking, “Well, why would anyone want to get their hands all greasy? Is that what being a man is all about? I don’t want to spend time underneath cars. I do know that.” CBC: How old were you when your mom remarried? Denis: Eighteen. CBC: Did you get on with him? Denis: Absolutely. He was a wonderful man, salt of the earth. Speaking of cars, one of the first — CBC: She married another Irishman? [laughs] Denis: Yes. One of the first things when George Riley became my new dad was he was going to change the oil on his Ford station wagon — everybody did that in those days. You didn’t take your car in for an oil change at Jiffy Lube. You did it yourself. And he said, “Do you know how to do change oil?” And I said, “No, I’ve never done that.” He said, “Well, you’re going to learn today.” So he jacked it up a bit and said, “Now get under it, take this wrench and remove that lug nut and let the old oil drain into this pan. And then dump the oil.” So I did that and I said, “Now what?” And he said, “See this open tube under the hood? Now open those new quarts of oil with this spout, and pour all four in there.” Then he went back in the garage to some project. But he hadn’t specifically told me to put the lug nut back. And again, I’m pretty dense about mechanics. #5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

baseball and tinkering with cars. He was just starting to try to get me interested in auto mechanics when he died. He was also a pretty heavy drinker and so we went to bars a lot. I remember spending a lot of time in bars and being intensely bored. That’s probably why I was drawing. [chuckles] But I did think he was a very smart man, though a self-educated man. He was very up on politics and current events, and a strong union man. He had a very hard life. His mother Evelyn died when he was five, from a ruptured appendix on a remote Texas farm because her husband, Benjamin Sr., wasn’t around to take her to a hospital. He showed up several days after she was buried according to family lore. He married another six or seven times that we’re aware of and had no paternal instinct. So when my grandmother died, instead of taking care of his two sons, he let other relatives raise them. My father grew up on a series of farms and ranches in Texas with various aunts and uncles who basically treated him like an indentured slave working for room and board. He never grew up with any sense of a loving family. No one showed affection. During the Depression, he joined the Civilian Conservation Corps, planting trees and building roads under that FDR federal program. CBC: Was he going far away — ? Denis: I don’t think he ever told me in detail how far he traveled with the CCC. I think I remember him talking about Colorado, but my sense was that work focused around Texas and Oklahoma. Then he joined the Army in the late ’30s. So when America entered World War II, he was already in the Army Medical Corps. Like a lot of young boys, I was fascinated with war and because he had been a soldier I would ask him all these questions about World War II. I knew he was a sergeant in the Second Division and that he was at Omaha Beach and the Battle of the Bulge. But he never wanted to talk about it. Later I learned from my mother that his war memories were simply too painful to revisit and share. Now I realize that a lot of battle veterans felt that way. They saw so much carnage and it was deeply traumatizing. As a medic at the front, my dad probably saw plenty of wounded and butchered bodies, trying to keep GIs alive until doctors could arrive, and carrying corpses on stretchers. I can only conjecture. He once described to my mom having to tend to GIs who were kept in cages. When she relayed it to me years later, I first thought they were deserters, but she explained they were soldiers who were shell shocked, kept in cages till they could get care away from the front. On a happier note he brought back a big war chest full of souvenirs that I would periodically beg him to open. He had bayonets, a helmet, a Polish pistol, a beaded bag full of German and French and Belgian coins, exotic cigarette lighters, battle ribbons, military patches and postcards, all kinds of things. To me it was a genuine treasure chest. He even had a long, folded Nazi banner with swastikas, and I remember thinking, “Oh, man. That is so cool,” not thinking of its ugly symbolism, but more as, “Gosh, you were actually there and took it off a building!” I had a typical naïve notion of the glories of war. So to the extent that I got to know my father before he died, yeah, I thought he was a great guy. CBC: Was he encouraging? Did he have any interest in the stuff you liked? Denis: Less overtly than my mother. I think he was much

CBC: Right, but following orders. Denis: So I pour the quarts in and all the oil quickly runs out of the unplugged pan and spreads all over the paved driveway. I instantly realized what a doofus I was, a total idiot, and I thought, “He’s going to kill me.” George was a strong, beefy truck driver who could have snapped my skinny body in two. He came back, looked at the oil spill, and I said, “I’m so sorry, Dad.” Then he said, “Well, I should have told you to put the lug nut back. So let’s start all over again,” in a very calm voice. He didn’t yell. He didn’t glower. He must have been angry, but he subdued his anger because he realized I had been fatherless for those crucial years when a young man would normally learn how to do things like change oil. So he just said, “Next time, put the lug nut back on before you pour the new oil in.” That was an early impression and it was, like, wow, what a great guy, because most guys, most new stepfathers would have really reamed me out. Or snapped me in half. CBC: That’s remarkable that you had a solid relationship. Denis: Absolutely, he was wonderful and we became very close. CBC: Did you show him your stuff? Denis: Oh, sure. As my professional career started to take off, he definitely took a certain pride even though, let’s be honest, a lot of what I was drawing or publishing was pretty alien to him and my mother. I certainly held back many of the underground comix, [laughter] but there were things they liked. Will Eisner’s books, for example, or the classic reprints. I was also getting quite a lot of positive publicity, especially in Midwest papers and regional TV. They always clipped the articles or taped appearances, proud of that recognition. When I was a guest on Larry King’s TV show on CNN, that was a big deal to them. My dad had been a fan of Larry King since his early days as a pioneer radio talk host, so that really legitimized me. They never quite understood the counterculture, the pot scene, or my musical tastes, but then how many parents of hippies did get it? CBC: “Whatever he’s doing, he’s doing it well.” Denis: Exactly. I made an honest living, gave them outstanding grandchildren, and stayed in close touch. Ultimately, that’s essentially what anyone wants out of a child, right? CBC: We haven’t mentioned the 500-pound elephant in the room when it comes to you underground cartoonists: Harvey Kurtzman and MAD comics. Denis: Yeah, gotta talk about Harvey. I don’t think I ever bought MAD comic books new off the rack, but I would get them second-hand through swapping and when I discovered them, they just stood out from the crowd. I would normally swap comics to read and then re-swap again because I was always replenishing the reading pile. But the MADs were among the earliest I put in the “keep” pile. And at like ten, 11, 12 years old, they were mind-blowing. Harvey parodies of other comic strips and the art by Elder and Wood and Davis was so over the top spot-on, there was simply nothing else like it. Humbug

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

didn’t get the attention MAD did, but was also a big impact. In fact, one of the Humbugs — I think #7 or 8 — had a cover that parodied “September Morn,” a once-scandalous painting of a naked woman standing demurely in shallow water. Harvey had Arnold Roth do the Humbug version with Sputnik flying over the woman because it was 1957 and that Russian satellite was the big headline. I innocently brought that into my sixth grade classroom and got caught with it. The cover nudity, however mild, even then, just shocked the teacher, Mr. Brissette. He didn’t understand that it was a parody and, in any event, comics were forbidden in school, especially sexy ones. He confiscated it and said, “You’re staying after

THIS PAGE & PREVIOUS: After receiving a copy of Kitchen’s debut effort, Robert Crumb struck up what would become a lifelong friendship with Denis, to the benefit of each. Perhaps the most important comic book published by KSP is Crumb’s Home Grown Funnies [Jan. ’71], featuring the inspired “Whiteman Meets Bigfoot.” Commission of the lovers on previous page inset is courtesy of Heritage.

THIS PAGE & NEXT: Denis Kitchen named his business venture, with tongue firmly placed in cheek, after the notorious German munitions dynasty, the family Krupp (exposed in the 1968 book, The Arms of Krupp, upper right). “Owner” Steve Krupp is below.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

“Let’s Be Honest” strip from Snarf #2 [Aug. ’72].

Denis: Yes, I think absolutely. CBC: How would he? His kids weren’t old enough to be going to school yet… Denis: Meredith may have been. But composition covers like that were common, I’m certain. CBC: Of course, he read comics while in school, too. Denis: Sure. Remember that Harvey’s born in 1924 so he’s not even 30 years old when he started MAD. He’s absolutely aware that kids are sneaking those disguised MADs into school and some are getting caught. The design was an overt dare to do so. CBC: [Chuckles] That issue with the composition cover was brilliant. How many kids really used it? Denis: I’ve gotta think plenty did. CBC: And what was it about it that made issues of MAD keepers? Denis: Well, first of all, I remember instantly loving the fact that other comics were being parodied. I’m not sure that I knew the word “parody” or knew the word “satire” at that age. I just thought it was the coolest thing in the world that somebody was dissecting other comics in such a clever way. “Superduperman” was a mind-blower. It was inconceivable back then that Superman could actually fight Captain Marvel. Or show the ridiculousness of the Clark Kent disguise. And “Flesh Garden” as well, and “Mickey Rodent.” These stories were like “Oh, my God! What is this?” It made you look at iconic characters like Donald Duck and Superman in an entirely different light. And there was something liberating in seeing them punctured so brilliantly. It was almost like, “How can they get away with this? Is this really legal or okay?” The artists signed their work, so Will Elder and Wally Wood and Davis were seemingly the sole authors. Kurtzman wasn’t signing those stories and I don’t think

school and you’re memorizing poetry for this.” I don’t know if that was a common punishment then, but that was the pain for my sin. And he didn’t exactly give me something with rhymes and a rhythm either. I struggled with the task and eventually fulfilled my sentence. But I remember thinking that he hadn’t in any way stifled my love of comic books, he had only made me hate poems. CBC: [Laughs] Hating poetry. Denis: There was also a certain perverse pleasure from this outlaw thing, the notion that comic books were so hated by my teacher’s generation, and so embraced by my generation. Other kids in class were like, “Aw, Denis got caught,” like maybe being caught back then smoking a cigarette on the playground. You got caught, but it didn’t mean that there was anything really wrong with it: you simply got caught. Part of the appeal with comic books then was it was this suppressed medium that teachers and most parents hated and that made it more exciting, more alluring. And the fact that that cover was kind of naughty, that it had a naked girl — her parts were covered — but she was still naked, that was pretty exciting stuff in sixth grade. It was pushing the boundaries. The next day in school was like I had done hard time in prison and got to walk with a bit of a swagger. It was unspoken, but I had confronted “the man” and was unscathed. [laughs] CBC: You know, that brings to mind a composition cover of MAD comics. So Harvey must have cognizant of that.

I knew for a while to what degree he was really involved on every level of the work, but eventually you’d see that he was the editor and there was a letters column and most of the covers early on were by him. So without necessarily focusing on Kurtzman himself, I just remember that the MADs and the Humbugs were just different than anything else and embodied some kind of zany energy and fearlessness. A handful of friends shared that feeling too. So some of us were paying close attention, all over the country we know now — discriminating comics fans — [chuckles] as opposed to just kids who just read comics. CBC: Readers. Denis: Yeah, and most kids, it seemed to me, were undiscriminating. They couldn’t — they didn’t really care whether they read Archie or MAD. And to me, it was there’s Archie and then there’s “Starchie,” and I sure as hell preferred “Starchie!” [laughter] CBC: And so you kept your eye open for him? Denis: Absolutely. I missed the first Help! magazine but saw #2 on the stands, the one with Ernie Kovacs drawing crude mustaches on campaign posters of Nixon and Kennedy — it was the 1960 campaign — and then someone on another level of reality drew a mustache on him. By then, I’m 14 years old and definitely aware of Kurtzman. I know he’s the primary guy behind MAD and Humbug and I’m thrilled that he’s back — only it’s different. It’s not a comic book. Help! has text and photos with captions and some cartoons — a mixed bag. But I still devoured every issue and eventually found the first, so I had a complete set. Help! lasted through my high school years. It was kind of another transitional marker from high school to college. A little earlier Kurtzman was already transitioning himself from Help! full-time into Little Annie Fanny. Around 1961 I also discovered Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics. They also had a big impact. Fantastic Four in particular grabbed me, but also Spider-Man and most of the rest. I was on it almost right from the beginning. I specifically remember buying Avengers #1 and with Fantastic Four, I jumped in with #4. CBC: Let’s see, you’re 16 and you kept with the comics? Why didn’t you give them up? Denis: I kind of had but rediscovered them. For a period in my mid-teens they were less interesting, and I was collecting stamps and coins, but then Stan Lee pulled me back in. I was part of that generation that experienced his reinvention of super-heroes. I was too young to remember, say, the Human Torch from ’40s Marvel comics, but I immediately related to the new Marvel. DC’s comics at that same time were just dopey and

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

boring. I had liked the monster comics Stan and Jack and Ditko were doing prior to the super-hero revival. They were one-shots and a fairly predictable formula, but it was good Ditko and Kirby art and great creatures. But suddenly, with Fantastic Four in particular, it was like recurring characters — interesting characters — ones with personality. In retrospect — I mean this has been talked about endlessly — but contemporaneous with my buying them, I just remember thinking there’s something about these comics that are different and exciting. “This guy, Stan Lee, is really on to something.” So besides Kurtzman, he was the other player that was meaningful to me. I mean we can argue, you know, whether Jack Kirby or Steve Ditko deserved more credit, and I completely understand the argument, but it was Stan’s name plastered all over and so him I was crediting while reading. I was hanging onto those serialized Marvel plots the same way I had hung onto Li’l Abner strips at an earlier age, but it was monthly instead of daily. And those months would seem to be endless. It’s like, “I can’t wait to see what they do — how does this get resolved? Who dies?” They were very compelling stories to me. One thing I did, starting in high school, was I bought five copies of every Marvel issue off the newsstand. I was earning the big Klepto money then. [laughs]

Above: Text to come.

I’d read and re-read one copy but then stash the other four away and never touch them. So years later I had pristine mint copies of these early Marvels. I just instinctively knew they were worth saving. They would be “good trade bait,” that was the way I put it. And I was always looking for missing issues like Hulk #1 or Fantastic Four #1. So I would have trade bait… CBC: Deals. Denis: So I ended sitting on those for a good number of years, eventually selling them when I

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Above: One of the most important — and enduring — personal and professional relationships in the life of Denis Kitchen had been his alliance with comic book giant Will Eisner, father of the graphic novel (above photo from 1990). The pair met at an early ’70s comic book convention, and soon the master was contributing to the young publisher’s outfit. Inset right: The Spirit and Commissioner Dolan grace the cover of Snarf #3 [Nov. ’72]. BELOW: Denis also published two issues of The Spirit [Jan. ’73 & Nov. ’73] featuring new Eisner covers, the early (and abortive) KSP revival.

thought they had peaked. And of course, they had far from peaked. If I had those same comics today, you’d be talking to me on my private island off Tahiti. But I sold them when Kitchen Sink needed working capital and I could get $100, $200 for a pristine, early Marvel at Chicago Comicon. I was thinking, “I paid 10¢ for this and someone’s paying me $100 — a thousand times what I paid for it.” It was too obscene a profit to turn down. And it was really handy for growing my company. After all, it wasn’t easy for a longhaired underground comix magnate to walk into a small Wisconsin bank and get a line of credit. After a couple Chicago conventions, I pretty much wiped out my best old Marvel inventory. Today, I look back and some these titles, you know, in a high CGC grade can sell for $10,000 or $15,000 each and more. Amazing Spider-Man #1 sold for over $100,000 at Heritage a while back — and I had five of them at one point! Where are my tranquilizers, Jon? CBC: You still did good. Denis: I did all right at the time. Just sold way too early [laughs] in retrospect. But the fact that I originally bought five of each seems pretty prescient. I can’t put myself today in the brain of that 18-year old. I had some pocket money, but nothing to really speak of. And I was investing a significant portion in something I somehow knew was a smart investment, but virtually anyone else in the early ’60s would have thought was a total waste of money. CBC: What was the plan? Denis: I just knew instinctively. That’s all I can tell you. CBC: Was any of it maybe to share, that this is so cool that “maybe I’ll share with somebody someday?” Denis: Well, I’d find kindred spirits. It’s how Dave Schreiner and I hooked up. Dave eventually became an amazing editor-in-chief for Kitchen Sink, but I met him in college when we were, I think, sophomores in journalism class. We were both journalism majors and I must have sat next to him. We found we had a mutual interest in Marvel Comics and Uncle Scrooge. He was a big Carl Barks aficionado and so we would find ourselves talking about favorites stories, artists, just comics in general. We’d hang out after class. One of our professors a bit later was George Lockwood, who I mentioned earlier. Lockwood was the first

All artwork, The Spirit and the distinctive Will Eisner signature TM & ©2014 Will Eisner Studios, Inc. “Eisner Vault” ©2014 Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and Denis Kitchen. All comics TM & ©2014 their respective copyright holders.

academic I met who talked about comics with passion. And both Dave and I were just like — our eyes just got wide — CBC: Now this is comic strips, right? Denis: Yeah, comic strips. But still, to have a professor in the ’60s who took any comics seriously? He was teaching “The History of Journalism” and he talked about the Yellow Kid and how comics became something big publishers like Hearst and Pulitzer would battle over because comics were really driving newspaper sales — they had such powerful mass appeal. He would describe these tugs of war and legal battles over Outcault or The Katzenjammer Kids, and Dave and I were entranced because there was so little out there at that time about the history of comics. It was a true eyeopener for us. Sometimes we’d hang out afterwards and talk to him His name was George Lockwood. He was also thrilled to have a couple of students who shared his passion. Eventually, when I graduated from college and was starting to freelance, George, wearing his newspaperman hat, was one of the first to give me paying assignments of any substance. Those first gigs made me feel like I could actually make a living as a cartoonist. So those connections proved really important on my ultimate path. Early on, it was a real struggle, just trying to pay the rent on my East Side flat and have food in the fridge and to do it through cartooning, whether with freelancing or from undergrounds. It was a terrible struggle, but I loved the medium so much that I was willing to almost literally starve. In fact, when Dave Schreiner and I got our degrees in journalism in 1968, he actually became a journalist, working for the Sheboygan Press and making Guild wages, which I think were $400 a week in the late ’60s. It seemed like a fortune to me. And he would visit me in Milwaukee when I don’t think I ever made $400 dollars a month. My rent was, I think, $75 total, which I shared with a couple roommates and I was struggling just to pay my third. Dave used to poke fun at me because I’d be boiling cauliflower or a can of hominy. One time he said to me, “You know, the white vegetable group is the least nutritious.” [laughs] And I said, “Well, hominy is 10¢ a can.” And he’d take pity on me. There were times when he left that he’d slip me a $20 and I’d be like, “Wow, thanks, Dave. I can really use it.” And when I couldn’t afford my own weed and he would lay a nickel- or dime-bag on me and I’d say, “Thanks, Dave. You know I’ll make up for it next time.” It literally took a couple of years before I could reciprocate. The first time he came to visit and I rolled a joint of my own pot and said, “Here, this is mine,” I remember him responding, “It’s about f*cking time!” I really had been kind of a charity case. The irony of course is that some years later, Dave came to work for me. It came full circle. But in my earliest professional years, I mean, there’s a reason I almost

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

Above: Text to come.

got out of the Army for being too skinny. I was starving. CBC: [Chuckles] But you were — people thought you were worth investing in, right? Denis: I guess you could conclude that in retrospect. To return to Dave Schreiner, he was a critical one. Looking back — connecting the dots — in high school, I was doing something pretty cool I thought. But at the university, suddenly I’m in a place drowning in smart and creative students and I didn’t feel very special. When I met Dave and he saw me drawing in notebooks he was encouraging me to do something with it. Dave became the sports editor for the UWM Post — I think our sophomore year — and he needed a logo for a column and he asked me. I said okay, did a cartoon panther I think, and it ap-

Above: Kitchen and Eisner jam page, “Eisner Vault,” from The Spirit #22 [Dec. ’79]. Below: Eisner self-portrait for his 1995 Will Eisner Sketchbook bookplate. Courtesy of Heritage. Inset left: Cover for the KSP book, The Art of Will Eisner [’82].

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

peared in the paper. Then he said, “Here’s a pass to the next football game. Do a cartoon about it.” I liked pro football, but a collegiate game didn’t appeal to me. But I went anyway. He was pushing me, to build confidence. Finally, he said, “You should do a regular strip for the Post.” He encouraged me to talk to the editor-in-chief, and based on Dave’s recommendations he said, “All right, try it out. If people like it, we’ll keep running it.” And so I began doing a weekly strip that became Sheepshead U. Sheepshead was a card game very popular in Milwaukee, played a lot by students. It was just a vehicle to do gags about college life. With each one, I was gaining confidence and gradually drawing a little better because they were pretty stiff. My style was by no means fully developed then. Occasionally, I’d turn in a real clinker and Dave would give me a hard time, like, “You know, that one wasn’t worthy.” So, from the start, he was looking out for me, but also being an honest critic when I needed it, forcing me to maintain standards and improve. He was crucial to my development, any young cartoonist needs encouragement and opportunity. And then we’d get occasional letters to the paper, typically critical because I used to make fun of the frats. I thought the fraternity and sorority members were snobs, so I’d often target them in gags. CBC: Don’t mess with the Greeks, boy. Denis: Exactly. So the Post gig was part of my self-teaching as a cartoonist, but the journalism

Above: Another significant professional association was Kitchen’s dealings with comic book genius Harvey Kurtzman. of various projects, including Kurtzman Komix [’76], published by KSP. Above photo from 1973.

curriculum was honing my writing skills, the other half of comics. It was also stripping away the mystique of journalism to me. Knowing how journalists think, how the process works was kind of illuminating. I already had this instinctive sense of how to get publicity, going back to Klepto days. I drove a 1954 Cadillac hearse to school. That was my daily car. And back then there would periodically be captioned photos, even in national publications, about college kids stuffing themselves into phone booths, setting alleged records. It’d be like “Sixteen kids stuffed in a phone booth in Dubuque!” Newspapers loved that kind of innocent college stunt. So I parked outside the student union at a busy time, called the Milwaukee Journal, and said, “A world record has just been set for stuffing kids into a hearse.” Whoever I talked to said, “We’ll send a photographer out.” I ran into the Union, recruited a bunch of kids and crammed them in, hanging out of windows. Next day there I was in a feature photo in the Journal, sitting in my driver’s seat, with the hearse full of kids also happy to be in the paper. It was a big picture, too. And I remember thinking, “God, that was so easy.” In 1967, I co-founded UWM’s first humor magazine, called Snide. CBC: Were you aware of God Nose and the other campus humor magazines? Denis: Only vaguely the major ones. CBC: This was spontaneous? Denis: Yeah, but college magazines had kind of a long tradition, going back to the Harvard Lampoon, and I had a paperback called College Parodies that reprinted some of the better college humor. I hooked up with a student from New York named Jeff Winters and we started Snide and we got official recognition as a student organization and the school provided an office. CBC: And a budget? Denis: No, no budget. We were on our own, but we sold some advertising for the magazine. For another stunt I formed the Purity Party ticket and ran for president of the student body. My political buttons said, “Quit Bitchin’ — Vote for Kitchen!” [chuckles]. I didn’t win, though it was fairly close, so a bunch of us took over campus, pretty literally. A long line of us marched through campus — that ROTC marching came in handy — with plastic machine guns and banners, and held tribunals with mock executions of professors on the commons. Hah! It was pretty audacious in retrospect. This was before real campus revolts were happening all over the country. Of course, that revolution stunt made headlines, too. So I’m developing cartooning and satirical skills, and simultaneously learning how to get publicity, guerrilla-style, not something you learn in any class. But once you do it, and it works, you do it again, and you start to think, “This is a snap.” Throughout my career, I was able to get a lot of free press, which was essential, because Kitchen Sink never ever had a significant promotional budget. I counted a lot on attracting press, always looking for that hook, whether it was regional or national. So my college experience was, in part, learning an assortment of pragmatic skills that stood me well when I ended up being a publisher, which I never had an intention to be. CBC: What do you think it is about your personality that is able to balance all these different aspects? We all know you repeatedly said you want to be a cartoonist and yet

your personality has really worked for dealing with a real disparate amount of personalities from R. Crumb, who’s no sweetheart at times, and all the way across the board to Will Eisner, who’s very businesslike and pragmatic guy who could understand and see in you, this hippie kid, that you can get things done, and you had a track record of getting things done in a time when you were still smoking weed and your whole generation was smoking weed. It’s just like, “Yeahhhh, I’ll do it later.” But yet you… Denis: Well, first of all, rule #1: I never smoked weed during the workday. CBC: Important message, kids! Denis: Yes, not all hippies had that discipline. I waited until the day’s work was done to get high. And there were often long days and no playtime. CBC: I read the story about cutting out tones on the windows and instead of dropping acid for… Denis: Well, I had a dead… CBC: You had a choice here and you decided to cut out that, what was it, Rubylith? Denis: Cutting Zip-a-Tone color overlays for the Bizarre Sex #1 cover as I recall, yeah. CBC: And this how is your work ethic has been… Denis: Well, the work ethic in that particular case might have saved my life. That day my first wife, Irene, and my brother, Jim, and two or three friends all announced that they were going to drop acid, and did I want to join them? I might have ordinarily, but I had a deadline, so I said, “Nah, I’ve gotta stay here and work.” They cajoled and almost tempted me, but I said, “Nope. Got overlays to cut. Have fun.” But they broke a cardinal rule. They dropped acid first, then got into a van without a designated driver. The guy who was driving, Dave Schreiner’s brother-in-law I think, was headed toward some rural destination but was totally out of his gourd. He pulled out onto a freeway in Milwaukee without looking carefully, or with severely impaired vision, and a big Cadillac going about 70 sliced right through their van: a big collision. No Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

one was wearing a seat belt. Irene, Jim, Kenny, they all went literally flying through the air when the van walls ruptured. Miraculously, no one was seriously hurt. There were some broken bones and abrasions, but my wife and brother and the friends all survived. They all described flying through the air in really slow motion, in this altered state, and bouncing in a field. CBC: They’re tripping. Denis: Yeah, out of their skulls, hitting the ground, not feeling any pain, rolling over and over, landing in this grassy field. One had been sitting on an inflated inner tube in the back of the van when it tore in half and was bouncing in the tube on the ground. I remember hearing these accounts later, and thinking how close I came to being in the collision and that maybe I wouldn’t have been so lucky. And, later, that I wouldn’t have had my oldest two daughters if Irene had been killed or seriously injured, or that I might have lost my brother. But they did survive and before long it was a source of laughs. A lot of crazy stuff people were doing in those days. But, yeah, the work ethic was definitely there for me. So was temptation. I was pretty well-connected on the East Side, the hip side of Milwaukee, and there were parties pretty non-stop, and great bands passing through town — just so many things going on. But I was very goal-oriented, able to summon the discipline to get the work done and still manage to party later. I had no objection to having fun. But I made sure there was this separation. A lot of people I knew didn’t have discipline. You have it or you don’t. I watched both parents work very hard, so I think it was instilled early. I sometimes called myself a “conservative hippie,” [chuckles] which is to say I maintained a schedule. But many evenings, before I had children, I’d be hanging with freaks. There tended to be a steady stream at my place. I usually kept a small notebook in my shirt pocket to jot notes because, even if I’m getting high, I’m getting ideas, hearing snippets that could be jokes or insights, whatever, and sometimes that habit would make people paranoid because — CBC: [Laughs] You’re pulling out a notebook. Denis: Right. One time I’m in a group I didn’t know well and one guy says, “Are you a narc?” And I’m like, “No, I’m just taking

Above: The final (and only all-color) issue of Jay Lynch’s humor anthology Bijou Funnies was in homage to Harvey Kurtzman’s innovative MAD comic book, which single-handedly inspired the underground genre. The ish features cartoonists parodying one another’s strips — Crumb tackling Lynch’s Nard ’n’ Pat, for instance — with Denis Kitchen handling the now virtually forgotten “Hungry Chuck Biscuits” by Dan Clyne. Below: D.K.’s splash from Bijou #8 [’73]. Inset left: Detail from the cover of Hungry Chuck Biscuits Comics and Stories #1 [’71] by Clyne. Top left: Ralph Reese’s back cover of Bijou #8. Top right: Header for R. Crumb’s introduction for Kurtzman Komix #1 [Sept. ’76], published by KSP.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

notes.” And he’s, “Taking notes on what, man?” CBC: “Let me see the color of your socks.” [laughs] Denis: So I said, “No, man, I’m a cartoonist. I heard something funny. It might go in a strip.” And he said, “You’re writing down our names.” So I handed him my notebook. He flipped through and it didn’t look like narc notes, so he handed it back. He said, “You’re making me — you’re making me nervous, man.” CBC: “You’re harshing my buzz, dude.” [laughs] Denis: Basically. So I learned there’s a certain unspoken etiquette with … CBC: Mixed company. Denis: Yeah, you learn what makes people uncomfortable in certain situations and you adapt. Once I was tripping with friends and one of the guys, though he was young, had false teeth. He must have been in an accident when he was young. We’re all in this candlelit room grooving to music and he suddenly pulls out his upper plate. It was about the grossest, worst thing anybody could possibly do in that situation. And I remember going, “Jesus Christ, Bill, put your teeth back. You’re killing me!” Nobody wrote an etiquette book for trippy hippies. CBC: “Don’t take out teeth,” check! Denis: Right. “And don’t drive on freeways.” CBC: Snide, you created that? Denis: I co-founded it with Jeff Win-

Above: The Marvel team-up you never expected the Hippie and the Man unite for Comix Book, Stan Lee and Kitchen’s 1974 attempt to mainstream the underground. Photo of the pair in the Bullpen in 1974. Below: Peter Poplaski’s unforgettable cover art for Comix Book #1 [Oct. ’74], edited by Denis Kitchen.

ters, a New York transfer student, which was very rare. The UW–Madison campus had students from all over the world but UWM was not a destination for many New Yorkers. He stood out from the crowd and I immediately gravitated to him. Jeff was very clever, an aspiring writer, really acerbic and audacious. He was a good magazine partner because he could make cold calls and sell advertising. I hated that part. I focused on editorial and design. He was another person instrumental in my growing wings, helping prepare me for what was to come. Jeff graduated a year ahead of me and the second issue of Snide was supposed to be the “all comics issue.” But the budget, the magazine’s revenue from sales and ads in the first issue, that budget left with Jeff. So that second Snide evolved into Mom’s Homemade Comics #1, my first self-published underground. And then that quickly turned into Krupp and Kitchen Sink and the Bugle. The humor magazine, the Post strips, the publicity stunts, they all led in a way to the businesses I ended up starting. I found kindred spirits in Milwaukee, another four or five good cartoonists who before long began contributing to the Bugle and the Kitchen Sink comics. A couple became partners for a while. I was trying initially to make the comics company kind of communal. I was a pretty serious socialist around that period. When that didn’t work, it was just trying to recruit talent, develop young, raw talent. Once the comics got out there, all over the country, submissions started pouring in and we’d get letters and sample art from all over the place. I’m compressing things here, but I knew Kitchen Sink was finally making it when the established San Francisco underground artists started sending things to me, because there were three publishers in the Bay Area where they could physically walk in the door. The fact that they were sending me stuff in the Midwest made me feel like I’d finally made it — was part of the inner circle. I also became aware there were a lot of politics in the San Francisco/Berkeley comix community that I was blissfully not part of. As you can imagine, it got a little incestuous, both literally and politically out there: cartoonists sleeping with each other, getting in spats with publishers and each other, and distinct cliques forming. So I was kind of neutral. Nobody out west knew me well enough to hate me. I think I developed a reputation as a reliable guy who they’d get a check from on a timely basis, an honest accounting, trying to do things conscientiously. CBC: Did you write letters of encouragement back or develop a rapport? Denis: Absolutely. I was an inveterate letter writer. CBC: Had you always been? Denis: It probably started in college when I had close friends in faraway schools. We wrote each other, got in the habit. When time permitted I used to send original color illustrated letters to friends. I suppose I could have just been on the phone, but — CBC: But that costs money, right? Denis: Back then, oh yeah. Long distance calls were expensive. But remember, I majored in journalism for a reason. I liked writing, I had confidence in my writing and honed those communication skills at every opportunity, and I think I got pretty good with it. I’ll never forget a conversation I had once with [publisher] Ron Turner at Last Gasp. I had written a number of letters to him, mostly for business reasons, because we were distributing each other’s books. He was

never responding and it drove me crazy. I finally confronted him at a show. I said, “Jeez, Ron, I sent you a half-dozen letters, and you never answered a single one. What the hell’s wrong?” And he said, “I’m intimidated by your letters. They come in, they’re perfectly typed, and there are no mistakes.” He said, “I can’t reciprocate.” CBC: [Laughs] Wow, he was intimidated? Denis: Yeah. It had never even occurred to me that someone might interpret letters that way. I didn’t care if he sent a scribbled note back — I just wanted a response. But he felt he had to respond in kind I guess. But that wasn’t a typical response. Most of the artists back then were happy to correspond, and sometimes, we’d illustrate the letters — literally draw on the letter or envelope — or include roughs or concept drawings. That was just part of the communication, because in those days, before fax machines, before scanners, before computers, way before email, that’s how we communicated. And nothing was instant. I’d send a letter to California, it would take a few days. They’d send one back and it would take a few days. Things were by no means instantaneous. I mean, sure, you could pick up the phone and make a quick decision, and that happened, but in our business, the show-&-tell and the exchanges were most effective by letters. I’m so grateful in retrospect because there’s now a written history of all that. I saved everything. There’s this voluminous correspondence and a lot of it with people who ended up being very important to the movement or the genre, and even some that are peripheral are still fascinating. That’s why I’m talking seriously to Columbia University about all this stuff. They’re probably going to get all the papers soon. And what’s really amazing to me as I look at — I don’t even know — 15 or 20 file cabinets full of letters — every one of them, I typed with one finger because — life’s little ironies — I never took a typing class. I never thought I’d need it. CBC: Well, two fingers. Denis: Well, yeah, two fingers to be technically correct — but the right index finger does the heavy lifting. The left index is just kind of an assistant. But I learned early on, of necessity, to type relatively quickly. CBC: You were a journalism student and you didn’t take a typing class? Denis: A very astute observation, Jon. That’s the thing. I didn’t plan ahead. In high school, I had a crappy guidance counselor and very unsatisfactory guidance. To be fair, I wasn’t even sure I could afford to go to college and if I did, what to major in. She’d say, “What do you want to do?” I’d say, “I want to be a cartoonist,” she’d say, “There are no schools for that.” Then repeat again next time. That was the conundrum. There was no Plan B. No engineering school option anymore. And meanwhile, I never took typing. No one ever advised me that it might be a very smart elective. I finally figured that since half of cartooning is writing — and I was sure I could self-teach myself to draw — it would be helpful to have some formal training in writing, either English or journalism. I picked journalism because that was the practical, communication aspect of writing. If I chose English, I feared it would be too classical, too scholarly and dry. Journalism is also about storytelling. But when I started at UWM and enrolled in Journalism 101, I didn’t read the fine print, which said typing was a prerequisite. So I got to my first class, a 50-minute class, and the professor said, “The first 15 minutes, I’m going to give all of you the bare bones of a news story with some facts and maybe some red herrings. Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

Above: Text to come.

You’re going to ask me questions for 15 minutes and take notes, And then you’re going to take the last 20 minutes, organize your notes, hand write the story outline, then type it and hand it in by the end of class.” And I froze. “Oh, my God. I’ve got to type. Jesus Christ! Why didn’t I see type coming?” CBC: [Laughs] In journalism class. Denis: Crazy naïve, huh? So what it forced me to do — one of those things borne of necessity — I didn’t have the luxury of writing or outlining my story first in longhand and then typing it. I had to write the story as I was hunt&-peck typing it on a manual typewriter. That was the only possible strategy. It forced me to think quickly, to come up with that “inverted pyramid” structure, a snappy headline, a concise opening paragraph, and so on, all pretty spontaneously. I did it well enough, and survived,

ABOVE: Original art for editor Kitchen’s intro page to that same issue. Courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen. Left inset: Last December brought us The Best of Comix Book, a hardcover compilation that includes an informative introductory essay about the underground hybrid by KSP contributor James Vance. Below: Mondo Snarfo [Sept. ’78] included a surreal back cover strip by Kitchen, a thinly-veiled reminiscence of his brief — and bizarre — experience working with “MCG,” Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics Group.

of über-capitalist, anti-government, selfish ideology, was not appealing to me. Truth is, I shouldn’t have seen profit as such a dirty thing. I don’t have regrets, but I think had I been more cognizant of how business works much earlier, had I made more pragmatic or appropriate business decisions early on, had I even learned how to deal with a banker, how to read a balance sheet, how to raise capital, how to depreciate, and so on, the business could have grown much, much faster, and that would have benefited the creators and the comics community, not just me. I didn’t know what most business terms even meant when I started. I not only didn’t take typing in high school — duh — but I didn’t take a single business course in college, or accounting, anything that would have made being a publisher, being a business, less daunting and more efficient. I just wanted to make comics. I never prepared for business. Didn’t anticipate being a publisher for several decades. They say ignorance is bliss. And that’s kind of how I got suckered into it. I made fun of it in an early strip called “Let’s Be Honest” [See pgs. 46–47. — Y.E.] where I’m in my office wearing a suit and tie and my secretary says there’s an artist here to see me. I don’t name him, but it’s a caricature of Crumb. He needs an advance. I quickly switch into bell-bottom pants and hippie clothes, and tell him, “Times are tough, but here’s $20 out of my own pocket.” Then I wire a bunch of money to my Swiss account. And the last panel, I’m partying with Hefner and I’m saying to him, “Yeah, Hef, publishing is a real f*cking hassle,” as we’re surrounded by babes and booze and Hef says, “I know what you mean.” That was my way of poking fun of the reality because — CBC: [Laughs] That wasn’t the way it was…?

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

but always felt handicapped, because, of course, I would have preferred to take my time and work from my notes like everyone around me. But I managed to avoid the course prerequisite. And by the time I learned to type my idiosyncratic wrong way, I felt it was impossible to learn the proper way, so I never did. My assistant once measured me and I was doing 45 words a minute like this. This index finger is a veritable blur. [laughs] I’ve often thought to myself, if I had learned to type properly, how many more letters might I have written? How many more comics I could have published? How many more file cabinets I would have? But I didn’t. CBC: You kept carbon copies of all your correspondence? Denis: Yes. CBC: That’s to keep track because of business, as a rule? Denis: Right, as a very practical matter initially. I knew early on that memories can play tricks, and things should be in writing. A lot of this correspondence amounted to a de facto contract before I had — before Will Eisner effectively forced me to start using formal contracts. In a letter, I might say to you, “Okay, Jon, I’m going to pay you this much and when, and here’s what you’re going to deliver and when and if it gets reprinted in Germany, we’ll split it.” And so with more and projects I would have to go pull the file and double check what was promised on either side, well before I had a staff to delegate to. But a great deal of the correspondence is more than strict business. A lot is editorial critiques, pitching and persuading, badgering, apologizing, the works, and often it’s very personal, chatty, even gossipy. Remember, many of these artists and colleagues became close friends. I cared about their lives, not just deadline or royalty rates. And I’m glad I saved everything because it became this pretty massive archive. The people itemizing it all for Columbia tell me there are 50 or 60,000 letters. When I started I never dreamed I was going to do that for 30 or 40 years. I was just trying to be a pragmatic hippie; pay the bills, keep everybody happy. CBC: Now, are you a people-pleaser? Denis: That’s what Stacey says. I guess so. How would you define that? CBC: That’s a big part of the motivation, is getting it right and making sure that all — and it’s not — the overwhelming motivation is not, per se, to cover your own ass, but to make as fruitful a relationship as possible. Denis: Yeah, I think so. Fruitful relationships. CBC: And that you like people and that you would like it reciprocated. Denis: It’s true. And I’m by nature optimistic. When Krupp started I would automatically extend credit to shops anywhere in the country, no questions asked, because I trusted other hippies would not rip me off, and the vast majority of the time, that trust was justified. On the surface it’s crazy, but virtually no one took advantage. It was part of a shared ethos at that time. Same with creators, the idea was always to share the pie equitably, and that creators should own what they created, not the publisher. In the ’60s, I was attracted to socialism. In my head I could see socialism working. I thought a society where people cooperated, pulled together, acted rationally, and shared the fruits of their labor was the way it should be. I argued with friends who were Ayn Rand followers. That kind

This Page: Kitchen Sink Publishing was sustained through desperate times by the Krupp Mail Order business, which not only sold KSP comix but also hippie paraphernalia and like counter-culture accouterments. Below: A Kitchen-designed water bong. Inset right: Denis’s exuberant cover for an anniversary edition of the Krupp Mail Order Catalog [1981]. Courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen. Next page: Top is our hero in 1977; far right is detail from his Mondo Snarfo [’78] story, “Major Arcana”; and lower inset is Kitchen’s cover of that same ish.

Denis: Of course not. I became a publisher by default, and I had no high regard for publishers. Anything I’d read or heard about the comics publishing profession involved characters like Harry Donenfeld, Jack Liebowitz, and Victor Fox, or the Charlton partners — shysters who had raped and pillaged their way through the industry. They were not admirable characters. There were no role models. Kitchen Sink was kind of an extension of my self-publishing. It started as a simple favor for Jay Lynch and Skip Williamson, taking on their Bijou Funnies, and then Crumb passed through town, and it just grew like Topsy. Soon even Europeans were sending me comics to publish. At some point, I realized, “Jesus Christ, I really am a publisher. I’ve gotta make sure I don’t fall into a situation where I’m ever ashamed of what I do. I want to — ” CBC: You don’t want to become a Liebowitz or Fox. Denis: Exactly. I mean not that I could have even if I tried. I wanted always to try to be fair and square. That, to me, was part and parcel of what the whole counter-culture ethic was about, the essence of being anti-establishment. CBC: Exploitation. Denis: Yeah. Exploitation was a word I used to use a lot. It no doubt came out of the Socialist-Marxist philosophy of the working class creating wealth and being exploited by the propertied class. I came to not take that as total gospel, but it was something I saw first-hand. I saw my dad working very hard and making a pittance and I knew that there were many millions like him who were paid very little by corporations who seemed to be thriving. I wanted things to be more equitable. With my publishing company, I could make it happen on a small scale. So it started out by paying a ridiculously high royalty — 16% of cover price — just because it seemed fair. It was so fair that I cheated myself. [chuckles] I made the Golden Rule much more golden to artists than myself, because I felt this misplaced guilt that I was the guy dealing with the money. I think the first year Tyler Lantzy was my primary partner, in 1970 or ’71, we grossed $250,0000. There was an article about us in the Milwaukee Journal — that publicity

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

machine at work — with Tyler, I think, quoting that figure. Now that amount has nothing to do with what your costs are and overhead and what you’re netting at the end of the day — CBC: Yeah. That’s a gross. Denis: Exactly. But many friends in our circle were like, “You guys made $250,000!” CBC: Of course. Denis: It’s like, “Well, no. That’s not in my personal account, no.” But it’s hard to walk it back. CBC: [Whispers] “Thanks, Tyler.” [laughs] Denis: I struggled from the start with what would be equitable with creators. Most costs are pretty fixed. You can negotiate with a printer, but you’re going to pay within the market range. You can negotiate with a landlord or get a farm in the country and do all these things to try to alleviate your overhead, but the distributor and wholesale discount structure can’t be manipulated much, the manufacturing can’t be manipulated too much, and so the royalty, by tradition, settles into the range of 10% because you can only slice the pie so many ways and have something left for the publisher. It was rare if I made as much as the artist. Profit was generally in single digits, if there was a profit at all. Sometimes, there would be artists who’d want an unrealistic advance or royalty. So I would literally draw a pie chart and say, “Look, the comic retails for 50¢. I have to sell it at 60% off retail, so that leaves 20¢. Out of that the printer gets 7¢, you get 5¢, and I have to pay the electric bill, the UPS bill, the rent, and your editor and the guys in the warehouse and this and this and, you know, how many pennies do you think are left?” And often, they’d go, “Oh, I didn’t know you only sold them for 20¢. I thought you sold them for 50¢. Many artists are clueless about how the business side works. There were many times I wished I was clueless! One reason I was able to attract icons like Eisner and Kurtzman and Caniff and others was they experienced the old system, knew first-hand the customary economies of the industry. They were not accustomed to dealing with someone who said, “Let’s work out an equitable deal here.” And when Will understood how the underground did business, it appealed to him a great deal on

Above: Text to come.

signed formal agreements. CBC: Your very first comic was Mom’s Homemade Comics? Denis: Right. CBC: Had you seen Zap? Denis: No, I hadn’t seen any underground comic when I started planning it in 1968, when it would have been the second issue of Snide. So I started it when I was a senior in college. CBC: Did Snide have comics in it? Denis: It had — I did a couple gag strips and illustrations, but it didn’t have any — CBC: Sequential stuff? Denis: Sequential stuff. But Jeff knew that that’s what I wanted to do and so the deal was he was the editor of the first issue and I was the art director. When he left, I would become the editor and would do this whole comic-book issue with a couple other contributing students. The first magazine’s profits — $800 I think — was in our student organization savings account to finance the second issue. But when Jeff left, he took the $800, went to Mexico, bought a bunch of pot, and got busted. Maybe in his head, it was a loan he planned to pay back, or thought he deserved it, I don’t know. It’s ancient history. I started drawing the comic, but with no seed money, it looked grim. I didn’t want to beg for ads, so the comics issue got put on hold. Then I graduated, had my brief stint in the Army, and right after that, decided to get serious and finish it alone. That was the end of 1968. I finished it in early 1969 with the title Mom’s Homemade Comics — subtitled, “Straight From the Kitchen to You.” I self-published 4,000 copies. Around that point, I saw Bijou #1 at Shroeder’s, a used bookstore in Milwaukee. I remember buying it and thinking it was pretty cool, but not exactly realizing it was

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

several levels. The only snag at the beginning was he wanted a contract, and I preferred the informal way for various reasons. One argument I gave him was, “I don’t want to pay a lawyer to draw up contracts. That seems crazy to me.” He said, “I don’t like paying lawyers either. I’ll write the contract.” [laughs] He educated me that a good contract protects both parties. I had perceived contracts as being kind of coercive, one party forcing something on the other. He said, “An agreement is exactly what the word says. We agree on the following things.” And he said, “You have to have contingencies if things go wrong. I can shake your hand and I trust you, but if I get hit by a bus tomorrow, how’s my widow supposed to know what you promised me, or vice versa?” And he said, “I like you now, but I might not like you in a year or two. Or I may not like how your company performs. We have to have term language so it only continues if we’re happy with each other.” And all this stuff made sense to me. It just never occurred to me that it needed to be formalized, because I was young and never thought about getting hit by a bus. [chuckles] Once Will and I did contracts I saw the benefit and I started doing it with other artists, but, not always. Some, like I used to, resisted. For many years, for instance, I never had contracts with Crumb. It worked out fine in his case for quite a while, but eventually even he

Above: KSP rises out of the underground and adopts bona fide company logos (designed by Leslie Cabarga). Below: Gay Comix, edited by Howard Cruse and published by KSP, was a significant advancement for comic book diversity. The Cruse cover here is from #2 [Nov. ’81].

part of a movement springing up, and now I was part of it too. But it got me in contact with Jay, who invited me to Chicago, where I met him and Skip. Jay had been keeping track and said Mom’s was the eighth underground comic. I don’t know if it was or not, but it was relatively early in the game. Jay gave me some addresses, like Harvey Kurtzman’s address, so I send a copy to Harvey. I also sent one to Stan Lee in care of Marvel. CBC: What did you write to Stan Lee? Whether he would publish it? Denis: No, no, not at all. I basically just said, “I’m a longtime fan of Marvel. I just self-published this comic and thought you might get a kick out of it.” Then, to my astonishment, he wrote back and we ended up being pen pals. CBC: Were you hoping he’d write a blurb or — ? Denis: No. I had no expectation whatever. CBC: So, it was just really was admiration for his — ? Denis: Yeah, and when he wrote back, I was like, “Whoa! I didn’t expect that.” Then I wrote back and he wrote back again. I’m thinking, “Stan Lee has time to write to me? He gets a ton of fan mail!” But I think I intrigued him. Part of it maybe was that I always had nice letterheads, with thermograph printing, and I was frequently changing designs. They were tongue-in-cheek or outré; like the Nazi saying, “You vill read our comics.” One showed a multi-story building called “The Krupp Building,” or the octopus capitalist holding a division of the Krupp empire in each tentacle [See pg. 46. — Y.E.] One that I know knocked him out was my stationery for The Cartoon Factory, our commercial art studio division. We were doing work for the Schlitz brewery, the Chicago Sun-Times, Milwaukee Journal, and clients like that. Not big, but it supplemented our revenue and earned a tentacle on the octopus. Anyhow, on that particular letterhead, Pete Poplaski, Pete Loft, and I jammed on cartoon characters rolling off an assembly line, and at the bottom the text said, “Studio located above the Spic-and-Span Dry Cleaner on Milwaukee’s prestigious East Side” or something similar. Stan loved that detail. It astonished me because early on, whatever I said or showed him, impressed him enough that he would say “Come work for me in the Bullpen.” First of all, those offers were unbelievable to me because I grew up with Marvel, and Stan is a hero, and the Bullpen is this mystical place. I’d say, “I’m flattered, but I don’t belong there. I’m not a superhero kind of guy. What would I do?” I think he was looking for an assistant editor, and he thought I showed promise. I’d periodically say, “Nah, I can’t do that, Stan. I’ve got my own thing going on here.” And he would say, “Leave that two-bit outfit and come for work for me!” And I’d say, “It’s my two-bit outfit, and I’m having too much fun.” And I think being elusive threw him off because almost anybody, any Marvel fan or most creators would have jumped at the chance. I just didn’t think it was right for me. He was on my comp list and one time he wrote to the effect of, “You’re getting so prolific, pretty soon you’ll be asking me to leave my two-bit outfit and come and work for you. So I’d better be nice to you.” It was that kind of joking relationship. At least twice he formally offered me a job, and I politely but firmly said no. And then the “Crash of TOP: The original acetate-laden board of Leslie Cabarga’s cover art for Dope Comix #1 [Feb. ’78]. The title, a late in arriving, blatant appeal to the underground’s oft-zonked readership, didn’t always glorify the drug culture. In fact, cautionary tales of the despair of addiction were included. Right: Barefootz’s artist buddy Headrack — the goatee’d fellow — from the Howard Cruse series might just be the first openly gay continuing character in American comic books. This detail is from the cover of KSP’s Barefootz Funnies #2 [’76], which included “Gravy on Gay,” the first strip to explicitly state Headrack’s sexual preference (and the one that prompted publisher Denis Kitchen to overtly ask Howard if he were homosexual and, if so, if the cartoonist would edit a new series called Gay Comix.

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

’73” happened — a double whammy with the Supreme Court ruling on obscenity that scared the hell out of our head shop market, combined with a market glut. At that point, I was married, had a baby daughter and a pregnant wife. So this time, I said, “Let’s talk.” And that led to the experimental magazine Comix Book for Marvel, because I feared Kitchen Sink and Krupp were going to crumble in the near future if I didn’t do something. And I had to think about my family. I went to New York to meet with Stan, who was then in charge — publisher Martin Goodman had retired. We worked out the basis for this hybrid magazine — “Marvel Meets the Underground” — which was a pretty brave decision for him. And for me, it was a compromise, so we were both kind of meeting in the middle of our comfort levels. He had to con-

This page and next: While he lived and toiled as publisher in Wisconsin, Denis Kitchen was actively engaged in his community, whether working on alternative newspapers — a few of his many, many covers are seen on the next page (all courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen) — or actively promoting the arts. Above: Poster for a 1978 Denis Kitchen art exhibit held at the University of Wisconsin– Oshkosh campus. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

vince the money people this hippie project was worthwhile, and I had to convince my comrades that working for Marvel was okay. You asked about Harvey Kurtzman too, right? I didn’t expect Harvey to write back either, but he sent a very encouraging hand-written note that said something like, “Underground comix are a phenomenon to deal with. You should join forces with the West Coast guys.” But that quickly turned into more correspondence too. I brought him out to speak at UWM, his first paid speaking gig, and filled a huge lecture hall. I wore my publicist hat and got all the local media to turn out, including the TV stations. Harvey was stunned by the attention he got. I was stunned that he didn’t realize how admired he was. Anyway, he took me seriously after that, so when I proposed reprinting some of his stuff, he was very receptive. Harvey also did a terrific guest cover for Snarf. And he drew a guest cover for Bijou #8, which was a full-color tribute to MAD, the one where Jay Lynch organized a bunch of us to parody other underground strips — CBC: “Tales Calculated To Sell You Bijou”? [chuckles] Denis: You know that one! Later on we did nice hardcover collections of Harvey’s Jungle Book, Goodman Beaver, and Hey Look!, even his early ’50s work on Flash Gordon, but it all started with just not being afraid to reach out. I couldn’t ask someone to buy an advertisement in a college humor magazine, but I never had any qualms reaching out to famous people. CBC: “I’m out here.” How did you first encounter — you found a Bijou in a used comic shop and — Denis: No, we didn’t even have comic shops then. It was a used bookstore. CBC: A used bookstore, yeah. And how did you meet Jay Lynch in person? Denis: Jay didn’t have a car, so I drove to see him in Chicago. Met Skip Williamson, too. We hit it off right away. Jay’s a very smart, quirky smart guy. He was a fount of obscure knowledge. And when he convinced me to publish Bijou, I wanted to really hustle to show that his faith, and Skip’s faith, was justified. Jay was like me in that he wrote a lot of letters and saved everything. He was well connected and generous with information. He’d say, “You should talk to so-and-so. Here’s their address and phone,” or, “You should send your books to this shop. They’ll carry it.” Jay was not just focused on his own work, but trying to help the underground comix movement grow, doing everything he could. CBC: So is that when you went to his studio, was that the first time you saw Crumb’s work outside of Help!? Denis: Actually I had a summer job in a print shop during college vacation and they had a magazine coming off the press that caught my eye: an article that showed the first Zap cover. I recognized the style, vaguely, and realized, “Oh, Crumb, from Help!” That was the first I knew of Zap. So then I looked and found it, which wasn’t easy in Milwaukee, and it was early, probably right around … CBC: ’Sixty-eight? Denis: ’Sixty-eight, yeah, maybe ’69. I met Jay in ’69, so it was right around there. Zap was a real eye opener. It was just brilliant and trippy and of the moment, just — it was poof! CBC: Was it akin to the moment you started recognizing Kurtzman? Did you see that wow, this guy is breaking the mold?

we took another time to Sheboygan and Grafton where, surprisingly, a lot of the black blues records were recorded in the ’30s on the Paramount label. Other Crumb titles steadily followed, so he became a real cornerstone of the company. I knew Robert’s titles would sell, but they were also the kind of material I wanted to publish, was proud to publish, even when it was controversial. CBC: You know, I would argue that “Whiteman Meets Bigfoot” as being one of the most important underground stories ever done. Was there a feeling of that he’s really dealing with — pardon the expression — something primal here? Denis: [Laughs] Yeah, quite literally, huh? Well, lot of it came from his own fascination — or obsession — with big, strong females and fulfilling his well known sexual fantasies. But on a deeper level, yeah, the whole idea of “Whiteman” representing the male culture, male white uptight culture, and just being part of a modern, urban, often dehumanizing society versus the lure of the wilderness, the more primal nature of humankind. Even though Yeti was anthropomorphic, there’s still also a kind of bestiality too — it was real provocative, to say the least. And then the little short story that led into it was Angelfood McSpade, you know, with, again, pretty explicit and… CBC: Racist. Denis: To most people, yes. I mean, I felt some discom-

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Denis: Yes, I would describe it as a similar moment. “This guy has it all.” I loved Robert’s style, his unique humor. That early Zap was insightful to the human condition and the counter-culture. It almost had an aftertaste to it. You’d read it, think about it, and re-read it, and then it seemed even deeper and more profound. I just remember re-reading that thing and going, “This is f*cking brilliant.” And so Crumb was already pals with Jay. Robert liked traveling around the country. He didn’t drive but he’d take the bus or catch rides with others. And Jay said, “Crumb’s coming to town. You want to meet him?” So they took a bus to Milwaukee, came to my place, and when they walked in Robert immediately saw my 1940s Wurlitzer jukebox playing 78 rpm records, the kind of music he liked, and saw things hanging on the wall, and on the shelf, and he kind of — CBC: “I like this guy.” [laughs] Denis: Yeah! I had old toy cars and robots, the same stuff he was collecting, and so we bonded instantly. That was 1970. We had actually begun corresponding a little earlier. In any event, he said, “I’m working on a new comic. I’ll let you publish it.” I said, “Great!” That ended up being Home Grown Funnies, our bestseller for many years. In fact, if you look at the cover of Home Grown, there’s a circle on the side that says, “The Snoid from Sheboygan.” That was inspired by a record-hunting trip

Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, Xenozoic Tales © Mark Schultz.

THIS PAGE: One of KSP’s greatest discoveries of the 1980s was Mark Schultz, creator of Cadillacs and Dinosaurs. Above is a ’93 limited edition print and below the talented artist’s cover for Xenozoic Tales #1 [Feb. ’87].

TM & ©2014 the respective copyright holder. All comics TM & ©2014 their respective copyright holders. Megaton Man TM & ©2014 Donald Simpson. All other characters TM & ©2014 their respective copyright holders.

fort too, but my feeling was, first, it’s free expression. And, secondly, I never got any sense that Robert was a racist. He was immersed in the black culture and music from the era he loved, but at the same time taking imagery from an earlier generation’s culture and regurgitating it back in a way that might easily be disturbing. I remember showing that comic to black friends and they laughed and I thought, “Well, if they think it’s funny, then should I still feel kind of queasy?” I’m sure there were also plenty of black people [laughs] who probably would have, uh, reacted differently. But the whole premise of the anti-establishment movement and the comix that spring from it, ultimately, was “F*ck ‘em if they can’t take a joke.” And my feeling was, we’re selling our comix in head shops to people who will get it. I almost never had negative feedback. We got a lot of fan mail and only occasionally someone would be upset by some content, but very, very rarely. That said, when the feminist movement was flexing its muscles, there were definitely some sparks. I had one notable moment when I walked right into the lion’s den. One day I learned that many of the comix in Krupp’s own head shop, Strickly Uppa Crust, had been stickered with “This Publication Offends Women” stickers. Some other shops on the East Side had the same stickers placed on their comix, put there by local militant feminists. The Bugle-American had a rival alternative paper in Milwaukee called Kaleidoscope. It was much harder to the left, much more of an “off-the-pigs” underground paper, and it had been taken over around this time by a feminist collective. You know I’m a political guy, I had been immersed in socialism, Marxism; I considered myself pretty progressive, even radical on some issues. I was certainly aware of feminism, and its objectives, but I hadn’t really engaged any activists. Many women in my circle were “feminist” in a general sense, but not hardcore. I wanted to meet the women who were running Kaleidoscope, maybe get a sense if they were behind the stickering, so I innocently suggested a meeting. They said, “Sure, we’ll meet. Come to our office.” I naïvely assumed it was going to be friendly, because I literally was going there to learn. I was curious. It was a hot summer day, there was no air conditioning in their building, and before they let on that they were hostile, they said, “Let’s go on the roof where it’s cooler.” So a half-dozen women and I walked up, carrying folding chairs. It was a three-story building, we’re on the roof, and I notice there’s no railing on the edges. They veer toward one side, put a chair very near the edge, then surrounded me in a semi-circle. I started feeling pretty uncomfortable — I’m a little acrophobic anyway — being confronted by these now very angry women. They denounced all underground comix as misogynistic and highly offensive. They begin berating me about certain stories and covers, mostly ones by Crumb and S. Clay Wilson, and I’m quickly on the defensive. I use arguments like freedom of expression and it’s satire, and, some are drawn by women, and that I hadn’t even published the majority of material that upset them. But they didn’t care, I was the living embodiment of male exploitation, and worse: I was an enemy within, supposedly part of a common political movement. I don’t think I ever literally thought they were going to push me off the roof, but I have to tell you it was still pretty damn creepy being on that precipice. At one point I said, in effect, “I came here to try to learn something. I didn’t know I was going to be prosecuted for

what some colleagues are doing. I don’t draw misogynist strips myself.” And then one of the women — I’ll never forget this — said, “We’ve seen your cartoons and you always emphasize breasts.” The woman who said that had large breasts herself, and was wearing a tank top kind of outfit. What the cartoonist in me wanted to say was, “I just draw what I see!” But I wasn’t that stupid. I basically said, “I’m unaware I was creating anything offensive, but I’ll think a little harder what I’m drawing and what I’m publishing.” And they basically said, “Yeah, you better.” Coming down from that meeting, I was relieved, first of all, that I wasn’t a bloody heap on the sidewalk. But it underscored to me how disparate and fragmented the alternative movement was. The radical feminists saw underground comic books as repulsive and offensive. SDS and pacifist groups and other single-issue groups might also dismiss comics: “Why are you doing this?” or, “Why aren’t you helping the movement more positively?” “Why are you doing drug jokes when you can be helping us liberate this Black Panther out of prison?” All manner of sticky issues could have waylaid me if my primary THIS PAGE: Another marvelous ’80s KSP find was cartoonist Donald Simpson, whose expert Marvel goal was to be an activist. But it wasn’t. Comics parody Megaton Man brought down the I thought cartoonists needed to express house! Above: MM #4 [June ’85] cover by Don. themselves however they wanted, and Inset left: Courtesy of Heritage, original art page out of that would come cultural value, and contribute to political discourse without be- from The Return of Megaton Man #2 [Aug. ’88]. Below: Simpson also contributed this promotional ing overtly didactic or tiresome. Targeting group shot of numerous characters appearing in the counterculture should not be off limits. Kitchen Sink publications of the 1980s. Nothing should be immune. And I would do my best to pull it together, try to give it some focus, try to make it progressive in general, but it wasn’t my job to censor. Of course by the process of rejection and acceptance — I mean — you could argue I’m censoring someone, but I was just looking for what I thought was the best. But I did conclude that I should be more proactive, using comics to give voice where needed. I reached out to Trina Robbins, Sharon Rudahl, Aline Kominsky, and other women making comics. Trina had been complaining about the depiction of women in a lot of the men’s comix,

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Above: Reed Waller’s “Omaha,” The Cat Dancer, was a groundbreaking KSP series that included explicit sex as incidental aspects to an overall soap opera about the trials and tribulations of an (albeit humanoid cat) exotic dancer. The creator suffered colon cancer and Images of Omaha was produced to help his expenses. Cover art for #1 [’92] by Steve Fastner and Rich Larson. INset top right: Waller poster originally composed for a 1990 Idaho comic book convention, Moscon.

especially with regard to sexual content. I said, “Isn’t eroticism a healthy thing? And how do you distinguish porn from eroticism in many of these cases?” She said, “Well, you know, women intrinsically see these things differently.” So I said, “Then why don’t you edit an anthology with women’s erotic stories or fantasies?” She took me up on that and we created Wet Satin. Likewise, I reached out to Howard Cruse when I figured out from clues in his “Barefootz” strips that he might be gay. When he confirmed it, I said, “Don’t you think it’s time for a comic book entirely by gay cartoonists? And would you edit it?” He said, “I’d love to see it, but I’m not sure I want to come out about this.” Because he was also a freelancer and he thought coming out could be lethal to his career. But he thought about it and then said, “I’m going to take you up on it.” And that’s how the long-running Gay Comix series came to be.

the Bugle, and the Bugle was covering — CBC: And the Bugle was…? Denis: The underground paper I co-founded in Milwaukee. It was a weekly that featured, at least early on, a lot of cartoon covers. And for quite a while we ran a full-page of comic strips by local artists also doing comic books for Kitchen Sink: Jim Mitchell, Don Glassford, Wendel Pugh, Bruce Walthers, and me, sometimes others. It was the only underground newspaper in the country with its own comic section. For a while we syndicated them to other papers. Occasionally, we’d have a guest covers by Crumb, Jay Lynch, Bob Armstrong, and others. CBC: A weekly alternative magazine/newspaper. Denis: Yeah, magazine-slash-newspaper because the format would periodically change. CBC: It was a giveaway? Denis: It fluctuated from being free to a cover price to free again and back because it was searching for the ideal balance between advertising revenue and newsstand revenue. Once when it went from being free to charging, I did a cover that had my capitalist alter-ego Steve Krupp running a newsstand, yanking the scarf of a hippie who was taking the Bugle without paying and growling, “That’s 25¢ now, hippie!” I ended up drawing probably 25 or 30 covers for the Bugle, including the very first one and the very last one. CBC: How many years did it run? Denis: From 1970 to ’78. Over 300 issues. The back cover of the Oddly Compelling book was the cover to the final Bugle, with the reporter going down the manhole and retreating. So anyway, what I was getting at earlier was my awareness of Stonewall and the incipient gay movement. I had close friends who were gay, in fact both roommates at one point, and in those days, it wasn’t always smart to be open about it.

CBC: How long of a time did he think about it? Denis: I’d have to look at our correspondence to be sure, but I don’t think it was terribly long. Maybe a few weeks, a couple months I’m guessing. CBC: Were you cognizant of Stonewall and the Gay Liberation movement at all? Denis: Sure. That incident was publicized widely, especially in things I was reading. You’ve got to remember at the same time I’m involved in

Guys got beat up in bars. Discrimination was rampant… CBC: And there was a lot of homophobia in underground comix as well, right? Real mincing characters… Denis: I’m not sure about that. Maybe there are some examples. But keep in mind this was a transitional period. This was a topic very much under the surface. I mean Howard Cruse never volunteered to me he was gay. I deduced it from his work. His character Headrack in “Barefootz” was an artist, and he was gay, and I just put two and two together. It seems autobiographical. So I asked in a letter. I said, “No offense, Howard, but is this character basically you?” Obviously it didn’t bother me. It was just one more thing about Howard, but it got me thinking. I was reading that as much as 10% of the population might be gay. Then 10% of cartoonists are too, and 10% of our audience, so why aren’t we doing something for that audience? When Howard agreed to edit Gay Comix, he said, “Here’s only one catch. I don’t know which other cartoonists are gay, except for a handful in some of the gay newspapers or magazines.” We presumed most were closeted. So I said, “How about I’ll mail a form letter to every artist on my mailing list? We’ll probably offend a few, but what the heck? Who knows?” So I wrote a carefully worded letter, soliciting contributions to Gay Comix, and sent it to everybody. A few people responded, “Why the f*ck did you send me that letter? You think I’m a f*cking queer?” “No,” I’d calmly say, “I sent it to every artist.” A surprising number of recipients did come out, some of whom were evidently bisexual, like Rand Holmes, who did the terrific cover; and Lee Marrs, artists for whom Howard and I would have had no clue without the mailing. And so Gay Comix was another project that came out of feeling I needed to be more proactive, at least in giving platforms to special interest groups. CBC: Did you see it as a mission? Did you see that what you were doing was part-and-parcel with an agenda? In other words, were you an entertainer or were you an educator? Denis: I probably did think I was on something of a mission. Remember, literally only a handful of people owned and ran an alternative comix publishing company, and I figured I ought to be trying harder to do more than mere entertainment. Understand that I’m all for purely entertaining comic books! We did our share of those. And even Gay Comix and Twisted Sisters and Corporate Crime Comics, they all had points to make, but they were entertaining at the same time. It was just giving a voice to minorities within comics. For example, there were relatively few women drawing comics then. Few women showed up at comic conventions unless dragged by their boyfriend. It’s different now. You see a real balance. But in those days, women were on the periphery. I would have given the same platform to African-American cartoonists, but I couldn’t find any. There was “Grass” Green, but he didn’t have any political interest; he only wanted to do sex stories. I kept encouraging, “Find some brothers.” They just didn’t show up back then. Another educational project was Consumer Comics, something I did for the Wisconsin Department of Consumer Protection. It was used for teaching high school kids what Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

Above: Text to come.

it means to legally become an adult, the implications of signing a contract, and scams aimed at the young. That approach worked for Will Eisner in the Army booklets he produced for years [P*S Magazine], so we did it for high school kids. Consumer Comics was reprinted in other states as well. In fact, it even got pirated. Somebody copied it, panel for panel, in their own style and published it and we had to shut them down. Thankfully the Consumer Protection Department was our partner, run by the state Attorney General. They provided the muscle. [laughs] It’s like, “Who would take the time to counterfeit an educational comic?” — but it happened. CBC: Do you have a copy of it? Denis: Sure, it’s in one of those file cabinets. CBC: [Chuckles] Is anybody as well-archived as you? Denis: Hah! I’m not aware of anyone else with such extensive archives in my own field. Most people don’t have an archival mentality, or they aren’t organized, or they don’t have the space, or they aren’t willing to take the time. I actually enjoy filing. It’s relaxing to me. I used to joke that if I had it all to do over again I’d be a file clerk. CBC: Like Harvey Pekar? Denis: Right! Except he didn’t enjoy it, it was just a drudge job to get a pension for him. One of the advantages I had early on was that once I got out of my initial starving stage, I bought a farm in 1973. So I had a big empty barn, I had out-buildings, I had space, lots of space that was free, so it allowed me to not only save everything, but to collect big things like jukeboxes, arcade games, telephone booths, and moose heads. Space is a liberating thing, something people who live in small apartments just can’t relate to. In Milwaukee I had one or two jukeboxes. On the Princeton farm, I had 30 jukeboxes at one point. You can’t easily do that without

TOP: The ubiquitous Peter Poplaski drew this 1978 postcard artwork depicting the KSP crew. From left, business manager Mike Jacobi, EduComics founder Leonard Rifas, Denis Kitchen, DK assistant Sue Schmidt, the artist Poplaski, and UPS driver Mark Nelson. Above: The dichotomy of being a publisher and a creator is shared by Denis on the cover of this fanzine from 1979. Both courtesy of D&SK.

for a living?” I’d say, “I’m a cartoonist and a publisher.” I always put “cartoonist” first because being an artist was the essence of myself. I think I always saw publishing as a temporary thing, not something that would last 30 years as Kitchen Sink Press alone did, and then another decade plus on a smaller scale. And I did manage to create cartoons along the way. I was never remotely prolific, but I produced more in retrospect than people might think, even a comics historian like you, would probably never see the regional material like the Bugle and then the Fox River Patriot. I was doing a weekly strip for a pretty long time and a lot of covers. I drew 25, 30 or so Bugle covers, and maybe another 20 Patriot covers, but only a handful have been reproduced. So if you just look at what was done in comic books, it’s not a heck of a lot, but enough to retain my chops. Occasionally, I’d do a story four-, five-, six-pages long — I still am now and then — and that was my realistic max. I could never again do a solo comic like Mom’s #1, never take on anything too time-consuming. The added irony was that I could never take my own company’s deadlines seriously and so most of the work I’ve done in the last 10, 20 years, it’s been at the behest of another editor. It’s like the cover I just did for you. It goes on my calendar and I do it. But if that was for one of my own books back in the day, more often than not, I would have seen that deadline getting closer and I would have gotten somebody else to fill in because I didn’t have time, or I’d rationalize, “I’ll do the next cover,” or, “I’ll do a story for the next issue.” CBC: Now there’s a real ego boost to seeing your own work on a cover. Was it that you wanted to be active with other people, to be engaged with other people, rather than being isolated and sitting there at the drawing board? Was it just purely a pragmatic reason? I mean how come your ego wasn’t pulling you to say, “Yeah, I’m going to do the cover instead of assigning it to someone else”? Where’s your ego in all this? Denis: The ego is present, but as a practical matter, my publisher instinct prevailed. Once I made that fateful decision to publish other people’s work, I took it very seriously and felt a serious responsibility to that family of artists, plus the employees I had, to keep the business going. I had to make the business viable so that people got their checks on time and the checks would clear. So if I said, “I’m going to do that cover, I had to be sure I could deliver it on time. I didn’t want to be the guy slowing down the train. I love drawing. I always loved drawing and writing, and every time I would do a new story or cover, I would say to myself, “Man, I’ve got to do more of this. This felt good.” But owning a business really is like the cliché: it’s a monster and the monster takes over. It’s a 24/7 preoccupation and even before email predominated, the phone rings evenings and weekends, artists and

THIS PAGE: Is it a surprise to hear Denis Kitchen is a Nancy fah-reak? KSP published Bushmiller collections (above, ’89) and DK collects all things Nancified (below right, panel from “My 5 Minutes with God,” Dark Horse Maverick #2 [2001]). Below is DK’s true self as seen by Carole Sobocinski & Jim Siergey in Kitchen Sink Press: The First 25 Years [’94].

a converted barn. But even earlier in Milwaukee I was instinctively archiving. I remember one time, Crumb was visiting with his then-girlfriend Kathy Goodell and something came up in the conversation about Robert promising something in a trade or something, and I said, “Well, let me go check.” So I opened a drawer, quickly pulled the “R. Crumb” file, and she said, kind of startled, “You saved all the letters he ever sent you?” And I said, “Yeah, I save the letters everybody sends me, and copies of my letters back.” And Robert said, “Yeah, Denis is like that. You know, it comes in handy sometimes,” and he just kind of waved it off. And maybe some viewed the habit as a little eccentric, but, yes, it often came in handy. But I never thought back then that someday a university or institution might want my papers. Remember, nobody took comics remotely seriously. Comic books were the lowest of the low. That’s not to say I didn’t have a healthy ego, but I saved all my correspondence and papers for my own sake. It had value to me. CBC: About your cartooning; now there’s certainly a sense of frustration there that you don’t have enough time to cartoon. What was your plan with it? Denis: Hah! At the beginning I figured whatever distraction this publishing gig was, it wouldn’t last very long. Either it would just fall apart because it wasn’t a viable business, or maybe the revolution was around the corner and [laughs] we wouldn’t have companies. The truth is I probably wasn’t thinking very far ahead. Everything was of the moment then. I rationalized there would be time to do both and the publishing thing would be part-time and I’d just keep drawing. But as the publishing “thing” kept growing, became more demanding, and serious, it affected more than me, because I needed employees. I had to hire people. I had to take on partners, then we had to get more space and those arms of the octopus started growing. At every stage of growth, I always thought of myself as a cartoonist first. When someone asked, “What do you do

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

clients and customers come to visit, crises happen, printers call, shipments come in early, and there’s always something where you have to drop what you’re doing and deal with it. And, typically, plans to be at the drawing board will be interrupted. I would try different tricks. There’d be times I’d just tell my staff, “I’m not here. I’m not answering the phone. Don’t bother me unless it’s life-or-death” — and then just draw. Forced seclusion was the only way, typically, because it was just otherwise impossible. CBC: When the externals would come in, would you pounce on them with any relish or was it with resentment or was it a mix? Denis: I’d probably have to admit “with relish.” The truth is I wouldn’t have stuck with the publishing business for so long if I didn’t largely enjoy it. I wanted to be a cartoonist, but I enjoyed being a publisher too, crises and all. Why? Because there’s a satisfaction learning to deal with crises and solving them, struggling with deadlines and meeting them, and, especially, with the distinct pleasure that comes from seeing a product through from conception to completion. I never ceased feeling the pleasure of holding a newly printed book, smelling the ink still fresh. And since I have a really retarded sense of smell, fresh ink was one of the few pleasant things I could smell. There’s something about holding the newest book or comic or product and knowing that a few months ago, or a year ago, it was just being talked about, or an idea thrown out, and suddenly, here it is. And now it’s gonna get shipped all over creation. There’s a special feeling from that. An analogy early on that I used — I don’t know if it’s a fair analogy — when I was transitioning from being a cartoonist to publisher, was that if I had been an actor, now I was becoming a director and producer. And if I’m going to be a director and a producer, I’m going to be creative with those roles, too. I didn’t necessarily see publishing as a demotion or an essentially unattractive position. I thought instead of being a solo performer, I’m now orchestrating the bigger picture. Not that it’s ever easy herding cats, getting artists to do anything. Artists and musicians are both notorious for being a little flaky. It just seems to come with the creative process. Some artists, the rare ones, like a Will Eisner who never missed a deadline in his entire career, is the exception. Most artists are dawdlers and procrastinators and always bite off more than they can chew. That includes me. Some are downright lazy. Some are downright deceptive. Cartoonists, artists in general, are not angels. I learned that early on. They can be amazingly talented and insightful and creative, but they don’t always keep their word and it’s not usually with intent. Everyone’s life is complicated. And over the years, I heard every imaginable excuse. It’s like the kid who said his dog ate his homework. I would constantly get phone calls, typically letters, you know, “Sorry I couldn’t get this to you on time because — ” fill in the blank. CBC: [Chuckles] You got the files to prove it. [laughs] Denis: Absolutely. And sometimes, I would pull my hair out. So would Dave and anyone working on production on my staff. But basically, I learned to live with it. And the nice thing — here’s the thing about underground comix that probably saved my sanity. It wasn’t like a Marvel or DC operation, a place where you had monthly publications and production contracts, ironclad obligations, and printing time was reserved for your periodicals and Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

Above: Text to come.

the stuff had to be there or you’d pay for the print time anyway. No, with my situation, we published periodicals, but not, “It must ship exactly January 10th.” I wasn’t obligated to meet such a rigorous monthly deadline. If I planned to get out four products next month, but only three of them came out, I knew, “Well, all right, the late one will fall in next month.” There was always something that was a straggler from a prior month or two that that would fall in and maybe you’d have four anyway. It just wasn’t always the four you had planned. That stuff could easily drive you crazy, and give you ulcers, but I learned early on not to lose sleep over any of it. From the very beginning, I said to myself, “I’m not going to get a heart attack over this. If it fails, I’ll do something else. I can always be a file clerk!” [laughs] And I think part of me, maybe subconsciously, wanted it to fail so I could be a full-time artist. I can’t even tell

Above: In 1991, Kitchen scored the Grateful Dead license and produced Grateful Dead Comix. Here’s the original Timothy Truman cover art for #3 [’91], courtesy of Heritage. Inset left: Larry Welz’s Cherry Poptart was an important addition to the KSP lineup. Below: So, too, was Monte Beauchamp’s innovative digest-sized comics anthology Blab! Charles Burns contributed this cover for #3 [’88].

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

recent years, I’ve been able to write a few books, working with partners. I co-wrote the The Art of Harvey Kurtzman book with Paul Buhle, I assembled the Underground Classics book with Jim Danky, both for Abrams. Then, just recently I co-wrote the Al Capp biography with Mike Schumacher, for Bloomsbury [Al Capp: A Life to the Contrary, 2013]. I find that by collaborating, it helps. If I say I’m going to write a book myself, I’ll likely put it off indefinitely. But if I find an equally enthused collaborator, then we together are meeting a deadline and the collaborative effort is intellectually invigorating. Co-writing a book, to me, is kind of like jamming on a comic strip, [laughs] only it has to be organized and cohesive. And I’ve always enjoyed working with people creatively. CBC: Is there a reason that I saw a reference to The Oddly Compelling Art of Denis Kitchen book [2010] within the 25 th anniversary book of Kitchen Sink [1994] — Denis: Yeah, Oddly was planned long, long ago. CBC: Like how long was it in the works? Denis: Actually, if you read the fine print on the indicia page of Oddly, I talk about that and I give a specific date. I believe it was originally planned on the 20th anniversary of Kitchen Sink, which would have been 1989, and I think it was formally on our schedule. It would have been a slimmer book, but what happened was there were other projects — I can’t tell you which, offhand — and I had to make some decisions with the schedule and I just decided I’d just sacrifice my own. I just put it off. I felt more obliged to do other artists’ books because I had given them my word and that was more important than the gratification of doing my own book. I don’t think I expected it would be delayed as long as it was. I thought it’d be pushed back a year or so. But it was pushed indefinitely. Then, when we came to Massachusetts, my marketing director, Jamie Riehle, said, “All right, it didn’t make Kitchen Sink’s 20th anniversary, let’s do it for the 30th.” So I said, “Great idea, we’ll do it for the 30th,” which would have been 1999. And, of course, the company died in December, 1998 [chuckles] so there again, it was on the schedule. Robert Boyd was the editor assigned to Oddly. Robert put assembled a dummy and the essence of the book was there. It would have come out the summer of 1999 had the company survived. But once again, it didn’t happen. Then [Dark Horse veteran editor] Diana Schutz, at a San Diego convention party, probably the Dead Dog party, cornered me and said, “How come there’s no collection of your own work?” I said, “You know, a couple of times it just got shelved. It’s jinxed.” And she said, “Well, let’s do it at Dark Horse. I’ll edit it.” When I was planning on publishing it, I just couldn’t take the book seriously. To be honest, I think partly the reason I pushed it off was it seemed too self-indulgent, too much of a vanity project. But when Diana said, “Dark Horse will do it. I’ll edit it,” then it was like, “Okay, let’s do it.” I also knew Diana’s a taskmaster, knew she would insist all aspects be delivered on time and I didn’t want to be yelled at by her. I also premised it on my good friend John Lind designing it, because I trusted his instincts and taste. Diana and John ended up co-editing Oddly Compelling. I removed myself almost entirely. I told them they were in charge of the editorial side. John made the image and design choices. I told him what my favorites were but, ultimately, I trusted his objectivity. I wrote the captions, and that was it. [CBLDF director] Charles Brownstein wrote a terrific career-spanning essay and Neil

Above: The ultimate demise of Kitchen Sink Press started with a series of events that began with the early 1990s acquisition of Kevin Eastman’s struggling Tundra Publishing, though bringing on James O’Barr’s The Crow in the bargain proved, for a time, highly profitable. Below: Recent photo of the co-creator of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles in his studio.

you. I just know that I never let the pressures get to me, even when it was a serious problem, like a financial crisis. Maybe, for example, a distributor — when there were several — would be late on a substantial check and that meant I couldn’t pay other people on time. I could have stayed awake all night staring at the ceiling, gnashing my teeth. I didn’t! I got a good night’s sleep, and the next morning, I dealt with it. My calm nature helped me get through all kind of business issues that would’ve driven many other people bat-sh*t crazy. CBC: Is it your fall-back position that you could draw? Denis: Yeah, but not just draw if push came to shove. I think I always had the confidence that if I had to, I’d write or draw for an ad agency or something like that. Or maybe start a syndicated strip. Or write a book. I just thought, “I have various skill sets. I’ll do something else.” I never felt like if the company failed, I was going to have to shoot myself or I was going to be a pauper or I was going to be miserable. Of course, eventually, after 30 years, the business did go under in an unexpected way, and I was briefly depressed. But I got over it and reinvented myself and I’m probably a happier, healthier person because of it. CBC: That’s interesting that you — okay, you primarily want to draw. In some sense, you sacrifice that urge, that desire to do that for something that you were able to leap upon with relish. And you had the security to know that if it all falls apart tomorrow, that “I can still do what I love.” I mean that’s a real — that’s pragmatic. [chuckles] Denis: Yeah, I think so. CBC: That’s really spiritually sound. Denis: I never thought of it that way, but I guess you could say that. Remember, I’m not just publishing, I’m also editing — so I always thought that’s another fall-back. And I had a degree in journalism. I can write. And as it turns out in

Above: Text to come.

Above: Denis Kitchen is, by all definition, an inveterate packrat nonpareil, who filed away everything, including these queries from a young comic book artist looking for a publisher. Courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen. Worthy of note is the archives of Kitchen Sink Press, in an act of generosity by Denis that will prove a boon to comic book historians for generations to come, have been acquired by the Columbia University Libraries/Information Services’ Rare Book & Manuscript Library it was announced last December.

Gaiman wrote a sweet and funny introduction. So it was a much more stylish production in every respect than if it had have been published earlier. The third time was a charm. CBC: [Chuckles] So Denis plays well with others. Denis: Yeah, I’m definitely a social creature. I’m most effective working alone when I’m focusing on something. If I’m writing or drawing, solitary is always best. But otherwise, I enjoy teamwork. CBC: We went over the “Crash of ’73” and how you worked with Stan Lee at Marvel with Comix Book and then you were able to work with Will Eisner with taking over the numbering from the Warren magazines, right? What were the mid- to later ’70s like for you? What was it like? Denis: Well, certainly first and foremost, it was a transition from producing strictly undergrounds to overseeing a more diversified list, which I didn’t have any problem with. I never bought into the counter-culture cliché that you couldn’t trust anyone over 30. I always thought that was a bullsh*t anthem from — who was it, Jerry Rubin? — a self-appointed spokesperson for my generation. I revered the best comics that came earlier and I wanted them available. I wanted to see them appreciated by the current generation. So when I had the opportunity to meet Will Eisner, my instinct, almost

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

immediately, was I’m going to try to get The Spirit reprinted. I determined that without any certainty that the market would be receptive. The Comics Reader later said our “Underground Spirit” was the first direct market comic. It was the same with Harvey Kurtzman and Milt Caniff and Al Capp and all the other cartoonists whose work I admired. Had I had the resources, I’d have reprinted all my favorites, but that wasn’t practical. I did allow myself to indulge in Ernie Bushmiller collections when a lot of people thought that was crazy or unworthy. Or both. But in the case of Nancy, I didn’t collect the strips in the chronological way we approached most classic strips, but instead we did topical collections. The first one was Nancy Eats Food. I remember seeing Frank Miller shortly after that one and he was telling me how that book cracked him up, and that he and [wife] Lynn were laughing out loud at Nancy Eats Food. I never would have thought Frank might buy that book or appreciate it. That kind of feedback helped reinforce the assumption I always had: that I’m not alone in my tastes, even when a little “out there.” I’m always gambling there’s a few thousand of us. A few thousand isn’t much. Out of a few hundred million people in this country, not to mention Canada and Europe, I’m confident we’re going to sell X-thousand of this. And that’s enough, with low overhead, to be modestly profitable.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

anecdotal story that helped explain it to me. I was at the Book Expo in New York, or back then, it was called the ABA show, and I was trying to get Kitchen Sink’s books into conventional book stores, way before it became commonplace. A bookseller came to our exhibit tables and picked up Nancy Eats Food and she said, “You know, I ordered eight or ten of these and put them in the humor section, but most didn’t sell.” Then she said, “I was going to return them, but on a whim I put them in our food section. And they flew out. I think they went to dieters or people giving gag gifts to dieters.” A really obese but funny Nancy was on the cover — a joyful celebration of eating food. A light bulb went off over my head. I was like, “Oh, my God. I think you’re right. I think they’re being placed in the wrong section.” And so I tried to convince my national book distributor, Berkeley Books, that they should re-rack the Nancy books but I just got blank stares. Twice a year, we would have these sales meetings where the publishers they distributed could talk up titles and authors to their sales reps. Thirty or 40 of these people in the room all had sales territories. So at the next one I held that book up and I said, “So-andso at the XYZ book store put this in their food section and it sold out quickly so that’s where you need to place this.” And I got blank looks. “We can’t do that. No, that’s the humor section.” I was like, “No, you don’t understand. Just try it. Test it both ways.” It was hitting a head against the wall. Nancy was just one tiny example of my exasperation with book distribution. In those days the sales reps didn’t have a clue what we were doing. CBC: They didn’t know where to shelve it. [chuckles] Denis: No. And, worse, they didn’t care. At one of the first sales meetings, I found out there were literally two reps who were comics fans, one in Boston and one in Chicago, and the numbers from their territories were way above the others, simply because they went into bookstores with some enthusiasm while the others were just going through the motions, if that. It was clear to me that if we just had a few more reps who cared a little bit, we could break into the broader market. But it never happened in a significant way, other than those slim regional pockets. But timing is everything. Kitchen Sink died before the Internet was an opportunity to market directly to consumers and before graphic novels became fully embraced by bookstores. Had Kitchen Sink been able to stretch it out just a little longer, a couple, three years or so, we could have taken advantage of the Internet being full blown and mainstream store acceptance, and it might be a thriving company today, much like Fantagraphics. They were once distributed by the hapless Berkley group, like me, but now they’re distributed by W. W. Norton and really penetrating the market. I see them, IDW, Dark Horse, and others doing things that, you know, I can’t help but imagine doing myself had fate been slightly different. Barnes & Noble and indy bookstores have sections devoted to graphic novels now. Most sales reps now actually do get graphic novels. And you have countless websites and social networks of reviewers and fans and people chatting about comics and connecting in a way we couldn’t really conceive of even in the ’90s. We relied on word of mouth and mail order and more primitive and inefficient means of getting books in the market. We did what we could at the time. CBC: Back to the advent of the direct sales market, you got into doing regular titles, right, in the ’80s? Denis: Regular series? Well some started earlier than the ’80s. CBC: You did Death Rattle. The Spirit was coming out regularly, I mean you really did have deadlines. Denis: Sure, we had real deadlines, much more so than when the focus was strictly on undergrounds. There was Megaton Man then, too. It was probably a bi-monthly. His first color series, was, I think, initially ten issues, and then it came back for another three — The Return of Megaton Man — in color and then various one-shots and spin-offs in black-&-white. We probably did something approaching 20 titles with Don [Simpson, Megaton Man creator] before he left his comfy apartment within the KSP complex and headed out West. There were also the periodic anthologies like Snarf, Bizarre Sex, Dope Comix, which probably were trailing off before that.

Gambling on my own tastes almost always worked out. Not always, but … CBC: When did it not work out? Denis: The most painful example of that was Polly and Her Pals. I love Cliff Sterrett. I think Sterrett is one of the most brilliant cartoonists ever. At his best he’s on par with Herriman or better in my view. CBC: Do you own any of his art? Denis: I do. I think the period where he was doing surreal comics, especially the Sundays, is a high point of the medium. When I first saw examples of those in the Smithsonian Book of Newspaper Comics, my eyes just popped out of their head. CBC: Me too. [chuckles] Denis: So Rick Marschall assembled a couple volumes of Polly Sundays, which we released as oversized hardcover editions. Sales were barely 800 per volume. It was the only time, ever, in my history, that I couldn’t even crack four figures. And I pushed those books. I told everybody I could, “This is brilliant!” But I got back mostly, “Cliff Who? Polly and What?” You know, if you weren’t 80 years old, [chuckles] you never heard of it, unless you were one of the hardcore comics aficionados paying attention. It was kind of like selling silent films to kids. It really disappointed me that there weren’t more than you, me and 798 other people who would support Sterrett’s prime work. And so occasionally, you know, something deserving would hit with a big thud. You can’t win ‘em all. CBC: What was your most surprise hit? Denis: Well… I’m trying to think what I had low expectations for that surprised us. It might have been the Nancy and Sluggo books. I think I saw Nancy as a personal indulgence that I was just going to do because I could and I didn’t give a damn if anybody else liked it. And that series did surprisingly well, especially the first one. Nancy Eats Food did quite well. CBC: That’s a great cover. Denis: Thanks. But I have a clue why it may have done well — I have one

CBC: And you were able to get out The Spirit as a monthly for the entire postWar run? Denis: Yeah. Eighty-seven issues, yeah. That one stayed on schedule the whole time, I believe. CBC: Wow. Was that a dream come true? Denis: It was. I wish we could have done it in color. We briefly tried it, but the numbers didn’t work and, also, that was the pre-digital era. We couldn’t cost-effectively or aesthetically do the color right. Will didn’t have originals or proofs on the stories, especially at the start of the post-war ones and shooting the old Sunday tear sheets was never satisfactory back then. The results weren’t satisfactory to me or Will and the sales couldn’t quite support the much higher production costs. In those days, to publish a color comic, you had to have about 20,000 sales to make the numbers work. We were hovering right around that, but when sales dipped into the teens we had to stop the color. Remember too that Will was more than a creator to me; he was a mentor. The rule he always had — a rule Will set up — was, “If we’re not both making money, I’m not happy.” I liked that rule because it meant I could always be completely honest with our profit-and-loss situation. He’d ask for complete transparency and I’d provide it. I’d send him the printing bills and I’d break down how my staff spent this many hours on an issue and this is what I paid for the separations, and we advertised here and here, and this is how many we sold and, finally, this is our net. And, bingo, I didn’t make money. I lost money. So then he might say, “All right, let’s drop the color and go black-&-white,” or “raise the price 25¢,” or “cut my royalty a point.” We’d just play with the factors and make adjustments. A few issues later, he’d say, “How are we doing?” “I’d say, we’re doing all right now, that sort of communication.” He’d said, “You made X-dollars this issue, and I made X-dollars, so we’re both happy.” That’s the kind of relationship it was. He was always willing to renegotiate. He just asked for honesty and transparency and imagination. CBC: Was Will the most professional cartoonist you ever dealt with? Denis: I would say easily when you measured on all the points. [chuckles] Yeah, easily. First, Will never missed a deadline, not with us, not with anyone. He was always responsive and open and almost always good-natured. I mean once in a while, he’d be irritable — who isn’t? — but he was just a pleasure to deal with. Will was always enthused, always eager to start something new. He’d finish one project, then jump into another and experimenting. He would try a science-fiction story, then he’d try an autobiographical story, then something historical or funny. He didn’t want to be in

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

a genre rut. We had volumes of correspondence. I mean I must have close to two feet thick of letters with Will and Dave Schreiner’s must be another two feet-thick. Before emails, the letters were the primary communication. We’d be on the phone a lot too. It was constant communication, and Pete Poplaski would be involved too. Pete, separately, would be in touch with Will because he’d take Will’s new cover art, get some general direction from Will on color, then Pete would add gray tones and color and integrate the logo and send the mock-up to Will for approval or alterations. We were all striving to just make the comics and books as good as they could be with, you know, a relatively limited budget because this was cult stuff, not mainstream. But Will’s work always sold respectably. The Spirit sold in the 12,000–20,000 range, which was pretty good. That’d be very good now. CBC: It would be damn good now. Denis: Yeah. I guess I didn’t realize how strong in some respects the market was then. CBC: With titles like Bizarre Sex, how regular were they? A couple a year? Denis: At times, yes, but there were ten issues altogether and they probably covered close to a decade, so that one averaged out more like an annual. I think they came out faster earlier and then they trailed off as the market evolved. The last issue of Bizarre Sex had a beautifully drawn cover by Bill Stout that was a huge alien vulva that filled a doorway and said, “Earthman, give me your seed!” [laughter] I thought it was hilarious, but most comic shops wouldn’t display that. Even a lot of head shops would be nervous. We were pretty outrageous with that series, beyond what was practical to display. I drew the very first Bizarre Sex cover: “The Giant Penis That Invaded New York.” I still think it’s funny. It went through about seven printings. But it wasn’t remotely an anatomical penis. It was a caricature of a penis with an eyeball on the tip, so how could you get any prurient feelings

PREVIOUS PAGE: Add drawing on chipboard to Denis Kitchen’s long list of interests, so much so his Chipboard Sketchbook saw print in 2011. Above: DK’s 2002 “Four-Headed Self-Portrait” says it all about the man’s abilities, eh? Below: Proof that it runs in the family, Denis’s youngest daughter, Alexa, is an amazingly accomplished cartoonist in her own right, having had, at the tender age of seven, a remarkable collection of work published, Drawing Comics is Easy (Except When It’s Hard) [’06].

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

from it? However, for the fourth issue, I was involved in the jam cover that was supposed to be a parody of my first cover. But Pete Poplaski drew a very realistic-looking vagina engulfing the Empire State Building. It was done in such a realistic — and jarring way — that I had the printer bind a plain outer cover over it. I knew it couldn’t be displayed. But that one also went through multiple printings. It’s not like the series wasn’t popular. I don’t know why I didn’t publish it more often. If we ever collect that series, I think people will be surprised just how insanely graphic it could be. But always, I thought, tongue-in-cheek, never really pornographic. Dope Comix was, in a sense, the same approach. A lot of people assumed it was a pro-drug comic. But if you really go back and read them, quite a few stories are basically cartoonists depicting bad experiences with cocaine or LSD or belladonna. And it wasn’t a complete celebration of the drugs hippies commonly imbibed. It was for me, a forum for cartoonists to express their experiences, pro and con about drugs. The title Dope Comix maybe implied, “Hey, light up and read me.” A few hippies who read it that way might have said, “Hey, you’re bummin’ me out, man.” But, with the anthologies, I encouraged artists to express themselves on a common theme. CBC: Did you ever reject anything? Denis: Oh, sure, sure. I mean I literally lost some friends, rejecting their submissions. And those were accomplished cartoonists. We routinely rejected tons of unsolicited material. CBC: I meant, like, for editorial content, not for facility. Denis: Oh, I see. Well, both. Ideally, you want a story that’s both well-written and well-drawn. Sometimes you settle for one over the other if one aspect is particularly strong. I certainly published enough things that, in retrospect, I think shouldn’t have. CBC: Anything in general that you can say? What, too pornographic? Denis: Well, one example that comes to mind is Super Soul Comix by “Grass” Green [#1, Oct. ’72]. I liked Grass personally and, I think I mentioned earlier, he was probably the only African-American cartoonist working extensively in the scene. I was probably trying too hard to give him a forum when I really didn’t think he was really ready for prime time. He came out of fanzines. He had a certain following, doing super-hero zines with Ronn Foss and people like that. CBC: Oh, Grass goes way back, yeah. Denis: Way back, and he was a little older than the rest of us and so it was kind of a respect thing. I kind of went, “Grass has paid his dues in the zines, I’m going to give him a forum.” But some of his work, I thought, was just embarrassingly bad and he always, I thought, drew way too fast. I thought if he just slowed down and refined his technique, it’d be better. And he always seemed to have the same theme of black guys chasing white girls to have sex. I thought, “Well, once or twice is fine. That’s his fantasy,” just like Crumb wanting to hop on a girl with big thighs or vice versa. But while Crumb was drawing his fantasies in an aesthetically outstanding way, Grass was doing it in a fairly crude way. I lost patience with him. In frank correspondence and phone calls I expressed my opinion that he was in a creative rut and needed to refine his technique, and expand his themes. He took some offense at that, which wasn’t easy, because I liked the guy. But I had to be an editor first. Another was Wendel Pugh who early on did Googiewaumer Comics for Print Mint, and was part of the Milwaukee group doing strips every week in the Bugle-American, ones we were syndicating for a while. CBC: Is he the one that was putting the subliminal “f*ck all

Above: Text to come.

censors” or something like that? Denis: Yes. The incident described in George Lockwood’s new book [Peanuts, Pogo, and Hobbes: A Newspaper Editor’s Journey Through the World of Comics, 2013]. Yeah, he snuck the f-word in an illustration assignment for the Milwaukee Journal’s Sunday magazine insert and at the last minute they caught it and had to destroy something like 400,000 or 500,000 magazines. Wendel’s work was always kind of esoteric and self-indulgent. I thought he was a deep thinker, and I respected him as a draftsman and as a conversationalist. But when he was doing his strips and stories, they just never delivered. They rambled — there was never a real plot and never a real punch. It was a stream of consciousness that I appreciated on one hand, but in anthologies where the object was to tell a story and to be funny or make a point I just felt he was failing, but I kept giving him rope, thinking he’d develop fuller skills. He delivered a story and a cover to go with it. I ran the story, but rejected the cover. I don’t think I even assigned him the cover. He just presumed to do it and I had a better one in hand. He got very angry, and compared himself to Carl Barks. I was like, “Whoa! With all due respect, Wendel, you’re not quite on par with Carl Barks. I think the cover I used was much better. My decision. I’m sorry you disagree.” He basically responded, well, “You have lousy taste, you don’t know what you’re doing, and f*ck you.” And after two or three more “F*ck you,” “No, f*ck you,” “No, f*ck you” letters, that was the end of what was once a close relationship. It could be awkward with creators I had gotten to know, trying to be objective, trying to bring some distance to decisions, when these are artists I may be partying with, or we have mutual friends. It’s much harder under those circumstances to say, “I just don’t like what you submitted here.” When I allowed the relationship to prevail I almost always regretted it later. I think every serious editor, every publisher, experiences that. You often struggle separating personal relationships from editorial objectivity. There were

other instances where my aesthetic decisions regrettably cost friendships. CBC: Now who were some of the cartoonists who got better because of — perhaps because of communication and collaborative kind of thing that you might have come in and thereafter, improved? Denis: Well, I think there’s a number of them. Take Mark Schultz. I liked his work from the start, but if you look at the very first story I published by him, in Death Rattle #8, compared to, say the IDW Artist’s Edition of Xenozoic art, you’d just see that Mark’s technique got drastically better. But I saw enough potential at the beginning to know he should be given a chance. He grew from being fairly derivative early on to become the full-blown Mark Schultz we love, who’s amazing, but it wasn’t immediate. I think Mark will be the first to tell you that working with Dave Schreiner, my editor-in-chief, was also crucial to his storytelling development. Was anybody in our field great from the start? The earliest published comics by Eisner, Caniff, Capp, and others: it’s all pretty primitive before their mature style took shape. Look at Bill Griffith’s first “Mr. Toad” underground: it’s pretty crude, but now his Zippy strips are really refined and quite sublime, one of the best newspaper strips. There are lots of examples. Almost everyone needs development time. I look at my own early work and I go, “Oh, my God. Yuck!” But if you have innate skills and work at your craft, at some point you find your own distinct style. Howard Cruse is another example. His early work is pretty slick, but relatively crude compared to what his style became. He’s another one I’m glad I had faith in. I got a lot of flack early on for publishing Howard’s work from Bill Griffith and Art Spiegelman, some of the self-proclaimed underground snobs who thought he was too... CBC: Too cute? Denis: Yeah, just way too cute. And I tried to say, “Have you actually read it? It’s really very witty material, and Barefootz is deliberately cute. Howard’s just kind of making fun of that genre. It’s terrific. Get past the big feet.” CBC: It’s like the ducks. Can you get by the fact they’re talking ducks? [laughs]

Previous page: Recent work by Denis Kitchen appeared in Monte Beauchamp’s Blab World #2 [2012], a two-pager,“The Vexing Thing Upstairs.” Courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen. TOP: Ye Ed snapped Denis before a pair of the cartoonist’s many (and I do mean many!) collections, plastic eyeballs and, at right, toy aliens. Above inset: Only four of the tens of thousands of postcards in the Kitchen collection, these on the theme of drunks sneaking back into the house. Courtesy of D&SK. Postcards, new and old, are currently the avid collector’s most obsessive pursuit. D.K. says, “If anyone reading this interview has old postcards in their attic, or knows an Aunt Alice who has shoeboxes of postcards, contact me. I even like the free cards given away by publishers and many artists at bigger conventions and trade shows. If a fan attending shows regularly grabs extras of freebie postcards at shows and then mails a pile to me, I exchange credit in our online Steve Krupp’s Curio Shoppe. For really good stashes of old ones, I’ll even swap old comics, books, or original art.” Those who can help out D.K. can contact him via denis@deniskitchen.com and mail cards to the gent at P.O. Box 2250, Amherst MA 01002-2250. Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

Denis: Yeah. Can you get by the pinhead? Can you get past the mice? I mean everybody’s got some idiosyncratic shtick they’re working. Ultimately, I think most people who were critical of Howard early on came around after Stuck Rubber Baby and some other things he did later in his career. It was perhaps easy to make a quick superficial judgment of his work. I have to say I looked at Rory Hayes early on and I just went, “This is way too crude for my taste.” Other people will tell you he’s the Grandma Moses of comix and you can have that debate all day. CBC: Did you ever publish him? Denis: He died so young. Was he in an anthology or two? I can’t remember. I didn’t know him and he died young and he wasn’t that prolific. I don’t think I ever met him, although I might have early on at a party in San Francisco. If I did, he

didn’t make an impression. But then he’d be hard to miss, because people tell me, even in the summer, he’d wear a long trenchcoat and I think I would have remembered that. [laughs] I did have some correspondence with Rory. And I included his work in the underground comix retrospect that made the rounds. CBC: Lost his mind with LSD? Denis: My understanding is that Rory overdosed on heroin. Because I wasn’t in San Francisco, I didn’t necessarily know any artist’s personal drug habits or who was sleeping with who. That stuff was largely a mystery to me for the West Coast crowd. CBC: Yeah, and not particularly relevant. But what is relevant, I think, with comix, underground comix especially, is drugs. With pot and acid particularly — would there be underground comix, do you think, without acid? Denis: Well, it’s a good question. If you start with Robert Crumb, he’s the first to admit that acid, for better or worse, is what inspired Mr. Natural and a lot of his early work. He even described it as being “bad acid” that caused his brain to be really fuzzy for a while. I never had a bad experience with acid, but Robert’s often talked about how it informed his work for better or worse. Given how his career developed after that, on balance, I’d say it was a good thing. #5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Above: The first two of a fivepage story by Denis Kitchen depicting the life of cartoonist Theodor Geisel, better known as children’s book author Dr. Seuss. This tale will appear in Monte “Blab!” Beauchamp’s forthcoming collection, Masterful Marks: Cartoonists Who Changed the World, coming this September from Simon & Schuster. Below is some other panels from the same piece. All courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen.

of LSD. I didn’t trip a hundred or more times like some hippies I knew, but Speaking of Robert, fairly early on, he stopped doing drugs altogether. when I did I typically let the acid images flow naturally, usually with my eyes I remember during one of his early trips to Milwaukee, he was in my living closed. I’d typically see extremely detailed, complex 3-D images, sometimes room with Jim Mitchell, Don Glassford, and probably Wendel Pugh, and a cosmic-huge, sometimes more sub-atomic, always gorgeous, often fleeting, couple other guys. Somebody lit a joint, passed it around, and when it got to Crumb, he said, “No thanks.” It went around the circle again, got to Don and going by frustratingly fast, often too fast to savor. Sometimes I’d prefer to see he’s shoving the joint to Robert, saying, “Come on, man. It’s really good sh*t.” static images, so I might pull Salvador Dali from the shelf and lose myself in And Robert’s quietly saying, “I don’t do that anymore.” Don probably wanted Dali paintings — he’s pretty damn trippy — or Rene Magritte, some of the Surrealists that I enjoyed. to be able to say later, “I smoked pot with R. Crumb!” But Crumb wasn’t But as far as undergrounds changing comics in general, with some hindinterested. I think I literally had to say, “Don, hey, lay off.” sight it now seems pretty accepted that undergrounds were a watershed in Crumb’s early comic book work was indisputably influenced by drugs, comics history. But undergrounds had such diverse content, from the trippier but everything after a certain point early on he did completely sober. A lot of artists use drugs specifically for inspiration. In my own case, I never wanted material to the political and the outrageous, and the autobiographical, so much and so much over the top stuff, that I think you have to step back and to draw while I was high. I needed to be completely sober to pencil and look at more than the comics themselves. I look at Humbug — a point where ink, but I sure as heck thought pot in particular, and sometimes acid, was a a handful of creators took control of their own destiny. They owned what great inspirational tool. That Bizarre Sex #1 cover, for example, was a vivid they created and created what they wanted. It wasn’t publishers directing idea that came to me during an acid trip. I had to do a quick sketch and put it. Humbug failed, but underground cartoonists did it on a larger scale, and it in my pocket so I wouldn’t forget. Many times, the next day, I’d pull such notes out and scratch my head. “What the hell is that?” It wouldn’t make any much of what we did stuck, much of it, beyond the aesthetics, affected the larger industry. sense. But that one stuck. CBC: But also, drugs made the artist look withMostly with pot I would hear things in in, rather than dependent on genre. conversations or see things in a different Denis: Right, right, I see your point. I guess I light, and go, “I have to remember that. That’s got off on the wrong tangent there. Yes, what funny,” or maybe, “That’s an interesting really distinguished some of the best underconcept.” With the next day’s clear mind, grounds were creators looking inward. Justin sometimes, I’d go, “What was I thinking?” Green’s Binky Brown Meets the Holy Virgin But other times, I’d think the insight was Mary is an example of something never before brilliant. That’s kind of what Bill Maher talked done: neurotic, self-introspective, painfully about in a recent piece in Rolling Stone, autobiographical comics. Likewise Crumb often how pot affects people differently. Some get allows readers deep inside his psyche. Maybe lazy, some get paranoid, and whatnot. But it you aren’t comfortable being there, but the clearly makes Maher creative and he’s glad. man’s id is out there in the open, the same as I’m like him. Pot was a creative tool for me. Justin. The first time I read Binky Brown, I felt But whereas someone like him can perform like I’d opened someone’s diary, and shouldn’t on stage stoned, I wouldn’t take that state of be reading it. It was so revealing, so personal, mind to the drawing board. And I can’t speak but I couldn’t stop. I re-read and I re-read it. I for other artists when I don’t know their work assumed it was probably cathartic on Justin’s habits intimately, but clearly, if you look at part, but for readers it was a rare window into the early undergrounds, a lot of them are someone’s pain and suffering. When he created very trippy. You have to assume these artists Binky, Justin didn’t even know he had OCD — were certainly inspired by hallucinogenic obsessive-compulsive disorder — it was diagdrugs, even if they weren’t tripping while nosed much later. He didn’t understand what actually creating the art. John Thompson, was even wrong with him as a young man. His Rick Griffin, Jack Jackson, Fred Schrier, and mother was Catholic, his father Jewish, and he Dave Sheridan… guys like that immediately had these religious conflicts and symbols and come to mind. sexual stuff tormenting him. That comic even CBC: Well, in a cultural sense too, do you influenced Will Eisner. I gave that one to Will think acid is a turning point within the realm and said, “You may not enjoy this, but I think this of comic books? That it brought underis an important book.” He read it and he said, grounds to a different level that eventually “Wow.” I can’t remember his exact words, but even permeated into the mainstream? he said it was unlike anything he’d seen in the Denis: Well, you know there were people genre. who would drop acid and read trippy mainA few years later, Will integrated autobistream comics like “Doctor Strange,” whethographical elements into his Contract with God er or not Stan Lee and Steve Ditko [laughs] and, later, did overt autobiographical comics. were intending that to be the case. Jack Jackson is another whose early work, CBC: What do you mean when you use a especially, was affected by peyote. In Texas, he term like “trippy”? had access to that. Peyote never made it to my Denis: Well, trippy can be defined differently by different people. I use generally with Above: Cliff Chiang’s Lady Liberty, mascot of the Denis Kitchen- neighborhood in Wisconsin. [chuckles] Jack told me he had really deeply profound hallucithe imagery that is either conjured up or is founded Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. All who cherish nogenic experiences, ones that were spiritual in appealing when you are under the influence freedom of expression heed the call to visit cbldf.org.

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

THIS PAGE: Anyone who knows Denis knows the man is big on buttons, having produced innumerable items to commemorate… well, whaddaya got? Here are a few, courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen. Below: Other objects of Kitchen’s collecting mania include jukeboxes, such as this one in Denis’s office. Photo by Ye Ed. Inset right: 1987 pic of Denis with a pair of primo Wurlitzer jukeboxes, courtesy of D&SK.

the movement. Maybe in some respects he lived vicariously through the generation he influenced, but I never sensed any jealousy. CBC: Although they just loved him, right? Denis: Absolutely. There wasn’t one among us who hadn’t grown up thinking MAD and Humbug, and even Help! was the greatest. We practically worshiped the guy. CBC: KSP regularly published anthology comics while the format was dying in the mainstream. But you kept them going. Denis: Yeah, I loved anthologies myself and so I ignored the market’s general indifference. Anthologies were also a way for me to give new talent some exposure, to kind of break them in. I thought that was important. If I had a really good cover and a good theme, then I could sell that minimum 10- to 20,000 copies that we needed. I was always working hard to get good covers to lure readers. I figured people would flip through and if you had a good mix, they were more interested in the entertainment, than any particular “star” power. Sure, Crumb and [Fabulous Freak Brothers Gilbert] Shelton and a few others always sold more. But I liked that format. I did well enough with that approach over the years. There were a lot of them. CBC: Did you have a favorite anthology? Denis: Probably Snarf, because I liked the humor genre best. Snarf didn’t sell as well as Bizarre Sex or Dope Comix or Death Rattle. There were other KSP humor efforts over the years too: Blue Loco, French Ticklers, Smile. I just always enjoyed a good, funny anthology. My plan, originally, with Snarf, to try to broaden its appeal, was that the covers would alternate; a well-known underground artist and then a well-known traditional cartoonist. I came up with that idea after Jay Lynch and I did the first couple. But for the third one, I invited Will and that was the first thing he did for me. I regarded that as quite the coup. The fourth was this Dutch cartoonist Evert Geradts. For the fifth, I enticed Harvey, who was followed by Crumb. The seventh one, I think, was supposed to be Wally Wood. I got Wally to say yes, then instead of just taking “yes” for an answer, I wrote back and I said, “Can you do it in your MAD style like the way you did it with Harvey? You know, the best stuff…?” I accidentally hit a raw nerve, so no Wood cover. Then I approached Al Capp in care of an assistant named Larry May who I had dealt with earlier when Capp provided a self-portrait for my Famous Cartoonists Button Series. I said, “Larry, any chance Al would do a guest cover?” Larry said, “I don’t know. Why don’t you talk to him?” I said, “Really?” He said, “Sure, I’ll set up a phone appointment.” That was the one call in my whole career that kind of intimidated me. I did really hold him on a pedestal, but he was a true celebrity, on TV all the time, and radio, and newspapers. He was more famous than any other cartoonist in the modern era. It was also self-evident in his later work that he hated hippies. Larry set up a phone appointment. I was really nervous because I wanted him to do a cover, but I also knew he’d be very suspicious, partly because not long earlier he’d been busted in Wisconsin on sex charges, and here’s a hippie doing underground comix — in Wisconsin — asking him for something. It seemed like he wouldn’t touch a Snarf cover with #5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

nature, where, you know, you feel a connection to something larger, whatever you want to call it. I think anybody who did acid or peyote, tend to have these feelings of oneness with nature, if it’s good acid. If you experience bad acid, you…. CBC: You get published by Last Gasp. [laughter] Did Will ever experiment with drugs? Denis: No. He didn’t condemn it, but it held no interest. One difference between Harvey and Will was that Will refused to even try pot. I asked a couple times if he wanted to privately test a little. And he said, “No, I’m sorry, I just won’t.” I think it was just one of those generational biases. But Harvey repeatedly tried, and he repeatedly claimed he never got high. But I think he wanted to bond in that way with the younger artists. And I’m not sure why he didn’t get stoned, but he said he didn’t. Maybe he was so much of a control freak he couldn’t let himself relax, or maybe he had some natural immunity. But I was with Harvey in situations where joints were passed around and he definitely partook. I think he wanted to be seen as being as hip as the kids in the room. He didn’t want to be “the old guy.” CBC: What was his nickname? He was the…? Denis: Oh, that. Some people early on called Harvey “the father of underground comix.” He said, “No, I prefer to be called ‘the father-in-law.’” It was much funnier. CBC: Was he jealous of the underground guys? Denis: No, no, I don’t think so. He embraced

Superman TM & © DC Comics.

Above: Text to come.

a ten-foot pole, but Larry said, “Talk to him. He might surprise you.” I was so concerned that I broach it the right way and everything. I re-read his interview in Playboy magazine that ran in 1965. It was the only thing I had handy about him back then. In re-reading it, one of the things that stuck out was that he hated altruists and anybody who didn’t want to make money. And so, sure enough, I finally get on the phone with him and I hear that big trademark guffaw and the first thing he says is, “So how you doing out there? Are you making money?” The truth of course was, “Hell, no, Mr. Capp,” but instead I said, “Oh, yeah, I’m doing really well. I’m THIS PAGE: Peter Poplaski, the cartoonist who’s making a lot of money. Doing very well, yes.” He been associated with Denis Kitchen since the said, “Good. I like to hear that. What can I do for inception of Kitchen Sink, is one of the most fasciyou?” I explained that I was assembling a comics nating and talented hombres to ever grace comics. anthology and would be honored by a guest cover. TOP: His original art for the cover of Superman: I dropped Harvey and Will’s names because I knew The Dailies, Vol. 2 [1999], which hangs in the KitchCapp knew them. “What kind of comics you doing en abode. Courtesy of D&SK. Above: Poster for a out there?” he asked. I said, “Well, they’re called Sketchbook Adventures of Peter Poplaski signing ‘underground comix,’ because we give artists the held in P.P.’s country of residence, France, where freedom to do whatever they want.” And he said, he very Robert and Aline Crumb. Below: Poplaski “These are hippie comix, aren’t they? Why would penciled — and inked most of — the wraparound cover of The Spirit “Jam” issue, #30 [July ’81]. I want to do anything for that? “ I said, “Because it’s a forum to do anything you want. I know you’re not fond of hippies, but,” I said — I remember this quote exactly — I said, “You can spit right in the eye of hippies if you want.” I said, “It’s is your platform. I’ll sell it to my audience even if you insult them. That’s what you do when you talk to students on your college tours,” and I said, “I admire your work, even when I disagree with you. Will you consider it?” I could sense a hesitation in his voice. I felt the hook taking. “Well, what does it pay?” My regular cover rate was a hundred bucks. I quickly doubled the rate in my response: ”Two hundred dollars.” He harrumphed. “Let me think about it.” That was the end of the conversation. Capp was making several thousand dollars speaking at a campus, sometimes as much as eight or ten grand. I knew I lost him then. For anything less than four figures, he wasn’t going to do a special drawing, with or without spit. What I should have said in retrospect, knowing what a publicity whore he was, I should have said, “This cover is going to be controversial and it’s going to get great press for both of us.”That he would have understood. But I blew it. CBC: Because you were so nervous in the beginning? Denis: Yeah, I was, I truly was. I didn’t have that trepidation Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

for anyone but him. CBC: Was it your love for Li’l Abner plus the nervousness about cultural — ? Denis: Look, he was the most famous cartoonist in the world. He eclipsed anybody then, in terms of fame. He was a regular on Johnny Carson’s Tonight Show. Name another cartoonist who appeared regularly on the Tonight Show, Mike Douglas… CBC: The Dick Cavett Show. Denis: Right, Dick Cavett, and on and on. He even had his own shows early in TV. Hell, he even had his own theme park. Who, besides Disney, had that? This guy was truly famous and I had this love/hate feeling toward him. After that call, I talked to Larry a couple of times and I said, “He’s not going to do this, is he?” Larry said, “I’ll work on him.” But that was it. So when I lost Wood and then Capp, that kind of took the wind out of the Snarf sails. I made one more attempt. I asked Carl Barks because I had been corresponding with him a bit. But this was around the time he was starting to do those duck paintings and he didn’t have time. But he sent a very nice letter, saying he was sorry. CBC: Oh, so you never got one.

Above: The aforementioned Peter Poplaski rendered this recent portrait of Denis. Over the last few years, D.K. has began yet another aspect of his multi-faceted career to become an book author and he’s also (sorta) rebooted the Kitchen Sink brand, only now in association with Dark Horse, and with partner John Lind. Below: 2010 saw the release of his long-awaited bio/art book, The Oddly Compelling Art of Denis Kitchen, a tome actually 25 years in the making!

tact me. I even like the free cards given away by publishers and many artists at bigger conventions and trade shows. If a fan attending shows regularly grabs extras of freebie postcards at shows and then mails a pile to me [P.O. Box 2250, Amherst MA 01002-2250 — Ye Ed.], I exchange credit in our online Steve Krupp’s Curio Shoppe. For really good stashes of old ones, I’ll even swap old comics, books, or original art. CBC: What’s up with Kitchen Sink Books? Denis: Well, the first book the new Kitchen Sink Books imprint is doing is The Best of Comix Book, about the experimental magazine I assembled for Stan Lee back in 1974. It’s being collected for the first time in 40 years. I wrote a forward for it, James Vance wrote a longer essay, and Stan provided a really nice introduction. Our goal is to do four, five, maybe six projects a year. There won’t be something every month, but there’ll be quite a variety. Some will be in a coffee table book format, on particular artists or subjects, ones that should appeal to a broad set of collectors and be commercially popular. Then there’ll be other books, not likely best sellers, but ones we have a passion for, ones that [partner] John [Lind] and I think deserve to be done. Mike Richardson has guaranteed us editorial autonomy, and as long as the line as a whole makes some money and both sides are happy, we’ll continue the relationship. At this point in my career, I just want to make good books, ones I’m proud of, ones that have some significance, and are fun to assemble. John Lind wants exactly the same thing. But, to be clear, I don’t want to start a Kitchen Sink Press all over with a few dozen employees and to have to deal with printers and distributors and warehousing and collecting money and all that. I don’t want those hassles and headaches again. By having a joint venture with Dark Horse, John and I get to do the editorial and design part, they do the rest and it’s a perfect kind of partnership. CBC: What’s after your Comix Book collection? Denis: A new edition of Kurtzman’s Jungle Book is in production. That 1959 solo work is an absolute classic, but it’s been out-of-print since the previous Kitchen Sink collection 25 years ago. This one will feature new design, a new essay by me, new design, and Crumb has promised a new intro. Plus we’ll recycle Art Spiegelman’s earlier intro. We’re excited about that one. Hopefully a new generation of comic fans can appreciate Kurtzman’s genius. We’re also working with Monte Beauchamp on a terrific book called Popular Skullture, which showcases a couple hundred skull-related covers from old comic books and paperbacks. Steve Heller’s doing the intro for that. I will probably get in trouble if I tell you anything after those. CBC: Mm-hmm. And what else are you doing? Is that your predominant focus right now, what you’re doing? Denis: Well, I think your cover says it all. There are a few

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Denis: No, I didn’t. But he sent a sketch of Uncle Scrooge reading Snarf, which was a nice little bonus. And then after that, I just kind of went, “Well, you know what? I just struck out three times here. I think I’m just going to give up and just focus on the guys in the underground.” There was never another guest cover from an older cartoonist, except Will Elder, who did an amazing one later on. But my original plan, to alternate them, that was out the window. So the seventh one ended up by being some guy named Art Spiegelman. CBC: Oh, yeah? [laughs] Badda-boom! Just some Pulitzer Prize-winning cartoonist. Are you the agent of the Estate of Will Eisner and of the Estate of Harvey Kurtzman? Is that the official function? Is that a different function from actively seeking work for a living artist? Denis: Okay, that’s a multi-part answer. With Will’s estate, it’s two parts. The literary estate is handled by the Kitchen and Hansen Agency. Will’s original art is with the Denis Kitchen Art Agency. They’re two very distinct entities. The art is [Will’s wife] Ann’s personal property so I represent Ann. With the literary material, the intellectual property, Will left a corporation which is administered by his nephew, Carl Gropper. With Kurtzman, it’s again bifurcated. The Denis Kitchen Art Agency also handles the art sales there. But my other agency, Kitchen, Lind & Associates, handles Harvey’s intellectual property. Literary agencies don’t handle art. That’s a specialty area I happen to do for just these estates and a handful of other artists: Pete Poplaski, Frank Stack, Howard Cruse, and Frank Miller. Art is tangible while intellectual property is abstract. In the literary arena, you’re typically granting or licensing rights, and negotiating contracts, typically for publishing but it can involve merchandise, film rights, and so on. I happen to cross over, but that’s not typical. CBC: [Pointing out the artwork for CBC #5 cover] What is this postcard reference? Denis: Good eye, Jon. That’s an in-joke. I collect a lot of things, as you may have noticed, but postcards have turned into a favorite avocation. That whole wall behind you here, that’s covered with albums — those are filled with topical postcards. If anyone reading this interview has old postcards in their attic, or knows an Aunt Alice who has shoeboxes of postcards, they should con-

hats. But that’s my predominant focus, yeah. I did recently draw a five-page color comic story, a mini-biography of Dr. Seuss. CBC: Where will that appear? Denis: It’ll be in Masterful Marks: Cartoonists Who Changed the World. It’ll be out this coming fall from Simon & Schuster. Monte edited that one. CBC: Do you have any dream projects? Denis: [Long pause] I’m not sure I can answer that. That’s a — CBC: You do have one? Denis: Well, there are a lot of things, a lot of projects I’d like to do. Some are getting periodically fulfilled. The Al Capp biography that I did recently with Schumacher, that was a dream project that finally materialized. I’ve been doing these “chipboard” drawings for years and throwing them in drawers. A selection finally got published a couple years ago. That collection and the feedback from it inspired me to do more. So, on many evenings, if I’m not reading or filing postcards, I’ll be drawing on chipboard. I’ve been surprisingly prolific, and the new ones are much better, I think. There are probably enough for another book now. Maybe it’ll be a Kitchen Sink book, or I’ll self publish it, I don’t know. Some people seem to dig them. They’re surreal, and spontaneous, and have a pretty unique look. And I’ve got a couple of exhibits coming up, one is in Holyoke in October and a solo exhibit in Brooklyn in, I think, late 2014, at the Scott Eder Gallery in Brooklyn. CBC: Do you have a graphic novel in you? Denis: I’ve thought about that. I think I’m just too damn slow. If I had nothing else to do, and I could devote a year or more to it, I think so. But I doubt I’ll ever have that opportunity. I’m juggling way too many things to take a sabbatical. But then I never say never because I look at Will Eisner as a kind of a role model. He left comics in the early ’50s to primarily be a businessman, then he got back into it, doing graphic novels, when he was in his early 60s, and didn’t stop till he died, when was almost 88 years old. Will retained his full facility with the brush. His ideas never stopped and his art was as

strong at the end as ever. So unless you get palsy or your eyesight goes, a cartoonist can work well into his eighties and maybe beyond. So I never say never. I’m still in my 60s and I’ve got ideas. I’ve toyed with the idea of doing something autobiographical and if I do it’ll probably be a written one, with a lot of pictures and new illustrations and things, but that’s as far as I’ve taken it. It’s in the folder of ideas and concepts. Maybe I’ll procrastinate till some tough editor, like a Diana, says, “Hey, let’s do this?” Then it becomes real and there’s a deadline. But I promised John Lind that for the short term Kitchen Sink Books will be the primary focus. I would be betraying that promise if I took on a major new project in the short term. CBC: What do you want to be best remembered for? Denis: Oh, man. You’re going to make me pick one hat? CBC: Yeah. Well, what is on your business card of life? Is it “cartoonist” or “fill-in-the-blank”? And what hats haven’t we talked about? Denis: Well, I guess we haven’t talked about the curator hat, the red fez with the tassel. That’s something I’ve been doing more and more in recent years, trying to get the best original comic art into museums here and abroad. I’ve been doing it mostly with a handful of creators. Will Eisner’s is continually shown, and Harvey Kurtzman had a big show not long ago at the Society of Illustrators. Monte Beauchamp and I put that one together. I co-curated a major underground cartoonists exhibit with James Danky that opened at the Chazen Museum in Madison and just recently was at a major museum in Switzerland. Our book that goes with that exhibit, Underground Classics, was published by Abrams. I’m currently talking to Frank Miller about a major retrospective of his career. Curating exhibits is a very gratifying thing to do. The artists deserve the respect, and the shows help them, plus our favorite medium gets some “street cred” with the fine art crowd. CBC: You certainly had your struggles, such as the collapse of KSP. You come across in retrospect, a very lucky, albeit talented guy who made the

TOP: If you think one business card is enough for Mr. Denis Kitchen, Esq., think twice! This cache of contemporary collectible calling cards comprising the comics concerns of CBC’s current celebrant were designed by Randy Dahlk. Below right: The two big boys residing at Denis and Stacey Kitchen’s central Massachusetts home in a photo by Ye Ed. The character labeled as such — that’d be the feller on the right — once served as sentry at a Big Boy Restaurant out West and the acquisition of the statue doubtlessly delighted the feller on the left, a huge Big Boy collector, to no end.

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

we use a nicer, whiter paper? What’ll that cost?” He said, “Another penny-and-a-half per comic.” I said, “A pennyand-a-half, let’s do it.” But again, my profit margin on a 50¢ retail comic was also pennies. I wanted the nice paper. But I couldn’t raise the retail price of the comic, I just thought, “It looks better. It looks classier.” So if you look at Snarf and most of our other titles at a certain point, they go to the nicer paper. I made less money, but I felt better and I thought it would make most artists happier. Maybe some collectors appreciated it too, but I didn’t see any spike in sales for the nicer paper. My competitors kept using newsprint. Most cartoonists, I think, saw me as being a pretty sharp businessman — it’s all relative, right? — but that paper upgrade, for example, without a revenue offset, that didn’t make any business sense. That was the decision of an artist who happened to own a publishing company. CBC: But you did make money? You must have, to do it for as long as you did. Denis: I often made more money from my sidelines than from my primary job as a publisher. I had a knack for finding collectibles before they were widely collected. Lots — and we do mean LOTS! — more of CBC’s Denis Kitchen interview is available as a FREE download at www.twomorrows.com/freestuff. The 29,000 word bonus interview’s subjects include those collectibles, the collapse of Kitchen Sink, formation of the CBLDF, favorite discoveries, biggest regrets, and much more!!

Right inset: Quite recently, the CBC editor had the privilege of not only moderating a panel with Denis Kitchen about his career, but he also presented — to a very surprised D.K., mind you! — the 13th Dimension’s “Not Quite Just Another Lifetime Achievement Award” to the gentleman at the 2014 Asbury Park Comicon, the delightful, old school annual gathering put on by longtime CBC pal Crucial Comics’ Cliff Galbraith and Robert Bruce of Popculturizm. Here’s a photograph of Denis and his award taken by — and courtesy of — Mark Mazz. 78

Above: Ye ed and Denis Kitchen in a pic snapped by Stacey Kitchen, taken during JBC’s weekend stay last summer. Yours truly has been chums with Denis since the late ’90s, when they met at a Comic-Con International: San Diego, when the KSP and TwoMorrows booths were in proximity. Since then, Denis has been enormously supportive of the Brothers Cooke over the years, none more so than on the full-length feature film documentary about his mentor, Will Eisner: Portrait of a Sequential Artist (poster of which is below), for which Denis was interviewed as well as opening up his expansive Eisner archives. Andy and I will always be grateful for Denis’s generosity.

right decisions almost consistently. Denis: [Chuckles] Yeah. It’s hard for me to imagine a different life. CBC: Without your touch, your influence, there are things that perhaps may otherwise never have never been published. So many different cartoonists, creators, stories that came out, so much stuff that saw print again, things affecting entirely new generations. There’s an huge body of work that cuts across a wide swath of comic book and comic strip art, that you have a touch in, and it becomes this body, this thing, in and of itself. Instead of focusing on precisely what you can personally do, what comes out of your pen … that’s pretty damn huge. Denis: Well, I guess. Was that a question? [laughs] I mean, I think, ultimately, that’s how I look at it too. It’s that analogy I tried to draw between trying to be an actor versus being the producer or maybe orchestrating instead of playing the violin. But I always felt I was doing, whatever I was accomplishing, I was doing with relatively limited means, even when Kevin Eastman made my dream come true. [laughs] What I’m trying to say is that the resources could never match the ambition. I remember one time talking with Harvey after publishing one of his books. He was very pleased with it, but some detail wasn’t quite up to his high expectations. Maybe he wanted cover embossing, something like that — I forget now — and I explained that I also wanted the same feature, but the budget just wouldn’t stretch. Alluding to his Little Annie Fanny gig and boss, I said, “I’m not Hugh Hefner, you know.” Playboy paid Harvey well and there were nice perks, but he was often miserable doing Annie. He looked at me and he said, “If you were rich, you’d be perfect.” [chuckles] At first I remember thinking, “Is that a compliment?” And then I figured out what he meant, which was that my heart was in the right place and I did the best I could within my means. Harvey appreciated that, respected that. Since we were simpatico, if I had deep pockets we could both do anything we wanted, and Harvey the perfectionist would have things done exactly the way he wanted, and he would maybe not be miserable doing it. So what he was really saying was, “I love you, Denis, but I sure wish you were rich.” [laughs] CBC: You did what you could. Denis: Yeah, that’s all you can do. I remember always being unhappy with the cheap newsprint that undergrounds were printed on. I asked the printer I had at the time, “What if

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

creator’s creators

Colorist Supreme!

Our master of hues sublime, Tom Ziuko: the man and his colorful story in comics publishers, including Eclipse Comics, where he lent A few years ago John Morrow (one half of the duo his hues to Scott McCloud’s Zot!, Fantagraphics, that is the husband-and-wife team comprising and Vertigo, with series that included The Doom TwoMorrows Publishing) was bestowing 1960’s Patrol and a five-year stint on Hellblazer, for which Marvel-style monikers to contributors of our sister he was nominated for a Will Eisner Award for “Best magazine The Jack Kirby Collector — and Colorist Colorist” in 1994. Recent projects include coloring Supreme is the nickname he gave to the ubiquitous two mini-series for IDW — The Crow and Dinosaurs Tom Ziuko. Tom has been the officially-unofficial Attack! — and he is currently working as both house colorist here ever since his work graced colorist and designer on a compilation volume of the first color cover of our flagship title almost two Evil Clown Comics, by Alan Kupperberg. decades ago; as well as many of our other books, Unfortunately, Tom has encountered some magazines, and publications like Alter Ego, Back serious health setbacks over the last few years, Issue, and Comic Book Artist, just to name a few. including kidney failure, neuropathy, and emergenLongtime comic book readers will recognize cy colon surgery; and lacking health insurance, Tom’s name and color stylings from his 30-year he is grateful for the support received from fellow career as a professional colorist in the comic book pros in the industry and comic book fans from industry; where his work appeared for over two around the world, and especially the Hero Initiative, decades working on original series at DC Comics, Tom Ziuko, TwoMorrows’ Colorist Supreme. a non-profit organization that came to his aid and and then another ten years at Marvel, contributing literally helped to keep a roof over his head and food on the table during his both coloring and b-&-w art reconstruction to their many reprint volumes. extended recuperation. On his behalf, much thanks to all. A lifelong artist, photographer, and musician, Tom might have folTom also contributes a one-page column to this magazine — the last lowed any one of these interests into a different career, but his early love page of each issue, entitled “A Picture Is Worth A Thousand Words,” where of the comic book medium won out. An introduction at eight years of age he shares scans from personal archives of comic book covers and art made to the seminal mid-’60s Marvel comic book work of storytellers including before any logos, type, or production work was added — just pure, unadulJack Kirby and Steve Ditko fanned the flames that would eventually blaze terated art the way the artist drew it — never before seen by the public. into full-color collaborations with both of those childhood artistic heroes, And Tom is selling his color guides and original coloring from his work as well as myriad of other comic-book greats; examples range from the done at DC during the ’80s and ’90s; and having made the transition long ago ground-breaking detective noir series Nathaniel Dusk, illustrated by Gene to coloring in the digital age, he is currently accepting new coloring assignColan; to History of the DC Universe and Crisis on Infinite Earths, drawn by George Pérez; and John Byrne’s revamping of the Superman franchise in the ments and commissions — please check out his work on Facebook at www. facebook/tom.ziuko. mid-’80s. Other popular DC series include The Shadow, Sword of the Atom, If you own original art and would like to display full-size airbrushed and Amethyst, Booster Gold, Atari Force, Thriller, Ms.Tree, Captain Carrot, The rendered color versions of the art, please contact Tom at atomica999@aol. Jetsons, and Looney Tunes; and dozens of others as well. com for rates. Along the way, he’s also worked for a host of other publications and

coming attractions: cbc #6 in summer

Swampmen rises from the muck’n’mire!

Swampmen: The Muck-Monsters and Their Makers! The epic historical retrospective over 10 years in the making is finally emerging from the bayou as our 192-page summer 2014 annual. Behind Frank Cho’s gruesomely gorgeous cover, Ye Ed and co-editor Jorge Khoury examine those creepy man-critters that crawled out of the morass back in the 1970s, through the memories of the artists and writers who created them! A stunning line-up of interviews discuss Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, The Heap, Lurker of the Swamp, It, Bog Beast, and even Marvin the Dead Thing: BERNIE WRIGHTSON, ALAN MOORE, STEVE GERBER, MIKE PLOOG, LEN WEIN, FRANK BRUNNER, STEPHEN R. BISSETTE, RICK VEITCH, GERRY CONWAY, VAL MAYERIK, JOE ORLANDO, MARTY PASKO, DON GLUT, JIM MOONEY, JOHN TOTLEBEN, TOM YEATES, KAREN BERGER, JESSE SANTOS, MICHAEL USLAN, MICHAEL W. KALUTA, LOUISE SIMONSON, ROY THOMAS, and the remembrances of many others. The emphasis is on the best 1970s and ’80s work of this fascinating sub-genre of horror comics, and we also include these astoundingly informative stories: “It Started with ‘It’: The THEODORE STURGEON Connection”; “The Romance of ‘Swamp Thing’: Heartbreak Inside the House of Secrets”; “With the Helping of the Heap: Alan Moore’s ‘Anatomy Lesson’”; “Jesus is Not Alright with DC: Rick Veitch and Cancelled Comics of Calvary”; and “The Lost Bernie Wrightson Swamp Thing Graphic Novel.” Illustrated with an amazing array of monstrous artwork by many of the field’s greatest delineators, this is the definitive look at that ground-breaking monster comics category, so jump into the muck ’n’ mire for our scintillatingly sinister sixth ish!

Color and black-&-white, 192-pages, $17.95

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • #5

a picture is worth a thousand words

TM & © DC Comics.

George Perez, pencils and inks, Action Comics #651 [Mar. 1990] cover art. Editorial decided the Action logo would fit the art better if the cover art was flopped. This required production to also flop Superman’s chest symbol, and also mirror George’s rather distinctive signature.

#5 • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

TM & © DC Comics.

from the archives of Tom Ziuko

™

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

N o . 5 B o n u s P D F, S p r i n g 2 0 1 4

Recommended for MATURE READERS

Chronicles of The King of the Kitchen Sink Empire

S p r i n g 2 0 1 4 • 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 5

B O N U S

P D F

T A B L E

O F

C O N T E N T S

Denis Kitchen–The Rest of the Story: We share the remaining portions of our career-spanning, comprehensive interview with the renowned cartioonist/publisher, covering the realities of the direct market, demise of Kitchen Sink Press, his side careers as art and literary agent, the formation of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, and resurrection with Kitchen Sink Books...... 3 HIPPIE W©©dy CBC mascot by J.D. King ©2014 J.D. King.

JON B. COOKE

J.D. KING

Editor/Designer

CBC Cartoonist

John Morrow

TOM ZIUKO

Publisher & Consulting Editor

CBC Colorist Supreme

MICHAEL AUSHENKER

RONN SUTTON

Associate Editor

CBC Illustrator

JORGE KHOURY CHRISTOPHER IRVING TOM ZIUKO RICHARD J. ARNDT

ROB SMENTEK

Contributing Editors

Brian K. Morris Senior Transcriber

STEVEN E. Tice STEVEN THOMPSON Transcribers

CBC Proofreader

Greg PRESTON SETH KUSNER CBC Contributing Photographers

MICHAEL AUSHENKER FRED HEMBECK CHRISTOPHER IRVING JORGE KHOURY TOM ZIUKO CBC Columnists

COVER: Being neither naked nor a lady, it’s Denis Kitchen in 1980, in his Princeton, Wisconsin, office. When featured in his Oddly Compelling Art book, Denis wrote of the pic in a caption, “The photographer taking this publicity shot asked me to pose with ‘art in progress.’ None of my own was handy, so the prestigious ‘Worm Castings’ box design by Pete Poplaski filled in.” At left is Ye Ed’s pic of the actual packaging.

Comic Book Creator is a 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. Fourissue subscriptions: $36 US, $50 Canada, $65 elsewhere. All characters are © their respective copyright owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter ©2014 Jon B. Cooke/TwoMorrows. Comic Book Creator is a TM of Jon B. Cooke/ TwoMorrows. The views expressed by interview subjects are not necessarily those of the publisher or editor.

The Chronicles of Krupp

The Rest of the Kitchen Story

Flashing back to Kitchen Sink Press, its demise, and Denis’s professional rebirth

ABOVE: In 1975, Denis Kitchen began the Famous Cartoonist button, which enlisted over 50 artists to draw self-portraits. Here’s the man himself’s contribution. Below: Detail from the cover of Fox River Patriot #53 [1979], this one sporting another Kitchen self-caricature.

Denis Kitchen: I was a voracious reader of comics in both the daily newspaper and in comic books. And from a very early age I drew, but even more in the earliest years I “sculpted.” I had a lot of modeling clay. I used to get an allowance of fifty cents a week and in those days, at the dime store — when many things literally cost a dime — a

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

[The following interview, transcribed by Brian K. Morris, contains the excised portions of the Comic Book Creator #5 print interview — a whopping addition 29,000 words herein! — conducted during a late summer visit to the cartoonist/publisher’s Massachusetts home (which, we neglected to mention in the print edition, was copy-edited for clarity and correction by D.K.). Here much more is discussed, including the complex story of Kitchen Sink’s acquisition of Tundra and the final collapse of KSP, as well as regrets of the past and hopes for the future. As so with the print edition, great thanks are extended to Stacey Kitchen for tremendous assist with imagery. We begin here with Denis discussing another childhood diversion after being asked when did his interest in cartooning begin. — Ye Ed.]

box of modeling clay was 10¢ and a comic book was 10¢. So I would either buy five comics or five boxes of clay or some combination and that was my weekly obsession: those two things… With the clay I quite literally built a clay world. Before my brother, James, was born, we had a small spare room that my mother allowed me to have as a private playroom and I quickly turned it into a fantasy world. I built castles with parapets and towers and armies of little men two or three inches high: scores, maybe even a couple hundred at one point, with green men fighting brown men and yellow men. Officers had elaborate costumes and weaponry and there were “aircraft” that would take them from one tabletop battlefield to another. Evidently I was this violent little kid, committing daily genocide on other clay populations, then building new generations. Comic Book Creator: Was this all on the floor or did you have a — ? Denis: It was mainly on tabletops. The green men were the evil ones. Their leader had an eye patch. The guns were basically toothpicks with a clay arm stock on one end, and little balls of clay would go on the pointed end. I’d propel the bullet off the toothpick and it’d be embedded in the other bodies — splat! And that’s how the battles would rage, with “bullets” flying. Today’s kids do this electronically, but I had actual physical encounters. Soldiers had bandoleers with extra bullets. When they’d run out of ammo the pointed toothpick end became a bayonet. One day the eye-patched green leader was finally captured in his stronghold. He deserved execution, but a firing squad or bayoneting seemed inadequate for this green clay Hitler. A more elaborate and fitting execution was required. I found a stepladder. I was small then but somehow put a stepladder on top of one table and reached a ceiling globe that covered the light bulb. I managed to put the green guy on top of the bulb so he’d bake for eternity. And then I proceeded to forget about it. At some point, my mother went to change the light bulb when it burned out and she said, “What on earth is this?” She found a hardened, petrified green man with an eye patch. CBC: Baked. Denis: Yeah, hard as a rock! So, at an early age, I had these odd, elaborate worlds that I created, that I would lose myself in for long spans of time. And when I wasn’t doing that, I was reading comic books. We lived in a fairly isolated place so I didn’t really have kids in the neighborhood that I could easily play with every day. [After discovering television] My clay world at that point transformed from … CBC: [Chuckles] Genocide. Denis: Yeah, that didn’t change. But the castles became log forts and pioneers and Indians, and then the Alamo and Texans and Mexicans. At that point, I recruited a couple of boys in the neighborhood and they’d help me build these log fortresses and build the figures and weapons. And then we would have wars with each other. The pioneers, Indians, and Mexicans all had the same toothpick rifles with a little ball of clay at one end for bullets. But the pioneers had a few cannons too, with much bigger cannonballs. I brought Douglas and Richard into my world and they got into it. I

Conducted by JON B. COOKE

king of the krupp comics empire

ABOVE: D.K., center, at the 1998 Comic-Con International: San Diego with two indisputable comic-book giants who proved enormously helpful to the cartoonist-publisher: at left, Will Eisner and, right, Stan Lee. Courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen. Below inset: Published in 1994, cover of Kitchen Sink Press: The First 25 Years, featuring a multitude of KSP characters.

explained, “Here’s how you kill them.” [imitates gun sound] And so we would have these battles with arcane protocols and I’d be [imitates gun] splatting their characters and they’d go, “No, man, not him. He’s my favorite. You killed him,” and I’d take back the splot and go, “Okay, we’ll give him a flesh wound.” [imitates gunshot], splat, I hit him in the shoulder. But sometimes, you’d go shmoosh right in the face, which was fatal, or a tomahawk in the forehead. The faces were drawn with toothpicks too. You’d basically have two eyes and a nose from quick pokes and make a little smile or a frown, depending on if he was a good guy or a bad guy, and give him a hat or feather headdress, so the personalities were limited to what you could do with a toothpick on a little, circular head. But they got into it too. They enjoyed building the forts with clay logs and paths and trees to hide behind. It could get kind of elaborate. We’d have favorites and it’d be like, “This is Davy Crockett. You can’t kill him.” We’d have these extended operatic battles that seemed to last forever, and my clay world went from being a solitary experience to being one where the three of us would build together and battle together, then rebuild. It seems like one entire summer vacation consisted of clay war, punctuated by comic book breaks and softball. We were probably eleven, maybe twelve years old and that was an endlessly entertaining thing for us…I was especially entranced by horror comics, mostly the pre-Code titles. So many were genuinely creepy… CBC: Were you attracted to the horror genre in movies, too? Denis: Not as a kid, no. I almost never saw movies as a kid. These days I like well-done horror, like Night of the Living Dead or Pan’s Labyrinth or The Walking Dead. But I abhor slasher type movies and pointless violence. I prefer the horror to be… CBC: Clever.

Denis: Yeah, I don’t want to see gore for gore’s sake. Those have no appeal at all to me. I like artful horror like Guillermo del Toro, somebody who does it with style. CBC: Were film, television, and radio, did they have any importance to you? Denis: As a kid, I have to tell you, I was completely deprived when it came to media outside of comics. I very rarely saw movies. I think the number of theatrical movies I saw before the age of 15, I could count on my fingers. CBC: Wow. Denis: And usually, it was a special treat. It would be like a birthday or maybe somebody else’s parents would invite me along and treat me. I’m not sure why that was the case. It couldn’t have been just the money. We weren’t that desperately poor, but it apparently wasn’t something important to my parents. I knew my mother grew up loving the movies, but I don’t think my dad did. He grew up really deprived in the south. He probably almost never saw movies, never got caught up loving film the way most Americans did. I don’t remember ever going to a movie with my father. When I would see a movie it would be a rare treat, deeply appreciated. But I don’t think I ever walked out of a theater feeling as good as I did after I’d read a stack of comics. I was completely hooked on comics. Even TV, which seems to have engulfed America at that time, I was kind of late to it. We couldn’t afford a set until the early ’50s so I didn’t grow up with television when young. I specifically remember by father listening to the 1952 presidential election returns huddled over a radio, so when we finally got a TV, it was around ’53 or ’54, probably later than most American households. And when we did get it, it was a really small screen. It must have been, like, an eight-inch screen. CBC: [Chuckles, points to large flat screen in D.K.’s den] Not like that! Denis: No, not like this one. And I didn’t realize when we got it, that I was

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Below: Milwaukee Journal managing editor George Lockwood did suceed in having Denis Kitchen contribute to the newspaper daily’s Sunday Insight magazine section, where the cartoonist contributed a four-page strip. Plus D.K. drew the cover of that May 7, 1972 ish.

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

nearsighted. I hadn’t been diagnosed. So when my folks were excited about watching our first set, I remember thinking, “What’s the big deal about TV? It’s so grainy and blurry, you can’t even see what’s going on unless you get right up next to it.” And they were like, “No, it’s fine. There’s nothing wrong with it.” Well, it was me. I couldn’t see. So TV initially held no interest to me. When I finally got glasses in fourth grade it was, “Wow! TV, cool!” I think I had an unusual childhood for my generation in the sense that in my formative early years, I wasn’t seeing either TV or movies and comic books and a private clay world were totally dominant. For better or worse. [We now jump to Denis as publisher of Kitchen Sink Press in the 1970s.] CBC: With the advent of the direct sales market, what was the — ? How do you recall that and was that a lifeboat for you? Denis: Yes, the emergence of the direct sales market allowed the transition from head shops to the specialty comic shops. It was a relatively smooth transition. CBC: You had a mail order gig going for a while. Denis: Oh yeah, almost from the beginning, we had that. Krupp Mail Order even spun off into a separate business in Colorado, run by my old

partner Tyler Lantzy and his wife Terre. That was a strength. But you can’t sustain a publishing company just on mail order. Also, you can’t say that head shops completely disappeared. They gradually went away but it wasn’t an overnight, they maybe went from a few thousand to a few dozen. That was a relatively fast and sharp decline. And at the same time, the comic shop phenomenon was fast developing. That network went from literally a handful of retailers to hundreds and then a couple thousand. And we had regional distributors popping up too. Before Diamond came to be the sole survivor, we had a really vital network of maybe a dozen distributors: Capital City, Longhorn, Sunrise, Seagate, Bud Plant, Friendly Frank, Heroes World, Titan, and so on. CBC: A lot of competition…. Denis: I loved that period because these distributors were mostly guys who started out as fans, and they loved comics. For the first time, we had truly efficient conduits to specialty shops. And I loved the fact that we could solicit ahead of time and get orders. I always tended to over-print anyway because I always wanted a strong backlist and had confidence we’d sell significantly more than first-day orders. But the direct market system allowed you to print conservatively if you chose, and that was a wonderful component. The part that’s not wonderful is that eventually distribution consolidated and we lost that crucial competition. I got dramatically caught up in that final shoot-out between Capital City Distribution and Diamond, and picked the losing side. CBC: Talk about that. What were the dynamics? Denis: Marvel made a fateful choice in 1994 to acquire Heroes World, the number three distributor, so they would have an exclusive conduit. That move had an explosive effect. DC Comics took advantage of the situation, figuring they could leverage their considerable market share into a better pricing situation. Capital City and Diamond made their best pitches and DC went with Diamond, which surprised a lot of people, because DC and Capital historically had a closer relationship. Heroes World proved totally inept and Marvel eventually signed with Diamond too. That left Capital City pretty screwed-over. Mid-sized and smaller publishers began rushing to Diamond with exclusive deals, but I didn’t. I was certain that Capital City was a superior organization. I was close friends with Milton Griepp and John Davis, the owners, and respected them. They personally collected underground comix. They had good taste! [chuckles] But that didn’t cloud my objectivity.

Left: Denis Kitchen’s journalism professor in college also happened to be a great newspaper editor, one with an abiding love for comic strips. Editor George Lockwood repeatedly encouraged the young artist to produce a daily comic strip. But Kitchen had ambitious of his own, though he did pitch a weekly contribution to the Milwaukee Journal. Alas, Mr. Lockwood passed on the proposal.

Everything in Capital’s organization was first class, from the stylish ads they ran to the knowledgeable employees they hired. Many, many retailers felt Capital provided superior, faster service too. And Capital had always been much friendlier to the indys, whereas Diamond had literally refused to carry many underground and indy titles. Diamond even refused to list Kurtzman and Elder’s Goodman Beaver because “beaver” was in the title. Can you believe that? If the indy publishers united, we’d have enough market share to keep Capital in the game. I thought it was a no-brainer. I was the first to publicly declare for Capital. As critical days and weeks passed I looked around, and to my absolute dismay, I was standing in a very tiny army. Nearly everybody flocked to Diamond. This period was one of my first tensions with Gary Groth, because I presumed Fantagraphics would be an ally. Gary knew Capital was much more supportive of his product line, he knew the censorship history with Diamond, and he always claimed to take principled positions. Yet he didn’t go with Capital. I was also was disappointed with Dark Horse. I thought Mike Richardson would pick Capital. They came within a hair of a deal, I’m told, but ultimately went with Diamond. One by one, I saw people I thought would be natural allies let Capital City hang slowly in the wind. Thanks in part to a successful lawsuit against Marvel, Capital continued in business for another year or two after sides were picked. But during that year or so Kitchen Sink never had such amazing service. They produced dedicated KSP catalogs, really pushed our line, brought us down for marketing strategies, things like that. Our sales actually increased going with CCD alone. It didn’t hurt that we had The Crow graphic novel, which was the industry’s number one backlist seller month after month in the mid-’90s. We sold close to 400,000 copies of The Crow — the higher price graphic novel, not the comic books — mostly in the direct market. Many industry people thought it was absolutely suicidal to go with Capital City and, once the handwriting was on the wall, it was easy to call it a nuts move. But for me, it was about loyalty and principle. And, honestly, I thought it was also the smart choice. But it wasn’t the bandwagon choice. A heck of a lot of retailers who preferred Capital went out of their way to order as much as they could from the underdog. But at the end of the end of the day, you couldn’t have DC, Marvel, Image, Dark Horse, and the vast majority of publishers on one side and just Kitchen Sink, Viz, TSR — the original D&D company — and a few others anchoring the other side. So Capital went under. CBC: Yeah, dark days. Denis: It was. But I will also add this footnote: I saw a dozen or more distributors go under in the years prior to the final Capital-Diamond showdown, and every single time that happened Kitchen Sink and other publishers were stuck with the balances each distributor owed, often a lot of money. One especially ballsy one, Scott Rosenberg, who owned Sunrise Distribution, folded Sunrise, stiffed publishers, and put its assets into starting his own publishing company, Malibu. That frosted a lot of us. He eventually became a Hollywood player with Platinum Studios. But, in total contrast, when Capital City went under, Milton made sure that every creditor was paid. He could have declared bankruptcy and walked away, but he sold Capital’s inventory to Diamond, sold Capital’s real estate, and then worked out regular, reliable payments with me and every other creditor. There wasn’t one cent of debt remaining when Capital finally shut its doors. I had the utmost respect for the way they closed their business. It was truly classy. To this day my hat is off to them. I also can’t tell you how many countless times I’ve heard publishers and retailers tell me how unhappy they are dealing with a single monopoly distributor. But it could have been different if so many publishers hadn’t panicked and rushed to Diamond. The industry got what it deserves in terms of a monopoly. CBC: You think there’s room for anti-trust? Denis: It’s not big enough. Some people talked about that,

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!

but the comics industry is not a big enough for the federal government to intercede. CBC: What is not big enough, that Capital… Denis: The dominance of a single company in this small corner of the country’s commerce is not considered to be significant enough to be in the public interest, Jon. It’s not like breaking up Ma Bell. I should also add that when Capital City folded and I had to crawl back to Diamond Distribution, Steve Geppi, the owner, welcomed me back without any hard feelings. Some of his lieutenants might have been resentful, but Steve has personally always been a good guy to me. In fact, we used to square off against each other on the softball diamond when distributors and publishers would have annual softball games in San Diego. Nowadays its inconceivable that publishers and distributors could actually take most of Friday off in the middle of San Diego Comic-Con and just have fun —a fun but highly competitive game. Anyhow, I was always the pitcher and Steve one of the better players, and we still argue about whether I struck him out more or he hit home runs off me more, but that’s ultimately how we worked out any tensions that might have arisen from the comics industry’s distribution war. CBC: How do you see digital? Is that viable in our lifetime? Do you have any thoughts on that? Denis: I’m certainly not a Luddite who hates it. It’s ultimately just another distribution venue. The new generation obviously embraces the Digital Revolution and understandably. With an iPad or iPhone you have a virtually unlimited library of comics and books and graphics and so on. Who wouldn’t love that? For me, I still want to be in an easy chair

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: Denis Kitchen created the fictitious Steve Krupp (named for a notorious muntions company) to serve as Kitchen Sink’s publisher. Here’s the bowler-topped mogul with (apparently) Mrs. Krupp on the cover of the Krupp Distribution Company’s ’82 catalog. Below: By the end of that decade, KSP was regular publishing books, including their popular Nancy and Sluggo series featuring Ernie Bushmiller comic strips collected by topic.

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

and read a physical book because I’m comfortable with that tactile sensation. I like turning the pages and having walls of books. But I see my youngest daughter, Alexa, and my wife, Stacey, getting most of their news and information online, playing games and all that, and I get it. I get it. Were I much younger, I’d probably get some comics via ComiXology. But I don’t especially like reading comics digitally. That’s just me. My feeling is the more platforms you have, the better. They can coexist the same way movies, radio, TV and print have coexisted for a long time. Many people thought TV would kill radio. It didn’t. It changed radio. Many thought TV would kill movies. It didn’t. Instead television became a big revenue source for the film industry. Remember too that printed books are one of the most inefficient businesses around. Books are routinely overprinted, and over-shipped to retailers who have return privileges. Tons and tons of books get pulped all the time because publishers are optimists and you can never come close to matching supply and demand. Forests are decimated in the process, whereas digital media is cheap and clean and efficient and takes up no space. That said, I still prefer to hold a book. [chuckles] CBC: Do you have a catalog that you own of Kitchen Sink Press stuff that — ? Denis: No, and that’s because I set it up to be a creator-owned business. When KSP went under, everything reverted to the creators, which is the way I thought it should be. That made Fred Seibert, the final big investor in KSP, very angry with me at the end. Maggie Thompson interviewed me for The Comics Buyer’s Guide when I was fired in December 1998. She said, “So what’s going to happen to Kitchen Sink’s properties?” And I said, “They’re all going to revert to the creators.” Fred called me and started yelling because I publicly stated that. I said, “But, Fred, it’s the truth.” And he said, “Yeah, but most of the artists don’t know that.” That comment struck me as the epitome of an arrogant, cynical businessman who

thought it was better to dupe creators into thinking they still had obligations to his shell of a company when they didn’t. Anybody who understood the underground ethos or read his or her own contract would know. Fred certainly knew because he had done due diligence. But he figured artists don’t read contracts. CBC: Can we discuss the demise of Kitchen Sink? Denis: [Deep sigh] It’s still painful to think about, but sure, we can discuss it. CBC: Now what were things like in the early and mid-’90s? Denis: So I had known Kevin Eastman a bit. We’d met at conventions a few times after the Turtles hit it big and when he was promoting his new publishing company Tundra. He told during one of our first chats that when he was a teenager, he had mailed his pre-Turtle cartoons to a bunch of publishers, but I was the only one who responded and encouraged him. I hadn’t remembered that, of course. We got so many unsolicited submissions. But I knew I tried hard to send personal notes when time permitted. When you’re young and sending a submission you’re kind of baring your soul. You’re vulnerable. And when you get a form rejection letter back, there’s nothing more deflating. But if you get a personal rejection letter from an actual human more or less telling you, “I looked at your submission. We can’t use it, but thanks for considering us,” with maybe a line or two of suggestions, well, that’s a little easier to take, and that’s what I tried in general to do. So when Kevin told me that anecdote, I thought, “Well, I’m glad I was kind to the kid and I’m glad to see he made it big.” I never thought there would be anything beyond that. But one day in late 1992, I’ll never forget, I was watching a Packer game with some buddies at my house. It was a Sunday afternoon. In Wisconsin, when the Green Bay Packers are on TV, nobody calls. They know better, or they’re watching the game too. The phone rang and I remember saying to my friend Ed, “Who the hell would call in the middle of the game?” It was Kevin. I didn’t want to be rude. I mean, I really wanted to say, “Hey, this isn’t a good time, I’m watching a game,” but since it wasn’t a normal business hour, and Kevin wasn’t a casual caller, I’m thinking it might be important. So I calmly said, “What’s up?” He started talking kind of vaguely at first, beating around the bush. I wasn’t sure where he was going. But then he said, “So how’s your company doing out there?” I kind of hesitated. I knew the Turtles had been tremendously successful and Kevin had started Tundra a couple years earlier, but I didn’t know why he would even be asking such a question. And so in kind of a smart-alecky way, I answered, “Well, I’m burning all my awards in the fireplace to keep warm.” [laughs] And we both laughed. And after that kind of broke the ice, he said, “I’ve got a proposition for you. It’s either going to be your worst nightmare or your dream come true.” And I think all I really heard that day was the “dream come true” part. Then he dropped the bomb. He said, “Would you consider merging publishing companies?” He went on to explain that he’d sunk a ton of money into Tundra, put relatives in charge, and for various reasons it was not working. And he

said, “I admire what you’ve done with Kitchen Sink. If we merged our companies, you’d still be in charge, you’d take a headache off my hands, and I’ll provide resources you’ve never had before.” My brain began racing at the prospect and I forgot about football. I told Kevin his proposal was intriguing, and definitely food for thought. I agreed to fly out to see him in Northampton, Mass. I should predicate this by saying I already had a sense in the early ’90s that I was going to have to do something. The market was changing, big players were throwing their muscle around more than ever, outside investors were funding start-ups, and a company my size was going to have a tougher go of it. It was already getting harder to get shelf space for Kitchen Sink in comic shops. I had relied a lot on personal relationships with retailers, strong reviews, and prestige authors, and all those awards I was burning [chuckles], but most retailers felt compelled to give their limited shelf space to the heavily promoted brand names. Indies were getting squeezed hard. I didn’t have significant personal financial resources. I figured I could tough it out indefinitely, especially with my low overhead situation, but it wasn’t going to be easy. And so when Kevin implied he was willing to significantly invest in a combined operation, I had to seriously consider it. When we met, the editorial talks were a lot of fun and I felt he was a kindred spirit, so finally I said, “What exactly do you propose?” He said he wanted me to run the combined entity but he needed to acquire a controlling stake in Kitchen Sink, defined as 51%. My first reaction was, “I can’t do that.” I said, “I could imagine a 50/50 deal — you know, we’re partners — but that extra one percent, that bothers me.” He said, “I have a 50/50 deal with Peter Laird on the Turtles and we’re squabbling all the time. We have these long, drawnout Mirage meetings and we have our lawyers present and we always have to come up with uncomfortable compromises and one of us is always resenting the other.” He said, “I don’t want anything like that.” He said, “I just want to know if I put resources into our partnership that if there ever is a major disagreement, I have a veto power.” But he said, “That’s the only time I’d ever use it. I want you to run this thing and I want you to do what you’ve always done before. I just want to make it easier.” He stressed, “That extra percent is just my safeguard.” And he said, “I’ll make it worth your while. I’ll pay higher than market value for that 51% of stock. And beyond that, I’ll invest a substantial amount in the company.” He said the 51% was non-negotiable. He said if I couldn’t agree to that, then to just walk away. I said, “Let me sleep on it.” And I went back. I talked to my brother Jim and Dave Schreiner, my attorney, and close friends. I was in a bit of a quandary. I saw an opportunity, one that was very tempting, but at the same time, I hated the idea of giving up control, even if it might be more symbolic than real. And at the same time, I’d never in my life or career seen the chance to receive any serious money from what I had built for twenty-some years. I drew a modest salary. I was content, I was creatively gratified, I was in control of my little empire, but I wasn’t really making money. Everything was plowed right back into the company. Then Kevin dangled money for half my stock that was unlike money I ever expected to see. CBC: How old were you at the time? Denis: My mid-forties. CBC: So you’re thinking of … Denis: I’m thinking it’s a chance to cash out some equity and still do what I enjoy. I figured there might never be another opportunity. I liked Kevin, I trusted him, he seemed like a nice guy, and I knew he tried to do good things with Tundra. He attracted some top talent there. And, yeah, it was apparently a bit of a mess by that time, but sure, I could straighten out the mess. I rationalized that it would all work out. I finally decided, yes, I would take him up on his offer. We lost some valuable time when a Hollywood player tried to make our tentative deal a threesome. After we nixed that option, Kevin and I went back to our original deal. Neither of us after that handshake did what I would call proper due

diligence. I trusted that he had unlimited resources and he trusted that I had unlimited managerial skills [chuckles] and we both overestimated each other. We signed our deal. I came out east in the spring of 1993. The press release went out on April first, the official date, but a PR blunder in hindsight. After Kevin bought 51% of Kitchen Sink Press, Inc., our corporation acquired Tundra’s assets. So the headline read, “Kitchen Sink Acquires Tundra.” It was technically correct and Kevin and I giggled over it at the time, but many people thought the whole thing was an April Fool’s joke. It took a while for it to sink in to the industry that Tundra was really gone and there was a new, expanded Kitchen Sink, now in Northampton. I brought a half-dozen or so employees with me from Wisconsin, and I had to fire quite a few of Tundra’s to reach the optimum number. In retrospect, I fired and kept the wrong ones. It didn’t take long for the honeymoon to end and to realize I had walked into a real viper’s nest. Some inherited Tundra staffers were very hostile to the idea of somebody else coming in. They had enjoyed living off

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: Denis Kitchen’s fledgling underground comix imprint, created to help out a couple of Chicago boys tired of publishing their own anthology, became the singular outfit outside of San Francisco filling up head shop spinner racks with hippie yuks and mind-blowing antics. Courtesy of Denis and Stacey Kitchen, here’s a KSP statement attesting to the Wisconsin-based company’s status. Previous page: A good friend and frequent contributor to Kitchen’s publishing house is Trina Robbins, pioneer underground cartoonist, comic-book “herstorian,” anthologist, and frminist firebrand. Here’s a self-portrait, a Famous Cartoonist button, and covers to two of her Kitchen Sink efforts. 8

Above: Panel of the underground comix publishers at the 1973 Berkeley Con. From left to right: Dan McLeod (Vancouver’s Georgia Straight), Dave Moriaty (Rip Off Press), Kitchen, Ron Turner (Last Gasp), Don Donahue (Apex Novelties), and Don Schenker (Print Mint). Courtesy of D&SK. Below: Kitchen participated in a co-op catalog with other of the smaller comic book publishers including Fantagraphics and Rip Off Press. Here’s the cover of that oneshot, self-cover catalog, New Age Comics, printed at comic-book size. Bottom: Local membership buttons of the United Cartoon Workers of America, which hoped to unionize comic book artists and writers.

a print shop. His brother-in-law, a cousin, and various friends were hired because of their relationship to him, not primarily because of skills. There were some good people that, in retrospect, I should have retained, and others I wish now I had fired the first day, but didn’t. I got some real crap Machiavellian advice from a couple of well-placed bad apples. That first year, 1993, was a struggle in many ways, but we made a profit, and a lot of terrific books were coming out. We just about swept the Harvey and Eisner Awards the next summer for the 1993 titles, and I was thinking maybe the worst internal politics might be passing. But there were ominous rumblings in the background, and shortly before Christmas that year, Kevin came into the offices one evening when I was working alone late. He wrote alone for a while in an office next to mine and then handed me a long hand-written letter, summarizing the state of his various business affairs. They weren’t good. Several things he had invested in were going south. The Mutant Turtles, his golden goose for quite a few years, were beginning a significant decline. A company called Limelight was imploding. A promising property called Underwhere was going nowhere. Shutting down his separate Tundra UK cost a bundle. Plus he’d committed significant funds to building his ill-fated Words & Pictures Museum. Meanwhile, we both had high hopes for Cadillacs and Dinosaurs, the licensed property I had developed earlier in Wisconsin, based on Mark Schultz’s Xenozoic Tales. It was airing that last quarter of 1993 on CBS’s animated Saturday morning line-up. But it got slotted against Fox’s new Power Rangers show and was getting killed in the ratings, something we never saw coming, because CBS had previously dominated Saturday mornings and nobody had ever heard of the Rangers. Tyco had invested $15 million in a C&D toy line that was rolling out as the ratings were floundering. So a property we both thought could be a KSP franchise and cash cow was disintegrating in front of us. Still, I assumed Kevin had quite deep pockets and we’d manage our way

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

what everyone jokingly called the “Kevin Eastman teat,” and they didn’t like it that the teat was being pulled away; that somebody was going to run it like a real publishing company. Tundra was set up so that artists controlled all decisions. Tundra didn’t even have editors — it had “straw bosses” who let artists make all the decisions, from what kind of paper to use, the format, the marketing plan, embossed foil stamping — you name it — everything that ordinarily an editor, production staff, and publisher oversaw: costs that would be bid-quoted, put on spread sheets and weighed against projected sales as part of a profit and loss projection. You know: how many copies your sales and marketing people think a title will sell based on comparable titles, what it costs to manufacture, with and without certain bells and whistles, what to spend on promotion, what the creator’s advance and royalty is, and so forth. There are these tested, long-standing ways normal publishers — even hippie/dippy publishers like me — do to figure out what the investment will be and what realistic returns project to be. Tundra didn’t do any of that. They just basically let the artists decide everything and then Kevin would pay the bill. People at all levels took advantage of his misplaced generosity. He later went on record saying he lost several million dollars — I forget the exact amount — over the first three years. CBC: The first three years of Tundra? Denis: Yeah. In an interview with The Comics Journal, he cites the actual amount. Tundra had attracted some outstanding talents. But their massive losses came mainly from the misplaced “let-artists-decide-everything” policy, combined with ineptness. First, he put an uncle in charge, whose only experience was that he had worked at

through the minefield. But, barely six months into my move east, Kevin said he couldn’t meet his financial obligations to me personally — his stock purchase was due in installments — and he couldn’t invest all the money he had promised to invest in our company. In fact, the basic accounting was unresolved. I was advised to fire Tundra’s financial officer when I arrived, but his junior replacement was over her head. We underestimated how complicated it would be to bring together two very different systems. Kitchen Sink paid royalties to creators and Tundra had a profit share, even though nothing was profitable. Reconciling them was daunting. I had also been assured Kevin was “investing” a million and a half dollars in working capital but suddenly his attorneys were calling what he was putting in “loans.” Our fundamental accounting, our fundamental understanding, wasn’t jiving and it was clear Kevin was feeling tremendous financial stress. I was overwhelmed, working 24/7, and feeling like I had inherited a worm’s nest, and making solid progress during the first few months. Accounting wasn’t my strength and I assumed someone like Kevin had ace people crunching numbers and I’d inherit somebody competent on that side at least. But it wasn’t the case. It’s tough to condense in a conversation like this, but whatever our misunderstandings, it was all a moot point. Kevin was holding the purse strings and he said, “We’ve got six months, basically, to find a white knight or we’re f*cked.” That was my first real clue Kevin had been seriously bleeding cash from various wounds. I was pretty shocked and depressed because I had uprooted myself, put my Wisconsin property up for sale, uprooted the employees who came with me, and I had no idea there would be such a short leash on making our combined operations function smoothly. A hundred things raced through my mind. What projects are immediately affected? What’s happening to all the editorial projects we’re committed to? What has to be killed or slashed? How many people will we have to let go? All these things are going through my head. But mainly, it was, “If Kevin can’t sustain this, then who’s the white knight who can?’” CBC: The plot thickens. So how did that play out? Denis: Eastman legally owned 51% of Kitchen Sink, because even though his cash flow was challenged, he hadn’t defaulted on the first installment or two to me personally for that 51%. But his local primary attorney, told me frankly that if KSP went under I could kiss that balance goodbye. And so he was in control of the next step. One of Kevin’s other attorneys brought Ocean Capital to the table. Ocean was an investment banker group in Los Angeles headed by a guy named Joel Reader. Joel flew out and had some long conversations with me in early 1994. He and a staffer interviewed everyone. They analyzed our sales and receivables and projections — really examined us inside-out over a few weeks. Then, basically, he confronted me with what is known in the corporate world as a cram-down, exercising financial leverage to force a deal on existing shareholders. He said, “We’ll rescue Kitchen Sink under certain conditions,” and then he laid out the terms. In raw terms, Ocean would provide working capital and financial expertise in exchange for about 90% of the company. Kevin and I would each be reduced to single-digit equity. It was conditioned on my staying and running the creative side of the company. The specific goal was to build the company and its profile for a couple or three years, then go public with an IPO. When a company goes public, the value of your stock holdings and options can make a huge jump. Joel reasoned that with Kitchen Sink’s quarter century in business, with prestigious authors like Eisner, Crumb, and Alan Moore; with The Crow; and history of awards; with Kevin’s high profile Turtle connection, they could sell a very sexy company profile. And then at some point after the initial public offering everyone could walk away with a nice pocketful of money, especially Ocean Capital. And the real lure for me was, Joel said, that I’d finally have the capital to develop dream projects and not be

distracted by the corporate side and the bullsh*t stuff — that I could do what I really wanted to focus on. Kevin was already on board because he had a dozen other crises to deal with and thought this was his best exit strategy for KSP. But they couldn’t proceed without me. So, after Joel Reader and Kevin’s attorney laid out the whole scenario, they said, “So are you on board or not?” Once again, I was facing a conundrum. I didn’t really like these new guys. I didn’t feel any real comfort level with them. The cram-down was a repulsive strategy to me. I certainly didn’t like the prospect of going from owning virtually 100% of the company in a short time to less than half and then only four or five percent. But on the other hand, they struck me as very smart, very competent investment bankers, with a clear business plan that, on paper anyway, could work. My sharp reduction in equity would be offset in part by a guaranteed salary at a big raise for three years, and Ocean agreed to immediately pay the note Kevin owed me. As a practical matter, if I said no, it all collapses. I probably get nothing whatever, unless I want to risk litigating. If I say yes, the company is salvaged (at least short term), planned projects stay on track, employees keep their jobs, and there’s a bonus pay-off

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: Father Denis and daughter Scarlet share a moment in 1977 as they gaze upon the original artwork of Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant. Courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen. Below: Perhaps the most comprehensive collection of the papers of an underground publisher was recently acquired for generations of scholars to come by the Columbia University’s Rare Books & Manuscript Library as Denis donated the 1969–99 Kitchen Sink Archives. Here’s a mere sampling of D.K.’s exhaustive files.

down the road for all shareholders. So, after consulting with my own trusted Wisconsin attorney, and my brother (who held a small chunk of stock), and closest friends, I okay’d the arrangement. The papers get signed and I’m still the president and publisher, with a very nice raise, and some stability, but now for the first time in my career I have a boss: Joel Reader, who’s now the chairman of the new Kitchen Sink board of directors, which of course is now dominated by Ocean. Joel was a kind of a nervous, fidgety guy. He was a serious suit and tie guy who my marketing director Jamie Riehle called “Fred Astaire on acid,” meaning he kind of resembled Fred Astaire, but he had a kind of trippy quality to him. Anyway, Ocean was not headquartered in L.A. by coincidence. Hollywood was integral to their endgame. The plan was to pitch Kitchen Sink as a repository of intellectual properties that could be adapted for film and merchandise. We had at least some track record there. The Crow was huge. We were selling a ton of Crow graphic novels, thanks to the movie’s success and notoriety. We were selling around 20,000 copies a month of that alone, month after month, con-

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Above: Courtesy of Denis & Stacey Kitchen, a scan of the original art D.K. drew initially for Insight magazine, the Milwaukee Journal’s Sunday magazine, to accompany a 1976 feature on the then-novel concept of a comic book convention. The following year, the cartoonist contributed it for use as the souvenir book cover for the Chicago Comicon. In Oddly Compelling, Denis writes, “I was able to sneak in plugs for Snarf and my personal favorite characters and artists… But the shopping bag plug for my favorite comics/ nostalgia shop in Milwaukee, Dale Manesis’s Good Old Days, was considered too-blatant a free advertisement and was censored in the printed [Insight] version.”

stantly reprinting it. I was sending its creator James O’Barr very large royalty checks. And even though Cadillacs and Dinosaurs had not been renewed by CBS, Ocean saw that as another good example of what we were capable of doing on that front. I stressed to Joel and his team that it’s impossible to consistently develop comics that can become big hits like The Crow. I told them, “You can’t hit a homerun like that very often. This is a company that will hit a lot of singles and occasionally, a double and just every once in a while, a homerun.” Joel said, “We expect you to create and acquire properties that are more likely than not to be optioned.” They were adamant about that as a key part of the plan. To that end the new Kitchen Sink board of directors had several film producers, including Robert Rehme, who was President of the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences. I saw him on TV on center stage opening the Academy Awards ceremony around that time. He and his partner Mace Neufeld had produced A-list pictures, like Patriot Games. A producer of the Hellraiser series was another board member, so they were pulling in some heavy hitters. But Kevin, Will Eisner, and I were also on the board, so a third of the nine at least were cartoonists [chuckles]. Mace Neufeld’s son Brad was brought in to be our V.P. of entertainment with an office in Beverly Hills. And Scott Hyman, the son of the Eastman lawyer who put Ocean and KSP together became our V.P. of business affairs in Northampton. They were intent about building a team with connections to the entertainment business. Joel took out a full-page color ad in Variety to announce Ocean’s involvement with Kitchen Sink, and he brought me out to his lavish Los Angeles mansion to party with people he thought could be investors or helpful connections. It was a heady time on one level. But at the same time Joel was in my face constantly, and pinching pennies at every turn. Dropping money on a full-page ad in Variety made sense to him, but getting him to approve advances to creators, or even paying small bills became pulling teeth. Joel had to approve every single expenditure, no matter how small, from his L.A. office, which was a pain in the ass to the Northampton office. He said to take the company public, we had to show growth, and we so had to watch every dollar, but I was never a spendthrift. His micromanaging was taking up a lot of time and slowing down the creative side that was supposed to be driving everything. The first year with Kevin, KSP showed a profit, and he said, “We’ve got to build on that. We have to have the lines on the chart moving upward.” One reason they decided to invest in KSP was that the comics industry as a whole, which they intensively researched, had been growing at a double-digit rate for several years in a row. The industry chart was steadily going up so the Ocean guys made projections based on continued growth, which is always dangerous. As fate would have it, the first year they were in charge, the comics industry started going the other direction, shrinking by double digits because it’s… CBC: It’s the comics industry. Denis: Yeah, it’s always been a roller-coaster ride. So right away, that bollixed things because Joel assured the Ocean investors, the people he had to answer to, that both our sales and profits would steadily and significantly increase. When the industry shrank, everybody’s sales shrank, including ours. We weren’t alone. It was overall a disappointing year. Joel Reader, as it turned out, had staked his personal reputation on turning Kitchen Sink around. What I hadn’t know earlier was he had the same essential group of investors put a lot of money into another company prior to KSP, some kind of interactive 3-D movie experience, and that venture failed. KSP was his chance to prove his true genius, and this was his last chance. I didn’t know that. So by the second year, the company’s still not turning around and we’re eating through the seven-figure investment. We’re still not showing a profit. We have a couple of shareholder meetings in New York, where I gave a slideshow about upcoming projects and then Joel followed with numbers and projections and he’s

exaggerating, and I’m feeling uncomfortable. He’s assuring everyone that we’re still on track to meet the IPO timeline. I don’t want to stand up in the shareholder meeting and yell “Liar!” — but I’m keenly aware he’s shading and exaggerating to the gathering where we’re going and when. And I also know I’m going to be called on the carpet when we don’t meet the expectations, so I’m not thrilled. But I’m trying to be a team player, and I’m hoping that the market will improve, we’ll have another break out or two, and by some miracle we can meet Joel’s projections. Point is, by the end of that second year, the numbers are not looking good. We’re not going to come anywhere close to meeting what he projected and we’re not going to show a profit. And the day after Christmas in 1995, I’m at home and I get a call from somebody at Ocean Capital. They said, “Joel’s dead. He hung himself on Christmas Day.” [long pause] So… CBC: So, there’s a lot of drama going on behind the scenes while you’re trying to make comics? Denis: It’s pretty intense, yes. So next the board of directors appoints an interim chairman, a partner in Ocean and a KSP shareholder who’s an older guy, kind of a grandfatherly figure, named Pierre Schoenheimer. I actually liked Pierre. He was the only guy in the Ocean group that I ever warmed to. He always asked the smartest questions and he seemed to take a genuine interest in the core of the business, the comics and books. He’d expressed pride in turning around other companies. In fact, he told me he’d never failed to turn a company around in his entire career. So I’m starting to feel pretty good about our prospects again. Pierre says, ”We’ll stay the course, fix some things, and just delay the IPO timing,” and just as his regime, his new strategy is about to kick in, Pierre gets into a serious car accident on Long Island and nearly dies. He’s severely incapacitated. He has to begin a long-term rehabilitation, so he’s out of the picture. And then an Ocean lawyer in New York takes over. The lawyer has no interest in turning the company around. He just wants this thing out of his hair, and wants his personal investment back. So he basically says to me, “We’re done with this company. We’ll sell it or we’ll liquidate it. If you want to buy it back, you can find someone to help you buy it back. Here’s the price we want. We need it by this date. If you can’t do it, we’re just going to sell the assets and everybody’s gone. That’s the end of it.” He said, “If you want to save your company, you got basically six months to do it.” CBC: The drama doesn’t end anytime soon? Denis: I’m afraid not. At that point, I’m desperately looking for yet another white knight to help me reacquire the company. Out of my own pocket I hired a local guy named Don Todrin, who ran an outfit called The Work Out Group, to help me navigate the waters. Don was an old hippie who once ran a custom rolling paper company that I had done business with back in the early ’70s. He seemed like a jovial guy and a kindred spirit. So he jumped in and we’re reaching out to a number of people and entities. One that’s very interested is Jim Lee and his company, Wildstorm. Here was one of the founders of Image, someone who had both artistic and business skills, and who had been part of this bold move, Image, where creators took charge. I had to respect that kind of entrepreneur. My team and I had numerous conference calls with Lee’s business right-hand, John Nee. The deal with Jim Lee seemed close to happening and then suddenly, [snaps fingers] it just went cold and there was nothing, and no explanation. I didn’t find out why until years later, when John Nee, who was then V.P. of business development at DC Comics, told me over a lunch. He said, “You’re probably wondering why our deal fell through.” I said, “Yeah, I’ve always been curious.” He said, “We didn’t want your brother, and we knew he was your right-hand, and that would be a deal-breaker for you. So we just let it go.”

And at the time of our negotiations, Nee was probably right. It would have been a deal breaker. The real kicker is that my brother James stopped talking to me not long after Kitchen Sink went under. So we couldn’t consummate the deal with Wildstorm because I wouldn’t abandon Jim, who soon afterward abandoned me. Life’s little ironies, huh? Of course, in a strange twist of fate, Lee’s Wildstorm was itself acquired by DC. So, in theory, had we made that deal with Lee, Kitchen Sink might have become an imprint of DC. But I think that would have been truly miserable. I couldn’t conceive fitting into that corporate structure! But, getting back to the ultimate outcome, simultaneous with Lee and Nee we’re having other conversations, and one is with Fred Seibert, who I’d met a couple years earlier when he

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: Denis, Sheena, and Scarlet Kitchen mess around in D.K.’s arcade game collection housed in his Princeton, Wisconsin barn. From 1978. Left inset: Farmer Denis, far left, poses proudly with fellow hayseeds and KSP workers Tom Casey and Mike Newhall in a photo from 1980. Both pix courtesy of D&SK. Below: “Self-Portrait as Quarter Moon,” D.K., 2007.

Above: Uncut sheet of R. Crumb trading cards published by Kitchen Sink and available today from Denis Kitchen Publishing Co., LLC. Below: Crumb’s beloved bride Aline had her own comix published by KSP, notably The Bunch’s Power Pak Comics #1 & 2. Here’s the cover of #1 [1978]. Inset right: Crumb and Kominsky-Crumb’s self-portraits for the KSP Famous Cartoonist Series of buttons.

them out of the picture I might be very interested in acquiring Kitchen Sink if it’s for the right price and you stay on board and if we can together do a plan that makes sense.” Bottom line is Don Todrin and I met in New York with the Ocean guys and did a kind of reverse cram-down. We offered a price considerably less than they wanted, but more than they’d get by selling the inventory and furniture and whatever they’d have in a real fire sale. Don was very good at that sort of thing. He was an attorney and an old hippie and we got a price that Fred said he’d pay. So Fred paid Ocean for the assets and negotiated a deal whereby Jim and I would be significant shareholders, and the next step was raising working capital. Fred wasn’t particularly rich. He basically used his Hanna-Barbera payout to buy KSP. But Fred assured us he’d quickly raise X-amount from some wellheeled friends, and, to some degree, he did. Penn Jillette from Penn & Teller was one notable investor, but it was a slow, grinding process and the company was just chugging along, missing on a cylinder or two, desperately needed the full infusion to get back on track. During the drawn-out Ocean dealings, I had to lay off the majority of the staff. We vacated the really nice office space in a building Kevin owned and moved into an awful space adjoining our warehouse in an ancient plastics factory. A leaky toilet on a

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

was president of Hanna-Barbera, which was then part of Ted Turner’s empire. Fred sought me out when KSP opened its Beverly Hills office, and we had a couple of very friendly meetings, discussing ways we might work together. Fred had struck me as being very bright, and far thinking. He introduced me to his close friends Richard Foos and Harold Bronson, the guys who started Rhino Records. We thought all kinds of things might come out of those conversations. Anyway, when Turner merged with Time-Warner around 1996, Fred got eased out of Hanna-Barbera. But he was given some kind of a — CBC: Golden parachute? Denis: Well, silver, anyway. But yeah, Fred got a pretty sizable severance package. He was a fan of Kitchen Sink and we had talked earlier about doing some business. So when the corporate reverses happened in both of our cases, he said, “Look, I didn’t like the Ocean group either. With

floor above sometimes dripped into my office. We needed, first and foremost, just a suitable workplace, and soon we moved into a building in downtown Northampton, and hired back many of the editors, designers, and others. While we were fund-raising and finalizing our deal with Fred, Don Todrin was getting more and more involved, never as an employee but as a paid “consultant,” now on Fred’s dime. Fred, who was in L.A., liked Don, liked his brashness and bluntness. And, for quite a while, I thought Don was an ally and a friend. I wasn’t tuned in to local politics, so it took me a while to find out Todrin was a convicted felon who’d been involved in local bank fraud. He had been a lawyer, but had to resign from the bar when he was convicted. He was wearing one of those ankle bracelets so they could monitor his movements. He was basically under house arrest after hours. I began to realize Todrin was a schemer and wheeler-dealer who was boring from within, and working in conflict with me. He had transparent self-interests. You may remember Kitchen Sink Press was producing candy. We had Robert Crumb’s Devil Girl as both chocolate bars in cigar-type boxes, and hard candy metal tins. And we were doing Freak Brothers Munchie bars, Cadillacs & Dinosaurs, Bone, Betty Boop Bars, a whole line, and they were doing quite well. We were selling them to a lot of non-traditional venues outside the comic market, like Urban Outfitters and some food chains. The candy was profitable, and publishing was marginal at that time. Don told Fred, “Gut the publishing. There’s no money in publishing. Make it strictly a candy company.” He promised Fred, “Let me run the show and I’ll get all of your investment bank and plenty more within a year.” I reminded Fred that we had agreed we wanted an intellectual property business, that the core value was in publishing, and that candy was a spin-off from publishing. It was a good profit center, to our credit. I’d produced a lot of merchandise over the years. I said with the right team and his patience, we’d ride the storm and make this work based on what I’d been doing for the previous 30 years, with publishing at the center. So I gave him my counter plan, which couldn’t assure him he’d have his investment back in a year. That would have been a false promise and an idiotic thing to say. So, toward the end of 1999, Fred was getting very conflicting information. Meanwhile, because of Todrin’s increasing presence, some people started quitting, including Jamie Riehle, one of my most valued employees. Jamie couldn’t tolerate even being in the same room with Todrin. Big promising future projects I wanted to do, like the Genesis book by Crumb, for example, were on hold because of the power struggle and restricted cash allocations and people quitting. Fred had to make a big decision. I forced the issue: Was it Don or me? Remember, Fred’s in Los Angeles. He’s not seeing the day-today dramas and personality conflicts; he’s busy with his new animation business. He’s preoccupied. This is something he invested in, but he’s not focused on it. So he took the information and arguments we each gave him and he said to me, “I’m going to a woman I know who I respect greatly, who’s a very skillful businesswoman, and objective. I’m going to let her decide because I’m thoroughly conflicted.” So he called me around mid-December of 1998 and he said, “I talked to my mentor, I gave her both your sides.” He said she looked at everything and her advice was, ‘If I were you, Fred, I’d go with the asshole.” So then Fred said, “Sorry, Denis.” And that was it. I was fired. I was in shock. I didn’t seeing it coming. I said, “You know, the guy you just called ‘the asshole’ is not only an asshole, he’s a felon, wearing a bracelet on his ankle, convicted of bank fraud, and you trust him over my track record?” He

just said, “I made my decision, Denis.” I did convince Fred to change the name of the company because I was embarrassed at that point to have the name Kitchen associated. So they called the candy company True Confections. Within about a year, it was belly-up and I saw an e-mail a local reporter forwarded me where Fred had said, “I’m on my way to Northampton to kill Don Todrin!” [laughter] That’s how angry he was. So, I think he realized he made a big mistake, but it all got very complicated and ugly toward the end. That’s about as brief an encapsulation as I can give you. There’s no short answer to your original question. Essentially once I made that first fateful decision to give up control, I was no longer in charge of my own destiny and the company was increasingly pulled in commercial directions, which I understand. The ideal situation would have been if Kevin and I had gotten together before

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Inset left: Kitchen chum Will Eisner contributed to the KSP Famous Cartoonist button series. Below: The renowned cartoonist also partnered with KSP to produce a series of Spirit trading cards. Here’s a limited edition, uncut and signed sheet.

Above: See page five. Courtesy of D&SK. Below: Alas, retired managing editor George Lockwood did not live to see publication last year of his book on comic strips.

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

he threw away millions in Tundra. He was a good guy — I never had a problem with Kevin himself, just his lieutenants. If he and I had grown KSP intelligently, with a sane business plan and a first class crew stem to stern, but… Why am I even speculating? I didn’t happen that way. A different question would have been what happened if I stayed in Wisconsin and in total control? Would I — could I — have adapted and survived or thrived with my own resources? CBC: So where were you psychologically at the end of this? Denis: When Fred said, “You’re out,” it was the first time in 30 years that I wasn’t immersed in KSP. I was lost for a while. I don’t think I was clinically depressed, but I sure went into a deep funk. I basically — I didn’t do anything for a while. I think first I just kind of stared out the window and started taking long walks in my woods…. CBC: Were you bitter?

Below: Courtesy of CBC pal José Villarrubbia, the Russ Heath biography page from the 1970s Spanish comics anthology Totem, which included these panels from the Warren horror classic, “The Shadow of the Axe,” written by Dave Sim. Inset right: That issue also included the Heath story (written by Saturday Night Live’s “Mr. Mike,” Michael O’Donoghue) “Cowgirls at War.” Here’s a detail of one of the curvaceous stars of that tale of bondage amidst battle, which appeared in The National Lampoon Encyclopedia of Humor.

Denis: Very bitter. Yes, very bitter. I really thought at the end of the day, Fred was smart enough to see Don was a con man selling him a bill of goods. But I think Fred’s wife never approved of him putting their nest egg into Kitchen Sink. And, when things didn’t flourish right away, I think she was saying, “I want our money back in our own bank account.” When I couldn’t assure him he’d see it short term, and Don did, that’s all he heard. If I had lied and said, “Get rid of Don. Do it my way and you’ll have your money back in a year and a half,” he might have still gone with me because he liked me and I’m sure he trusted me. But the truth couldn’t compete with the promise. Don was a good hope salesman, and I was selling realism. So basically, the first few months of 1999, I didn’t do much of anything. I wanted to think hard about the next step. I didn’t feel like drawing or writing at that point. So I carved new paths in the woods. I trimmed trees. I puttered. I had a dormant collection of postcards and, just to relax, I pulled the handful of albums off the shelves and I started sorting loose postcards and putting them in order and I kind of lost myself in busywork and hobbies. CBC: So how did you get yourself back on track professionally? Denis: Will Eisner called sometime during my self-imposed retreat and he said, “What are you going to do next?” I said, “I really don’t know. I’m in a deep funk.” He said, “Would you be my literary agent?” I had been his original art agent as a sideline, but that was different. I said, “Really? You don’t need a literary agent, Will. You’ve always handled your own business matters.” He said, “Yes, and I’ve always enjoyed it. But the sand grains are falling through the hourglass. I’d like more time to create new work. I think it’d be good for both of us if you handle the business side for me. Please consider this.” Around the same time I was in touch with Judy Hansen, who had married an old friend of mine from the Bugle days. She was an attorney and had been a vice president at Kitchen Sink for a couple years in the early ’90s, and, coincidentally, she had been urging me to start an agency with her. And so with both of them counseling that, and feeling kind of aimless, I said, “All right, for the short term anyway, let’s do that.” So I agreed to form an agency and Will was our first client. Then we started adding other clients and it became a business unto itself.

Above: Perhaps the most lucrative arrangement in the 30-year history of the publishing house was Kitchen Sink’s dealings with Robert Crumb, whose art adorned comic books, trading cards, serigraphs, buttons, album covers, T-shirts, and even candy bar packaging. Here is the outside and inside wrapping of El Crumbo’s Devil Girl Choco-Bar. Below inset: Courtesy of Heritage, Robert Crumb’s original cover art for his XYZ Comics — the “Last Word in Comics!” — published by KSP in 1972.

CBC: You were able to pull a good income from that? Denis: Yeah, for a part-time gig. Unless you have lots of bestselling clients, an agency is kind of a feast-or-famine situation. But at one point the Kitchen & Hansen Agency had probably 20 clients. One quarter, somebody’s earning well, and another isn’t. It’s a business where you’re earning a small slice of every client’s income for the deals you put together. There was one deal early on where I negotiated a $100,000 advance. For what — when it you boil it down — was one day’s work, I got a $10,000 commission. So I started to think, “Well, this is sweet.” But of course, that doesn’t happen every day or every year. But it gave me a sense of what was possible. CBC: You said Kitchen & Hansen was part-time. What else were you doing? Denis: I’d already had the Denis Kitchen Art Agency, which was a business Stacey and I had selling original art for Harvey Kurtzman, and Will and a few other artists or estates. Then I started what I called a “hobby publishing” entity called Denis Kitchen Publishing. DKP published Harvey’s The Grasshopper and the Ant and Crumb’s Mr. Natural Postcard Book. Then I published Crumb’s music card sets, the blues, jazz, and country cards and then a set of his comic characters. This was a way to keep my foot in publishing, but it was never a terribly serious or significant-sized company. But add those part-time gigs together, along with freelancing and, yeah, I did all right. But being a literary agent was never something I particularly enjoyed. It was something I could do. CBC: Is that why your agent hat on the cover looks evil? [chuckles] Denis: The Ku Klux Klan hood? Yeah, that’s pretty subtle, right? It was good that Will called me that day. I have no regrets taking that path. But I don’t want to agent forever. I’ve slowly shrunk that aspect of my career over the past few years. Judy is a full-time agent with many, many clients of her own, but my partnership with her is now down to just a handful of valued clients. Kitchen, Lind & Associates, the new partnership I started with John Lind some years back also initially focused on representing cartoonists and estates, and we still retain some that we personally like, but we’ve greatly

reduced that component. John and I want to make books. That’s our passion. For several years we “packaged” books for big houses like Abrams, Chronicle, and Bloomsbury. But we want total creative control, so that’s why we’re starting the Kitchen Sink Books imprint, bringing back that name as a variant of Kitchen Sink Press. That’s an exciting prospect for us. I want to make books. I want to be creative. Agenting and deal-making helps clients but takes a certain toll. It often involves confrontation, arguing and sparring with lawyers and such. It’s like going into a shark tank. Why do it if you don’t have to? CBC: But it was a bridge? Denis: Yeah, it was a bridge. No regrets. But now, in weird way, Kitchen Sink’s come full-circle. Fred’s group, that old corporation is long defunct. They let the Kitchen Sink Press trademark lapse, we checked. When they still owned the “Kitchen Sink” trademark I tried to buy it back at one point. But they wouldn’t even respond so I just waited and waited until it lapsed. But rather than use the identical “Press” and the same faucet symbol, we made it “Kitchen Sink Books.” John made a sink the visual symbol. It’s now a fully registered trademark. We’re affiliated with Dark Horse. John and I fully assemble and design the books and Dark Horse does the rest: manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, the “fun” part. [chuckles] CBC: All right, so what was the idea for The United Cartoonists Workers of America? Denis: Our union? [chuckles] That was more symbolic than real. For my generation of underground artists, it was we’re in charge of our own destinies, we’re not going to take sh*t from publishers, The Man, however you want to define it — breaking the chain of the old way publishing was done. It symbolized the business model we embraced whereby the artist owns the copyright, the artist owns the art, and the money may come through the publisher but it’s allocated in an equitable way. Underground cartoonists received a royalty, not a flat rate. The artists controlled ancillary and international rights, everything. It turned the old model upside down. The United Cartoonists Workers of America with the fist breaking the chains repre-

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: Peter Poplaski, frequent Denis Kitchen collaborator and longtime associate, is — besides being a terrific artist in his own right — a magnificent mimic of other artists’ styles. Witness these joint KSP-DC Comics products, exquisitely rendered by Pete P. Below: Longtime fan Ye Editor had hoped to include a Poplaski article to accompany the Denis Kitchen feature but, alas, we could not reach the American expatriate currently residing in the same French village as close friends Robert and Aline Crumb. Neighbor Crumb, in fact, contributed an introduction to the 2012 Denis Kitchen Publishing release, The Sketchbook Adventures of Peter Poplaski.

with some of us. Spain Rodriguez and I used to joke about it because he, more than any of us, was a real political activist, a serious lefty. He was especially proud of that union symbol. He and Crumb, in particular, put variants of the UCWA symbol on their comic book covers. Spain and Crumb actually attended a meeting early on in San Francisco of what was probably the last vestige of the “Wobblies” — the International Workers of the World. The IWW was at one point the radical spearhead of the union movement, when it was rough and tumble and when companies routinely hired Pinkertons to beat and shoot strikers and agitators. So they attended the meeting thinking that it might be really cool to affiliate the UCWA with the IWW, to give the organization some actual claim to be a bona fide union, especially with the IWW and its proud radical tradition. But the meeting was really boring and they realized anything they attempted there would only be a bureaucratic burden and so they quickly dismissed the notion. Occasionally I will get somebody, usually an academic — or labor historian — who finds our various UCWA union buttons via Google and they’ll contact me. They want to know about the history. And when I tell them what I’m basically summarizing to you here they are invariably disappointed that there wasn’t something more tangible to it.… CBC: How could there be, right? I mean it’s — Denis: Yeah. [chuckles] I mean it’s cartoonists, not auto workers. Will told me that way back in the ’30s, during the Great Depression, some artists and cartoonists actually held some meetings in New York, talking about unionizing, at a time when there would have been a legitimate reason to organize, and serious inequities to address. But he said you just can’t organize artists. [chuckles] CBC: Wrangling cats? Denis: Exactly. CBC: You’ve mentioned that at times your collecting has subsidized your business…?

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

sented those ideals, which were unheard of for cartoonists just before us. The key word was “equitable.” I was in kind of a weird position because publishers, at least traditional publishers, were the enemy, and I’m a publisher and I’m also involved in the union, how weird is that? I was always feeling a little two-headed. I’m a cartoonist at heart, but I’m a publisher because somebody’s got to take care of business. Gilbert Shelton was an owner of Rip Off too, so I wasn’t alone having a foot in both camps. Could the UCWA have been a functional union in terms of paying dues and having union meetings and negotiating as a united body? No, it never came to that. First of all, the underground artists were getting a fair deal. So no one had to picket outside Kitchen Sink or Last Gasp or Rip Off to demand a royalty or to have art returned. It was simply the symbol of breaking away from the mainstream style of doing business. And the local buttons were just an affirmation of being part of that community. If you had six or more cartoonists, [chuckles] then you could establish a local and get a local button. CBC: Now how many did you have? Denis: I think I made official unions buttons for ten or eleven cities. But I recently received an application from Portland, so the union is still growing. Portland will be Local 11 or 12. CBC: Are there any meetings? Denis: Not in any formal sense, no. But there was definitely a sense of comradeship, at least

Denis: Vintage jukeboxes, for example. In the early ’70s I got in on jukeboxes when they were $50 each, sometimes free. People would say, “Get that thing out of my garage. If you haul it, you can have it.” CBC: For real? Denis: Yeah. Oh, yeah. They were just big, ugly things that often didn’t work, and very few people at that point appreciated them. Remember, these played 78s, an obsolete speed. Unless you had our Crumb record of course. CBC: Did you restore them or did you know what to do? Denis: I didn’t have time to truly restore them. But I had a rule early on that I wouldn’t pay more than $75 for a jukebox. I advertised. I had free ad space in the Bugle-American for a long time, then I moved up north to Princeton and with another partner, Mike Jacobi, I started another weekly paper that was kind of a rural alternative and — CBC: What was it called? Denis: The Fox River Patriot. We haven’t even touched on that. That’s a whole other thing. And at the same time, Mike and I had another paper, a monthly called Yesteryear, which was for antique collectors and dealers. That one was mostly Mike’s toy. But I co-owned Yesteryear and one of the benefits was free advertising. I’d run quarter-page “I Buy Jukeboxes” ads there, when hardly anyone else was seeking jukes. So I’d get calls from all over the place. I had an old pick-up truck on the farm, so when I had time and somebody called, “I’ve got an old Wurlitzer, you interested?” I’d pay $50 or $75, haul it in my pickup, and stash it in my barn next to the other jukeboxes. I just had an instinct about them, similar to when I was buying five copies each of the early Marvel comics and setting them aside. The craftsmanship on the ’30s and ’40s jukes was great. They were gorgeous, especially when lit up. Anyhow, I built an inventory of about thirty or forty vintage jukes, which was easy because I had a largely empty barn at the time. Then sometime in 1975, Oui magazine came out with a cover story on vintage jukeboxes. It showed these Los Angeles dealers who were restoring and selling machines for at that time, $1,500 and $3,000, and up. So the moment I instinctively knew was coming had come and I was suddenly sitting pretty. On the other hand, goddammit, I’ll never find another one for $75 again. The word is out they’re very collectible. So I would gradually flip machines from my inventory when needed. So I didn’t have to draw a big salary out of the comic company. I was

wheeling-dealing on the side. CBC: Now you know how comic book dealers can be. They’re a certain — they can be a certain type, for lack of a better term, assh*le now and then; [Denis laughs] brutal. Buying low, selling high. How are you as a — ? Denis: As the a-word? CBC: With dealing in that world. How were you able — ? You obviously have this solid — Denis: Well, first of all, I don’t think it’s apples and apples. CBC: Well, isn’t — ? Denis: Jukebox World isn’t overlapping with Comic Book World. CBC: But the attitude: buying low, selling high, taking advantage, exploitation. Denis: Well, let’s look at that. When I was buying those

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: Covers for the entire run of the Denis Kitchen-helmed anthology Comix Book. The first three issues [Oct. ’74–Mar. ’75] were published by Marvel Comics; the final pair [1976] by Kitchen Sink Press. Initially the title was to be Comix International, but Warren Publishing beat Marvel to the punch in retaining trademark. Below: Cover for #1 of the fiveissue Warren series [’75–’77]. Inset bottom: Jim Warren coaxed Will Eisner to take his Spirit away from KSP in the early ’70s.

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

jukeboxes, cheap where I was, those were the going prices. You didn’t argue with “free.” I had no idea till that Oui article broke, that there was a West Coast market starting to develop. Remember, this is pre-Internet. You can’t Google “jukebox” or check out eBay results. I don’t think I was taking advantage of anyone. The sellers wanted the ugly hulks out of their garages. Had I not been there, many would have gone to dumpsters. These were regarded for the most part as junk. I just knew I loved them and thought they were beautiful and deserved to be saved. I invested in my instincts, as I often did, and gambled I was right. CBC: Big time. Denis: Yes, as it turned out. If a little old lady said she had a copy of Action #1 and I offered her $75, that would be gypping, I agree. But there was no Overstreet Guide for jukeboxes. If I paid them $50–75, it was a fair price at the time. It was no different than anything you’d buy at a flea market or yard sale.

Above: For a novice publisher, Denis Kitchen dove into his role as underground comix vanguard with relish, early on even publishing a 3-D comic book replete with stapled-in glasses! Here’s Denis’s back cover artwork for Deep 3D Comix [1970]. Inset right: Cover of same by Dan Glassford. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

CBC: Yeah, yeah. Denis: The Marvel comic books that we discussed earlier, I bought off the newsstand at cover price. To me, those were investments, like buying penny stocks. That’s how I looked at it. I simply had a knack for getting in the ground floor of things, things I personally liked and appreciated and thought would trend upward. CBC: Before there was blood in the water. Denis: Are these references to assh*le comic book dealers and blood really necessary, Jon? [laughs] I’m a collector. I like bargains as much as anyone. If you walk around the house, I can point to all kinds of things I was lucky enough to acquire when nobody else seemed interested. That’s part of the appeal of collecting, right? I think original comic art’s another example. Early on, I was buying comic art or swapping for comic art when there wasn’t really a significant market. Swapping was key because I could often trade with fellow cartoonists. You know, with Crumb for example, way before his art skyrocketed. Or Pete Poplaski. Nobody knew who Pete was but I appreciated his art and when he’d do jobs for me I’d often buy the original or swap. He was a collector too, so if he wanted an Al Capp, I might trade him a Capp for a couple Poplaski’s, whatever we thought was fair. CBC: You were dealing within the love of the form. Denis: Exactly and it was with contemporaries. At the time, nobody else, or very few, were asking much money for their art. CBC: So you didn’t have to deal with the sharks. Denis: Back to those assh*le dealers again, huh? No. In fact when I started collecting comic at there weren’t any dealers, really, at least specializing in art. Way back at the start, maybe 1970 or ’71 someone, probably Phil Seuling, referred me to an old-timer in Brooklyn, Abe Paskow. Abe was probably one of the very first guys to collect comic art, and he had lots so he dealt on the side. I wrote and asked him if he had any Burne Hogarth Tarzans. I’m a total stranger, a kid in Milwaukee, but Abe mails me two Hogarth Sundays in a big tube. He automatically trusted me. Those were the days. His note said, “Take one for $50 or both for $75.” Any fool would take the second at half-price, but I could barely scrape up $50. So I had to return a Sunday Tarzan for want of $25. You know how much that would bring today? Point is, early on, nobody placed high values on these things. For what seems like a pittance today, you could have bought the crème de la crème. Will Eisner was selling some of his best Spirit stories for what might have seemed like a lot at the time for cartoons, but was practically giving it away in retrospect. Fortunately for his widow and his art agent, he didn’t sell them very often. Prime Spirit stories that he sold for a few hundred dollars could bring $40- or $50,000 and more in today’s market. And it wasn’t that long ago. The comic art market has come a long way in a relatively short time, and many think it’s far from peaked CBC: Has something really shifted with the 1%, shall we say? That they have so much money that the value of these things has just gone through the roof, that these things are becoming the purview of the rich? And then it’s out of the reach of regular folk. Denis: The really prime comic art, you mean? CBC: Yeah, that. The stuff that we love that is now — Denis: There are definitely some buyers — what you just called one-percenters — entering this market and supporting the six-figure sales we’re seeing sometimes at Heritage and seven figures in private transactions. My art agency has dealt with a number of very well-heeled collectors. I could see a trend where the very best pieces by certain recognized cartoonists, the masters, could only be afforded by a small echelon of buy-

ers. Most of the buyers who I know in that territory are genuinely passionate about comic art, and are buying primarily for that, not strictly as an investment. But no one, and I’d include myself there, can truly separate buying art, even the art you intensely love, from seeing it simultaneously as an investment. I mean, let’s be practical, there’s insurance and asset management and you have to attach numbers at some point, and then you normally want to see that number climb, just like your Apple or Hewlett-Packard stock. Art is a funny area and it can’t be compared to other commodities in that there are emotions and tastes. You analyze the stock market, for example, but art doesn’t have that kind of detached objectivity to it. Art is the unique product of an individual creator and it will always be treated differently than other investments. We talked about getting in on the ground floor earlier, like I prided myself on jukeboxes and Marvels. Highend art can be the most stable of investments. For example, if a billionaire buys a Van Gogh painting for $40 million, it’s a virtual certainty it will only increase in value, plus you have an object of beauty and prestige that might enhance your reputation in a way that money alone will not, whereas that same investment in the stock market is always something of a crapshoot. Even a once rock-solid corporation like General Motors can go bankrupt. But a Van Gogh or a Rembrandt, they’re timeless. But most art collectors, even ones who can buy a Van Gogh, get the most satisfaction, I suspect, from gambling that their eye will spot the contemporary equivalent of Van Gogh. Think of when Gertrude Stein held salons in her tiny Paris apartment, entertaining Picasso and his contemporaries, and buying as she could from just her writer’s income. And she filled her walls when few others were buying what we now regard as modern art masterpieces. All self-confident art collectors want to believe they have the Gertrude Stein gene, that they will be able to buy relatively unknown artists’ work and their choices will prove prescient. You can make the same argument for comic art. It’s starting to dramatically trend in some areas. At Heritage, Frank Miller art has, a couple or more times now, brought well into six figures, Crumb has hit six figures, some other artists are — CBC: Kirby’s six figures. Denis: Yeah, and I think we’ll see these kinds of figures getting more common for first rank comic artists. I’m aware of private sales that I think would shock some people. But to get back to your observation — the real crème de la crème is only affordable by people of means, so a middle class collector is locked out. On the other hand, a middle-class collector can still have that Gertrude Stein gene, can still identify undervalued art and possibly do very well. How much faith do you have in your own taste? It always comes

down to supply and demand, but I’m very curious how this plays out, comics having always been popular, for well over a century, and widely accepted in the culture, but now the crème de la crème being treated as Fine Art. And we’re talking about that top percentage of name artists, the masters, the really proven people. There are obviously plenty of cartoonists, some pretty well known, who can’t get more than a trifling for their art. But what we’re seeing with the high end comic art is fascinating. Is it a bubble that will burst, or is the very best comic art permanently becoming part of the fine art arena, and will some of the prices we’re marveling at now look like a bargain another decade or so? CBC: It’s all relative. Denis: If you accept that some comic art is Art with a capital “A” and the best belongs in museums, then who knows where it can top off? Who in comic art belongs in the Old Master category? I’m prejudiced, but I would unequivocally put he best of Eisner and Kurtzman there, and Crumb. And Herriman, Sterrett, McCay, Raymond, Foster, I can go on, but we’d probably be in some general agreement about the ones who are valued with hindsight. But when you look at the younger generation, who makes the cut? Who are the younger equivalents? The contenders? Chris Ware? Jim Woodring? Charles Burns? Then look at the still younger generation, the ones still up and coming, the ones that even poorer collectors can afford. If you have a really good eye and you are confident, it’s a great time to go shopping for

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Top: Originally drawn as album cover art in ’75, this surreal piece by Denis Kitchen, entitled Major Arcana, was re-used as the splash panel for his story in Mondo Snarfo #1 [1978] and eventually made into a three-dimensional poster, which we’ve reproduced here courtesy of Mr. Kitchen. Above: The Denis Kitchen cover art for that outstandingly weird and wonderful Snarf one-shot offshoot. 20

Above: The never-to-be-reprinted (or suffer the full wraith of the Disney legal department) Air Pirates Funnies #1 and 2 [1971], covers by Bobby London and Gary Hallgren respectively. Below: To raise money for their ill-fated defense, the underground cartoonists would solicit sketches at cons. Here’s a ’75 placard, courtesy of Heritage.

socialist that when I buy something, I’m hoping it’ll appreciate. But I only buy what I truly like. I never buy stock. Wall Street holds no interest whatever for me. I invest in things I understand. I understand comic art, jukeboxes, and so forth. Not everyone feels so confident, but then you don’t have to put all your eggs in one basket. Diversifying and dabbling is something everyone understands. I think anybody with a really good eye today can go to comic art exhibits, even conventions, and meet young talent and start to hone tastes till making those choices feels second nature. Support the handful of comic art gallery owners, like Scott Eder, someone who often offers amazing art by not-yet-recognized geniuses at what I think are bargain prices. You just have to trust your taste. CBC: So, the future… What else would you like to do? Denis: I’d also like to do more art books, monographs about particular artists, some of whom are kind of forgotten and deserving of revived attention. CBC: Such as? Denis: In particular, Harrison Cady is an illustrator I’ve long admired. He did wonderful illustrations and centerfolds for the old Life magazine and others, starting around the turn of the century. You’ve maybe seen some. His specialty was anthropomorphic insects and frogs, and tremendously detailed crowd scenes. I’ve been assembling albums of his work from old magazines, and some originals, for many years, anticipating an eventual collection. Another is Boris Artzybasheff. He had an incredible style. During World War II he did these amazing industrial illustrations, and work for a wire company with incredible caricatures of Hitler, Mussolini, and Tojo made out of this industrial wire and mechanical components. He also did Time magazine covers for many years. A very inventive artist.

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

comic art. If you can’t afford the masters, then by all means, see if you’re good enough to pick the masters of the future. Exercise your Stein gene and go, “I like his art or her art. I’m going to buy some. I’m a patron and I don’t care if it’s ever valuable because I love it.” Then, if you’re astute or lucky — or both — it may prove a good investment, and maybe a great investment, and you live in your own museum and enjoy it every day. To me, it’s got to be about the love of the art first, and the investment second. I can’t completely separate the two because there’s enough of a capitalist in this old

CBC: What else? Denis: You know, I’d like to draw more. There are a lot of things I’d like to do while I still have a lot of energy. To sum it all up, It’s just an overall passion for the comics and illustration medium at all levels, trying to be a proselytizer for the best the medium has produced, trying to keep geniuses from the past alive, maintain and grow their legacies, try to show younger generations what came before and deserves their attention, while at the same time, to develop new, young talent so that we encourage a tradition, a continuum, but also always welcoming experimentation. I like working with the kids as much as the geezers, you know? I fell in love with comics as a kid and never fell out of love. I consider myself a very lucky man, having always found a way to make a living in all aspects of it. It’s always been pleasurable even when there were some tough times. But the business or the market or individuals, taken as a whole, I feel grateful I’ve been able to work closely with so many brilliant artists and writers and to get to know many of them on a personal level. I still feel relatively young and there’s a lot I want to do. I’m not ready to write that epitaph yet. CBC: And I’m not asking for one, really. [laughs] Just a career assessment to date. You know, I think you told me a story about George — Denis: Back to George Lockwood? CBC: Yeah. Did he encourage you to be an artist, a comic strip artist? Denis: Yeah, he pushed hard for me to go that direction. Like I said, we bonded, starting when I was in college, and he saw the opportunity to get a young promising guy into the syndicated strip business, because of his strong contacts with the syndicates. He — the Journal — was a good customer and he had some clout. He was a veteran newspaperman the syndicate guys listened to, because he was a real comics aficionado, with a strong eye. He wasn’t just throwing darts at available strips like many papers. If he said to them, “Hey, I’ve got this young talent. Look at him,” I’d have entrée with the top men. There were no guarantees, of course, but George could make that introduction. He kept saying, “You’ve got to develop some strip ideas. Get me some samples.” I was starting Krupp, Kitchen Sink, and the Bugle. My hands were full, so I’d tell him I would think about it, but later. Finally I said, “George, “I don’t think I’m cut out to do a daily strip.” And he’d say, “Are you stupid? Don’t you understand? This is the ultimate.” There was a serious generation gap there. He was absolutely clueless what I was doing with undergrounds and why that appealed to me more. One time in his Journal office he said, “Bring in some of these comics that you’re doing. Let me see them.” So I brought him a stack of what I thought were relatively tame undergrounds because I knew seeing the really wild ones, he’d faint. So he starts flipping through them, and we’re in the middle of a big newsroom at the Milwaukee Journal. It’s one of these open spaces where there’s dozens of desks. Reporters are typing away and stuff, but it’s relatively quiet. And he flips to some page and he goes, [shouts] “Penises! Why do you guys — ?” in a really loud voice, “Why do you guys always have to draw penises?” He says, “There’s nothing pretty about a penis! They’re ugly! I know! I’ve got one!!” And every face is turning toward us. “Okay, you found a penis in a comic, George, I’m sorry.” He was looking out for my own best interests. He liked me. He wanted to take me under his wing and he wanted me see me become

the next Walt Kelly. I said, “First of all, I doubt I’m fast enough.” He said, “Walt has an assistant. He can’t do it all himself either. But you don’t want to start as someone’s assistant. You’ll be trapped assisting forever. You’ve got to start out doing your own invention.” I said, “But, George, I’d have to come up with eight weeks of sample strips. That’s a lot of work. That’s all on spec. I won’t get paid while doing that.” I gave him all my reasons and he said, “You just don’t understand. You could make it big. That would be the greatest thing. Why wouldn’t you want to do that? I’d die to be in your shoes. Take advantage of my contacts.” So I said, “Look, I’ll tell you what. I’ll compromise.” George was giving me assignments, which was critical income in those lean early Kitchen Sink days. I would do stuff for the Journal’s Sunday Insight magazine. It paid pretty well and I was appreciative and there was a big audience. The Milwaukee Journal then,

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: Interesting Chicago artifact from 1982 — a poster by Jay Lynch and Gary Whitney featuring their strip Phoebe and the Pigeon People, the comics collections which were published by Kitchen Sink. Inset left: Jay Lynch contributed this ever-so busy cover to Dope Comix #3 [June ’81].

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

on Sundays, had a circulation around four or 500,000. This was a big paper. And so I said, “Look, what I’d like to try is a full page for Insight.” That was about an 11” x 14” size, a good size, and I said, “I’ll do a full-page where I go to someplace in Milwaukee, or nearby, and do like a Shel Silverstein thing, with my impressions, funny situations, based on actual places and things, but with my jaundiced take or whatever.” For perspective I was proposing more of a Billy Ireland scenario. Ireland was the Columbus, Ohio, cartoonist who inspired Milton Caniff to take the syndication route. But Ireland just wanted to do a regional strip, and for many years that was in Columbus. That’s what I felt comfortable doing, at least at that stage. I didn’t feel prepared to do a national thing. I felt too young, too raw. And I figured with a weekly gig I could still hedge my bets with the fledgling Kitchen Sink. George said, “I don’t like that idea at all.” But nonetheless I went back and roughed up a couple to show him. One is reproduced in my Oddly Compelling book, called, I think, “Cream City Comics,” based on an old nickname for Milwaukee. I actually felt good about the concepts, and ideas were coming to me, and for the first time the general idea of a mainstream continuity started to excite me. And whatever the budget would have been back then, I would have been happy with it. I showed George the roughs and

Above: What? Me commercial? Robert Crumb, infuriated at the cinematic depiction of his first successful comic book character by director Ralph Bakshi in 1972’s Fritz the Cat, the cartoonist had his fornicatin’ feline murdered Mafiastyle in the Kitchen Sink-reprinted The People’s Comics [’72]. Inset right: Cover of same, which was initially published by The Golden Gate Publishing Company, which, according to the Grand Comic Database, had only one other release, the ’72 cartoon pin-up book, Turned-On Cuties, featuring contributions from Crumb, Jay Lynch, Bill Griffith, the Mad Peck, Spain Rodriguez, and Art Spiegelman, among others. Below: For giggles, here’s Jay Lynch’s cover.

he wasn’t supportive at all. He said, “You just don’t get it.” [growls with frustration] He threw a little temper tantrum and kept telling me how shortsighted I was and how I should go after the national audience and I could make really big money. Basically, “Are you out of your mind, kid?” After that, I lost any enthusiasm and went back to the path that we’ve been talking here about. It was the path not taken, for better or for worse. I kind of wish he’d have given me that little rope, and maybe he could have pulled me in, inch by inch, into his grand plan. We stayed in touch periodically, after he moved to another newspaper, and after he retired. And every time, he’d be like, “You blew it. You blew it! You could’ve done a strip.” I’d say, “George, I’m doing alright. I’m having fun, I don’t have any regrets.” When I talked to him I always kind of felt like Marlon Brando in On the Waterfront, where he’s all bloodied and he says, “I coulda been a contender.” [laughs] I have no idea if I’d have had a chance for success in the syndicate world. George would have enjoyed making it happen, because that was the big time for him: a “normal” cartoonist’s dream. It was more important for him than me. So we stayed in touch for years. He died a few months ago, just before, unfortunately, his book on comics went to press. He never saw it in print. CBC: Did you ever think of ideas — I mean obviously, the key for having a regular daily strip is to have continuing characters, right? Denis: Right. That’s the usual formula, and it was something that bothered me about coming up with a syndicated concept. What I considered doing, the rough stuff I showed him, was semi-autobiographical, me going to places, impressions, reality-based gags. And I did do one with them. I never really liked the idea of being wedded to the same cast of characters, like doing Blondie, forever and ever, even though I knew that where a cartoonist can reel in the audience and the licensing revenue. Crumb told me once that his biggest nightmare would be if he had to fill in boxes — strip panels — every day, day after day, with the same characters, over and over, and I had to agree. What would have appealed to me was something more non-traditional, like Gary Larson later did so well with The Far Side, where you could be all over the map with gags and irony. That’s what I did with my weekly Bugle strips. I briefly had a regular character, a janitor named Ferd Pile, but after just a couple of months I had another character assassinate him. [laughs] I instinctively knew I wasn’t cut out to do regularly recurring characters. This was before George was pushing me to develop a syndicated idea. There’s another thing reprinted in the Oddly Compelling book, I think it’s called “Denis Kitchen, Star Reporter, Visits the Underground,” where I did a several page story for his Insight magazine, with a tongue-incheek response to his honest curiosity about the whole hippie scene. He’d said things like, “I don’t know what the hell your generation is up to with the long hair and all this stuff. Explain it to me.” And I finally said, “Well, have me do a comic strip about it. I bet a lot of readers your age feel the same way. Send me to the East Side,” — that was the hippie district — “and I’ll do a funny explanation.” He bought the concept, and so I got to have fun putting him into the story. I showed myself working in the Journal newsroom, typing with one finger. George calls me into his office and he’s this

gruff, Napoleonic character. He says, “Kitchen, I have an assignment for you. I’m sending you to do an exposé on hippies.” And I’m like, “Why me?” And he says, “You’ve got a mustache. You can infiltrate.” So basically I’m the bumbling reporter, trying to figure out what the hippie scene is about. I end up literally underground where there’s Mr. Natural and the Freak Brothers, and that’s the real underground, not on the street level where all the touristy head shops are. I drew it in black-&-white and wash, the first time I worked that way, because Insight was printed on a rotogravure press and could reproduce grays really well. George must have thought it would be a popular feature because he made it the cover story. The pay for that gig probably fed me and paid the rent for quite a while as I worked for nothing on actual undergrounds. [chuckles] And so that, I thought, was an example for George, of something I could do as a single page, once a week, maybe even once a month, just to give me a little foot in the door. I think it could have developed a good audience and built my confidence for maybe the big time shot and feel like I can do something regular while I still had my day job. But for him, there was no compromise. He was like, “Quit that idiotic day job and get me eight weeks of samples and I’ll make you a star.” CBC: And it was all just on your talent and it was — you didn’t even have to pitch him a character or pitch a concept? Denis: Well, I never got serious enough to come up with any characters and samples. I’m sure if I had I would have first shown him the character sketches and premise and said, “All right, I’ve got a couple ideas here. What do you think?” He would have given me good feedback, especially since his own reputation with the syndicates would have been tarnished if I submitted crap stuff. I think George maybe fancied himself as a homegrown Colonel Patterson who, you know, would say to Harold Gray, “Make the boy a girl and call her Orphan Annie.” There’s always some tinkering at the beginning. But I never got to that point. I kept remembering Crumb saying, “If I did a daily I’d kill myself.” And I just concluded, “I don’t want to do that either.” [laughter] CBC: He’s f*cking right. [laughter] Some people did it very well, though. Denis: Yeah. Oh, yeah. Some are multi-millionaires. But it’s a daunting prospect. CBC: I mean that was the Holy Grail of the comic book artist: to get a newspaper comic strip. Denis: Absolutely! Will Eisner tried with a thing called Fireball Bambino in the late ’40s. It went nowhere. A daily strip was Harvey Kurtzman’s dream. He tried many times to sell ideas to syndicates and was constantly rejected. Of course if he had sold one of the strip ideas early on there’s be no MAD. The world as we know it would be a different place! CBC: And then some guys get a strip, a daily grind, and they find out they’re in living hell, right? Denis: Yeah, I guess so. But I’m just speculating. I don’t really know. CBC: Because if you weren’t making enough money to hire assistants, you had to have an assistant to be able to pump that stuff out, never mind a Sunday. [laughs] Denis: Yeah. Yeah, you don’t have to convince me. I think it’s a … CBC: Murder! So, you were just off-handedly talking to Crumb about it? About doing a daily? Denis: Yeah, I don’t remember the exact context. I’ll just never forget what he said. The notion of filling in panels for the rest

of your life was in the context of a syndicated strip. But, in truth, you could say that about cartooning in general. Comic book artists fill in endless panels, too. It’s just the relentless deadline pressure, the stress, the inevitable writer’s block, that’s I think what we’re talking about. And on top of that the same characters staring back at you day after day. Do you become fonder of them with time, or do you come to loathe those two-dimensional creations? Sure, there’s a certain glamour in being a cartoonist, and the potentially big pay-off, but there are easier jobs, right? CBC: [Chuckles] And boy, then you did some dream projects of like doing The Complete Li’l

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: The notorious X-rated animated feature based by Robert Crumb’s comic strip, Fritz the Cat [’72] proved successful enough at the box office to spawn a sequel, The Nine Lives of Fritz the Cat [’74]. Famously, the cartoonist was so incensed with the feature, he killed the cartoon character for good with an ice-pick to the head. Inset left: Detail from the cover of Mr. Natural #2 [’71]. Kitchen Sink Press published Mr. Natural #3 [’77], which collected the short-lived strip published in The Village Voice.

Above: Professional cartoonist, author, historian, publisher, agent… call him what you will. But, at heart, Denis Lee Kitchen is an inveterate collector! Here’s the man at a ’70s con seeking an elusive issue of some obscure title. Below: For Ye Ed’s massive tribute issue devoted in memory of the comic book master Will Eisner, Denis contributed an anecdote about his early 1970s first meeting with The Spirit creator, for which the cartoonist-publisher also contributed this illustration of hippie Kitchen and square Eisner to accompany in Comic Book Artist Vol. 2 #6 [Nov. 2005].

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Abner. Denis: That was definitely a dream project because, like we discussed earlier, that was my favorite strip growing up. It took me a long time to get the rights. While Al Capp was alive, I didn’t approach him. I didn’t have the means then, plus I don’t think I was confident there was a market for the reprints then. But after he died, I approached the attorneys who represented his estate. I think I started modestly, offering to publish a “best of” volume. They said, “Make us an offer.” So I did. The attorney called me and he said, “We got your offer. We appreciate your interest, but call us back when you’re talking real money.” Now a few thousand dollars, that was real money to me, but that was beneath their level of interest. Keep in mind how big Capp was at his height, licensing a theme park, and with huge advertising deals with big brand cereals and so on. They were accustomed to Proctor & Gamble money. So I conferred with Dave and Pete and Jim and said, “Jeez, what if we do them all?” We added up the total royalties they might earn and, taking the long view, it was “real money” by anyone’s standards. So I formally proposed publishing entire years of dailies, four times a year — or maybe it was twice a year. I

said, “If we do all the strips, including the Sundays, it’ll be 54 volumes and something around a quarter million dollars in royalties.” That got their attention and we proceeded to a deal. Keep in mind that 54 volumes is staggering. Nothing in comics, hardly any book project anywhere comprised 54 volumes. It would be much bigger in pages and volumes than the Encyclopedia Britannica. But I felt confident. The one mistake I made at the beginning was — being too excited — I announced the project prematurely. I was amazed how much publicity we got. The Associated Press picked it up and it was all over the country, which made me feel people still cared about the strip, but it was all out there six months before we got the first book out. We had this tremendous buzz and then, when the first volume actually came out, it was old news. As was often the case, getting the publicity was easy for me but of course — duh! — timing is everything. Our mass market book distributor, Berkeley, gave me sh*t about that timing, believe me. So Li’l Abner launched kind of ass-backwards. But still, it did very well and the first volume actually had to be reprinted. We sold, I’m pretty sure, 15,000 copies of volume one. But then the sales just slowly, gradually diminished, and by the end, it was around 3,000. But I still would have continued them. I would have done them all if Kitchen Sink Press hadn’t gone under. We reached the 27 volume mark, exactly half the projected 54. We were just approaching the point where the dailies, in my view, were showing signs of deteriorating. It was still pretty good into the mid-’60s and getting uneven into the late ’60s, but when you hit Capp’s 1970s Abners, it was awful, just god-awful. Capp himself admitted when he retired that the strip hadn’t been funny for years. On the art side, Frank Frazetta stopped doing the Sunday pencils around 1961 and not too long afterward he lost his longtime assistants Andy Amato and Walter Johnston to retirement and illness. He replaced them mostly with Bob Lubbers who was doing it, I think, in a pretty half-hearted manner… CBC: Not an easy man to work with, right? Denis: I know. No, not easy at all. Not easy at all. Read our biography. [chuckles] CBC: How did you meet Pete Poplaski? Denis: Right after I started the original Kitchen Sink, one of my roommates, Bill Kauth, was a traveling book salesman. In Green Bay he picked up the campus paper and called me. “There’s a kid in here you ought to take a look at.” And I went, “All right, mail it to me.” There were illustrations of Pete’s and they were really good, so I sent him a letter, asking if he was interested in doing work for a new comic book company. Pete turned out to be a comics fanatic and immediately wanted to drive to Milwaukee to meet me. Pete was straight as an arrow and when he arrived at my East Side flat he walked up the stairwell, with the walls covered with psychedelic and surreal images, and then into this den of iniquity. [chuckles] My place was filled with freaks and marijuana smoke. He coughed quite a bit, and he was a little nonplussed by the scene. We still laugh about it, but he and I hit it off right away. Pete dropped out of school, which didn’t make his parents too happy, and started working with me. We remained inseparable for many years. He was the staff artist, my art director, and a lot of the commercial jobs we got, Pete would do them. He was so versatile, and such a chameleon with styles and mediums, he could draw anything, and it’d be great Gradually, he got more confident in his writing and editing skills. I hired Shel Dorf to edit our new Steve Canyon magazine, because Shel was Milt Caniff’s letterer, and he assured me he was capable. But I found out almost instantly that Shel was totally inept. So I fired Shel and asked Pete if he could take it over. He turned out this amazing magazine. It really blossomed under him and

had much more than reprint material. He got to know Milt Caniff personally and talked to him regularly and pulled great stories out of Caniff, who was getting quite up in years and loving the attention from younger fans. Every cover was amazing design and color done in complex multiple overlays, requiring deep abstract thinking, long before digital color. Milt had a complete archive of every single Canyon strip, so we were getting perfect proofs to shoot from. But one time there was one Sunday inexplicably missing from his archives. Milt said, “My assistant Willie and I turned the place upside down and we couldn’t find that one page.” He was in a bit of a panic. But Pete said, “Don’t worry, Milt.” Then Pete took a color Sunday tear sheet of the missing proof, put vellum over it, traced it in line in Milton’s style. We Photostatted it and inserted it in that issue. When the magazine was printed, Milt had forgotten, at that point, exactly which one had been missing. When he got his copy in the mail I called and said, “Pick out the page that Pete drew.” He said, “Okay.” Then he looked at every page intently — and who knows Milton Caniff’s style better than Milton Caniff himself? — and then he re-looked again, and finally he said, “I can’t spot it. I have no idea which one was missing earlier!” CBC: What a mimic. Holy sh*t. Denis: Pete’s drawn covers for our Li’l Abner series in Al Capp’s style that the family couldn’t detect. The Brooklyn Museum years ago assembled an exhibit of post-atomic images that included a Shmoo drawing by Al Capp. But it wasn’t a Capp original, [chuckles] it was a Poplaski. He’s done Flash Gordon covers in Alex Raymond style. When Educomics was doing Keiji Nakazawa’s Gen of Hiroshima comic books, they hired Pete to do Nakazawa and nobody ever knew. CBC: He’s about the best mimic there is, huh? Denis: I think so. When Alan Moore was doing the Tom Strong series there was a sequence where Alan wanted a several-page script done in C.C. Beck’s Captain Marvel style. So who’d he ask for? And you saw the wraparound Spirit “jam” cover hanging in the other room? That’s all Pete’s pencils underneath, and largely Pete’s inking, but Will Eisner, Milton Caniff, John Pound, Leslie Cabarga, me, and Richard Corben inked portions of it. When the magazine was published [Spirit magazine #30], I included a key, an outline of the crowd scene, indicating which artist inked which portion. After it ran, quite a few people called or wrote to tell us the key was wrong, that we had omitted credits for Harvey Kurtzman and Moebius. Well, yes, it looked like Moebius and Harvey drew certain characters, but they were totally by Pete. He also often draws larger than any other cartoonist I’ve ever seen. The covers he did for the Superman books DC and Kitchen Sink co-published in the late ’90s, those originals are literally four feet wide! CBC: [Laughs] Did he ever have a desire to do a regular book? Denis: I don’t think so. First, he’s not very prolific and also, he’s primarily a painter. Oil paintings. Comics is one passion, but painting is his real passion. He’s kind of a Renaissance man who — CBC: Does he make money at the painting? Denis: Pete sells paintings to collectors and tourists in France, where he now lives most of the time. Pete is kind of obsessed with Zorro. One of his endearing idiosyncrasies is that he often publicly dresses in a Zorro costume, complete with mask and sword. You can see him in action, even fencing, in various YouTube videos — check ‘em out. That’s how he attracts tourists. People will be walking down the cobble-stoned streets of this idyllic medieval French village and they suddenly go, “Is that Zorro painting at the easel?” And so, of course, they’re curious, they walk over, and most tourists speak English. Pete strikes up a conversation with them — he’s a charming character — and see he’s doing brilliant work on the canvas. And often enough, they’ll follow him to his studio, and buy a finished landscape or still life

or nude right off the wall. Then he goes back to paint. He only has to sell a couple of paintings or so a month and he does all right. Robert Crumb and Aline Kominsky are his biggest patrons, and they don’t typically buy art. CBC: And so the work that you do with him, you give him a lot of lead time to do? Denis: Yeah, if at all possible. Or if he’s really enthused, he’ll do it ahead of schedule, if the assignment excites him. CBC: Does he ever have any projects that he brings to you? Denis: Yeah, sometimes, but typically they don’t get finished. He’s been working on the definitive Zorro book for years. He’s the world’s foremost expert on Zorro, bar none, but he keeps refining and refining his book, because there’s always one more thing, one more detail, one more bit of research he has to do on location. I was supposed to agent that book 20 years ago and I’m still waiting. I have no doubt it’ll be definitive, if I live to see it. CBC: Is this the whole cultural history of Zorro? Denis: It’s kind of beyond Zorro himself. The larger theme is the myth of the hero. Pete gets deep into it. He writes about what preceded Zorro in literature, the earliest manifestations of the costumed hero, and about Johnston McCulley, the pulp writer who created Zorro and other characters, and the countless Zorro film spin-offs. And I think he has virtually every Zorro movie poster in every language, and.... CBC: I want the book. Denis: McCulley is from Chillicothe, Illinois, and so Pete’s been going there, working with the Chamber of Commerce, trying to set up a museum for their now-obscure native son. And I’m like, “Pete, finish your book instead of — ” He’s a one-man, zealous champion for Zorro and the writer’s legacy. And he’s read and re-read every pulp that Zorro has ever been in. Everything Johnston McCulley ever wrote. And then he ties in other things. Part of his hypothesis is that Zorro was the direct progenitor of Superman and, I think, the first masked hero. Of course Zorro was popularized by the Douglas Fairbanks silent films, and that led to Errol Flynn and that led to this and to that and, basically the whole myth of the superhero, he believes, evolved from Johnston McCulley’s writings. Every spare dollar — or Euro — he makes, he invests in rare Zorro posters and artifacts. You just missed him. Pete was here for about three weeks. CBC: Does he have a style of his own? Denis: Oh, sure, certainly his paintings. A lot of stuff. Did I show you the great caricatures he did of me and John Lind we’ll be using in some promotion? That’s pure Pete, too. But, for example, he’s doing Superman and Batman covers for

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: Serigraph by Will Eisner of Spirit femme fatale Skinny Bones, published by Kitchen Sink. Below: Dave Gibbons cover for KSP’s The Spirit: The New Adventures #1.

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

IDW’s reprint series. So, when Dean Mullaney says, “I want you to do these eight covers,” Pete just right away goes, “Okay, that’s the Curt Swan era. I’m going to do that cover like Curt Swan, and that one as Wayne Boring,” or, “This is the early Wonder Woman so I’m doing to do it like H.G. Peters.” And that authentic look, that’s part of the fun for him. CBC: Yeah, what an interesting character. Denis: He sure is. And ethical as they come. If he was dishonest, he’d be selling Frank Frazettas for a fortune, because he could fool you. Actually, here’s another story for you. Some years back, just before the dot com bust, when everybody on Wall Street was gambling on these upstart Internet

companies that were unproven, there was an outfit called red.com. I have no idea what they even sold. They came to Crumb and offered him, I think, $80 grand to do some illustrations for their Website, with half upfront. Aline, Robert’s very pragmatic wife, said, “Take it. Do it.” Robert was like, “Nah, I don’t want to do it,” because they wanted people working at computers and stuff like that, which, to Robert, was boring. But Aline said, “Take the money.” So they take the advance, they cash it, and then he’s got to do these things and he’s half-hearted. He sends it to them, and they go, “That’s not what we want.” So Pete happened to be at dinner when the red.com people said they wanted a do-over. CBC: [Chuckles] Dr. Poplaski. Denis: And they said, “Either give us what we want or we want our money back.” And Aline’s like, “I spent that money.” So Pete says, “Well, can I just try?” They go, “Please.” So Pete does these drawings in the Crumb style, people at computers and whatnot. They send them in and they go, [excited] “That’s it! That’s the Crumb we want.” CBC: And they went bust anyways. Denis: Yeah, they went bust before the second payment was made. CBC: Was it good? Denis: I never saw the art, just heard Pete summarize the situation. CBC: [Laughs] Somebody’s passing those off as Crumb. Those originals are somewhere. Denis: Hah! Probably. By the way, I published The Sketchbook Adventures of Peter Poplaski, so there’s another place you can see his real style, at least his sketching style. It’s mostly from his travels. CBC: I have seen that, right. Denis: Wherever he is, if he’s at a train station, a bus stop, anywhere, he pulls out the sketchbook and he’ll start sketching strangers. And he has these little exercises he calls like “Three-Minute Portraits” so he’s got to do your portrait in three minutes, then stop, do the next person, three minutes, stop. CBC: He’s just one of those guys, like you’re one of those guys, that really like production. We really like the “all-ness” of print, of having to put it together. And, look, he does it without seams. He doesn’t even do paste-ups and white-outs and stuff like that. Denis: Right, right. Very seldom. CBC: And that’s why I find Poplaski so appealing because he seems like a — he immediately seems like a kindred spirit with an enormous talent. I just would love to see him do stories, you know? Denis: Well, you’d definitely love Pete in person. And he has done three- and four-page stories, maybe five-, six-, but nothing of significant length story-wise. CBC: Because I would argue he’s better than what he’s mimicking. Denis: I completely agree. But he’s not well-known, largely because he’s not prolific, and he doesn’t do long stories. Even for people who’ve seen his beautiful covers, his signature’s often small or kind of hidden. And they’re not — CBC: Hmm, but I also like wanting that and it’s okay that I don’t get it. It’s just that every time I see his name, it’s just one of those things that like, “Oh, yeah.” You know, like I’m in The Club, like oh, yeah.” That’s why I wanted to specifically talk about him because he’s just always been around, he’s always been mimicking other people’s styles, but he does it with such verve and it’s such a perfect thing, it’s almost better — again, better than the original. There’s just something of — he even gets it better than the original artist. Denis: Absolutely, yeah. And he’s really, really knowledgeable about both art history and pop culture. He reads big, heavy tomes on art history. He’ll read the letters of Van Gogh, the autobiography of Benvenuto Cellini, the kind of art books very few other cartoonists — or anybody — picks up. When Justin Green lived in Wisconsin and spent time with us, he watched Pete over some period read the Time-Life Library

of Art, a bunch of volumes I had in my office library but had never more than skimmed. Justin said, “No one else but the editor and Pete has read those books cover to cover!” CBC: What was up with ProJunior? Who was Don Dohler? Denis: Don Dohler created the character in an obscure mimeo zine. I published the first and only ProJunior collection. That character became the cartoonists’ communal property. CBC: It looked like this thing has a long history, yet totally unknown to any number of readers. And it was treated with reverence and it was all you guys were coming together to — Denis: Well, Dohler was a friend of Jay Lynch’s and maybe somebody else. Artie? Skip? Don was an early fanzine artist when comics zines were extremely rare, and you’d have to say, objectively, he had limited talent. He created ProJunior, a character whose only distinctive characteristic was reversed eyeballs. Jay was the impetus of the anthology. He said Don doesn’t care about owning the character, so it’s communal property. So we pulled it together and did it. A lot of good contributors were in it: Crumb, Wilson, Justin, Spiegelman, Trina, Joel Beck, a bunch of people. I did a two-pager. Jay did the cover. Somehow the contributor count was off and the diagonal stripe on the cover of the first printings said “23 Underground Cartoonists!” But there were actually only 22, and we corrected the stripe text on later printings. But the “23” cover is one of those scarce variants underground collectors seek. Later Crumb, in particular, did additional ProJunior stories. And I remember Justin Green including ProJunior on a Krupp catalog we jammed on. I can’t tell you much more than that. I had a little correspondence with Don Dohler, who ended up making low-budget horror films. In retrospect, it was definitely an odd comix project, but the point was probably that we could all draw the same character, something novel at the moment. CBC: Merchandising: In the early days were you involved in creating various kinds of merchandise. You said that you designed a bong, for instance. Did you have an interest in other paraphernalia? Denis: I did do the design for a bong way back in 1970 or ’71, yeah. I still have one. I always liked cool merchandise. I never felt I was restricted to just doing comics and books. I think the first thing I diversified into was greeting cards because, early on, we were mainly in the head shop market, and I developed a line of mostly drug-related greeting cards for Christmas. They were quite popular. We sold a ton of greeting cards. We had a point of purchase display for counters with groups of eight different designs. We re-released them several seasons in a row, updating with new artists and new designs. Artists included Jay Lynch, Trina Robbins, Justin Green, Pete Poplaski, Pete Loft, Steve Stiles, me. Later, we did “All-Season” cards, not restricted to Christmas. Howard Cruse did an early gay-themed card and one for parents who used to use LSD. We thought Hallmark can do it, [chuckles] we can do it for our audience, too. Even later, after I moved east, we did two different sets of Christmas cards. This time, we used artists like Charles

Burns, Art Spiegelman, Jim Woodring, and Drew Friedman, and many others. But they weren’t as successful because comic shops seemed far less interested in having targeted Christmas-themed greeting cards, certainly not the way head shops embraced them. And, maybe too, the distinct hippie sub-culture embraced whatever helped identify that movement. It was — you know — the establishment, your parent’s generation, sends sappy or religious Christmas cards to everybody so we’re going to send outrageous Christmas cards where trees are made out of marijuana leaves or Santa Claus is stoned or whatever. Jay Lynch did the manger scene where the Wise Men come in and Mary’s holding the baby and one of the Wise Men says, “What do you mean it’s a girl?” Justin Green did a manger variant where Joseph is handing out cigars. I loved that stuff. If I’m going to send out a Christmas card, I want it to have some personality. So that was the first experiment in creating merchandise and it was very encouraging. I think next was the 78 rpm record by Crumb. I mentioned earlier that me and Crumb had 78s in common — him, collecting the records; me, more the jukeboxes that played them — and he loved making music too, so I proposed to him, “Let’s make a record.” We perversely decided to make it a 78. Again, this is flying in the face of all marketing logic, right? Already at that time, in the early ’70s, 78s were thoroughly obsolete. If you had a record player that played 78s, it’s because it was your parents’. No hippie had a 78 rpm turntable. But nonetheless, we wanted to be 10” in diameter and we wanted the crazy 78 rpm speed. So the first thing we did was record the music. Robert Crumb, Bob Armstrong, who’s also a cartoonist, and Al Dodge, came to Milwaukee. We created a new arm for the Octopus: the Ordinary Record Company. I rented a studio and a sound engineer. I produced a session where we recorded four tunes, all of which I thought were great. The next step was to manufacture it and that ended up taking months because —

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: Ever the savvy businessman, Denis Kitchen maintained communication with retailers through his regularly published newsletters hawking the coming KSP line-up and available inventory. Here’s the header art, doubtless drawn by the ubiquitous Peter Poplaski, for The Kitchen Sink Pipeline. Courtesy of Denis Kitchen.

Previous page: Above is a promotional poster trumpeting the Kitchen Sink line-up back in the day and featuring art by Bernie Wrightson, the subject of the issue after next of Comic Book Creator. Below is the Spirit “Ev’ry Little Bug” picture disk (that boasted Billy “Will Robinson” Mumy on guitar!). Another “Ordinary Record” pressed by Kitchen Sink.

Below: Denis Kitchen has expressed an interest in pursuing a book on American illustratorcartoonist Harrison Cady, whose whimsical style graced the Peter Rabbit comic strip between 1920–48. Here’s a superb example of the artist’s work.

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Above: Kitchen Sink even produced counter-culture greeting cards with its Kruppcards line. Here are a pair of cards by Howard Cruse and Steve Stiles respectively.

CBC: Yeah, where are you going to find — ? [laughs] Denis: Exactly. Gosh, there’s nobody in the Yellow Pages that does this sort of thing. I got shunted around and around. And finally, somebody said, “Try so-and-so in Nashville,” and I got this old record manufacturer on the phone. And I told him what I wanted and he said, “You want a what?” I told him again and he said, “Well …” He had a heavy southern accent and he spoke kind of slow, and he said, “Well, I got a machine off in the corner. It’s got a tarp on it and I haven’t looked at it in years. I don’t know if it’ll still run. I can dust it off and see. Let me get back to you.” So he did and he got it operating again and he gave me a quote. It’s not like I could compare quotes with a competitor, but it seemed reasonable. And my partner Tyler Lantzy kept saying to me, “You really want to do this? You really — ? You think we’re going to sell it — ?” And I said, “Come on, it’s fun, it’s Crumb, he designed a special label and a jacket for it.” I said, “People will buy it, even if they don’t play it.” And he said, “How can you be sure?” CBC: Most of the people will play it. [chuckles] Denis: Yeah, most people won’t ever play it. Tyler at that time didn’t quite get that collector mentality. But I knew. I just knew instinctively people will buy this thing as an artifact. So the Nashville manufacturer pressed them. I think the minimum was 5,000 — because, you know, a ten-inch vinyl disk itself was obsolete. So to make 5,000 blanks and to press them and all that, Tyler was like, “You really think we can sell 5,000?” CBC: Five thousand? Wow. Denis: It seemed a reach for sure, but it was too late to turn back. I said, “Aw, trust me.” Soon we had publicity in Creem and Rolling Stone and all kinds of regional and alternative press, because it was such an anachronistic oddity — who’s crazy enough to do this? And also it’s Crumb, with his cult following. We blew out of the 5,000, then we reprinted, and sold a second 5,000, so there’s two printings out there. And at that point, sales were starting to wane. We had recorded four tunes, so we could have done a second record. Crumb had designed a second Ordinary label and jacket for it and Tyler said, “I think we sated the novelty market. That’s it.” I couldn’t really argue with him so for better or worse, we never did the second. But the success of selling 10,000 completely obsolete objects gave me confidence that we could sell the most unlikely things if they were cool enough. You can’t define that, but I just instinctively knew this was cool. CBC: [Pointing out the artwork for CBC #5 cover] What is this postcard reference? Denis: Good eye, Jon. That’s an in-joke. I collect a lot of things, as you may have noticed, but postcards have turned into a favorite avocation. That whole wall behind you here, that’s covered with albums — those are filled with topical postcards. If anyone reading this interview has old postcards in their attic, or knows an Aunt Alice who has shoeboxes of postcards, they should contact me. I even like the free cards given away by publishers and many artists at bigger conventions and trade shows. If a fan attending shows regularly grabs extras of freebie postcards at shows and then mails a pile to me [P.O. Box 2250, Amherst MA 01002-2250 — Ye Ed.], I exchange credit in our online Steve Krupp’s Curio Shoppe. For really good stashes of old ones, I’ll even swap old comics, books, or original art. CBC: What kind do you like? Denis: All kinds, especially pre-linen early ones, but even new advertising and promo cards, as noted, hold appeal. I like any visually interesting postcards. These days I’m especially into postcards from the very early 1900s into the ’30s or so, ones that depict drunks in a humorous manner. Plus the cheesy romantic cards of that era, or leap-year postcards giving women license to be aggressive, vintage automobile postcards, humor in general, and of course any comics-related cards. In the modern area I especially love tacky ones, whether intentional or not. There’s something about postcards that appeal to me. They were hugely popular back in the day. Gazillions were sold for a penny each with another penny for postage. They were the email of the day. Countless publishers cranked these out and so there are almost endless varieties and themes. And they go back to the late 1890s, so they appeal to my interest in history. You get to see a visual parade of each passing decade, with evolving design styles, changing social norms, fashion of course, the way gender rela-

century ago, when, to cite the one example, most of society looked at drinking in a generally tolerant and funny way. This is no longer a funny subject. CBC: That’s true. Denis: The same cultural evolution can been seen on any topic — sexism, politics, driving cars, raising children, whatever — all societal trends are dramatically visible through postcards, because this was such an enormously popular medium, a big part of people’s daily lives way before radio, TV, and mass media. It’s also another medium that made frequent use of cartoons. CBC: So you’re looking at ones that are somewhat narrative in nature, that their imagery — you’re not looking for a Coney Island or — Denis: I make a narrative out of them. CBC: So you’re making sequential storytelling out of these clichés. Denis: Yeah, it’s easier to just show you some examples in the albums. CBC: Does any series incrementally tell a story? Denis: Well, understand that there were postcard publishers who did create specific sequential postcards so you’d have like a set of four, or a set of six, sometimes ten or more that tell a story. Those are typically romantic in nature. CBC: Were they perforated? Denis: No. No, you bought them as a set, presumably, but you’d mail them to friends or a romantic partner one day at a time, as an unfolding story. CBC: Oh, so all at the same time, they’d make sense as a set. Denis: Right. Those kinds are usually boy-meets-girl themes where the punch line is a kiss or an embrace. Heady stuff when a mere glance at an ankle turned men on. Occasionally I’m lucky enough to find in estate sales where some guy in, say, 1906 sent such a set to a girlfriend, one day at a time, postmarked in sequence, each with the same Spencerian handwriting, and that girlfriend, maybe eventually his wife, saved them all the intervening years until maybe an unsentimental grandchild put them in a yard sale or on eBay. CBC: That’s what I was going to ask. Denis: The intention was to see a visual story unfold. Does that remind you of comic strips? Anyhow the drunkard ones,

tionships are portrayed and change, and so on. They’re a slide show of the culture. I enjoy sorting them thematically. For example, one of my favorite categories is drunks. I have two or three albums of just men drinking, and staggering, and sneaking home — from the early 1900s into roughly the Prohibition era. What intrigues me, given our current condemnation of drinking and driving especially, is that drunks are portrayed then as just amusing. They’re funny. In virtually every one, it’s not — CBC: Judging? Denis: — Right, not judging in a negative in any way. In fact, it’s the wives who are portrayed as villains as they wait up for their drunken husbands with rolling pins ready to crack heads. There are seemingly endless variants on themes. Take one example, I find my first postcard of a drunken guy leaning against a light pole. All right, that’s kind of a cliché. Then I find a variant of that, and then another one, and another one. Now I have several pages of nothing but drunks leaning on light poles! Some are cartoons, some are staged photographs, and now I’m curious just how many I’ll find of that single theme. Ditto for drunks trying to find their way home, stumbling and falling, and cops lifting them up, or they’re with buddies holding each other up. There are scores on each of those. Then they get home and they can’t fit their key in the keyhole. This must have been absolutely hilarious in 1912 because I have bunches of those, all centering on the same visual joke. For each of these themes, I’ve got lots of examples, and it becomes a certain collecting challenge: how many different postcards were there with guys fumbling to put a key in the keyhole? Well, many more than you’d think. After I sort by themes, then in a case like this, I’ll sort further in a presumed chronological order. First, they get drunk, then they lean on poles, then they fall down, a cop picks them up, then they find their home, then they stumble with the key, then the wife threatens to kill them, then they pass out… CBC: Of course. And you have time to do this when? Denis: I work long enough hours. What I’m describing might be work or tedious to some, but it’s one way I relax when indoors. I’ll sort cards in my man cave with TV or NPR or music in the background. I never cease to be amazed at the number of variants on any given theme from roughly a

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

mostly, those were never intended as a set. I’m assembling them as some form of expression without a name. But I do this, also, with the eyeball cards. [chuckles] I do it with tawdry stripper cards, with hobo cards, with most of... CBC: Ah, you got a book in mind? Denis: Yeah, definitely, at some point, I think there could be several thematic books. CBC: Do you never not have a book in mind? [laughter] Denis: That’s the bonus of being both a publisher and a collector — the two can easily overlap. It can also allow elements of a hobby to be tax deductible. [laughs] Maybe you saw my Reading Comics postcard book? That’s a book that came out of another whole set of albums. I think you saw the source for that: I collect vintage photographs of people who are reading comic books and strips. The old photos of cartoonists, and newsstands might also become books. It’s just a question of how you assemble or present the content for a particular audience. There’s a definite story to tell with postcards, primarily as visual books, but with context that might have cross category appeal, like, anthropology, sociology, social history and so on. So yes, it’s become my favorite hobby of late, even though — CBC: You’ve got to show people to have them understand it? You get a lot of quizzical looks? “Really, Denis?” Denis: To some degree, yes, I get some quizzical looks.

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Above: Editor Denis Kitchen contribution to his anthology Snarf, #2 [Aug. ’72]. Previous page: Top is Cherry Poptart, the hardcore — and exceptionally profitable — KSP-published comix by Larry Welz. Taken from a promotional flyer courtesy of Denis Kitchen. On right are four covers of KSP’s Bizarre Sex, the title published between 1972–84. At bottom is Denis’s illustration to the back cover of Leonard Rifas’s Energy Comics #1 [Jan. ’80], a play on the innocuous electric company character Reddy Kilowatt. Also featured is the cover of Gen of Hiroshima #1 [Jan. ’80], also published by the Edu-Comics imprint. Next page: Top is a certain Oddly Compelling intro writer, Neil Gaiman, checking out The Best of Comix Book. Below is Denis’s strip, “And She Gives Good Head, Fred,” from Snarf #9 [Feb. ’81]’s back cover.

Also I think some people hear “postcard collecting” and they think it’s a little old lady hobby, like quilting or something. But I’m always happy to pull representative samples so people who don’t have a clue what we’re talking about might go, “Oh, I get it now.” CBC: [Laughs] Because I know people who collect H.P. Lovecraft postcards. Denis: Why not? I have some of those. Name almost any topic. That wall there filled with binders? All those binders are full of postcards. There are probably well over 50,000. Lovecraft is too easy. Sometime in the ’90s a couple of my employees had breakfast in a café in San Diego specializing in pancakes. The owner, a woman, had giveaway postcards on the counter showing her face with a pancake on her head. Of course, I had trained them well, so they grabbed a couple, and later in the office announced they found a brand new category for me. I thanked them, but the next day I brought in several other examples of other postcards of women with food on their head, including a different woman with a pancake on her head. They were floored. I love moments like that. CBC: You’re very ill. [laughs] Denis: Very possibly. My wife and youngest daughter tell me that quite often. CBC: Well, we are collectors. Denis: Yes, so you understand. Everyone needs to unwind in some way after a stressful day. In the book business there are constant deadlines and plenty of stress. CBC: Not every day’s perfect, right? Denis: Hardly. So down time is critical for mental health. Take yesterday evening. I went downstairs and started sorting stork postcards. CBC: Storks? Denis: Like when storks were a universal symbol for newborn babies. It’s astonishing how many stork postcards there were — and how they weren’t always the obvious “stork carrying a baby.” There are a ton of those. But I like the darker themed ones, long before we had birth control. Like one card where a stork with a baby is approaching an open window and the couple are chasing the stork away with a broom because they don’t want a baby. CBC: [Laughs] That’s a good one. “Not here, pal.” Denis: Or I just got one where a stork is carrying twins, but one baby is black and the other is white, and the stork says, “I don’t know how that happened.” These cheap communication devices tell you things about the culture you might not think of. During an era a hundred years ago when you’d think a child’s birth was a welcome thing, a lot of humorists at the time were using stork jokes to show, “No, we got enough kids already.” CBC: And that’s the growth of immigration, too, and the Catholics in the middle of that. [laughs] Denis: Yep, all of that. There would be like a woman with six kids who sees a stork approaching and she’s shrieking, “Not me! Please!” Or another shows a stork stalking a single woman who’s running away. CBC: [Laughs] Do they — are there racial ones? Denis: There are, sure. I don’t specifically go after racial cards, which I generally find offensive, but sometimes they’re part of larger card lots, and I see them. They are reflective of the culture during their time too, though usually in a disturbing way. One obvious example is the very common old Florida tourist cards where alligators are about to devour little black kids. That was considered mainstream humor well into the ‘40s and even beyond. CBC: And there’s a special subculture of collectors seeking… Denis: There are, definitely. I’m a generalist, but within being a generalist, I have certain themes that particularly appeal to me like, say, eyeballs. You saw on the wall too, that I collect actual eyeballs. Well, not real human eyeballs but plastic, and glass and rubber ones. There are a couple of eyeball display cases right where you were sitting earlier — maybe you didn’t even look at those.

CBC: [Laughs] No. Denis: They were staring at you. How could you miss them? But that’s another example of my urge to organize things. For years when I come across eyeballs — like everyone does, right? — I’d gradually put them in the “eyeball” drawer until there were enough to organize. Then I find the right display case, like a small printer type drawer, and arrange them till they fit perfectly right. And at that end point, I’m really glad I saved all those eyeballs for 20 years. You just have to plan ahead and be patient. I did the same thing with aliens when alien toys were especially prolific, right after the Roswell craze. CBC: And I still have those. Denis: I have no doubt. The nice thing about aliens is it’s not like Disney or Warner owns the trademark and controls the licenses. Anybody, any company, can produce their own alien variant. And a lot of them were chintzy, cheap, plastic, crappy-looking. I’d buy them all and then arrange them in displays. CBC: Isn’t there something weird with that? Aren’t there a lot of people with a particular mental illness and that’s the vision that they have seen? Isn’t that where they — that image comes from? Denis: I’m not sure it’s exactly a mental illness for most accounts. I think one scientific explanation for claims of nighttime abductions is called sleep paralysis. I’m intrigued by the whole flying saucer and alien sub-culture, but I don’t buy into the various claims for a second. CBC: It’s like disparate. You can have somebody in Borneo having the same kind of vision of an alien, describing an alien in exactly the same way someone in Brooklyn does. Denis: No, they typically don’t, Jon. The actual truth is that the prototype we’ve come to know as the classic alien — you know, the so-called “gray” with the big elliptical eyes — it comes from TV shows and movies. CBC: From Close Encounters, basically? Denis: Before that, even. There was the story of Betty and Barney Hill, the alleged abductees who’d described being kidnapped by saucer beings in the ’60s. There was a TV movie [The UFO Incident, 1975] based on their claims that early on established the prototype that other people would later claim to see. Millions who saw that show had that particular image placed in their minds. That UFO culture fascinates. I’ve gotten a lot of books on it over the years, many by true believers, starting with flagrant hoaxers like George Adamski, right through that Heaven’s Gate suicide cult. I’m just morbidly attracted to it because — CBC: Yeah, because it’s weird. [chuckles] Denis: Because it’s so freaking weird, right, and because so many people seem to truly believe we’re visited by aliens. A shocking number if you believe the Gallup polls. CBC: What’s up with Kitchen Sink Books? Denis: Ah… so we are going to talk about comics again? Well, the first book the new Kitchen Sink Books imprint is doing is The Best of Comix Book, about the experimental magazine I assembled for Stan Lee back in 1974. It’s being collected for the first time in 40 years. I wrote a forward for it, James Vance wrote a longer essay, and Stan provided a really nice introduction. In fact Stan also signed a very limited edition of the book. How often does Stan do that? He was really quite proud of Comix Book. It’s unlike anything else he ever did in his career — no capes and no alter-egos. And it’s creator-owned. That was a first for the big companies back then. It’s what Jim and I largely write about in our text. There’s some real interesting material. Many will be surprised, for example, that Comix Book was the first real national exposure for Art Spiegelman’s Maus. Or how many people realize that Stan Lee used to send checks to S. Clay Wilson? Trina Robbins did a story about Wonder Woman getting knocked up. And artists like Basil Wolverton and Alex Toth are in the collection too, so it wasn’t just underground cartoonists. John Lind designed the book, so it looks great.

Our goal is to do four, five, maybe six projects a year. There won’t be something every month, but there’ll be quite a variety. Some will be in a coffee table book format, on particular artists or subjects, ones that should appeal to a broad set of collectors and be commercially popular. Then there’ll be other books, not likely best sellers, but ones we have a passion for, ones that John and I think deserve to be done. Mike Richardson has guaranteed us editorial autonomy, and as long as the line as a whole makes some money and both sides are happy, we’ll continue the relationship. At this point in my career, I just want to make good books, ones I’m proud of, ones that have some significance, and are fun to assemble. John Lind wants exactly the same thing. But, to be clear, I don’t want to start a Kitchen Sink Press all over with a few dozen employees and to have to deal with printers and distributors and warehousing and collecting money and all that. I don’t want those hassles and headaches again. By having a joint venture with Dark Horse, John and I get to do the editorial and design part, they do the rest and it’s a perfect kind of partnership. We just get the editorial and design headaches and hassles. [laughs] We’ve been packaging books for top trade publishers for several years now and we’ve done books we’re very proud of, but it’s often really frustrating. The large publishers always have the last word. You can turn in a book you think looks perfect and they’ll inevitably want to change the cover, or change this, change that. You have to inhale deeply, count to ten, and go, “Okay,” because they’re in charge. They’re the ones paying you to package the book. It’s not even to say, “We’re

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: The artist is particularly proud — and rightfully so — of his exquisitely-drawn Warren war story “Give and Take.” Russ Heath not only painstakingly rendered this terrifically detailed story; he also posed for a Playboy photographer pal for the Blazing Combat #4 tale. Russ’s only regret? Because he posed for every role, every character looks exactly like Heath!

fans can appreciate Kurtzman’s genius. We’re also working with Monte Beauchamp on a terrific book called Popular Skullture, which showcases a couple hundred skull-related covers from old comic books and paperbacks. Steve Heller’s doing the intro for that. I will probably get in trouble if I tell you anything after those. CBC: Are most comics related or are they all mixed up? Denis: Predominantly comics related, but we’ve got at least a couple of things on the list that have nothing to do with comics, or peripheral, like Popular Skullture. Some fall into more of a pop culture realm and others are more in the illustration vein than comics. We can’t be typecast. Just like comics. CBC: Mm-hmm. And what else are you doing? Is that your predominant focus right now, what you’re doing? Denis: Well, I think your cover says it all. There are a few hats. But that’s my predominant focus, yeah. I did recently draw a five-page color comic story, a mini-biography of Dr. Seuss. CBC: Where will that appear? Denis: It’ll be in Masterful Marks: Cartoonists Who Changed the World. It’ll be out this coming fall from Simon & Schuster. Monte edited that one. CBC: Do you have any dream projects? Denis: [Long pause] I’m not sure I can answer that. That’s a — CBC: You do have one? Denis: Well, there are a lot of things, a lot of projects I’d like to do. Some are getting periodically fulfilled. The Al Capp biography that I did recently with Schumacher, that was a dream project that finally materialized. I’ve been doing these “chipboard” drawings for years and throwing them in drawers. A selection finally got published a couple years ago. That collection and the feedback from it inspired me to do more. So, on many evenings, if I’m not reading or filing postcards, I’ll be drawing on chipboard. I’ve been surprisingly prolific, and the new ones are much better, I think. There are probably enough for another book now. Maybe it’ll be a Kitchen Sink book, or I’ll self publish it, I don’t know. Some people seem to dig them. They’re surreal, and spontaneous, and have a pretty unique look. And I’ve got a couple of exhibits coming up, one is in Holyoke in October and a solo exhibit in Brooklyn in, I think, late 2014 or early 2015 at the Scott Eder Gallery in Brooklyn. And so we’ll see if —

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

always right, or we’re always the smartest ones in the room,” but it’s a respect thing. We no longer want to argue over which font to use or what the cover approach is, or the logo, or whatever the issues might be. At this stage, John and I feel we’ve got the track record, with longevity and numerous awards for design and overall content, enough that we’ve earned that creative autonomy. We don’t expect Dark Horse to underwrite Kitchen Sink Books if they lose money. It’s a business proposition. But we do expect the final say, or in film terms, the final cut. That’s why we’re with Dark Horse. Mike gives us that respect, and we, in turn, respect his organization. CBC: What’s after your Comix Book collection? Denis: Well, I can reveal a bit. A new edition of Kurtzman’s Jungle Book is in production. That 1959 solo work is an absolute classic, but it’s been out-of-print since the previous Kitchen Sink collection 25 years ago. This one will feature new design, a new essay by me, new design, and Crumb has promised a new intro. Plus we’ll recycle Art Spiegelman’s earlier intro. We’re excited about that one. Hopefully a new generation of comic

This and the next three pages: Covers for the Denis Kitchen-edited humor anthology Snarf. After Denis snagged Will Eisner to draw #3’s cover, the editor hoped to persuade top-echelon cartoonists to draw covers and he met great success, with contributions from Harvey Kurtzman, Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman , and Will Elder, among other comix luminaries. Below and next page bottom right: Two, though, who got away as Snarf cover artists despite heavy Kitchen lobbying, were Ernie Bushmiller, creator of Nancy, and Li’l Abner’s Al Capp. With Bushmiller, Denis never got past the syndicated cartoonist’s wife and with regards to Capp, the money KSP could offer just didn’t make the bon vivant’s pay grade.

CBC: You got something in October, you say? Denis: Yeah, in Holyoke, Massachusetts. There’s a group show I’ll be in. I’m not very plugged in locally. I live here, and love where I live, but I don’t know much about local politics or the regional art scene. I’m not plugged into the community, really. I’m pretty disconnected because I’m immersed in so many projects. I don’t come up to breathe that often. CBC: Right. Denis: So I seldom mingle in town. But Gary Hallgren, the cartoonist, he’s plugged in and he lives nearby. CBC: Oh, does he? Denis: He’s about 15 minutes away, and we’re old pals. Gary participates in a lot of group shows. He talked me into joining this one and that’s new for me. I don’t usually get involved with galleries. But I’ve agreed to do some new paintings for that show, experiment with some ideas I have. So we’ll see how that goes. CBC: What’s the genesis of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund? Denis: In late 1986, I got a call from Frank Mangiaracina. He was a regional distributor in Gary who also owned a small chain of stores in Indiana and the Chicago area. He said Michael Correa, his store manager in Lansing, a suburb of Chicago, was busted and the cops confiscated a number of titles. Omaha the Cat Dancer, one of Kitchen Sink’s long-running series, was one of them. But the bust included some relatively innocuous things like Heavy Metal and even Ms. Tree and ElfQuest. And so he sent me — CBC: And Weirdo. Denis: I think so, yeah, Weirdo was nabbed too. Frank sent me a clipping that appeared in the local paper and I was just dumbfounded, because the cop was self-deluded and stupid enough to talk candidly to the reporter. He told the reporter that the shop was selling vile stuff with an “otherworldly influence” and things that were Satanic.” He said, “If you know what you’re looking for you can see the satanic influence everywhere.” So I realized right away the cop making the bust is a religious nut. This is beyond obscenity — he’s seeing the Devil at work. So I said, “What are you going to do?” And he said, “I hired a lawyer and we’ll contest it.” But he hired a local lawyer who had no experience in First Amendment law and one of their mistakes was bringing in Cat Yronwode as an expert witness. The jury had seen the busted publications, some of which were quite sexually graphic, but clearly intended for adult readers. With Cat on the stand, the prosecuting attorney said, “Would you let

your children read these comics?” And Cat was like, “Yeah, sure, I’d have no problem with that.” And so even though the case had nothing to do with children reading the busted comics, she apparently lost all credibility with the jury with that comment. They found Correa guilty. He faced a significant fine and some jail time. At that point, I felt, “Oh, man, I’ve got to do something here.” So I told Frank, “I’m going to raise some money so you and Michael can get a really top-notch attorney to appeal this. It can’t come down this way.” The very next convention I was at was in the Twin Cities and Sergio Aragonés was there. I think he was the first I asked. I said, “If I put together a fund-raising portfolio for Frank’s manager, would you contribute?” And Sergio said, “Absolutely!” Reed Waller, Omaha’s artist, lived in Minneapolis and, of course, he agreed to do a piece. Then I contacted Will Eisner and Crumb and Rich Corben, Frank Miller, Steve Bissette, Howard Cruse, and — I have to look — ten or 12 artists to each do a piece for the portfolio. I did a plate, too. And then I talked to my printer and said, “This is for a good cause, will you just do it at cost?” He agreed. I talked to the distributors and I said, “Will you pass this along without taking a cut?” I think they all agreed. I tried everything to minimize cost and maximize the revenue. I set up an account under the name Comic Book Legal Defense Fund. Then I found a highly respected First Amendment attorney in Chicago named Burt Joseph. He had put together the Playboy Foundation and had worked with Hefner on a number of key court tests. I met him in person, was impressed, and said, “You’re the man.” He took the case to the Appellate Court and overturned the conviction. After paying him, there was still some significant money in the special account I had created, I think in the neighborhood of $20,000.

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

This page and next: More imaginative Snarf covers, including the unpublished #16.

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

inal comic art to his publisher, also in California. That ended up being a very expensive case that we finally overturned, and it had nothing to do with sex. We had the notorious Michael Diana case where Michael initially was a suspect in a Florida serial killing that he had nothing to do with, but in the course of discovery, the police found these cartoon booklets he was self-publishing and selling or trading to like-minded people and they busted him for obscenity. The books were pretty graphic and blasphemous: Jesus mutilating and having sex with children, strong stuff, but done for his personal amusement and a tiny number of adults. The jury found him guilty and the judge went way beyond any case we’d ever heard of. As part of Diana’s sentencing, the judge, said Diana was no longer allowed to draw, even in the privacy of his own home, and law enforcement would spot-check him. We were like, “You can’t do that! You just can’t do that. That’s beyond the pale.” But that was the sentence. We tried to appeal it all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court, but the Supreme Court declined to hear the case. We were appalled. You can’t win them all and that case is now a standing precedent. But, most of the time, we successfully intervene and stare down a prosecutor, or if we go to court we prevail. After founding the CBLDF and chairing it for, I think, 18 years, I resigned a few years ago, and urged the board to have term limits, which they’ve since implemented, because I think organizations need fresh blood periodically. And then a year or so back, the board decided to create an advisory board so now, Neil Gaiman and I co-chair the CBLDF Advisory Board. The other advisors include people like Mike Richardson and Matt Groening and others, assisting in fundraising kind of industry elders in certain situations. So I’m still peripherally involved, but not day-to-day. At the very beginning I just felt very strongly about abuse of power and I felt protective about Omaha. I loved that series and thought it was obscene to be called “obscene.” Anybody who’s ever read it knows it’s a very literate, humanistic story that, yes, has some sex in it. But so do a lot of great literary novels. To single it out, along with others in that bust that was just idiotic. We have to prevent ignorant or close-minded cops and prosecutors from pulling worthy things out of stores. Most retailers don’t have the means to properly defend themselves. These are often very expensive cases. So there has to be an organization that can help. CBC: Is there a team of lawyers that — ?

Below: Our esteemed resident photographer Seth Kushner (that’s he above in a pic taken by Ye Ed) is currently ailing with a serious malady and all of us at Casa CBC offer our deepest wishes to our chum. Here’s Seth pic of Denis Kitchen taken at Baltimore Con last year.

So, at that point, I asked myself, “Should I just give this money to a deserving charity or should the CBLDF maybe be a permanent organization? Are there going to be more busts?” And I thought, “Maybe we just don’t hear about other busts. There could easily be more incident like Friendly Frank’s.” So I decided to keep it going and to build a formal organization. I filed for 501(c) 3 status, the IRS category for non-profit organizations, and built a board. I invited a couple of guys who had been particularly helpful with fundraising and volunteering. One was Minneapolis book dealer Greg Ketter, then we asked IADD, the association of direct distributors, to nominate someone, knowing they would select Frank Mangiaracina, the distributor/retailer who first called me about the bust. Early on, we wanted to make sure the board represented all facets of the industry: distribution retail, publishing and creators. We kept Burt Joseph on retainer to review any proposed case, to make sure any applicant’s claim for assistance was within the parameters of the First Amendment. We also had charitable and educational guidelines as part of our 501(c) 3 charter. So gradually the CBLDF grew, raised more funds, took on other cases, hired specialty attorneys, employed full-time staff and became an umbrella organization for the whole industry. For the first time a retailer, for example, in a situation comparable to Michael Correa, could call an 800-number and know they’d immediately have someone pay attention and offer fast, professional legal assistance, whereas in the past, similar situations would pass unknown. If you weren’t in the town where an incident happened, more often than not, it didn’t even make the news. We heard many stories of cops coming into shops, telling a retailer, “I don’t like those comics. You better get them off your shelf,” and they’d usually comply to avoid trouble. It was that kind of quiet intimidation. So over the years, we had a good number of cases where an overzealous prosecutor or police officers, most typically in the Bible Belt, but not always, would do their best to censor the content of comics shops. We also had cases that didn’t involve alleged obscenity, like cartoonist Paul Mavrides in San Francisco, who balked when the State of California’s Board of Equalization tried to charge him a sales tax for simply mailing his orig-

Denis: Burt Joseph has since died so there’s a new expert attorney on retainer. Often the CBLDF will work with the ACLU in certain areas because they have many affiliated attorneys who are serious First Amendment specialists. Occasionally we will find regional attorneys who will do the legal work pro bono. More often than not, we help applicants find a qualified regional attorney and, where possible, negotiate a reduced rate. Cases can easily cost several tens of thousands of dollars. Sometimes, just by coming in to a fresh situation with an organization like the CBLDF with a long track record and a reputation for tenacity, and one that’s media-savvy, some local officials will just back down, because when they busted a guy, they didn’t realize some national organization was willing to come in and make a big case out of it. And the truth is, in many cases, they fully understand the local ordinance they use to bust the guy isn’t going to stand up to scrutiny because it will be proven unconstitutional up the legal chain. So if a CBLDF attorney points that out to them, they will sometimes back down and drop the charges because they don’t want a bad headline that makes it look like they’re wasting taxpayer money on a case they’re going to eventually lose. A lot of times, it is just local politics. It’s real easy, if — let’s say — you’re a district attorney running for re-election, to bust somebody for obscenity. You look like a local hero, right? It’s just too easy. And in some cases, like the police officer in Lansing, Illinois that cracked down on Friendly Frank’s shop,

it was a religious cop who was personally offended. It had nothing to do with the law. How can a comic be satanic? CBC: How about Hot Stuff? [chuckles] Is there any sense that, obviously initial, is that children are being exposed to this? Is there any kind of shift that’s taking place that where comics aren’t kid stuff anymore? Denis: Typically there are local ordinances that set reasonable standards for display of adult material. If you’re selling skin magazines, for example, or X-rated videos, anything like that, there are local laws that say sales have to be to customers 18 or over. And if you have mixed product in your store, you have to have a segregated area. Typically, an ordinance will say such material has to be out of sight or out of the reach of a child. In some locales, such material must literally be in a separate room behind a curtain. Towns and cities regulate these things and its usually just common sense. If you’re a retailer, don’t be stupid, right? We had at least a couple of cases where comic store clerks were set up, where the police sent someone in who was 17 years and 11 months old to buy an X-rated comic, and if the guy behind the counter routinely took the money without asking for an ID, suddenly, he’s in handcuffs. Some retailers are too lazy to routinely check or, frankly, they don’t want to lose the sale. Who thinks they’re under surveillance and going to be set up? So part of the CBLDF’s ongoing educational program is teaching retailers to be smart, to be aware of local restrictions, things like that.

CBC: You do outreach? Denis: The Fund is doing that now, yes. Charles Brownstein, the executive director, recently showed me booklets now being disseminated, to help educate retailers and the public. Neil Gaiman funded the creation of these materials. For a long time, we didn’t have the spare resources to do such things. It’s step-by-step as staff and budget permit. CBC: That would actually — a good, effective outreach would benefit the organization, right? Because there would be less chance of these mishaps occurring. Denis: Yes. And they need every aid that can be made available. You know, it’s not always easy to be a retailer. You’re ordering hundred and hundreds of new products every month. You can’t possibly read or view everything in your store. And you might have somebody inexperienced or lazy helping you, maybe you’re on vacation, and somebody’s filling in who isn’t as savvy as you, or not taking precautions as you would. It’s easy for a retailer sometimes to accidentally get in trouble, especially where a borderline age is involved or an ordinance says this material has to be four feet off the ground and yours was three and a half feet or whatever. If authorities, for whatever reason, want to get you, they can probably find a reason. It’s like “Stop and Frisk.” If the police stop and frisk enough people who look suspicious or are of a certain color,

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Above: Splash to Denis Kitchen’s Teen-age Horizons of… Shangrila #1 [Summer ’70] contribution. Courtesy of Heritage Auctions.

you know, some percent of the time, they’re going to find a drug or a weapon. But should they be able to just stop anyone they don’t like the looks of? Those of us who live in Rhode Island or Massachusetts, like you and I, there’s less concern about basic rights being violated. But if you’ve got a comic shop in, say, Alabama, I think you have to be extra judicious. There will be many people in the community who’d rather you weren’t selling Dungeons and Dragons “devil worship” games or “weird” comic books, and you will be continually under scrutiny and vulnerable. We had a case in Texas where a shop was busted and the case was very weak. The two owners were exonerated, but the bust alone made the local newspaper headline, to the effect of “Local Comic Shop Busted for Obscenity.” The bad press caused one partner to lose his girlfriend, and for the shop to go out of business. It pretty much ruined these guy’s lives and livelihood. The CBLDF can win cases, but we can’t turn restore lives. You usually can’t restore a reputation once it’s sullied, especially in smaller towns. CBC: Right. So has outreach been discussed for a while? Denis: Remember, I resigned close to a decade ago, so I’m no longer privy to internal detail, how long certain things have been discussed before being implemented. CBC: Was that a thought back in the day? Denis: Yeah, oh yeah. The concept was certainly on the fund’s agenda for a while. It’s always a question of human and financial resources, and how you allocate them. We had to grow from just me volunteering time and me volunteering my secretary Paula’s time, back in the late ’80s, to finally getting a part-time executive director, Thom Powers in the early ’90s. When I came to Northampton, I hired Susan Alston as the first full time executive director. She had been with Tundra, one of the people I mistakenly fired a short time earlier. Now, today, the CBLDF has a full-time executive director, Charles, and Alex Cox, the deputy director, who focuses on administration and conventions, and another full-time staffer focusing on fund raising. There are also merchandise donations from publishers and artists, often sold at cons or as incentives where if you donate money, you get a free book, or free T-shirt or whatnot. It’s like your local public radio station soliciting donations and… CBC: Kickstarter. Denis: Yeah, any device that make it easier to donate to a cause. When you go to a convention now, chances are you’re going to see a CBLDF booth with staffers or volunteers who can tell you about the Fund and you can buy merchandise that’s been donated by publishers. It’s just constant fundraising to maintain the organization and to pay for the periodic legal battles. CBC: Hmm, and has it been a steady history that’s taken place? It’s been up and down, it’s probably been difficult, has it always been a struggle? Denis: You mean in terms of victories versus defeats or…? CBC: The survival as an organization. Denis: I don’t think I ever felt it wouldn’t survive, but there were times when it was lean and when the amount in the war chest made us nervous. There were times when if we had a really big case, we would have had to really scramble, but there are times when some months might go by without a major case and so you’d build up the chest. And then, when there is a big case, then that’s helpful in a way because people see the news stories and a person on the line and they realize the threat to free speech is real.

CBC: Right, one of ours. Denis: Exactly. CBC: I remember a situation with Marvel and Megaton Man. Denis: [Chuckles] Well, that one wasn’t handled by the CBLDF. It was more of a tempest in a teapot. Don created a set of Megaton Man buttons that we were promoting through his comic books, and one of the buttons had Megaton Man saying, “I eat X-Men for breakfast!” The Marvel attorneys contacted us. They said, “You can’t use that name. That’s our trademark.” I said, “It’s a joke! This is parody. It’s Megaton Man, an over-muscled character with the brain of a nematode saying he can eat your guys for breakfast. That’s fair use.” And they were like, “We’re sending you a cease-and-desist.” I basically said, “We made a thousand buttons. You want to make a federal case or sue over a lousy thousand buttons? Go ahead. It’s going to make you look stupid, make Kitchen Sink and Don Simpson look sympathetic to fans and I’m going to sell a lot more Megaton Man. Is that your game plan?” Basically, It went away quietly, but it was something of public tiff because somebody leaked their threat to The Comic Buyer’s Guide and Comics Journal, places like that, probably to make it look like a David and Goliath thing. Actually, now that I think back, it was me who leaked it. [laughs] Anyway, the powers at Marvel at the time backed off. It wasn’t worth it. CBC: With your peers though, there was the Air Pirates case. Denis: Well, yes, and Disney hammered them into submission. But you know what? I disagreed with Dan O’Neill on that quixotic effort. His position was essentially that Mickey Mouse had become such an American icon, that he effectively belonged to the public, that the Pirates could do whatever they wanted with Mickey. Parody is one thing, and very important, but they took it well beyond a single story to make a point. They created two entire comic books with explicit X-rated versions of Mickey and Minnie, and other characters long associated with children’s comics and cartoons. I personally thought they were overreaching. Believe me, I have no fondness for the corporate Disney empire, but If somebody had done what the Pirates did to a character or property I owned, and it went beyond a one-shot, I would probably be pretty pissed and take action too. You have a right to take satiric pot shots at anything, but the Pirates just went too far, persisted after they made an initial point. The Supreme Court shut the Air Pirates down in a nine-to-nothing vote, so even the most liberal justices had no sympathy for their legal arguments. I just picked up the book about that legal battle, the one by Bob Levin, so I’m curious to see his breakdown of that whole showdown. CBC: Did you have debates at the time, discussions at the time? Did people, any of the — ? Denis: Sure. Remember, most of the Pirates were friends of mine. Gary Halgren’s still a close pal like a mentioned earlier. I liked Ted Richards. I liked Sherri Flennikin — in fact Sherri and I came close to being a couple at one point — Bobby, and Dan, the ringleader, I liked all of them. I just thought taking on Disney was a futile task that would eat up their time and limited resources and all for the wrong reason. My feeling was, “You guys are all really talented, develop your own characters. Don’t try to take over Disney’s characters.” I think most of them regret the battle in retrospect because of the time and energy drain and the constant angst. They might have had their earnings garnished for life. I mean, these were real fears. [chuckles] If you mess with the big boys, they’re going to come down real hard on you. Is it worth it? I know some agree it was just a crazy, quixotic thing to do… CBC: Do you remember any comic book projects that you regret passing up? Denis: Oh, sure. Yeah, there were quite a few over the years. At one point, Crumb offered me Weirdo magazine. I loved the stuff he was personally doing for it, but he was

using some material — what I thought was god-awful stuff — by street people and rank amateurs who I thought didn’t have a scintilla of talent. But he liked giving a platform to a certain kind of cartoon folk art, stuff I had no aesthetic regard for. So while I had the utmost respect for Crumb the cartoonist, I didn’t like Crumb as an editor, so I turned him down. CBC: Do you have regrets? Denis: I think that decision was too hasty and short-sighted in retrospect, yeah. When Crumb stopped editing it and he let Pete Bagge edit Weirdo, Pete Bagge also offered it to me. And again, I’m not sure quite why that time, but I turned it down again. So that’s one example. Also, fairly early on, I’d get submissions from some cartoonists who I didn’t think were quite ready and thought they needed a little more time to develop, and then sometimes I missed out on them entirely. Chris Ware was a prime example. He was corresponding with me while he was still in college in Austin, Texas. I remember Dave Schreiner and I were looking at Chris’s submissions a couple times, thinking he might be close for Snarf, but saying, “He’s close, but he needs a little more time.” The next thing we know — poof! — he’s somewhere else. Timing is so much a part of publishing, which is why I always liked to use anthologies to give young artists a toe in the door, to build a relationship and let them feel their oats. Why didn’t we give Chris Ware that toe in the

Comic Book Creator • Spring 2014 • Bonus PDF Edition • #5

Above: Also courtesy of Heritage, D.K.’s paranoic cover art for Mom’s Homemade Comics #3 [Feb. ’71].

Above: A couple of catalog covers from Kitchen Sink Press and its sister organization, Krupp. Both courtesy of Denis Kitchen.

Below: The new chapter in Denis Kitchen’s life is the Dark Horse imprint Kitchen Sink Books, which Denis runs with partner John Lind.

I also thought it was a conflict of interest. How can you be a publisher of comics and publish a magazine of criticism at the same place without being at cross-purposes? CBC: I guess it’s okay with some other publishers. Denis: Right. I would have loved if the Hernandez Brothers had sent Love & Rockets to me, but they didn’t. Fate often hangs on those thin threads. I also remember when Terry Moore was just starting to… CBC: Oh, right, the girls. Strangers in Paradise? Denis: Right. He was looking for a publisher and I was very interested. I loved what he was doing and we started talking business. Then he was like, “I’m thinking I might self-publish.” He thought he’d follow the Dave Sim model. I remember saying to him, “If you go that route, Terry, it’s not going to be easy. There’s a whole lot on the production side and distribution side that will drag you down. I know firsthand how hard it is to make comics when you’re also publishing comics.” But he was lucky because his wife Robyn was very astute on the business side and it did work. He’s one of the few who successfully followed the Dave Sim model, like Jeff Smith, who also had a really capable spouse.

Profuse thanks to Stacey Kitchen for her much-appreciated assistance! 39

#5 • Bonus PDF Edition • Spring 2014 • Comic Book Creator

Right inset: The dual conflicting nature of one Denis Lee Kitchen: Businessman and creator is emphasized in this D.K. caricature.

door a little earlier? You can’t win them all. I’m sure if I went through the files, there would be a number of talents where today I’d go, “I turned him down? What was I thinking?” CBC: Who are your favorite discoveries? Denis: My favorite discoveries? Joe Matt was certainly one. I gave him his first toehold in Snarf, then his Peepshow collection. Howard Cruse was another. Reed Waller and Kate Worley with Omaha. Mark Schultz, for sure — I’m certain there are others. Charles Burns may have had his first comic story in Death Rattle. I’d have to go over the backlist and see what others I might be forgetting offhand. I wasn’t necessarily keeping track of, you know, who I published first or who “discovered” someone, but I think Kitchen Sink had a pretty good batting average. I remember when the Hernandez Brothers burst on to the scene, and I read that they had self-published Love & Rockets as a zine and sent a copy to The Comics Journal to be reviewed. When Gary Groth saw it, he did more than review it, he immediately offered to publish their stuff. So in a case like that I never even had an opportunity. Part of me thought, “Jeez, if we had our own magazine of criticism like The Comics Journal, then we’d get more first looks like that.” But

NEW BOOKS FROM TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING

DON HECK: A WORK OF ART

DON HECK remains one of the legendary names in comics, considered an “artist’s artist,” respected by peers, and beloved by fans as the cocreator of IRON MAN, HAWKEYE, and BLACK WIDOW, and key artist on THE AVENGERS. Along with STAN LEE, JACK KIRBY, and STEVE DITKO, Heck was an integral player in “The Marvel Age of Comics”, and a top-tier 1970s DC Comics artist. He finally gets his due in this heavily illustrated, full-color hardcover biography, which features meticulously researched and chronicled information on Don’s 40-year career, with personal recollections from surviving family, long-time friends, and industry legends, and rare interviews with Heck himself. It also features an unbiased analysis of sales on Don’s DC Comics titles, an extensive art gallery (including published, unpublished, and pencil artwork), a Foreword by STAN LEE, and an Afterword by BEAU SMITH. Written by JOHN COATES.

AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: 1965-69

JOHN WELLS covers the transformation of MARVEL COMICS into a pop Ambitious new phenomenon, Wally Wood’s TOWER COMICS, CHARLTON’s Action series of FULLHeroes, the BATMAN TV SHOW, Roy COLOR HARDCOVERS Thomas, Neal Adams, and Denny documenting each O’Neil leading a youth wave in comics, decade of comic GOLD KEY digests, the Archies and book history! Josie & the Pussycats, and more! (288-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $41.95 (Digital Edition) $13.95 • ISBN: 9781605490557

NOW SHIPPING!

ACBC: The 1970s

JASON SACKS & KEITH DALLAS detail the emerging Bronze Age of comics: Relevance with Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’s GREEN LANTERN, Jack Kirby’s FOURTH WORLD saga, Comics Code revisions that opens the floodgates for monsters and the supernatural, Jenette Kahn’s arrival at DC and the subsequent DC IMPLOSION, the coming of Jim Shooter and the DIRECT MARKET, and more!

(192-page full-color hardcover) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95

(288-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $41.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.95 • ISBN: 9781605490564

SHIPS SEPTEMBER 2014!

SHIPS AUGUST 2014!

COMICS MAGAZINES FROM TWOMORROWS ™

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

No. 3, Fall 2013

01 1

BACK ISSUE

ALTER EGO

82658 97073

COMIC BOOK CREATOR

DRAW!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR

BACK ISSUE celebrates comic books of the 1970s, 1980s, and today through a variety of recurring (and rotating) departments, including Pro2Pro interviews (between two top creators), “Greatest Stories Never Told”, retrospective articles, and more. Edited by MICHAEL EURY.

ALTER EGO, the greatest ‘zine of the ‘60s, is all-new, focusing on Golden and Silver Age comics and creators with articles, interviews and unseen art. Each issue includes an FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America) section, Mr. Monster & more. Edited by ROY THOMAS.

COMIC BOOK CREATOR is the new voice of the comics medium, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics, focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. Edited by JON B. COOKE.

DRAW! is the professional “How-To” magazine on cartooning and animation. Each issue features in-depth interviews and stepby-step demonstrations from top comics professionals. Most issues contain nudity for figure-drawing instruction; Mature Readers Only. Edited by MIKE MANLEY.

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR celebrates the life and career of the “King” of comics through interviews with Kirby and his contemporaries, feature articles, and rare & unseen Kirby artwork. Now full-color, the magazine showcases Kirby’s art even more dynamically. Edited by JOHN MORROW.

(84-page FULL-COLOR magazines) $8.95 (Digital Editions) $3.95

(100-page FULL-COLOR mag) $10.95 (Digital Editions) $4.95

O C O M IC B

FEVER houry

rge K

by Jo

it in Catc0h14! 2

SUBSCRIBE! • Digital Editions: $3.95 each, or save with a digital subscription (digital editions are included FREE with a print subscription)! • All our magazines are now full-color! • Lower international shipping!

2014 SUBSCRIPTION RATES: (with FREE Digital Editions)

Media Mail

1st Class Canada 1st Class Priority US Intl. Intl.

Digital Only

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR (4 issues)

$45

$58

$61

$66

$127

$15.80

BACK ISSUE! (8 issues)

$67

$82

$85

$104

$242

$23.60

DRAW! (4 issues)

$34

$41

$43

$52

$141

$11.80

ALTER EGO (8 issues)

$67

$82

$85

$104

$242

$23.60

COMIC BOOK CREATOR (4 issues w/Special)

$40

$50

$54

$60

$121

$15.80

BRICKJOURNAL (6 issues)

$50

$62

$68

$78

$180

$23.70

TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans! TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

NEED MORE

KITCHEN?

If you’ve just read Comic Book Creator’s multi-faceted interview with Denis Kitchen and your curiosity is piqued for more, these recent collections are at fine comic shops, selective bookstores and online retailers...

The Best of Comix Book S. Clay Wilson once worked for Marvel Comics!? Stan Lee wrote checks to him?! Forty years ago Stan Lee and Denis Kitchen collaborated on an unlikely union of Marvel Comics and Underground Comix! This first-time collection of Comix Book features an astounding talent line-up plus contextual intros/essays by Lee, Kitchen and James Vance. Also a limited deluxe version signed by Lee & Kitchen. First book from the new Kitchen Sink Books imprint. $35

Chipboard Sketchbook First collection of Kitchen’s surreal, spontaneous drawings done on “chipboard” surfaces without pencils or prelims. A knockout package, beautifully designed by Greg Sadowski and John Lind and bound, appropriately, between heavy chipboard covers. Intro by Kitchen. “The line work is remarkably effortless and whimsical and the drawings are hysterical; all the rubbery anatomy, devilish grins, and disturbing little beasties.” —Royal Nonesuch $19.95

The Oddly Compelling Art of Denis Kitchen This beautiful monograph was nominated for both Harvey and Eisner Awards and won an American Graphic Design Award for John Lind. Illuminating essay by Charles Brownstein and introduction by Neil Gaiman. “I was always thought it was a shame that Kitchen became a publisher and businessman to the neglect of his artistic talent. He was a gifted an exceptional artist. I think his downfall was women... The big sap.” —R. Crumb $34.99