Modern Masters Vol. 14: Frank Cho

M O D E R N

M A S T E R S

V O L U M E

F O U R T E E N :

FRANK CHO

By Eric Nolen-Weathington

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Modern Masters Volume Fourteen:

M O D E R N M A S T E R S V O L U M E F O U RT E E N :

FRANK CHO edited and designed by Eric Nolen-Weathington front cover art by Frank Cho front cover color by Brandon Peterson all interviews in this book were conducted by Eric Nolen-Weathington and transcribed by Steven Tice

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Dr. Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com First Printing • November 2007 • Printed in Canada Softcover ISBN: 978-1-893905-84-9 Trademarks & Copyrights All characters and artwork contained herein are ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho unless otherwise noted.

Liberty Meadows, University2 and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho. Zombie King ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho and Eric Crowe.

Summer Days ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho and Scott Kurtz.

Batman, Bat-Mite, Black Condor, Catman, Catwoman, Doll Man, The Freedom Fighters, The Human Bomb, Mr. Mxyzptlk, Phantom Lady, The Ray, Selina Kyle, Superman, Uncle Sam ™ and ©2007 DC Comics.

Greyshirt, Tesla Strong and all related characters ™ and ©2007 America’s Best Comics, LLC. Ares, Avengers, Black Cat, Black Widow, Brood Queen, Captain America, Dr. Octopus, Elektra, Hank Pym, Iron Man, Lindy Reynolds, Madame Hydra, Magneto, Mary Parker, Mary Jane Parker, May Parker, Mr. Fantastic, Nick Fury, Peter Parker, Sentinels, Sentry, Shanna the She-Devil, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Storm, Tigra, Ultron, Venom, Wasp, Wolverine, Wonder Man ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Cavewoman ™ and ©2007 Budd Root.

Nodwick ™ and ©2007 Aaron Williams.

Atom Eve, Invincible ™ and ©2007 Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker.

Jade Fontaine, PvP, Scratch, Skull the Troll ™ and ©2007 Scott Kurtz.

Caspar the Friendly Ghost ™ and ©2007 Harvey Entertainment, Inc. Witchblade ™ and ©2007 Top Cow Productions.

Secret Agent X-9 ™ and ©2007 King Features Syndicate, Inc. Barsoom, Dejah Thoris, Jane, Tarzan ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc. Conan ™ and ©2007 Conan Properties International, LLC. King Kong ™ and ©2007 Universal Studios, Inc. Editorial package ©2007 Eric Nolen-Weathington and TwoMorrows Publishing.

Dedication To “my Brandy,” Donna, the love of my life.

And to Iain and Caper, the adorable goofballs of my life.

Acknowledgements Frank Cho, for all his time and effort, and for all his suggestions regarding future Modern Masters candidates.

Special Thanks Dave Colombo, Ray Cuthbert, Bill Maio, Benno Rothschild, Tom Ziuko, Rick McGee and the crew of Foundation’s Edge, Russ Garwood and the crew of Capital Comics, and John and Pam Morrow

Modern Masters Volume Fourteen:

FRANK CHO

Table of Contents Introduction by Brandon Peterson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5 Part One: Tales of a Fifth Grade Comic Book Artist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Interlude: Under the Influence . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Part Two: Taking Shelter in Liberty Meadows . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 21 Part Three: You Never Forget Your First Love . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 44 Part Four: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 69 Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 85

Jungle Girl ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

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Introduction was a guest and I reintroduced myself to him. We got along great, and as I left CrossGen later that year and started to work for Marvel out of my home studio, Frank and I started the now almost daily habit of calling each other late at night while we are working and shooting the breeze for a few hours. Frank had started working for Marvel Comics as well, doing Shanna the She-Devil and proving that unknown editor at Dark Horse didn’t know a good jungle adventure artist from a hole in the wall when he rejected Frank. I’m glad for the industry that Frank gave comic books another shot.

I

remember first meeting Frank Cho at the San Diego Comic-Con in 1997, but he doesn’t remember meeting me. This snub hurts me grievously to this day.

I had been working in comics for quite few years, making my big splash in the early ’90s as the artist of Uncanny X-Men and later being one of Top Cow’s stable of young artists throughout Image Comic’s glory days. I was wandering around the convention, perusing the small publishers, and I walked past the Insight Studios table and saw something that caught my eye. There on the table between known books like Radical Dreamer and Breathtaker was a copy of University2, featuring a classically well drawn young lady and a bunch of cartoon animals on the cover. I stopped and leafed through the book, and saw that the work inside was a special blend of a clever, humorous mind and great artistic talent, created by someone who seemed to be able to switch from a loose, expressive Tex Avery style to a classic Franklin Booth style at the drop of a hat. Someone who could do both drawing styles exceedingly well.

I asked the lone young man watching the table who had drawn the book, and he sheepishly admitted it was his work. The man was Frank Cho, fresh from nursing school and just starting Liberty Meadows. We talked for about ten to fifteen minutes and I heaped a lot of praise on him for his work, which he took with a smile. I could tell he had no idea who I was, what I had done, or even why I would have had a professional badge on, so I felt a little put off by his seemingly indifferent response to my professional flattery. I suggested that he ought to try to do some comic book work, and he told me he had lost his appetite for comic books after being rejected by Dark House comics for a Tarzan submission. I still wonder to this day what dope at Dark Horse passed on Frank Cho. At this point in the conversation, one of Frank’s fellow Insight Studio-mates returned and Frank wanted to take off, so I left with my freshly bought copy of University2, enjoying my discovery of Frank’s work.

Frank quickly lost his roughness, and as months went by he showed himself to be not just a funny animal and babe artist like so many people liked to label him, but a truly great all-around artist, tackling super-heroes, science fiction, and fantasy with an apparent ease. This has sparked a good envy in me, prompting me to constantly try and up my sorry game to compete in his league. I don’t know when, over the last few years, Frank went from being the guy asking me questions about specifics on comic book art and the industry to being the guy I need to take lessons from, but he is now consistently one of the few guys I can count on one hand that inspires me to draw and keep improving. He is one of the few people whose work consistently makes me wonder, “How does he do that?” and “How can I learn to do that?” when I look at it.

On a sappier note, Frank Cho is an incredibly nice and decent person, though you wouldn’t know that from his off-color jokes and sense of humor. We’ve had several long phone talks working over comic pages late at night, and I would count him as one of the best friends I’ve had in my lifetime. He’s a funny, sweet, thoughtful guy, who cares deeply about his friends and family, and one of the best people I’ve ever had the pleasure of working with and occasionally for. I guess it’s a good thing I didn’t let my being grievously hurt by his not remembering our first meeting get in the way of meeting him again. It would have been a big loss for me.

I can think of no one who deserves the title “Modern Master” in comics more than my friend Frank Cho.

Fast forward to 2003, with me now working in Florida as the Art Director for CrossGen Comics, the new owners of the MegaCon convention held every spring in Orlando. That year at the convention, Frank

Brandon Peterson October 24, 2007 5

Part 1:

Tales of a Fifth Grade Comic Book Artist

MODERN MASTERS: Do you remember anything about your childhood in Korea? You moved when you were about six years old, right?

school, so you had to get used to a new kind of school system, new people, not to mention the language barrier. Did you have any problems making the transition?

FRANK CHO: Right. I was born near Seoul, South Korea. When I was six, we immigrated to the United States.

FRANK: It was pretty tough. I remember I had to go to “English As a Second Language” class, up until fourth grade, I believe. That was pretty tough.... It was comic books that helped me learn the English language, because of the pictures and words.

MM: Do you remember anything about Korea?

FRANK: A little bit. I remember kindergarten. I remember just little stuff, nothing concrete.

MM: So when did you start becoming interested in art?

FRANK: Pretty much, as far back as I can remember. My dad is artistic. I inherited my artistic talent from him. I started drawing at an early age and didn’t stop.

As I got older, it just increased in intensity. I guess my first real awareness of my passion for art, oddly, came right around the time we left for the United States; it was around the same time Norman Rockwell died, and his art was all over the place. I remember seeing some of his paintings and I was just amazed that those were paintings and not photographs, and feelings it invoked from a single image. So I think that was my first real awareness of art, of the power of art. And from then on, it just snowballed.

MM: Have you ever had any kind of interest in going back and exploring your heritage?

FRANK: Not really. My parents get on my case about it, but I’ve been in this country for almost 30 years now, and I still haven’t seen a lot of the major landmarks. So I’d like to explore the United States before I go to Korea. I still haven’t gone to Disneyworld or the Grand Canyon—the big stuff.

MM: So what was Beltsville, Maryland like for you as a sixyear-old moving from Korea?

MM: Did it take you a while to make friends, since you weren’t able to communicate as well? Plus it appears you moved around a bit early on. Do you think that added to your interest in art, because it’s such an isolated pastime?

FRANK: Actually, we first moved in with my mother’s sister, my aunt and her husband, in Philly. We lived there for a few months, and then we moved to Prince George’s County in Maryland—Landover, Maryland. It’s right next to Largo, Maryland. And from there we moved to Beltsville.

FRANK: No. I’m a pretty social and friendly guy. I didn’t have any trouble making friends. I drew a lot. Language wasn’t really too much of a barrier. Many of the kids I grew up with were very patient and friendly, and helped me overcome the language barrier. I was extremely lucky to have friends who were very patient with me.

MM: Did you have any trouble integrating? I mean, you’d already started 6

MM: You said your father was artistic. Did he draw much while you were growing up? Did he tell you, “This is the brush that you use,” and that kind of thing?

FRANK: Not really. My dad had taken many art classes in his youth and was a standout art student, but he never became a professional artist.

MM: It was more of a hobby for him?

FRANK: Well, even as a hobby, he didn’t really draw much. My first memory of my father doing something artistic was right before we left for the United States. I guess he got suckered into building a model boat for one of his friends or co-workers. It was this historic Korean warship that was shaped like a turtle with a dragon’s head at the bow. I remember him carving this boat from a block of wood. It was about two feet long. It was pretty impressive. I’m pretty sure that, looking at it with adult eyes, it wasn’t as intricate as my childhood memory remembers it being, but as a child, I remember just being blown away by it. I remember my dad shaping the pencils into miniature cannons and carving the powerful and fearsome dragon’s head— all the little details that he put in. My dad was a great artist....

When we came to the United States, we were pretty poor. We didn’t know anyone. No money or free time. We didn’t really do any traveling. My dad had two jobs.

He was a janitor at night for Greyhound, and he was a carpenter during the day, and my mom worked at a shoe factory. So the only times that I saw my dad using his artistic ability was when I had a science fair or science project to do and he would help me. I would screw up, and my dad would help me build or fix something. I remember a couple of times he actually drew the poster that I was supposed to hand in, and I was just amazed at the posters that he drew. It was pretty impressive.

MM: You said you used comics to help you learn English. What were the comics you were reading as a kid when you first started reading them?

FRANK: I remember my dad bringing comics home from his work when he worked as the janitor at the Greyhound station. He would bring home these old comics that people just left at the station. But it wasn’t until fifth grade that I became really interested in comics, because all my friends started collecting comics at the time. So it was about ’83 that I really started collecting comics, when I really became aware of comics. My friends and I only collected Marvel titles: Fantastic Four, Uncanny X-Men, Spider-Man. I think Walt Simonson’s Thor started up around 7

Previous Page and Above: Sketches from high school.

Left: Preliminary sketch for a Conan illustration.

Conan ™ and ©2007 Conan Properties International, LLC.

Below and Next Page: Pencil drawings from Frank’s high school art class—though the drawing of the girl below was probably done in Frank’s spare time in between class assignments.

Artwork ©2007 Frank Cho.

that time. A lot of Conan. Oddly enough, I didn’t care for Daredevil or The Hulk. I read pretty much everything that Marvel was putting out. I never read DC comics, I don’t know why. Well, I can tell you why: DC comics were boring as hell. [laughter] MM: Were you looking at the credits right away to see who your favorite artists were, or was it just about the characters?

FRANK: I think I noticed the artists right away. The artists that I really liked growing up were the artists that really made a huge impact on me, John Buscema and Don Newton. Don Newton’s Detective Comics #509 blew my mind away. I came across some old Batman comics at my local library, and I remember flipping through that issue and being just stunned at the

artistry of Don Newton, with his clean, classic figure work, and inked beautifully by Dan Adkins. I tried to hunt down more of Newton’s Batman comics, but unfortunately it was right around the time that he passed away. So I guess his work kind of rekindled my love affair with classical drawing. And then, around that same time, I discovered John Buscema’s How to Draw the Marvel Way. As I remember, it was around fourth, fifth grade. That was the big turning point of my life. And then I discovered Frank Frazetta and Al Williamson shortly afterward.

MM: What did you see in them?

FRANK: It was probably sixth grade when I discovered Williamson and Frazetta. I saw their work in an old Creepy reprint. I think it was one of those small pocket-book sized....

MM: Oh, yeah, the digest-sized Best of Creepy book.

FRANK: Yeah, it was a Frazetta cover of Wolfman fighting Dracula. Inside there was one of those few Frazetta comic stories that he did for Warren. It also had an Al Williamson story, “Sand Doom.” When I saw that Williamson and Frazetta work, it was a revelation. I was stunned, just rooted to the spot. And then I came across the Fantastic Art of Frank Frazetta Ballantine book at the local library, and the rest is history.

From fifth grade through middle school, I was discovering one artist after another, absorbing everything I could about those artists. I started to refine my taste in high school.

MM: Did you see the Williamson Star Wars newspaper strips at all during that time?

Did Star Wars have any kind of impact on you at all?

FRANK: No, I missed Star Wars because I came to the United States— MM: Oh, yeah, you came over right after the first movie was released.

FRANK: Star Wars was what, ’76, ’77? So I missed the whole Star Wars revolution. And none of my buddies were crazy about Star Wars. My first Star Wars movie was Empire Strikes Back, and I didn’t see that at the theaters, I saw it on videotape, which I thought

8

was amazing. I saw The Empire Strikes Back first, and then I saw Jedi, and then I saw Star Wars [laughs] last. I liked Empire Strikes Back more than I liked Star Wars. I still think The Empire Strikes Back is the best movie out of the six.

MM: Oh, yeah, definitely. Were there any other movies or television shows that you saw during that time that had that same impact on you that comics did?

FRANK: Blade Runner blew my mind away. Blade Runner, Aliens. That early to mid-’80s time period was absolutely incredible for movies. From fifth grade through middle school... well, actually, up until high school, I was discovering new artists and visual treasures left and right, so I had a very fertile period.

MM: Were you trying to draw your own stories during that time?

FRANK: Oh, yeah. When I was in fifth grade, I made the decision that I was going to be a comic book artist or a book illustrator. My buddies and I used to make these comics, you know, on regular type writing paper, and sell them for a quarter. It sold well enough—I mean, each issue we sold about ten copies—we did two or three issues. It was about a bunch of fighting vegetables. [laughter] I think that was in sixth grade. What really sucked was I ended up doing everything.

There were two or three of us, and we would come up with the story, we would talk about the story. Then my buddy was supposed to script it out, but I ended up with that job. But I was also drawing it, plus lettering it. The only thing my buddies did was photocopy it and staple it. But that only lasted a couple of issues, I think, because it was just too much work for me.

FRANK: Well, it was like one page of set up and nine pages of fighting. [laughter] I wish I could get a hold of one, to see what it looks like. It was basically a bunch of Marvel character rip-offs. I think the main character was a giant hot dog—he was kind of like the Spider-Man or Wolverine type character. And then he’d get ambushed by this big, giant Hulk-like figure. I remember the Hulk figure whacking the hot dog hero with a car, sending the hot dog hero into a telephone pole. I had a terrible time trying to draw the underside of the car. I don’t know why I chose that angle. And I remember poring through old car magazines trying to get a good shot of an undercarriage.

MM: How long were the stories?

FRANK: I don’t know. Probably ten pages.

MM: That’s not bad. A lot of the artists I talk with tried to create their own stories at that age, but they’d usually get two or three pages into it and lose interest. Being that age and doing a ten-page story, that says something, I think.

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My high school English teacher, Mrs. Menapace, was also an important figure in my teenage years. She encouraged me to pursue art as a profession. Oddly enough, I didn’t really get any encouragement from my art teacher in high school. I got a C in her class. I don’t think she liked me, and I didn’t like her. I think she was intimidated by me, and I looked down on her abilities.

MM: So you were even doing photo research, too?

FRANK: Yeah, I would draw it and then my buddy would say, “The undercarriage of the car doesn’t look like that.” And then I’d get really self-conscious. [laughs] MM: At what point did you decide to do the newspaper strip for the high school paper?

MM: But in those art classes, did you develop an interest in other media as well?

FRANK: Well, I always drew, and it turned out I had a natural talent for writing short, humorous material.

My good friend, Terry DiSandro, encouraged me to try out for the school newspaper as a cartoonist, which I did and I took to it like duck in water. I really enjoyed it, and everyone liked my cartoons. It was a very gratifying experience.

FRANK: Well, coming back to Norman Rockwell, I wanted to do oil painting. But my art teacher, I guess I can’t blame her, she just didn’t have the skill or the knowledge to teach me oil painting, so I was very frustrated with that class. I constantly outdrew the teacher, and other students came to me for help instead of her.

So there was a certain amount of resentment by the teacher, and I had similar feelings. There were definite feelings of jealousy from both parties. And also, me being a smart-ass didn’t really help. [laughter] So, in hindsight, I should have treated her with more respect. You know, she is, after all, a teacher. She kind of left me pretty much alone as the weeks went by. She would assign an art project, and I would finish that in a very short period of time and then do whatever stuff I wanted to do the rest of the time.

Toward the end of the year I was skipping classes, because I was bored and didn’t get anything from that class.

MM: Was that when you were a freshman?

FRANK: I think I was a sophomore when I started it, or maybe a junior.

MM: Was it a weekly paper?

FRANK: Monthly.

MM: So deadlines were probably not an issue, then.

FRANK: My buddy Terry was great. He was the editor-in-chief at that time. He gave me a third—or was it a half—of a page to draw my big, giant comic strip, and I would do these funny caricatures of my teachers and wrote paneled comic stories around them. All the teachers loved it. My comic book career kind of took a weird turn. Instead of doing comic books, I kind of went down the newspaper comic strip path early on. Middle school and high school was when I really got into Bloom County and Calvin & Hobbes and The Far Side, and discovered Li’l Abner and other classical stuff like early Mad magazine. For some reason, I naturally gravitated toward humor and discovered my natural talent for doing humor strips, so that’s how I got my start doing a comic strip.

MM: So now you’re drawing comic strips and studying the comic strips. How did the comic strip illustrators influence you compared to the comic book illustrators?

FRANK: Well, the comic strip illustrators didn’t influence me at all, maybe except for Bill Watterson. He was a true artistic master. A lot of the modern comic strips, the art just kind of sucked. So I was actually looking to the old cartoonists from the past to draw my inspiration from.

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Walt Kelly on Pogo and Wally Wood from Mad magazine. I would pore over Wally Wood’s brush line, the incredible lighting and that exaggeration and humor. And I looked at Li’l Abner for the sexy women. [laughter] Man, he could draw women. But it was Bloom County, Berke Breathed, that taught me comic timing. His stuff was absolutely incredible during his first run at syndication. Bloom County was a beacon of comedy in a sea of drab, tired newspaper strips. I owe a lot of my comic education to Berke Breathed and Garry Trudeau.

really opened my eyes on what it took to be a professional comic book artist.

MM: Did you get a response back?

FRANK: I never sent it in. I didn’t have the courage. Because I knew it was bad.

Even though my friends said it was good enough, I knew it wasn’t good enough. But that Marvel Try-Out Book kind of taught me what to expect.

Previous Page: It appears this sketch was done during a Physics class.

Below: A sketch from Frank’s college days, this time with a model posing.

Artwork ©2007 Frank Cho.

MM: Did you see the link between the two?

FRANK: Oh, yeah. I mean, I discovered Bloom County early on and just ran through the collection books, and I’d keep reading about how Bloom County was influenced by Doonesbury. So I tracked down some of the older Doonesbury strips, and I immediately saw the relation between the two strips. But I thought Berke Breathed had a better sense of timing and a better sense of delivery—which Doonesbury had, early on up until around the ’80s.

MM: It became a little more engrossed in the real world, I guess.

FRANK: Yeah, a little too wordy and started to get very heavy with political messages. It kind of lost that comedic edge. Yeah, Bloom County was my bible for how to do a comic strip, how to write comic strip jokes.

MM: As you were getting closer to graduating high school, did you have a career path in mind for yourself?

FRANK: Like I said, I wanted to be a book illustrator or a comic book artist since fifth grade.

MM: Had you done any research as to how to go about doing that?

FRANK: A little bit. All I knew was that Marvel Comics was in New York City. I got that Marvel Try-Out Book when I was in... gosh, sixth grade, around there, and I tried that out. My friends thought that I was ready, but there’s no way. I was light years away from being ready. That book 11

MM: Let’s talk about was those presidential caricatures you did right after high school. How did that job come about, and what was that for?

FRANK: I like to think of it as my first professional job. I started on it in 1990, right out of high school. I was working at a grocery store, and I’m a pretty friendly guy, so I knew a lot of my customers. One of the customers was an art director for a company that sets up conventions. They had some sort of business convention coming up in 1992, so they decided to have this convention use a big presidential theme. I actually brought some of my art to work, and one day when he was shopping I showed it to him, and he got really excited about it and hired me to do a bunch of caricatures of the US presidents throughout history. I think I did about 20 pieces, the largest piece being a parody of the crossing of the Delaware, where it was all the various presidents rowing the boat, with George Washington standing there. That was my first professional job, and I got paid a whopping 500 bucks.

MM: Which, for someone coming out of high school, you probably thought that was pretty good money, right?

FRANK: Yeah, at the time I thought it was pretty good money, but I think I could have asked for more, because I did a huge amount of work.

MM: How many hours did you put into it?

FRANK: It took me about a month to draw all the characters, because I was also working full-time at the grocery store. And it took me another month to help transfer them onto these huge panels.

MM: Did they shoot it on film and blow it up from that?

This Page and Next: Three of about 20 presidential caricatures Frank drew as part of his first professional assignment: Abraham Lincoln, Dwight D. “Ike” Eisenhower, and John F. Kennedy.

Artwork ©2007 Frank Cho.

FRANK: Right, they made a transfer of it, and projected it onto the board, and they had some guy retrace it.

Since I was nearby, I would come in and see how he was doing, and the guy wasn’t that great. So I ended up going in and redrawing them while they were tracing them onto the big panels. That took a long time, which I didn’t get paid for. But it was a fun gig.

MM: After high school, you went to Prince George’s Community College.

When did you start working on the strip there? Was that your freshman year there, or was that a little later, after you got adjusted?

FRANK: It was right away. I graduated from high school and had a $10,000 scholarship to go to the Maryland Institute of Art. Despite my scholar12

newspaper and for the student magazine. I was actually the art director of the student magazine.

ship, I was trying to figure out how to pay for it, because the school at that time was $20,000 a year, and I only had a $10,000 scholarship. My parents didn’t want me to go there, one, because we couldn’t afford it. My older brother was already in college at that time and my younger brother was a year behind me. So my parents couldn’t afford to send both of us to pricey colleges with a third son a year away on their very limited budget. But I was passionate and willing to work for it. Two, my parents thought I would starve as an artist. They were telling me to get a real job first, and do the whole art thing as a hobby. They’re from the old country.

They’re very practical people. They meant well. So I really didn’t get much support from my parents to go the art route.

Anyway, I was all geared to go to the Maryland Institute of Art until I visited the campus. And it was just not the environment for me. It was a bunch of modern art nonsense—abstract art and splatter paint and weird stuff just for weird’s sake. It wasn’t an art school, it was basically a playground for pretentious rich kids. I was devastated. So in August, a few weeks before school started, I declined my scholarship and went to Prince George’s Community College and just started taking basic courses. I really didn’t know what I was going to do. And my parents, coming from a typical Asian family, put tremendous pressure on me to become a doctor or an engineer, so I started taking a lot of science and biology classes.

I’ve always been a good student, and the next thing I knew, I had taken so many science and biology classes that I qualified for nursing school. So I transferred to the University of Maryland School of Nursing in Baltimore.

MM: What was the art director job like? What were you responsible for there?

FRANK: I had to track down the other artists and make sure they turned in their stuff. [laughter] And I helped lay out the book with the editor-in-chief, but it was mainly tracking down artists. The editor and I would assign art for various articles and essays to the art students who volunteered for the project and when the deadline came, they didn’t have the stuff ready or would completely disappear. It was like herding cats. In the end, I wound up drawing 90% of the illustrations.

MM: How often did the paper and the magazine come out?

FRANK: I think the paper came out every two weeks and the magazine came out once a semester. My editor was very happy with my output and submitted my comic strips for some contests. I won the College Media Association Award for Best Comic Strip with my Jesus Christ comic strip that I did, and which I got a lot of grief over. All the students loved it, but, man, all those religious nuts hated it. I don’t know where they came from.

Once it was announced that I won the award with my Jesus strip, it was crazy. You would think these God’s children would be very tolerant people. But no, these Bible thumpers were the nastiest and the most hateful people on Earth. Those religious fanatics are scary people.

MM: Was it just people from inside the campus, or were you getting criticism from outside the campus, as well?

MM: What year was that?

MM: All the core classes, the general course work.

FRANK: It was inside and outside the campus. I guess it was just circulating among the religious nuts. I guess “nut” is a strong word, but it seems like the more religious you are, the less tolerant you are. It was a crazy school year. I remember Prince George’s Community College with fondness. It was a great period in my life.

FRANK: Right. Meanwhile, I drew Everything but the Kitchen Sink for the Prince George’s College student

MM: That was the first time you started developing your own recurring characters?

FRANK: 1993. I graduated in 1990 from High Point high school, and I was in Prince George’s Community College for about three years, two-and-a-half years, taking all kinds of classes.

13

Below: Another sketch from Frank’s high school days.

Right: Frank the Duck, as he appeared in University2.

Next Page: Cover art for the University2: The Angry Years trade paperback collection.

University2 and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

FRANK: Yeah, many of the characters in Liberty Meadows made their debut in one form or another at Prince George’s Community College. Then I transferred to the University of Maryland Nursing School in Baltimore, but the Nursing School didn’t have a student newspaper. So I would drive down to the University of Maryland at College Park, the main campus, which was about 20 minutes away, and drop off my comic strips for the daily campus newspaper, The Diamondback. I would go there, like, twice a week and drop off two or three strips at a time, while going to nursing school. That was the start of University2, [pronounced University Squared] and it became a cult hit, which I didn’t know because I would only come at night twice a week to drop off my strip. [laughter] I think my editor at The Diamondback entered my comic strips for the Scripps-Howard Foundation Award, and the next thing I know I won Best College Cartoonist of 1994. The Scripps-Howard people flew me out for this giant banquet at the famous Peabody Hotel, which turned out to be a black tie affair, so I actually had to get a tuxedo. They gave me a big old giant plaque and the whole nine yards. They had my picture taken for various newspapers and press releases. It was just kind of surreal.

MM: That’s cool. Did they have any professional comic strip artists at that banquet?

FRANK: The Best College Cartoonist [Editor’s note: Also called the Charles M. Schulz Award] was the only college category.

The rest of them were “real” newspaper categories, like Best Editorial Cartoonist and Best Journalist, Best Investigative Reporting, Best Short Story Reporting, whatever. So it was pretty intimidating, because they would call out all these serious people in their tuxedos, and they’re showing clips of all the nominees. They’d have stories 14

about African genocide, serial killers, housing projects, poverty, and then they get to my category and me, a comic strip about animals drinking and chasing women.

MM: Did they blow up one of your strips on the screen?

FRANK: Oh, yeah.

MM: Did you get a chuckle?

FRANK: It was pretty funny. That pretty much started me on the road to syndicated cartooning. After I won that award, I decided to give newspaper syndication a shot. When I came back, I started putting together a submission packet for the various syndicates. And meanwhile I continued with nursing school. I graduated with a Bachelor’s Degree in Nursing, but a couple of months before the graduation ceremony, I got accepted by Creators Syndicate to be a syndicated cartoonist for Liberty Meadows. So I went on stage, got my diploma, and basically went back home and started drawing cartoons.

MM: Let’s talk about the development of the strip starting from Everything but the Kitchen Sink back at Prince George’s up through University2. When you first started developing the strip, did you have any goal in mind as to what kind of characters you wanted or what kind of stories you wanted to tell?

FRANK: There really wasn’t a big master plan or anything. Everything was very organic and fluid. I just started off with the duck character named Frank the Duck, which was a play on my real name. My real Korean name is “Duk.” Frank is my Catholic name. I was baptized as Francesco. So I created this duck character with glasses, and from there I started adding other animal characters, and that’s how University2 came to be. I really wasn’t writing for an audience, I was just writing stuff that was making me and my friends laugh.

MM: What about the character development? Frank started out as a talking animal, then you made him human. What was the transition process with the characters?

15

FRANK: I based lot of the animal characters on my friends’ personalities. Dean the Pig is based on my old college dorm mate, Dean Markos. I didn’t even changed the name. The real Dean—Dean Markos— is half Greek and half Italian. He was quite a character—one of the funniest guys I’ve met, and a really nice guy.

And he was a pretty heavy smoker, even though he was studying to be a pharmacist.

The other animal characters, Ralph and Leslie, they’re just kind of a hodgepodge of my friends and people I’ve known. So, to a certain extent, I really wasn’t making too much stuff up. I was just using stuff that happened to me, or stories or jokes that my friends would tell each other, as a launching pad for a longer joke or storyline.

Above: Convention sketch of Dean the Pig. Below: The guys of Tri Kuppa Brew after a rough night.

Dean, Liberty Meadows, University2, and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

MM: As you were preparing your submission package for Liberty Meadows, obviously you’ve got to make something that’s going to appeal to a national audience, as best you can and still be true to yourself. How did you make that decision as to what to use or what to change and that kind of thing?

FRANK: [laughs] My stuff is pretty much rated PG-13 and R, around that area. So I took all the strips that were more PG and put them all together. It was more like the highlights of University2. And I just changed the premise for mass appeal, because University2 is a raunchy college

16

strip about bunch of live lab animals who escape to the University of Maryland, and then they get recruited into one of the local fraternities, the Tri Kuppa Brew.

That’s the setup. For Liberty Meadows, I pretty much took all the strips and made sure there were no college references and set it up at an animal sanctuary. That explains all the crazy animals.

I sent that submission packet to the top syndicates: Universal, United, King Features, Washington Post Writers Group, Tribune, Creators Syndicate, etc., and I got rejected by all of them, except for Creators Syndicate. They were the last syndicate that I heard back from. And it was pretty discouraging. A couple of the syndication submission editors actually took time to explain why they were rejecting my strip, which was really nice. Basically they were saying that my strip was too aggressive and my characters were too ugly. They said it was entertaining but the humor was just too aggressive and sexy for the family newspaper market. So I get all these rejections, then I get a call from Creators Syndicate. They said, “Did you sign with anybody yet?” I said, “No.” They said, “Don’t sign with anyone, we’re sending you a contract right away.” So within a week they sent me a contract to be a syndicated cartoonist. This all happened while I was in college, before I graduated from nursing school, so it all happened very fast. I was extremely lucky.

©2007 respective owner.

Interlude:

Under the Influence

Norman Rockwell I connected with Norman Rockwell’s art early on. My earliest memory of art in any form was Norman Rockwell’s paintings. Not only was he a flawless painter but he was a brilliant storyteller.

Each of his paintings told a story, which is an incredible feat. He may be the greatest American illustrator of the 20th century.

Norman Rockwell is still a constant source of inspiration for me.

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Secret Agent X-9 ™ and ©2007 King Features Syndicate, Inc.

Al Williamson

Artwork ©2007 Frank Frazetta. Conan ™ and ©2007 Conan Properties International, LLC.

Al Williamson is my art hero and my friend. Al will be the first one to disagree, but he is in my opinion one of the greatest adventure newspaper strip artists, if not the greatest artist, who has graced the comic field. Al took the very best of Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, Milton Caniff and Roy Crane, and added a unique dynamism into his art. No one can touch Al Williamson in creating black-&-white comic art. His bold, high contrast split lighting and the way he dramatically spotted blacks was sheer magic. I picked up many of my storytelling techniques by studying how things are lighted in Al’s work. His sense of visual composition to move the story was uncanny. He knew exactly the right spot to place the camera and give you the visual information you needed to understand the story. He was a natural storyteller. Brilliant stuff.

Frank Frazetta I discovered Frank Frazetta’s art when I was in the sixth grade, and it was love at first sight.

Frazetta’s art is so primal, with brilliant colors and dynamic figure work. His men were powerful, his women were zaftig, and his beasts were ghastly. His art connected with me at a gut level. Frazetta’s art had the right balance of realism and exaggeration that made all his images leap out of the pages.

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Franklin Booth Franklin Booth is one of the greatest pen-&-ink artists of the 20th century, and also one of the most unique.

With a simple ink line, he could paint illusions of epic grandeur and delicate atmosphere. He could do more with a pen than a thousand painters could do with a brush.

Batman, Catman, Catwom

an, Selina Kyle ™ and ©20

07 DC Comics.

©2007 respective owner.

Don Newton Don Newton is one of the most underrated and underappreciated comic artists in comic book history. His art was clean, graceful and solid. Good storytelling and beautiful drawing are some of the traits of this largely forgotten artist. Don Newton opened my eyes to the fact that you can marry the fine academic art with the rough and tumble comic art. I’ve always thought his run on Batman rivaled that of Neal Adams in defining the essence of that character.

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John Buscema

Conan ™ and ©2007 Conan Properties International, LLC.

You can’t be in the comic business without acknowledging John Buscema. After Jack Kirby and Neal Adams, John Buscema may be the most influential artist in American comic books. John Buscema helped me build a solid base in storytelling and figure work in my formative years. He was a superb draftsman. His drawings were like a textbook on composition, anatomy and visual storytelling. His art instruction book, How To Draw the Marvel Way, was the bible to me growing up.

Jack Kirby may have built the Marvel house but it was John Buscema and John Romita Sr. who helped maintain it in the early years.

John Singer Sargent

©2007 respective owner.

One word comes to my mind when I think of John Singer Sargent: class. There’s a sense of elegance and grace in his art. Everyone and everything he painted looks very noble and endlessly charming. With a few economical brush strokes he could make a sunburned, pleasant milk maid look like the Queen of England.

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Part 2:

Taking Shelter in Liberty Meadows Post-it notes on my art with little arrows pointing to Brandy’s breasts and butt saying “reduce breasts, reduce butt.” [laughter] So I would go back and white out Brandy’s figure and try to change her from a D cup to B cup.

MM: What kind of input did the syndicate have on the development of Liberty Meadows?

FRANK: Some, but not too much. The main thing that I changed was turning Frank the Duck, the duck boy, into a human character. Liberty Meadows was an animal sanctuary, and I wanted to make Frank into an animal doctor. The rest of the characters were the same as they were in University2, the college strip. The big change that the syndicate made me do was turning Leslie the Laughing Lima Bean into Leslie the Bullfrog, which was funny as hell.

I said, “Why do you want me to change Leslie?” I thought a talking vegetable was so strange that it was funny. But they said it didn’t make sense. They said a talking vegetable doesn’t make sense, but a talking frog does.

MM: That didn’t last terribly long, though.

FRANK: As time went by, I gradually made Brandy’s boobs and her butt bigger. I did it under the radar and my editors didn’t really notice it. By year five, Brandy had more curves than the beltway.

MM: Were you able to use those strips that you had sent in as the first part of the continuity for the strip?

At what point, from the time you signed the contract, did you actually start running in the papers?

FRANK: They gave me a year. Actually, I requested a year before they launched, because, again, my dream was to be a comic book artist.

Normally the syndicates only give you maybe six months lead time to stockpile your strips before the launch. But I requested a little over a year because I wanted to break into the comic book market and scratch my comic book itch. I tried out for the Dark Horse Tarzan. I was and still am a huge Edgar Rice Burroughs fan.

Brandy ™ and Frank Cho. My good friend, Al Gross, wanted to break into comics, too and he had a contact at Dark Horse. So he and I joined together and submitted Burroughs related stuff to Dark Horse. Al got accepted, but Dark Horse turned me down. So I said,

MM: Well, he is on an animal sanctuary, so I guess I can see their point, to an extent.

FRANK: I had a setup for Leslie.

Brandy was gardening and she had some new fertilizer, and then while she was gardening, one of the vegetables started talking to her. That was my setup for Leslie, but they didn’t like that. They said, “You’ve got to turn it into a talking animal.” I go, “What’s the difference between a talking vegetable and a talking animal?” We fought over that, and I gave in. “You guys know what you’re talking about, so I’ll change it,” so I did. And then they’d keep telling me to tone Brandy down. When I sent them the first five weeks of the strip, they sent most of the strips back with little 21

“Eh, I guess it wasn’t meant to be.” In hindsight, I agree with Dark Horse, because I wasn’t quite ready to do an actual full comic book.

MM: Was it Tom Yeates that did that?

FRANK: No, it was.... What was his name, Shenk?

Chris Shenk, I think, was his name. This was 1997, around that time period. So my whole comic book dream bubble had burst, and I just said, “I’ll just start concentrating on the comic strip.”

MM: So you didn’t send a portfolio to Marvel or DC? FRANK: No, I didn’t send anything to Marvel or DC, because I just didn’t have the same passion for superheroes. I still liked them, but I liked Tarzan better. And also, Al and I kind of teamed up, and he had a way into the Dark Horse office, whereas neither of us knew anyone at Marvel or DC. So I gave up my comic book dream and went back to Liberty Meadows full time.

Actually, I’m kind of going ahead of myself. When I was in college, I joined Insight Studios Group, which was headed

by Mark Wheatley, Marc Hempel, and Al Gross.

MM: What year did you join Insight?

FRANK: That would be about ’94. Around that time period. Wheatley, Hempel, and Al Gross were at Insight Studios. I met them through the Small Press Expo and the local Edgar Rice Burroughs Fan Club, the National Panthans. At Insight Studios, that’s where I put together the University2 collection book. Which, again, I didn’t know I was a cult hit on campus, so when I put together the University2 collection book and sold it to the University of Maryland book store, they bought 500 copies, which I thought was insane. I’d thought, “Maybe I’ll sell 50 copies.” They ordered 500 and said, “Would you like to do a signing?” And I said, “Sure.”

I remember coming onto campus, and there was a huge line. They said about 600 people showed up. It was a huge line coming out of the bookstore. And my first thought was, “Hmm, they must be having some sort of a sale.” I kept walking and walking, and then the store manager waved me over to the table and I said, “What’s going on?” They said, “These people are here for you.” It was like, wow. I was floored, and the store bought a couple hundred more copies. That was a great experience.

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MM: Wheatley and Hempel were fairly well established at that point. Did you get a lot of stories from them? Were you quizzing them to see what they thought of...?

FRANK: Yeah, I was like a little kid bugging them. Hempel was never around.

Marc Hempel is like a hermit. He would only come in at night, when everyone was gone, to check his mail and do his computer stuff. It was mostly Mark Wheatley and me at Insight Studios. The only reason I joined Insight Studios was because it was only a quarter mile from my girlfriend’s house, and I would go see my girlfriend almost every day and end up stopping by Insight Studios, so that’s how I became a member. My girlfriend later became my wife.

Mark Wheatley educated me on the whole comic book business, which I’m thankful for. It was really interesting to get the whole history of the comic book business through the eyes of an independent artist/writer. Hear him recount all the pitfalls and all the stuff to watch out for. Just the general hell he has experienced as an unsuccessful comic creator.

Wheatley would tell me horror story after horror story about what he went through, and that I should expect the same or worse. So I braced myself for failures. But it didn’t happen to me. As I mentioned before, I’ve been extremely lucky in my career.

I was relatively successful in most of my ventures. When he was helping put together the University2 book, he was saying that an independent, black-&-white humor book would fail. And me being stubborn, I said, “It’s going to work out. I think it’s funny.”

And Wheatley would say, “Just brace yourself for when

it’s a failure and you’ve lost the thousands of dollars that you invested in it.” And it turned out to be a big hit, and it went through seven or eight printings. For that year-and-a-half period, I actually lived off the money made by University2.

MM: What kind of distribution did you have? Were you getting it into bookstores and that kind of thing?

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Previous Page: Page 1 of Frank’s Tarzan try-out samples for Dark Horse, and a 1998 illustration of Tarzan’s girl, Jane.

Below: Page 2 of Frank’s Tarzan try-out.

Jane, Tarzan ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc.

FRANK: The first printing was, like, 2,000 copies, and I sold most of it to the University of Maryland bookstore.

I also sold them by going to different comic shops and through the mail. And when I did the second printing, I offered it to Diamond Distribution. Diamond took a chance on it, and it’s been a steady seller for them.

MM: So you try out for Dark Horse, and you’ve got a year to get ahead on Liberty Meadows.

FRANK: Right, I spent about half that year trying to get the Tarzan gig, which didn’t pan out, and I concentrated solely on Liberty Meadows. Then the fights started. The big war began with my editors. The first year or two, I kind of backed off and gave way to my editor’s decisions. What did I know? I mean, they’re the syndicate editors, so they must know more about comic strips than I did. But I found out they didn’t. And as I drew the strip more and more, I started getting more and more confident in my abilities and my comic strip. I started arguing with them about their censorship.

Okay, let me tell you about the comic strip market and the humorless wasteland it has become. There are five topics that you cannot draw or talk about in a “family” newspaper. You can’t talk about sex, drugs, religion, violence and race issues. Me being young, dumb, and full of sperm, would hit upon, every week, one of those five topics. And literally, every week, I would fight with my editor, trying to get the joke approved. It was not a happy period in my life. By the time I voluntarily pulled the strip from the newspaper after five years of war, I’d gone through four or five editors. I felt especially bad for my last editor. She was a really sweet lady, and with a great sense of humor, and she knew what I was going for. She understood the joke. But she knew that the newspaper features editors wouldn’t accept it and had to censor me.

FRANK: At its peak it went up to about a hundred newspapers, including all the foreign papers and all that.

By the time I stopped doing the comic strip for the newspaper, it was down to about 20-25 papers. The newspaper market is a tough market and it’s a dying market. But newspaper editors had no idea what to do with it. I mean, one of the big arguments that I would have with the syndicate editors and newspaper editors is they would always say, “Water down your strip, dumb it

MM: How many papers did you start in?

FRANK: I launched in about 30 newspapers.

MM: That’s not bad.

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down, where a five-year-old can understand it.” And my argument was, “Show me a five-year-old who will go to the newsstand and buy a newspaper.” My argument was constantly, “You have to upgrade your comics. You’ve got to be less restrictive.

You’ve got to take chances. Because newspapers are getting killed by the Internet, by television, movies, magazines. You have to keep up with the competition, because the whole newspaper market is a wasteland of dumb, watered-down strips. You’ve got to take more risks and inject new blood.”

MM: I work part-time at a newspaper, and there have been a couple times since I’ve been there where the paper retooled the comic strip page. And even the most awful strip, they’d get rid of it, and hundreds of people would write in screaming bloody murder, “How could you get rid of suchand-such?!?” Especially with a strip that had been around forever, even though it wasn’t funny anymore and was on its third artist or something. But people still read it, maybe out of familiarity or habit.

FRANK: Oh, yeah, it really is sad. The

thing is, it’s the vocal minority who gets to dictate the comics page. You could get hundreds of positive letters and verbal feedback, but the features editor will always listen to that one cranky, retired church lady complaining about something asinine. And the features editor will freak out and try to cater to that one vocal minority and ignore all the positive feedback for the strip. I used to get tons of letters when I was doing Liberty Meadows. Tons of positive letters. And I would get a few negative letters, but it was just those negative letters that my syndicate editor would focus on. It just drove me crazy.

MM: In the first Liberty Meadows strips you start off basically establishing the relationship between Frank and Brandy, and that’s really the core of the strip, right?

FRANK: Pretty much, that’s the heart, yeah.

MM: And then you did the smart thing: you had a series of strips where each one focused on one of the supporting characters in order to give the reader a pretty good idea of who each character is, and what they’re all about.

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Previous Page Top: The third page of Frank’s Tarzan try-out, this one partially inked.

Previous Page Bottom: The first Liberty Meadows strip.

Above: Two strips from the first week of Liberty Meadows emphasizing Frank’s instant infatuation with Brandy.

Tarzan ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc. Liberty Meadows ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

Above: Enter Shecky the Monkey King—Ralph and Leslie’s favorite character.

Next Page: Pong and Kong. Two Liberty Meadows Sunday strips.

Liberty Meadows ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

FRANK: Yeah. In the beginning, I introduced all the principal characters with a strip focusing on them, individually, and basically build up from there.

Did you have any resistance from editorial about that, that it might take the focus away from the humor of the strip or the ongoing characters?

MM: You set up all these different types of characters, and you could take the strip in several different directions. Did you have a solid idea of what direction you wanted to take the strip?

FRANK: You know, I don’t recall any negative feedback from my editors about Shecky the Monkey King. No, wait. I think one of the editors didn’t quite get it.

I don’t think she thought it was funny.

Humor is very subjective. So I tried to explain it to her, but she didn’t quite understand it. She didn’t understand my humor, to be honest with you. C’est la vie.

FRANK: I had a rough outline in my mind. I set up all the key points that I wanted to touch upon in the outline, all the way from the beginning to the end.

The ending was the big wedding.

MM: So you had that in mind even when you were first starting the strip?

FRANK: Yeah. I made sure I hit those outline points as the story progressed. It’s basically like connecting the dots between each story point.

MM: Not very far into the strip, you brought in Shecky the Monkey King.

Obviously that came from your love for Tarzan, and King Kong to an extent, too.

26

MM: And then later on, of course, you had Mighty Shmoe Pong, and Son of Mighty Shmoe Pong—a combination of King Kong and Mighty Joe Young.

FRANK: Exactly. I wanted to throw in all the movies and characters that I loved as a child into Liberty Meadows, so in some ways Liberty Meadows is kind of like my Mad magazine.

MM: And there were other things you brought in, like the Cavity Creeps from the old Kirby-designed Saturday morning

27

commercial, and then all the Star Wars references, Alien, Xena.... Did you ever have legal ramifications from any of that?

FRANK: [laughs] The only cartoonist that gave me hell was Charles Schulz, and this was in college, when the strip was still called University2. I did a parody of Charlie Brown where he’s stuck in a kite-eating tree, and Charlie Brown asks one of my characters to help him down from the tree. My character chopped down the tree and the tree lands on Charlie Brown. It was a stupid, sophomoric strip, just a gag.

And I get this cease and desist letter from Charles Schulz’s attorney saying that I was violating copyright. They said they would seek legal action against me if I continued down this path. I was a sophomore in college, and it scared the crap out of me. I thought I was going to get kicked out of school. Thank God for my editor of the newspaper, she was great. She was like, “If Charles Schulz doesn’t have a sense of humor about it, screw him.” She was great. I wish I could remember her name. She was very supportive, and helped me get though it. And then, a year later, of course, I won the Best College Cartoonist of the Year, and won the Charles Schulz Prize for Excellence in Cartooning. Talk about a great irony. Charles Schulz was the only guy who gave me trouble. All the other cartoonists were great. I actually got a fan letter from several cartoonists—Dean Young from Blondie and Robert Browne from Hi and Lois.

MM: What about Bil Keane?

FRANK: I never heard anything from Bil Keane.

MM: That was one of your first parodies in Liberty Meadows, when you did the Family Circus parody.

FRANK: The whole Family Circus thing, that was nothing new. When I was younger, my friends and I used to go through the Sunday pages and cut out the Family Circus comics. We would white out all the dialogue and Xerox it so you’d have this blank Family Circus with all the artwork in it, but no dialogue. Then we’d write our own dialogue, which was... very raunchy. We used to do that for fun. [laughter] We did that with a lot of cartoons. We did it with Garfield, the soap opera strips. It was pretty funny.

MM: Who came first, Truman, your reallife dachshund, or Oscar?

FRANK: The cartoon character came first.

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MM: You brought him in to play along with Truman. And you could do a completely different kind of story with Oscar and Truman than you could with the other characters in the strip—a much more innocent kind of cartoon. You could go from the raunchy Dean cartoons to the more innocent Truman and Oscar cartoons.

FRANK: Right. Yeah, I created Truman and Oscar for that purpose. If you really look at Liberty Meadows, it’s really three strips in one. You have the love story between Frank and Brandy, the wacky comedy of the animals, and the innocent kid strip of Truman and Oscar. It really is three strips in one.

MM: Did you ever have trouble balancing that, and making sure one aspect didn’t overwhelm the others?

rotating characters. I tried not to let one dominate the others. Truman and Oscar strips have always been kind of like a speed bump, because I’m naturally inclined toward that love story and the crazy animal stuff. The Truman and Oscar stuff is— I kind of have to struggle a bit, because my brain isn’t quite geared that way. I can rip right through the love story and the crazy animal stuff, but I struggled with the Truman and Oscar. So I made a great effort to put Truman and Oscar in the mix as much as possible and not neglect them.

MM: Is that why you brought in the squirrels, to play against them, and to make it a little easier to come up with ideas for them?

FRANK: At times. But, overall, I think it worked out. If I would get too deep into one aspect of the strip, I would try to switch gears and do a quick Truman and Oscar strip or an animal strip, constantly

29

Previous Page Top: Frank often parodied other newspaper strips, such as this parody of Family Circus.

Previous Page Bottom: Brandy, Truman, and Oscar out for a stroll.

Above: Truman and Oscar were an outlet for a more innocent brand of humor.

Below: Truman and Oscar commission piece.

Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

big Misery spoof, that was pretty funny. This was one of those stories that wrote itself, because the only idea that I had at the time was have Marc DeRail come to Liberty Meadows to do his big outdoor show, and then wackiness ensues. As I was drawing the first part of that storyline, the Misery spoof popped up then eventually became the second part of the story. I had a different ending in mind at first when I started the Marc DeRail story. My

FRANK: That wasn’t the original purpose. The squirrels were created because the place that we used to live at the time had a lot of squirrels, and they used to drive me crazy. They would always chew through stuff, and you could hear them on the rooftop scampering about. Yeah, that’s how the squirrel characters were created, and then they naturally became Truman and Oscar’s enemies.

MM: The first big storyline was the Marc DeRail storyline.

FRANK: Marc DeRail, yup.

MM: What gave you the idea of crossing Mark Trail with Misery?

FRANK: It was just one of those ideas that just came out of nowhere.

The funny thing is, in the Washington area there’s an actual train called the Marc Train, spelled M-A-RC, and it’s a popular commuter train that takes people from the suburbs to DC and Baltimore. By naming the character Marc—M-A-R-C—DeRail, a lot of the people reading the Washington Post got a kick out of that and instantly bonded with the storyline. And yes, it was a parody of Mark Trail and Stephen King’s Misery. I don’t know where I got the idea, it just popped into my mind to make him this great and rugged outdoorsman, but in reality, when off camera, he’s really a big metrosexual, yuppie prima donna.

MM: And then the cow becomes a recurring character because of that storyline. I assume you got a lot of response from the cow.

FRANK: Oh, yes. Cow was a surprise hit. I’ve always thought cows were just naturally funny animals, and when I introduced the Cow character with the whole kidnapping of Marc DeRail story, which evolved into this 30

original ending ended with Marc DeRail getting mauled by a bear. But parodying the Misery movie elevated the whole storyline to something a lot more sophisticated and funnier.

MM: Then you ended it with the Twilight Zone the Movie ending.

FRANK: Yeah, exactly, the Twilight Zone ending.

MM: You also had a little cameo with Fearless Richard Stacey, the cross between Fearless Fosdick and Dick Tracy.

FRANK: Right, right. Actually, it was Fearless Fosdick from Li’l Abner that I was parodying, so it was a parody of a parody.

MM: Exactly. [laughter] I guess that was your love for Al Capp showing.

FRANK: Oh, yeah. I mean, Al Capp’s Li’l Abner was a huge influence on me.

When I was going through my Frazetta period, I discovered Al Capp, because Frazetta drew for Al Capp for nine or eleven years. He drew Li’l Abner women hot.

They looked great—the body caricatures and facial expressions, great stuff.

MM: In ’97, you started formatting the strips into the comics. What led to that decision to producing comics, and what kind of difficulties did you have as far as getting them reprinted?

FRANK: It was because my syndicate was having trouble getting Liberty Meadows collected into a book, and a lot of fans wanted some sort of collection book. So the decision was made to collect my Liberty Meadows strips in a comic book, collect 48 strips at a time. That way the fans would get some sort of a collection book in a timely fashion, and also it wouldn’t kill the big, thick collection book down the road. It was one of those things that I really didn’t plan on. I was just trying to use the comic book to buy time for the collection book. Instead, the comic book became more popular and profitable than the syndicate collection books. Each issue increased in circulation.

The Liberty Meadows comic book suddenly put me on the comic book map.

Previous Page: Cow entered the strip as part of the Marc DeRail storyline and became an instant hit.

Above: Panel featuring the first appearance of Fearless Detective Richard Stacey.

Left: Cover art for the second printing of Liberty Meadows: Eden, the first collection book of Liberty Meadows strips.

Liberty Meadows ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

FRANK: Here’s the great myth: People think that if you’re a syndicated cartoonist, you make big money. It’s false. You need to be in about 300 papers before you start making some pretty decent money. I was making less than minimum wage pretty much from the start. I started off at about $17,000 a year, and toward the end, I was down to about $10,000 a year. And I was spending about 60 hours a week working on the strip. No, I couldn’t have survived without the income of the comic book. Originally I didn’t count on the comic book to make money, maybe some extra play money at most, but from early on it became my main source of income.

MM: You were starting to print, in the comics, some of the rejected strips, or the unedited versions of the strips, that kind of thing. Did you have any problems with the syndicate about that?

FRANK: No, the syndicate knew. They really didn’t care about the comic book market, so they basically allowed me to do it just to keep me quiet. [laughs] Because the first year-and-a-half or so I was a good soldier, and kind of kept my mouth shut. When I realized the syndicate was having trouble getting a simple collection book deal, and censorship of my strips continued unabated, I’d basically had enough. That started the big battle with my editors. So one of the concessions the syndicate gave me was the complete control of the comic book reprints. They said, “Go ahead, do the comic book. You can put in all the original humor into it, the original punchlines and all that. Just leave us alone.” I was extremely happy, and it only made the comic book more popular.

MM: Did you notice an increase in the number of papers you were getting into after the comic?

FRANK: For the first year, the newspaper circulation increased.

Liberty Meadows started out in about 30 papers. Then, for the next twelve months or so, maybe 18 months, it started increasing. I think it hit its peak at around a hundred papers, that’s according to my syndicate. Then, after that first year, I started losing papers. On the newspaper side, I was slowly losing circulation, but on the comic book side I was gaining more readers. It was kind of weird.

MM: Income-wise, the comics, I assume, more than made up for the loss of the papers?

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Previous Page Top: A commentary of sorts on the censorship of the Liberty Meadows strips.

Previous Page Bottom and This Page: Brandy and SuperTruman! From preliminary sketch (left) to pencils (previous page) to finished inks (below).

Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

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Below: Illustration from Jimgrim and the Devil at Ludd, which reprinted two short Jimgrim novels

by Talbot Mundy which originally appeared in Adventure Magazine in 1922.

Next Page Top: Fun with bras.

Next Page Bottom: Brandy and Ralph.

Jimgrim artwork ©2007 Frank Cho. Liberty Meadow ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

MM: Do you think part of the reason it was popular in comic form is due to the dearth of humor comics on the stands? I mean, there are a bit more humor books out there now, but at the time Liberty Meadows started there were very few.

comics and pop culture showed up in the strip, as well, and there was some affinity there with the audience.

FRANK: I have no idea. I try to figure it out, but I have no idea. I don’t know why Liberty Meadows was a hit, why I connected with the audience. I really don’t know. I’ve been extremely lucky, that’s all I can say.

I’m just lucky. I guess I was at the right place at the right time.

MM: Oh, yeah, that doesn’t hurt at all. [laughter] Around that time, you also did some book illustration work. There was Jimgrim and the Devil at Ludd and Bride of the Beast Man. Was it hard switching gears, doing that kind of thing, or were you already drawing in that style for fun on the side anyway?

MM: I think a large part of the strip’s popularity owes to the fact that your love of

FRANK: And also drawing hot, sexy women helped. [laughter]

FRANK: It wasn’t too hard. I was doing that on the side as I was doing Liberty Meadows. It’s harder now since I’ve become more self-conscious about my art. But back then it was just shoot from the hip, that type of thing, just drawing for the fun of it. I still have fun drawing it, but I’m more critical of my artwork now. Yeah, that whole book illustration thing was a passion of mine from early on. If you remember, when I was in fifth grade I made the decision that I wanted to be a comic book illustrator or a book illustrator. And I was extremely fortunate to be able to do both at the same time. So the whole book illustration was another great bit of luck, to able to land that type of gig and drawing the stuff that I wanted to draw—the whole Edgar Rice Burroughs and pulp story type stuff.

MM: In 1999 you won National Cartoonists Society Award in two categories. That must have been vindicating for you.

FRANK: Winning the National Cartoonists Society Awards for Best Comic Book and Best Book Illustration was sweet.

To be recognized by your peers and artists who you respect was humbling and exciting. That was one of the high points of my accidental career.

MM: Did that give you more ammunition as far as dealing with your editors?

FRANK: “Hey, I won the National Cartoonists Society Award”?

MM: Yeah.

34

FRANK: They don’t care. [laughter] “You’re behind on your deadline.”

“Well, I’m behind on my deadline because you rejected a week’s worth of my strip.”

MM: Did you ever get to the point, after the comic took off, where you would maybe draw strips knowing they would be rejected, but thinking, “Well, they’re going to be in the comic, and that’s where I’m getting most of my income, now”? Did you get to that point at all?

FRANK: Yes and no. I let the joke and the story dictate the strip. By that time, I pretty much didn’t give a rat’s ass. I wrote and drew whatever I felt like and let my editor deal with the appropriateness of the humor and make the changes on Photoshop.

Newspaper is such a weird business. I remember one strip where Brandy was in a bra, and it’s not that offensive. You see cleavage.

She’s wearing a bra, so you have cleavage. And they’re saying, “Oh, you can’t show cleavage. You have to take that out. And I’m going, “Well, there are all these bra ads in the newspaper. What am I doing different? Just turn a couple of pages in the newspaper and there’s a huge, half-page bra ad, with the big gazongas right in your face.”

And they said, “No, no, no, the comics page is rated G. Everything else is rated PG or PG-13, or whatever, but the comics page has to be rated G.” I thought that just didn’t make any sense.

MM: Do you still keep an eye on the comic pages?

FRANK: No, no. I stopped reading the comic pages a while back. I still get the paper. I still get the Washington Post delivered every day and read the paper, but I haven’t followed any strips in a while. I mean, the last strip that I followed that was pretty funny was Pearls before Swine.

MM: That’s not bad.

FRANK: Yeah. That was kind of an acquired taste. When I first saw it, I didn’t care for the art.

MM: It’s not the greatest art, yeah.

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Reading the Internet is not the same. When you’re eating breakfast, you read the paper.

FRANK: But I kept reading it and it clicked for me. He’s really funny. And I used to follow Ernie, by Bud Grace.

Get Fuzzy used to be pretty funny. And that’s pretty much it. Oh, Speed Bumps is pretty good, too.

MM: With many papers there’s a big push to move things online, and they’ll have extra features online— photo galleries, video footage, and things like that on the website. That’s where it’s headed, now.

MM: I’m not familiar with that one.

FRANK: That’s a single-panel strip. He has a really good, cartoony art style, and solid writing. So out of the new crop of comic strips, those four I kind of kept my eyes on for a while. And then one year I stopped getting the paper for a year because it was just too much and I was getting lot of my news on TV and the Internet. But I recently started getting the paper again, because I just missed reading the paper in the morning, y’know?

FRANK: Yeah. Since we’re on the subject of the newspaper syndicate, the contract that I had from Creators Syndicate was horrible. It’s my fault. I had a real bad lawyer and trusted his advice, but it was a really, really crappy contract. It was a 20-year contract, the syndicate owns the copyright, the whole nine yards. I found out after I became a syndicated cartoonist that I could have 36

negotiated a better deal. You can have a contract be, like, five or seven years and you own copyright. You can actually ask for a bigger percentage of the profit, which I didn’t know when I first signed.

So, for all the young cartoonists out there who want to get into the syndication business, ask for a five-year contract and you own copyright. So when the comic strip is printed, it says copyright your name and distributed by the syndicate. And you can ask for a bigger share of the pie, instead of 50/50. Even though 50/50 is pretty standard, you can ask for 60% or more.

In some ways right now is a pretty good time to get into newspaper syndication because I think a lot of the syndicates are more flexible. But, at the same time, it’s a really bad time financially, because all the newspapers are losing circulation. But, of course, there’s always the Internet. You can easily do a web strip and gain a following there, and use that as leverage to get a really great deal from the newspaper syndicate.

Which I’m doing right now. I’m writing and drawing a new daily webstrip with Aaron Williams, and Jim Demonakos is setting up the web site. I can’t go into too much detail but we’re going to launch next year. Look for a big announcement soon.

ing and they’d yell at me that, “You’re late on your strip. What are you doing?” I’d say, “I’m working.” “What are you working on?” “I’m writing.” They didn’t understand that. They’d think I was being lazy.

MM: Would you self-edit the gags yourself, or would you run them by people, say, your wife? “Is this funny?”

FRANK: It has always been up to me. I’ve always trusted my instincts, and it’s paid off very well. I think I have a natural, innate knack for comedy. Every now and then I run an idea by my friends to see what they think, but 99% of the time I self-edit and

MM: How’s that going to affect your comic book work timewise?

FRANK: Aaron Williams is my co-writer, and we’ve already written the first 60 strips and are right now doing the character designs. It’s not really a daily comic strip, it’s going to be three days a week. We’re going to launch it once I finish drawing the first 100 strips.

MM: I guess that means the writing side takes a little longer for you than the drawing side of doing a strip?

FRANK: Yeah. With the drawing side, once you have a character design down, it’s pretty easy. It’s the writing that’s the hard part. I mean, writing is easy and hard. When I was doing Liberty Meadows, I would come up with 50 jokes in a very short period of time, and out of that 50, two would be funny. [laughter] A lot of my friends and my wife would see me just sitting there watching TV or read37

Previous Page: Pencils and inks for one of the “breaking in my new/old pens” Liberty Meadows strips.

Below: Cover art for The Nodwick Chronicles Vol. V, collecting the webstrip written and drawn

by Aaron Williams.

Liberty Meadows ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho. Nodwick ™ and ©2007 Aaron Williams.

MM: [laughs] Too nice for some of your cruder jokes?

old Warren magazines, Creepy or Eerie, where Al did this strip about this hack cartoonist whose name was Baldo Smudge. So I basically took that as a nod to Al Williamson. Not that many people got that reference.

FRANK: Yeah, it can be too much for her sensibilities.

She’ll get mad at me. “You wrote that? That’s disgusting!”

And, of course, I show it to my buddies and they think it’s hilarious. So if it pisses off my wife, then I know it’s good. [laughter]

MM: Let’s get back to the storylines. The Evil Brandy storyline, where did that idea come from? Was that one of your key points that you had laid out early on?

just put it out. One thing I won’t do anymore is show the strips to my wife, because she’s a lady....

MM: How do you keep coming up with all the Dean in the bar jokes? Because there are so many one-liners. Did you have people writing in telling you their cheesy pickup lines?

FRANK: When I was in college I had a dorm mate, Dean Markos, who is a great guy. He’s a pharmacist now, Dr. Dean Markos. It’s kind of scary. He was one of the funniest guys I’ve ever met, and he would tell me all these one-liners. He was like Henny Youngman. And that kind of got the ball rolling. So I used the real Dean to build upon the cartoon Dean. Over time, you get to know the characters voices and personalities and know who and what the each characters would say. Dean was the easiest since he was based on a real person.

MM: Baldo Smudge, what is that a reference to?

FRANK: Baldo Smudge. [laughs] I’m a big fan of Al Williamson. I’ve considered him one of my art heroes and a good friend. There’s a story in those 38

FRANK: Star Trek. [laughs] Evil Captain Kirk.

I got the idea from Star Trek and pretty much every other goofy science fiction show where they always have an evil twin. It also gave me an excuse to draw two Brandys in the same strip, cat-fighting. [laughter] MM: There you go. I assume that was one of the more popular storylines.

FRANK: It was pretty popular.

The storyline I’m really proud of is the Frank and Jen relationship toward the end.

MM: I wanted to get into that. What is it about that storyline that stands out for you?

FRANK: Everything really clicked, I guess. A lot of my stories are happy accidents. I would write and draw something, and then halfway through it, I’ll stumble upon a brilliant

idea, and the story evolves into something better than the original intent. But with the Frank and Jen storyline, I had everything mapped out, and everything just clicked. Especially the Jen seducing Frank scene. I was more confident in my writing, and I wasn’t just winging it. Jen getting her revenge on Frank was my personal favorite bit, because everything was deliberate and planned out in advance and the story unfolded as exactly the way I had planned.

Confidence is a big thing in writing. I did Liberty Meadows in the newspaper for five years, and I didn’t really feel comfortable or confident in my writing until the third year.

My storytelling skills were all there from the beginning because I’d been doing it for a number of years in college, but I think after the third year as a syndicated cartoonist, I became more confi39

Previous Page Top: Dean tries out another of his crude pick-up lines only to be soundly thrashed once again.

Previous Page Bottom: Commission sketch of Dean and Brandy at the pool. I sense another thrashing coming.

Above: Two strips from the final confrontation of the Evil Brandy storyline.

Left: A comfortable and confident monkeyboy makes for better comic strips.

Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

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dent in my writing abilities. Also, my art style was evolving, too, at the same clip.

Looking at my old stuff, the artwork is just horrendous. It’s only until about halfway through the third year that I realized that my artwork was becoming very distinct.

MM: Yeah, exactly. You started using a lot of thin line in your approach, and there was a little more subtlety in the details.

FRANK: Yeah, exactly. I became very confident with the inked line, how the characters looked. I really enjoyed the last yearand-a-half, two years of the newspaper strip, because everything came together.

Some of my favorite storylines are from the last two years of my syndicated career.

Frank and the snowstorm, the return of the cow, Frank going out with Jen, Brandy reveals her feelings for Frank, and Jen’s revenge. One after another, everything just clicked.

MM: Sunday, December 30 of 2001 was the last appearance of the newspaper strip.

FRANK: Was it 2001? Yeah.

that had never been done before? [laughter] I was only in about 20 newspapers at that point, and a lot of the newspaper readers didn’t know that I was doing the Liberty Meadows comic book. So one of the big reasons that I left with cliffhanger was to advertise my comic book and bring my newspaper audience over. “The strip isn’t dead. You can still follow it in the comic book.” That was the big reason for the Previous Page: Highlights from the infamous “Jen seduces Frank” sequence.

Above: Will she or won’t she? Readers of the daily newspaper were left wondering unless they found a comic shop and a copy of the Liberty Meadows Wedding Special.

Left: A happy Brandy runs from the altar.

Illustration from the Liberty Meadows Wedding Special.

MM: Why did you decide to end with the cliffhanger in the last comic strip and conclude the story in the comic book?

FRANK: Um... it was something

Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

41

Above: As Liberty Meadows was winding down as a daily newspaper strip, Frank began running the Comic Book Shop Locator phone number with the strips (see bottom left of strip).

Below: The second strip featuring Mike the Raccoon, the character loosely based on Frank’s best friend, Mike McSwiggin.

Next Page: Cover art for Liberty Meadow #37, the most recent issue of the comic book.

Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

cliffhanger. And also, to get more money. [laughter] And it worked. Liberty Meadows sales spiked when the final cliffhanger strip came out. I talked with some of the local retailers, and they were saying that the phones were just ringing off the hook.

People were trying to find the Liberty Meadows comic book. It ticked off a lot of newspaper fans, too, who didn’t have access to comic book stores. But everything worked out in the end.

MM: Near the end of the strip, you brought in one last character, Mike the Raccoon. He seems kind of out of place. I’m not sure if he ever quite fit in. Why did you introduce a new character at that point?

FRANK: Mike the Raccoon is based on my old college roommate, Mike McSwiggin.

He’s my best friend and a great guy, and he has a mild OCD. Back when we were roommates, every night he would lock and relock the door repeatedly. He would just stand there for a minute or two just yanking on the doorknob to make sure it was locked.

He destroyed so many doorknobs when I was living with him. And it was just funny.

42

He would lock the door and just yank on it.

I would bring my chair to the front door and sit down to look at him and clock him. And he’d tell me, “Yeah, yeah, I know,” but it was almost like a ritual. I’d always wanted to create a character based on Mike, since all of the other characters are somewhat loosely based on various friends and family. I had the idea for Mike the Raccoon from the very beginning, when I created Liberty Meadows, but I just didn’t know how to fit him in. I tried to get him in before I stopped the newspaper run, so I shoe-horned him in. I regret it to a certain degree since Mike’s introduction wasn’t as well thought out as I hoped. It just didn’t feel right. The timing was all wrong. You don’t want to introduce a major character like that into your....

MM: When a big storyline’s coming.

FRANK: Exactly. The funny thing was I had to cut Mike the Raccoon from the newspaper run because I miscounted the final strips. So his debut didn’t happen until issue #35 of the comic book. If you’re reading this Mike, “I’m sorry for screwing up your debut.”

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Part 3:

You Never Forget Your First Love and it was about an alien that could transfer its mind and take over bodies. Kind of like Deadman. It was a light, comedy adventure written by Al Gross and Mark Wheatley. I was doing that when I was finishing up nursing school.

MM: From what I can tell, your first comics job outside of your Liberty Meadows stuff was a pin-up for Batman: No Man’s Land. Is that the first thing you remember doing, or is there something else? This is back in 1999, I think.

Oh, no, actually, you did a Cavewoman story first, right?

MM: Was that an ongoing feature, or was that just a one-shot thing? I know Penthouse Comix usually had several four- or fivepage stories.

FRANK: Yeah, I handled Cavewoman stuff first. I met Bud Root in North Carolina. I think there was a small convention called Dream Con or something like that, and Bud and I were guests. We hit it off right away. This was in ’97, I think. And I started doing a bunch of pin-ups and short stories for Bud just for fun. I think my first real, professional job in comics was for DC. I think I did a Wonder Woman pin-up.

FRANK: I think it was a 12-chapter story. I did the first two chapters and was working on the third one when we got orders to stop it.

And thank God it was never published. They canceled Penthouse Comix an issue or two before our debut, so the story never saw print.

MM: That was for the JSA Secret Files book.

MM: After being in that comic strip mindset for so long, did you have any problems adjusting to the format? Just in terms of pacing and that kind of thing?

FRANK: Yeah. Is that the first one?

I’m not sure.

MM: They came out around the same time, so it could have been either one—the Batman pin-up or the Wonder Woman pin-up.

FRANK: A little bit. It was very exciting, because I had always felt trapped in that four-panel comic strip grid, and suddenly I got these big, open pages to do whatever I wanted. So it was a little bit overwhelming, but it wasn’t too bad of a transition.

FRANK: Well, if you really want to get technical, my first professional comics job was for Penthouse Comix. That was around 1995, I think.

It was called “The Body,” 44

MM: Did you pencil and ink that story?

FRANK: Yeah, I penciled and inked it, and Mark Wheatley colored it MM: Did Penthouse pay you?

FRANK: Penthouse paid Mark, and Mark paid me. Mark got the lion’s share since he created it.

MM: Gotcha. They paid quite a bit more than the average comic company.

FRANK: Yeah, I think they easily paid double the average comic rate at that time.

Maybe triple the rate, something like that.

MM: So you were kind of spoiled right off the bat.

FRANK: Yeah, being a college kid, it was pretty exciting. I wasn’t rich, but I did okay for a college kid.

MM: After you those first two DC pinups, you started doing covers and pin-ups for a lot of different people. Were you just doing them for people you knew, or for anybody who asked? You did something for Wolff & Byrd, Jingle Belle, and things like that.

FRANK: Well, pretty much anyone who asked. And half the jobs I didn’t charge for because I knew the people well and considered them my friends. Like Bud Root, I didn’t charge him for any of the covers or pin-ups. Wolff & Byrd, the same deal. Yeah, DC was pretty good about it. They paid me promptly. However, I was surprised that DC never hired me for a story.

MM: You did the three pages of World’s Funnest.

FRANK: That was through Evan Dorkin.

Evan Dorkin personally invited me. I honestly don’t think DC knew who I was. And it was only after Marvel put me under an exclusive contract that DC actually showed any interest, aside from the couple of pin-ups and covers that I did prior to Marvel. And I got those DC jobs from people who knew me. Usually it was the writers who personally asked for me—I don’t think DC editors really knew who I was.

MM: How was that World’s Funnest job? I mean, you only did three pages, but it looked pretty fun. And you got to draw Phantom Lady. I’m sure that’s why Evan thought of you.

FRANK: Yeah, Evan said, “You’re going to love Phantom Lady.”

MM: Did you know who the Freedom Fighters were at that time?

FRANK: Yeah, I knew. I did a lot of reading when I was a kid, so I knew all the characters. But it’s just one of those things that you never thought of drawing: the 45

Previous Page: Cavewoman pin-up.

Above: Page from Cavewoman.

Cavewoman ™ and ©2007 Budd Root.

Above: Frank’s two pages for Superman and Batman: World’s Funnest.

Next Page: The opening page of Greyshirt #6.

Bat-Mite, Black Condor, Doll Man, Human Bomb, Phantom Lady, The Ray, Uncle Sam, Freedom Fighters, Mr. Mxyzptlk ™ and ©2007 DC Comics.

Greyshirt ™ and ©2007 America’s Best Comics, LLC.

Human Bomb, Doll Man, Phantom Lady, and Black Condor. It was nice. I had a blast, and Evan Dorkin was great.

Actually now I think about it, Evan Dorkin almost gave me my first job. Back in ’94, at the Small Press Expo in Bethesda, Maryland, I met Evan, and we hit it off right away. He was writing the sequel to The Mask, and was about to pitch a new story to Dark Horse. It was kind of like The X-Files, with people in trenchcoats and hats—Men in Black type stuff. He really liked my stuff, and he forwarded it to the Dark Horse editors and said, “You should really take a look 46

at this guy and give him work.” He made the introduction for me, but I dropped the ball on that one big-time. Dark Horse sent me a script and I thought it was a practice script, not a real script. It was right around finals time and I couldn’t draw it, because I had a couple of term papers and all the finals that I needed to prep for. I didn’t get around to it until about a month later. I did a rush job on it, and it looked like crap. That was the last I heard from Dark Horse until I signed with Marvel. Man, I haven’t seen Evan for awhile. I wonder what he’s doing?

MM: I just saw his name as part of a new kids’ show on Nick, Jr. called Yo Gabba Gabba. He and Sarah [Dyer] are working on an animated segment of the show.

FRANK: Evan’s a funny guy. I think the same convention I met him is when I met Mark Wheatley at Insight Studios, which did lead to my first real job in comic books—drawing pornography for Penthouse. [laughter]

Right: This panel from Greyshirt #6 shows Frank’s Wally Wood via Mad influence.

Below: More panels from Greyshirt #6. Scurvy dogs, indeed!

Next Page: Elektra— the silent killer! Though not from Frank’s Ultimate Spider-Man story.

Greyshirt and all related characters ™ and ©2007 America’s Best Comics, LLC. Elektra ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MM: Let’s move on to the Greyshirt story, Greyshirt #6, with Rick Veitch. You got to draw a goofy “pirate captain” and his buxom crew of lady pirates, plus a bunch of zombie pirates. It seemed to be right up your alley.

FRANK: Yeah, another fun job. I’m not sure how I got that job. I think it was Rick Veitch or Scott Dunbier who personally got me on board for that story.

MM: How was Rick to work with?

FRANK: He was great. He writes a very detailed, descriptive script, and it was a fun script to draw. Yeah, I had a blast. He gave me a chance to flex my cartooning muscle for that story.

MM: Now, you also did a story for Marvel around that time—a six-page section of the Ultimate Spider-Man Super Special, which was basically, except for a few wisecracks from Spider-Man, a silent story. Did you

find that harder or easier to do, as far as having to work without much dialogue?

FRANK: I actually found it easier, because with the dialogue you have to make room for the word balloons and all that, but with these silent stories, it’s all visual. So you can do some pretty graphic stuff without worrying about leaving room for word balloons. That was my first Bendis gig, I believe.

MM: Yeah, it was your first time working with Brian Bendis.

FRANK: Right. Brian’s another guy who’s really great to work with. Very generous writer. I’ve been lucky, pretty much all the writers I’ve worked with were solid writers and pretty decent guys. All of them have been really nice to work with.

MM: Now, in that story you didn’t bother making Spider-Man look like the teenager he is in the Ultimate Spider-Man series.

Was that just a personal preference for you, or did you have any direction as far as that goes?

FRANK: I think at the time I thought it was just a regular SpiderMan story. [laughter] When I heard John Romita Sr. was on the book, I got really excited and tried to make my

48

Spider-Man look like John Romita Sr.’s as much as possible. John Romita Sr. defined Spider-Man for me and gave Spider-Man that classic SpiderMan look. I was trying my best to make it look like Romita’s, and not to disappoint him. You have to understand John Romita Sr. was one of the architects who visually defined the Marvel universe.

Now, Steve Ditko, on the other hand, I hated his art growing up, and I still hate his art.

No, I take that back. I don’t hate Ditko’s work. I just don’t understand his art and its appeal. I can’t see what people see in his stuff. I just see ugly people, clunky drawing and uneven inking.

The only thing he kind of succeeded at with his drawing, I guess, is Spider-Man and Dr. Strange.

Both were quirky and somewhat weird characters and Ditko’s ugly and distorted style matched well. My friends and I used to have arguments about different artists, and most of them kind of side with me, saying, “We understand Kirby. Kirby is the man.” But Steve Ditko is just—we can’t quite place him. He’s just an odd, odd bird. But some of these hardcore art collectors, they just rave about Steve Ditko. As a comic fan, I can’t see it, and, as an artist, I still can’t see it. I guess it’s just nostalgia and history that the art collectors see.

MM: Well, I’ve heard you say that SpiderMan is one of your favorite characters, so was this something special for you to do, to be working on Spider-Man, finally?

FRANK: Yeah. It was a great honor to work on Spider-Man because Spider-Man was one of the first super-hero comics that I started collecting when I was a kid. Just reading and dreaming about Spider-Man, and then growing up to draw Spider-Man. It was a kick in the pants. It was an awesome experience.

MM: And you followed that up by doing the three covers for Amazing Spider-Man, as well.

FRANK: Right, right. And then I went to do Spider-Man with Mark Millar.

MM: Marvel Knights Spider-Man came a little bit later actually. In the mean time you did a little section of The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong.

FRANK: Oh, that’s right.

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MM: That was a great group of artists in that book. Did you feel any intimidation knowing who was in the book?

FRANK: Not really. Many of my friends were drawing that book. So I was just happy to be included in the company.

MM: Did that just get you even more excited to work on it?

FRANK: It did. Originally I was supposed to do the mermaid chapter, but I didn’t want to draw people swimming and asked for a different story.

Scott Dunbier was the editor, right?

MM: Yes. FRANK: They had various stories they were trying to match the artists with, and there was a jungle story. I said, “Well, let me do that one. I’m more comfortable around jungle stuff.”

MM: Yeah, I would have thought they would have picked you for that to begin with.

FRANK: That’s what I thought, too. And so I got to draw Jungle Tesla. The mermaid story went to Adam Hughes who did a brilliant job on it.

MM: Did you have any visual input as far as, say, the spider priestess? Did you make her up whole cloth, or was there some direction given as to what they wanted?

FRANK: They pretty much left it wide open, so I just made up the spider priestess costume as I drew her. I had her wear a big ol’ bone necklace to cover her...

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MM: Her naughty bits.

FRANK: Her naughty bits. [laughter] Actually, that was a really fun story to draw.

I had a ball just doing research. That was the first time I drew a tiger in an actual, sequential story, where I had to figure out how they move and all that stuff. So it was fun research. It was overall a fun project.

MM: Do you normally get into the research part of the jobs?

FRANK: Yeah. When I was younger, when I first started out, I hardly did any research.

I just drew it. But as I got older, I started to do more research to make sure everything looked the way it was supposed to.

MM: With something like that tiger, would you go through several different sketches to get a feel of what you can leave in, what kind of detail to keep in, what to leave out?

FRANK: No, I hardly do preliminary sketches. I just wing it for the most part. If you look at the original you’ll see all the erase marks, because I would draw it, screw up, erase it, redraw it, erase it and redraw it again, constantly. So you’ll see a lot of erase marks. I’m surprised I didn’t erase my way through the paper.

MM: One interesting little thing you did right around that time, too, was a few guest strips of PvP. How did that come about?

FRANK: I met Scott [Kurtz] at a convention and we hit it off, and from time to time he needed help, and I would jump in and do these guest strips for him or write gags for him. I was just helping out a friend, that’s all it was.

MM: How many of those did you do? You did quite a few.

FRANK: Yeah, a lot, actually. I think I was at Scott’s place for a week and he and I banged out some strips and wrote a whole bunch. That was another fun experience.

MM: And the two of you together, came up with Summer Days, which you did a nine-page story of in the More Fund Comics anthology. It seemed like you were going to do something ongoing with that. What happened?

FRANK: I came up with the original idea for Summer Days.

It’s an idea I had had for awhile but I just didn’t have the time to completely invest myself in it. Everything was fleshed out, it just needed minor tweaks and maybe some fresh perceptive. I invited Scott to collaborate with me since I had so much fun with him on PvP. With the two of us onboard, we could get the ball rolling faster. Share the load so to speak. But Scott and I couldn’t match our schedules, then things happened and we drifted apart. In the end, Summer Days just kind of died. I decided to go back to my original concept of Summer Days and try to salvage the project.

Aaron Williams [creator of Nodwick] and I have been bouncing ideas around for a while now, and Summer Days has evolved into Glory Rose.

MM: And this is the webstrip we talked about earlier.

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Previous Page: From The Many Worlds of Tesla Strong #1.

This Page: PvP’s Skull guest-stars in Liberty Meadows, and Frank’s take on Jade and Scratch.

Tesla Strong ™ and ©2007 America’s Best Comics, LLC. Liberty Meadows ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho. PvP ™ and ©2007 Scott Kurtz.

Can you say where the name comes from, or does give too much away?

Right: Page 9 of “Road to Home,” the first and only published Summer Days story, from More Fund Comics.

Below: Summer Rockwell—star of Summer Days—in a very Norman Rockwell type of composition.

Next Page: Nice save, Spidey! Page 8 of Marvel Knights Spider-Man #8.

Summer Days ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho and Scott Kurtz.

Spider-Man ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MM: That kind of gives too much away.

It’s kind of like Northern Exposure meets The Andy Griffith Show with Top Chef thrown in. It’s going to be a semi-daily web strip. I’m having a lot of fun designing all the characters.

MM: Are you looking at the same kind of thing you did with Liberty Meadows, where you collect them in the books?

FRANK: Yes, exactly. With Glory Rose, since Aaron is on board, I’m actually having fun writing it. With Liberty Meadows I’d go in spurts. I have to be motivated. But with Aaron as my co-writer, I’m constantly bouncing ideas off of him, so it’s actually more fun and rewarding.

Also the creation of a new product is always exciting.

MM: Let’s get back to Marvel Knights Spider-Man with Mark Millar. They were basically fill-in issues, I guess. What was that experience like, working on a regular Spider-Man title?

FRANK: It was like a dream come true.

One, Spider-Man was one of my favorite characters growing up, and two, Mark Millar is my favorite writer currently in comics. I was actually floored when I was offered the job. The bonus was that Terry Dodson did most of the heavy lifting and set everything up visually, and I just waltzed in and played for couple of issues.

MM: And between the two of you, there’s not a drastic change of styles.

FRANK: Exactly. Axel Alonso was overseeing the whole project, and Cory Sedlmeier was the assistant editor on it. Axel made a brilliant move by pulling me in on Spider-Man with Terry.

MM: Did you wish you could have done more issues, or were you happy to move on to the Shanna mini-series?

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Right: Buildings, buildings, buildings!

Marvel Knights Spider-Man #8, page 26.

Below: Cover art for Shanna the She-Devil #4.

Next Page: And the cover art for Shanna the She-Devil #5.

Shanna the She-Devil, Venom ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

FRANK: I was happy to get back on Shanna. It’s like, I love to visit New York City, but I wouldn’t want to live there. I love Spider-Man, but I don’t want to draw Spider-Man for a prolonged period. Too many buildings, cityscape, and cars....

MM: And Spider-Man has the ultimate urban setting.

FRANK: He’s swinging around buildings, everything that I hate to draw. Plus, I had already started working on Shanna the SheDevil. I took a break to do the two issues of Spider-Man. It was actually kind of freaky how everything got started. Well, let me tell you how I met Axel Alonso. Scott Sava, who does Dreamland Chronicles—he’s the computer animator guy— did a Spider-Man story, I forget what that was called, with digital illustration. It was through him that I met Axel. Axel was trying to get hold of me, and Scott got us together. It turned out Axel Alonso was a big fan of mine—he loved all the sexy illustrations—and he got me an exclusive contract with Marvel. I remember meeting him and Joe Quesada at the Pittsburgh Con. I think it was 2002, around that time. They took me out to eat at Hooters of all places. Axel wanted me to restart Shanna and said, “I want you to revamp her, recreate her.” And that’s how I came on board Marvel.

Axel’s one of the best editors I’ve had the pleasure of working with because he’s so laid back with me. He gave me just the right amount of encouragement, and if I was straying, he would kind of nudge me back gently onto the path. Yeah, he’s a good guy.

Shanna was originally an 8-issue mini-series, which got cut down to seven when it was all said and done. I did the first five issues of Shanna as a MAX book, which was Marvel’s mature audience, rated-R book line. And then the whole Bill Jemas expulsion happened. I think I was one of the last Jemasapproved projects to come on board. When Jemas got fired—this is just my gut feeling— they were trying to get rid of or undo everything Jemas approved. So they decided to change Shanna from a MAX book to a Marvel Knights book. That’s where the rating change happened. Overnight, Shanna went from rated-R to rated-PG. Axel fought 54

like hell to keep Shanna a rated-R MAX book, God bless him. I remember they called me up to New York and I had a meeting with Quesada, Axel, and Dan Buckley.

They told me about the ratings change, which was really nice of them to tell me face to face. I wasn’t happy about it. I know that Axel was more pissed off than I was. But I wasn’t going to throw a big hissy fit, because it’s their character. I went in knowing full well that I was just a gun for hire. So I said, “That’s cool. Thank you for letting me know,” and I moved on. When I got home, I had the painful job of going back and redrawing page after page, and covering up all the naughty bits. It sucked, but it beats digging ditches for a living.

FRANK: I had an outline written down, and as I was drawing the pages, I would fill in the gaps and the details. I had the entire story arc mapped out from start to finish. There’s an interesting side note. I have a drawer full of Cavewoman short stories and notes that I’ve written but never got around to drawing. Shanna the SheDevil was originally a Cavewoman story that I wanted to do down the road. So when Marvel offered me Shanna [laughter], “Oh, I’ll just change a few things and use this Cavewoman story.” So it was fairly easy story for me.

MM: About how many pages did you have to go back and redraw? You said you were five issues into it?

MM: How badly did losing an issue for the series mess up your story? Because I assume you had everything pretty well plotted out.

FRANK: Yeah. It screwed me up a bit. In the original storyline, issue #7, the one that was cut out, was almost a silent issue.

It was 22 pages of Shanna and the doctor just fighting through a valley of raptors.

MM: And that scene got condensed down to about ten or eleven pages.

FRANK: Less than that. It completely changed the tempo of the second half of the story. But the good news is that the uncensored MAX Shanna will happen. I had dinner with Axel at San Diego this year, and he said that the director’s cut MAX Shanna has been green-lit, so whenever I’m ready, they’ll publish the uncensored Shanna in its entirety, which is awesome. I think that’s what I’m going to do once I finish the first story arc of Mighty Avengers.

MM: In developing the story, what came first? Did they just pitch you the character, or did they have a story kind of in mind that they wanted to do when they brought you onboard?

FRANK: They just named the character and said, “Can you do something with Shanna?” And that was it.

MM: So what did you do in developing the plot? Because this was the longest storyline you’d worked on. Did you plot out the whole arc first, before doing anything else, or did you kind of work your way along as you went?

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Below: Cover art for Shanna the She-Devil #6.

Next Page: Raptors attack! Cover art for the final issue of Shanna the She-Devil.

Shanna the She-Devil ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

FRANK: Yeah, I was five issues into it when they changed the rating. I had to redraw pretty much every scene that had Shanna in it. [laughter] It’s got to be about half the book.

MM: Did you do much more than simply drawing clothes over the figures, or did you have to go back and redraw some of the figures, as well?

FRANK: I had to go back and redraw figures. Sometimes I had to completely redraw the

entire page, but mostly I made the changes in Photoshop. And a few times I actually had to delete panels and completely rewrite and re-pace scenes. It was a pain in the ass.

MM: By moving it into Marvel Knights, it implied that the story was part of the Marvel Universe, but it doesn’t really fit into the Marvel Universe. There’s even a panel where it explains the guys named her Shanna after a comic book character. So obviously you didn’t intend for it to be part of Marvel continuity, but could you see this character as part of the regular Marvel Universe?

FRANK: Yes. But I gave Marvel a way out if they didn’t want to incorporate the revamped Shanna into their universe with that bit of dialogue. I haven’t read the new sequel yet, so I don’t know what they’re doing with it. I do have a Shanna the SheDevil sequel in mind, which, who knows, down the road I may do. But, like I said, it’s Marvel’s character, so I really have no claim on it. Axel came to me and said that they had a sequel in mind and asked if I was interested in it, but I told them I’m a little burned out of Shanna right now. So the Shanna sequel went to Jimmy Palmiotti.

Who was the artist?

MM: Khari Evans, I think.

FRANK: Right... so the job went to them. I don’t know what the story’s about, but I told them, “Don’t mess up my sequel idea.”

Is Jimmy’s Shanna sequel out yet?

MM: The first issue or two are out now.

FRANK: I’ve got to go to the comic shop and read it. Knowing Jimmy, I’m pretty sure he did a really good job with it. I’m actually curious to see what they kept and what they deleted.

MM: What kind of research did you do for the book?

FRANK: Porn. [laughter] What do you mean?

MM: You know, for the dinosaurs and the Nazi props and that kind of thing.

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opportunities when he finds them, that kind of thing.

FRANK: Yeah. The more I read about T-rex, the more I think T-rex were scavengers.

The whole locomotion, the short arms, and the physiology of T-rex were wrong for hunter-predator. T-rex were basically designed to sniff out dead carcasses like scavengers. I read their olfactory sinuses were shaped very similarly to those of turkey vultures, which are known scavengers. It just makes a lot of sense.

MM: Speaking of dead carcasses, let’s talk about Zombie King. That was just a oneshot, but it was only the beginning of the story. Did you have a movie pitch in mind with that, or was it something you just didn’t care to follow through on?

FRANK: It was a movie pitch. I had that whole zombie-cow scene written years before I drew the first page of Zombie King. I’ve always been a huge horror fan—zombies being one of my favorite movie sub-genres—so I had that zombiecow scene in mind for a long time. Don’t ask me how I came up with the idea. And once I started breaking down that zombie-cow scene visually, it kind of dawned on me that this could make a pretty decent movie if I could get the right people to do the story. So this goofy zombiecow scene that I did for fun morphed into this bigger story. I did that first issue, issue #0, with a movie pitch in mind, which Dark Horse Entertainment is very interested in. Chris Tongue at Dark Horse Entertainment is patiently waiting for me to do a detailed treatment of it at this point. I’m going to try to have that done by the end of the year, and shoot it over to Dark Horse.

FRANK: I actually did a lot of dinosaur research on that one, especially the raptors and the T-rex. I’ve always liked drawing dinosaurs, and this really helped me get a better understanding of the dinosaurs in general. I actually found out a lot of interesting things about the dinosaurs.

MM: And you use a lot of that information in the captions, too, where you incorporate the new theories about the T-rex, that he’s a scavenger, but he also will take his 58

MM: That’s cool. As soon as that gets accepted, you’ll probably do a mini-series or something to support it?

FRANK: Yeah. Dark Horse Entertainment has a direct-toDVD branch of their company, and Chris Tongue thought it would be perfect for that. I’m going to write the treatment and I’m going to try to sell myself as the director, because I pretty much have everything storyboarded, so it’s just a logical step. Once I finish the treatment and Dark Horse and their financial backers are happy with it, I think it’s going to get green-lit. And once it gets green-lit, I’ll finish out the story in six-issue miniseries comic book form. The plan is to have the comic book and the DVD released at the same time.

MM: The same thing they did with The Man with the Screaming Brain.

FRANK: Right. So that’s our initial goal right now. But I’m putting the cart before the horse. I have to finish the treatment first and get other projects off my plate.

MM: Well, you’ve got all these ideas going in different directions. You’ve got humor stuff, horror stuff, fantasy stuff. You cover all the bases there.

FRANK: I’m literally working on five different stories right now. They’re in various states of completion, writing-wise. The story that I’m really happy with right now is called Dragon Line, which once my Marvel commitment is over I’m going to work on as my next big comic project. I’ve already talked with Erik Larsen at Image, and Erik said whenever I’m ready, they’ll publish it. So I’m all set.

MM: Who is Eric Crowe, and what part does he have to play with Zombie King?

FRANK: Eric Crowe is a childhood friend of mine, and he and I are both horror nuts. I’ve known Eric since I was 14 years old. We see all the horror movies together, and I just like bouncing ideas off him. He’s more like the audience for me and good judge of horror stuff.

MM: Your test audience, as it were.

FRANK: Yeah, and he would make some suggestions and stuff like that. I acted out the whole cow scene for him, like, four years ago. I said, “I have this crazy idea for a zombie movie, what do you think this opening scene?” And as I acted it out the scene, he was on the floor laughing.

Previous Page: In the jaws of T-rex! Cover art for Shanna the She-Devil #3.

Above and Below: A zombie and his... romantic interest. Panels from Zombie King #0.

Shanna the She-Devil ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Zombie King ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho and Eric Crowe.

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MM: I assume you didn’t act that out for your wife. [laughter]

Below: Detail from Zombie King #0.

Next Page: Frank doing his part in the resurrection of Spider-Woman.

Page 15 of New Avengers #14.

Zombie King ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho. Spider-Woman ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

FRANK: I think I mentioned it to my wife, briefly. She was horrified. I’ve learned that if my wife is horrified by it or disgusted by it, then it’s a winner. [laughter] MM: Do you have the basic story pretty much thought through now, or do you still have some aspects of it you need to develop?

FRANK: I’ve roughly outlined the story and broken down the important scenes.

There are some finer details that I still have to figure out, but the overall storyline is pretty much mapped out. You’re a security guard stuck in a big bio-warehouse full of zombies in the middle of a blizzard. You try to outlast the blizzard and survive the zombie onslaught, but your ammo is running out. So, as the story progresses, you start to go more and

more medieval and things get very brutal in a low tech way. Scene after scene of zombies getting destroyed. It’s for the whole family. It’s the feel good Christmas movie of the year. [Eric laughs] I’m waiting for Disney to call. [laughter] MM: They can make a ride out of it. Let’s go on to New Avengers. You did two issues there, and each of your issues just happened to feature the female characters.

You’ve got the Spider-Woman story in #14, and #15’s more Ms. Marvel-centric.

Had you been interested in Spider-Woman at all before working on that story?

FRANK: No, Spider-Woman was before my time. My prime collecting period was from 1983 to 1990, and I don’t remember Spider-Woman well. I think they discontinued Spider-Woman around that time.

MM: You never saw the Saturday morning cartoon?

Above: A nice Sterankoesque two-page spread from New Avengers #14.

Next Page Left: Ms. Marvel sporting one of the best costumes in comics.

Next Page Right: Not only does Frank get his best buddy Mike McSwiggin’s name on the page from Marvel Knights Spider-Man #8, but he has Truman run out into the action. Not to worry though, Spidey saves him on the next page.

Madame Hydra, Nick Fury, Spider-Man, Spider-Woman, Tigra, Venom, Wolverine ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Truman ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

FRANK: No, I don’t recall. Spider-Woman is a visually fun character to draw, but beyond that I don’t have any nostalgic fondness for that character like Brian Bendis does. I did a big Spider-Woman pin-up for Wizard magazine, and Brian saw that and absolutely loved it. That’s how I got the New Avengers fill-in gig. He just wanted to see me draw Spider-Woman in my zaftig style.

MM: Besides that big two-page spread, she wasn’t really in costume all that much. There isn’t a whole lot of action going on, there.

FRANK: Right. I mean, there was some action on the operating table. Don’t forget the boob implants. [laughter] MM: You also snuck in a cameo of Jen in the office of the Daily Bugle.

FRANK: Yeah. In every issue I draw, I try to sneak in a Liberty Meadows character, or 62

my best friend’s name, Mike McSwiggin.

It’s kind of like Al Hirschfeld and Nina, he put the his niece’s name “Nina” in all of his illustrations. So that’s what I’m trying to do.

My buddy Mike gets a big thrill out of it.

MM: The next issue has a little more action with Ms. Marvel. I think the current Ms. Marvel costume is one of the best costumes in comics. What do you think of the costume?

FRANK: I think it’s a beautiful costume. Is it Dave Cockrum’s design?

MM: I think he came up with the original concept, but it’s been tweaked a bit over the years.

FRANK: I think it’s one of the most iconic costumes in the Marvel Universe. If Marvel plays their cards right, I think Ms. Marvel can become the female icon character for

them. I was discussing this with somebody recently, saying that there were no iconic female characters at Marvel. DC has Supergirl, Wonder Woman, and Power Girl, but there aren’t any standout female characters in the Marvel Universe. The closest they have is Phoenix and Storm. I think Ms. Marvel has the potential to be the big standout iconic female character for Marvel. I’m having a great time drawing her in Mighty Avengers because of her bold, graphic costume. It’s such a striking costume, with the big lightning bolt on her chest. And, oh, my, does she have a chest. [laughter] DC has Power Girl, so I’m gonna make Ms. Marvel Marvel’s Power Girl.

about three months off just to work on creator-owned projects, like Liberty Meadows. I was doing the Liberty Meadows animated show pitch. I wrote the first full pilot script and put the bible together, drew all the character models, and wrote the synopses for the next 15 episodes.

I also worked on Zombie King and other quick projects.

Don’t forget I have two young children at home so if they get sick, I don’t work that day. But Marvel gave me plenty of time. It’s completely my fault that the book is late.

MM: Did you have any input at all as to who made the team?

FRANK: Yeah, a little bit. This is a good analogy of how things came about on Mighty Avengers: Brian poured the foundation and built the framework for the house, and I’m just helping him put up the drywall and maybe helping him move some stuff around, like moving a window to a different place. Brian pretty much had everything all outlined when I came on board. I’m just going in and helping him plug in the holes. Brian had a list of Avengers that he wanted on the Mighty Avengers team, and he asked me which characters I wanted to draw. I pretty much wanted to draw all the classic characters like Yellowjacket, the Vision, the blue ape Beast, etc. But

MM: How far in advance did you start working on Mighty Avengers before it actually started publication? Did they give you enough time to get a couple of issues ahead?

FRANK: Oh, they gave me plenty of time.

It’s just that I keep getting sidetracked by other projects. Mighty Avengers launched in March of 2007, and I got my first script back in May of 2006. I took

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the Vision was in Young Avengers, so we couldn’t use him. I was really pushing hard to get Beast on the team, because I thought that whole buddy relationship with Wonder Man would have been wonderful and would add to the overall team flavor of the Mighty Avengers. But we couldn’t use Beast for some reason, which I was disappointed in—who has Beast?

MM: I think he’s in Astonishing X-Men. FRANK: Yeah, Joss Whedon. Joss Whedon had big plans for Beast, so we couldn’t touch him. I wanted him to come back to the Avengers and turn him back to the big monkey Beast instead of the big lion Beast. I also wanted Jocasta on the team, but Brian didn’t want her on the team for some reason. But pretty much all the team members that Brian had on his

list were team members that I wanted, minus a couple. So, yeah, from early on we were on the same wavelength. Brian described the tone of each book, which was brilliant. New Avengers is the dark, secret super-hero team operating underground, and Mighty Avengers is the bright and optimistic government-sanctioned team. And we agreed that Mighty Avengers should be just all-out action; big, epic battles. Brian did a beautiful job on Mighty Avengers. When I got the first script, I was like, “Holy crap.” It was non-stop wall-towall action. Instant classic.

MM: He did a nice job of weaving the exposition scenes in between the action so the reader doesn’t get bogged down with it.

FRANK: Right, exactly. I told him that I wanted action, and he really took it to heart.

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Previous Page: Cover layout for the first issue of Mighty Avengers.

Above: There’s nothing quite like a two-page spread of giant monsters destroying a city to get the party started. Mighty Avengers #1, pages 2 & 3.

Ares, Black Widow, Iron Man, Mighty Avengers, Ms. Marvel, Sentry, Wasp, Wonder Man ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: Frank “punched up” the script in these panels from Mighty Avengers #5 (above) and Mighty Avengers #4 (below).

Next Page: Frank shows more down-toearth action with Black Widow on page 17 of Mighty Avengers #3.

Ares, Black Widow, Iron Man, Sentry, Ultron, Wonder Man ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MM: It opens up with the giant monsters coming right at you.

FRANK: Exactly. As I was getting the scripts, I was getting more and more excited. The fan part of me was really excited as I read the script, because it was just so energetic. But the artist side of me was getting more and more uncomfortable, because I was like, “Oh, crap, I’ve got to draw these massive cityscapes...”.

MM: Well, there’s a whole lot of rubble in the first few issues.

FRANK: Then I had to draw this army of Iron Men fighting the Avengers. I was,

like, holy crap.

MM: How detailed does Brian get in the scripts? Does he leave a lot of the choreography up to you?

FRANK: No, Brian writes a very tight script, very detailed. It’s like a movie script. He’s been nice enough to let me stray a little in the action sequences. I’ve changed some stuff here and there. Such as, Brian might write, “Sentry punches Ultron. Ares in aerial combat, etc.,” and he would describe it in a pretty detailed manner, but I would switch things around a bit to amp up the visual action if there was room. Instead of Sentry just punching Ultron, I drew Sentry punching through an Iron Man to nail Ultron. Instead of Ares knocking down an Iron Man in the air, I drew him chopping an Iron Man in half and using the leg portion like a gun to shoot down other Iron Men—go off the script to add that extra oomph to the visual actions. I would also add in small transitional scenes to make the sequence flow better. Little stuff like that.

MM: Is there any aspect of doing this book that maybe took you by surprise? Maybe a character you didn’t think you’d like, but you find you’re enjoying more than you thought you would?

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FRANK: Two characters that I really enjoy drawing, which surprised me... I mean, Ms. Marvel is a given. But Ares has really grown on me.

MM: I thought that would be your answer just from the way you draw him. It looks like you’re really enjoying going to town with him.

Right: Model sheet for Ares.

Below: Ares shows his rough edge right away, as Iron Man and Ms. Marvel recruit him for the team.

Next Page: Venom preliminary sketch.

Ares, Iron Man, Ms. Marvel, Venom ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

FRANK: Yeah, Brian wrote Ares as a total jerk.

Like Wolverine used to be. It’s just fun to draw nasty characters, because everyone is all good and professional, but Ares is such a raving jerk. You can cut loose on him, while with the other characters you kind of have to hold back. Ares is a great over-the-top character, and Brian’s handling him beautifully.

MM: So how many issues are you planning on doing for Mighty Avengers?

FRANK: Well, I’m only doing the first six issues.

I’ve taken myself out of the rotation, because it takes me eight to ten weeks to do an issue. The monthly grind doesn’t suit me anymore. Right after the sixth issue, I’m doing the Mighty Avengers Annual #1 and then I’ll finish up Shanna MAX, and after

that, who knows? But I know that Brian wants me on Mighty Avengers as long as I’m happy.

MM: Is it disappointing to you at all that you can’t keep a monthly schedule?

FRANK: Hell, yeah. It’s frustrating and embarrassing that I can’t handle a monthly book like I used to. I used to pencil and ink a book in 6 weeks. I did Zombie King #0 in 4 weeks, and I wrote, drew, and lettered that. I would prefer to be a monthly artist. When I was doing Liberty Meadows, it was a daily comic strip with a daily deadline. I did that for about ten years if you include my college years, so I know I have the speed. But, for whatever reason lately, I’ve become very selfconscious about my comic book work and slowed down. To me, none of my drawings are good enough, so I draw and redraw it constantly, analyzing every line and panel. I really hate myself for dropping the ball on Mighty Avengers.

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Part 4:

Storytelling and the Creative Process home. Then shortly after that I go pick up Samantha from daycare. I keep them occupied until dinner time, around 6:00. My wife comes home and we have dinner, play with the kids, put them to bed. and then I spend some time with my wife. Around 9:30 I go back to work—my second shift. This is when I really work, because the phone’s not ringing. This is when I do the bulk of my drawing—I’m a night-owl. I draw from 9:30 ’til three in the morning. Then I go to sleep and start the whole routine over again.

MM: Do you have a regular routine you try to stick to?

I’m sure it isn’t exactly the same from day to day, but do you have a certain order you like to do things?

FRANK: It’s pretty much a seven-days-a-week job. It drives my wife crazy, because I really don’t get any break at all. Going to a convention is my “break,” so to speak.

MM: And that’s a working vacation.

FRANK: Yeah, exactly. It’s pretty non-stop. I get up around 7:30 with the kids and help them get ready for school and day care—fix their breakfast and get them dressed. I drop Emily off at the bus stop and make sure she gets on the bus. After that I drive my other daughter, Samantha, to daycare. By the time I get home, it’s around 9:00, I start my first shift of work.

MM: Do you change your tools depending on the job, or are there a set number of things you use no matter what type of job you’re working on?

FRANK: I use the same things no matter what I’m doing. My paper of choice is Stratford Bristol board, vellum surface, 300 series. It has a slight tooth which I like. I use a regular mechanical pencil—a 0.7mm Pentel P207.

MM: Do you like a softer lead or a harder lead?

MM: Do you do warmup sketches?

FRANK: I use whatever lead is in the mechanical pencil. [laughter] The lead that I use is the Pentel 0.7 refill leads, medium HB hardness. For inking, I use Micron Pigma pens, three sizes: 01, 05, and 08. I use the 08 for everything, and use 01 and 05 for details. To fill in large black areas, I use #2 watercolor brush with Speedball Super Black India ink.

FRANK: I just jump into it. I know that Mike Wieringo used to do a lot of warm-up drawings, but I could never do that. I just jump into it, and if I make a mistake, I just erase it. [laughter] I’m not really a morning person, so I don’t do a lot of drawing in the morning. I try to, but I usually end up just reading a script and doing a lot of writing. Maybe block out figures, make calls, and stuff like that. From 1:00 to 2:00, I grab something to eat and then usually end up taking a nap. Around 3:00, I walk down to the bus stop and wait for Emily to get

MM: So you don’t do any feathering with the brush?

FRANK: No, no, I just don’t have the patience.

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Below: Layout sketch for an oil painting.

Right and Next Page: Preliminary sketch and final line art for Shanna the She-Devil #1.

Napoleon Duck ©2007 Frank Cho. Shanna the She-Devil ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Nor do I have the talent or skills like Mark Schultz, who can create all kinds of ink lines with his brush. I just use my Micron Pigma pens to mimic the brush lines. I press down hard on my pen to create fat lines and ease the pressure to create thin lines. I’ve been doing it so long that most people think I use a brush.

The only real time I use a brush is when I’m oil painting, which I do just for fun. I’ve got tons of oil paintings at home. Oil painting is relaxing for me.

MM: When do you find the time to paint?

FRANK: I don’t. [laughter] I try to make time once a month to do a couple hours of oil painting. I can’t wait until my Marvel commitment is over so

I can take some time off and concentrate on my oil paintings.

MM: What kind of subjects do you paint? Do you do still life, or fantasy...?

FRANK: Everything. I usually work on three oil paintings at once. I have three oil paintings set up on the easels in my studio right now. If I get tired of one, I’ll just move on to the next one. Right now I’m working on a giant King Kong oil painting. It’s like 4' x 5'. That one I’m really excited about. I’m also working on a Napoleon duck—a mad duck—as a wedding gift for my friend, Marc Nathan. And I’m also working on a painting of the Grand Canyon. All three are about 4' x 5'. I found out I can’t paint small. [laughter] I just like the physical process of slapping paint on the canvas. It’s very relaxing.

MM: When did you start painting? Did you just pick it up one day?

FRANK: I just picked it up. Being a self-taught artist, I’m very conscious of my lack of formal training. So I try to 70

learn everything I can about the formal process of doing art, like oil painting and watercolor and pen-&-ink. Well, pen-&-ink, there’s no real training involved, to be honest with you, it’s just pen-&-ink. [laughter] And watercolor is pretty much the same. I mean, there are a couple of tricks of the trade that you can easily figure out. But oil painting is one of those things that I really take seriously.

Norman Rockwell pretty much started me on my career in art, so I tried to emulate Rockwell in some sense and get involved with oil painting. I put a great deal of effort in self-training to bridge the gap in my art education. I’ll read books about oil painting technique, and I’ll look closely at an oil painting and try to figure out how it was done—try to reverse-engineer it. And you know what I found out? There is no one technique. There is no one right way to do it. So right now I’m trying to figure out what works for me and figure out my style in oil painting. I figure if I just keep painting, a style will emerge.

I’ve found I like to paint wet on wet, like John Singer Sargent and Diego Velasquez who really moved paint brilliantly—the “less is more” type approach. I try not to get wrapped up in the details. I just go more for the effect than for the surface details.

distinct style yet. The next big painting I’m going to do is some sort of nude. Which is funny, for all the good girl art I do, I haven’t done any nudes in my painting.

MM: Have you ever sat in on a live model session?

FRANK: No, I’ve only taken one art class. When I went to PG Community College, I took Painting 101, and it was kind of a waste of time, because they were teaching what I was already doing on my own... painting still life in a corner. The art instructor was a fantastic painter but a mediocre teacher. I just wish the class would have been a little more constructive. I’m trying to get into digital painting, too.

MM: What program are you using, PhotoShop?

FRANK: PhotoShop. But I’m such a retard that I’ve pretty much given up on it. [laughter] I can do simple, flat colors, but the other effects are just so time-consuming that I said, “If I’m going to spend this much time on it, I might as well just do it on paper.” That way you can have an original, too. So if I need something colored digitally, I’ll just hire my friends who are so much better at it than I am. [laughter]

MM: Do you have aspirations of maybe showing at a gallery sometime down the road?

FRANK: Eventually, but right now I’m not ready. I’d be too embarrassed to show what I’ve done so far. I just don’t have a

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MM: So you don’t have that burning desire to do everything soup to nuts, where you can do everything yourself for complete control?

FRANK: I can do everything myself now, it’s just the old way—Dr. Martin’s dyes for coloring, hand-lettering word balloons, and all that stuff. But I pretty much gave those up. I have a pretty good support system that can digitally color and letter my stuff so much faster and better than I can. As long as I can control the writing and drawing, I’m fine.

MM: Do you prefer to have your work hand-lettered, or does it matter to you?

FRANK: It depends on the project. It used to matter to me early on, but now I’m pretty flexible. I still hand-letter Liberty Meadows and other personal projects that are close to my heart. Those are things where I still want to do everything the classic way.

MM: Do you have an assistant?

FRANK: I have one assistant, an intern actually. She’s a full-time college student—a Film and Television major at Towson University.

Her name is Mara Rose. She comes in every Friday from 10:00 to 3:30. She’s a joy to have around the studio. She helps me scan my art and color in my old Sunday strips. Right now I’m working on putting together a massive Liberty Meadows Sunday strip collection book. All my old files have been corrupted, so she’s going back and rescanning and recoloring all the old Sunday strips. That’s like a full-time job! I also bring her along to conventions, because I’m so busy signing stuff and running to meetings that I need someone to run my booth. So she’s been doing that for the last year-and-a-half now.

MM: What’s your routine as far as from the time you get the script until the time you’re done? Where do you start?

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Previous Page: Preliminary pencils and inks for Marvel’s “House of M” crossover event.

Above: Liberty Meadows preliminary sketches.

Captain America, Magneto, Mr. Fantastic, Spider-Man, SpiderWoman, Wolverine ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Liberty Meadows ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

Right and Below: Frank’s layout of the money shot for page 9 of Mighty Avengers #3 and the finished page in its entirety.

Next Page: Preliminary sketches for Amazing Spider-Man cover work.

Hank Pym, Mary Jane Parker, Spider-Man, Tigra ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

FRANK: I do all the action sequences first. [laughs] MM: Do you thumbnail the story all the way through, or do you even bother doing that?

FRANK: I don’t thumbnail, I go straight to the Bristol board. I block out the figures right on the final sheet. I guess that’s my thumbnails, so to speak. On each page I look for the money shot and make sure that shot is the biggest panel of the page. Once I figure out which panel will be the money shot, I build the other panels around that. It’s pretty straightforward.

MM: You start with the action sequences and save the talking heads for later. So you’re jumping around from page to page, not working in sequential order.

FRANK: Right, I’m all over the page and all over the story. I’m just now finishing up issue #6, and I’m drawing page 9 and 10, jumping around constantly.

MM: Will you do any inking between penciling, or do you save inking until the end?

FRANK: No, I ink as I pencil.

MM: You do kind of loose pencils and then you do most of the drawing with the ink?

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FRANK: Yeah, I’ll draw the figure, and if the figure is tight enough, I’ll go ahead and ink it, and meanwhile the rest of the page might just be a bunch of stick figures.

So if you see my pages as I’m working, each page will be in various stages of completion, from loose gesturedrawing stick figures to finished ink background or faces and stuff like that. There is no methodical progression in my work.

MM: He is very, very good. What stage of the drawing do you prefer? Is it more fun doing the layouts, or is it more fun doing the finished piece? Where do you find the most enjoyment in the drawing process?

FRANK: It depends on the day. Lately it’s just been laying it out. I usually lay out, like, three or four pages at a time. I read the script and block in the figures, figure out the camera angles, composition, and flow of the visual narration. That seems to be the fun part right now.

Sometimes, if I have a mental block and can’t figure out the visual flow, then I’ll just go ahead start drawing and tightening up the figures that I’ve already blocked out.

So it all depends on the day and which part of the story that I’m drawing.

MM: Do you provide directions for your colorist, or do you kind of leave that up to him?

FRANK: I leave it up to him. My colorist of choice is Jason Keith, a fantastic digital colorist. We both started together at Marvel on Shanna the She-Devil. When we first started working together, I would give him general directions, but now I trust him. He’s a fantastic colorist with a great eye for light and shadow. I just let him have at it, and he hasn’t disappointed me yet.

MM: Do you do any sketching on the side? Do you enjoy—or even have the time for—drawing just for the sake of drawing?

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FRANK: Oh, I draw all the time.

paper. I seem to kind of fall into that mode. If you look at my studio, there are a bunch of pieces of paper that I have little sketches on.

MM: Do you keep sketchbooks with you wherever you go?

MM: And that’s just to kind of break up what you’re doing?

FRANK: No, I don’t do that. I should, but I don’t. I actually draw a lot on the back of the comic pages I’m working on just for fun. I generally do a lot of loose scribbles—sort of like Roy Krenkel. Roy is known for drawing random figures and scenes on little scraps of

FRANK: Yeah, exactly. Do something different to recharge my battery.

MM: Do you have a different thinking cap you have to put on when doing illustration work?

FRANK: Well, I like to think of a comic book as a movie. I have to figure out how the images interlock, connect and flow. But when I’m doing illustration, it’s just one image, so I switch gears and almost think of it as a cover. I have to figure out what will be the best image to illustrate that essence of the story or scene. Illustration is kind of tricky, because in a sense you’re an editor and an artist.

You have to read the whole story and then go chapter by chapter and highlight the scenes you think will make the best images, and that takes time. Unlike a comic book, books have a lot of quiet moments. Sometimes the author or an editor will get involved by asking you to illustrate specific scenes, and they’re usually scenes you don’t want to draw. [laughter] They’re often the least exciting scenes, so that’s always a challenge. You have to figure out how to make a quiet scene exciting. One of the ways I handle those lackluster quiet scenes is to play with shadow and light. I like to use the Caravaggio method where you spotlight the main figures and leave everything else in shadow—very similar to what Mike Mignola does beautifully.

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MM: Do you actively look for illustration work, or is it just one of those things where you take it as it comes?

FRANK: I’ve been lucky. They usually come to me. Lately, I just make the project I want to work on happen. I actually have a couple of jobs lined up—they’re just waiting for me. One is with Christopher Golden.

He recently did the book, Baltimore.

MM: Right, with Mignola illustrations.

FRANK: Chris and I are doing an actionmystery novel set in the Victoria era. I’ll be illustrating it in a Franklin Booth style, like Bernie Wrightson’s Frankenstein. I’m really excited about working on it, but I’ve got to finish some comic book work first. I also have a Burroughs type project a friend and I have been talking about, but it’s way too early to make any announcement.

Some days I’m really excited about doing comic book work, some days I’m really excited about doing comic strip work, and then there are other days when I’m really excited about doing illustration work.

I often end up juggling all three at once.

MM: When you’re writing for comic strips, you’re pulling stuff from everywhere. Do you keep a notebook with ideas for gags, or do you just take it a week at a time? How do you work?

FRANK: I used to keep a notebook, but that quickly fell apart. What ended up happening is I would scribble on scrap pieces of paper and on the backs of envelopes, and completely neglect my notebooks. So I gave up on keeping a notebook. If you look at my desk, you’d see piles of post-it notes with little sketches and phrases and stuff like that. My desk is a mess, bunch of scrap pieces of paper everywhere.

When I was doing Liberty Meadows for the newspaper, I would write and draw one week at a time. It was pretty stressful. I made sure to try to get two really funny ideas for that week, and then try to build a story around them to support those two strips. For each individual strip, I would write the punchline on the final panel and try to figure out the set-up for that punchline. So I wrote everything in reverse. And,

of course, the actual execution of your idea on paper is another whole set of trouble.

There’s still further evolution, because you still have to figure out the physical pacing and timing. That’s always fun. If something is off, you can kind of sense it right away.

When I was doing Liberty Meadows for the newspaper syndication, I would kill myself every week. First part of the week, I would watch TV, read books, and just wander around trying to get an idea and a story for the week. Then, the last two days I would crank out seven strips—three-anda-half strips a day. There were several times where I ended up doing all seven strips in a little over a day, and you can tell. During that five-year period, I would try to spend two days writing and do five days of drawing, but that never worked out. It was always five days of writing and two days of drawing.

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Previous Page: Illustration for Jimgrim and the Devil at Ludd.

Above: Preliminary sketch and finished inks of a panel for a Liberty Meadows Sunday strip. In the preliminary sketch, Frank draws Jen’s entire body to ensure proper placement of her knees in the final drawing.

Jimgrim illustration ©2007 Frank Cho. Liberty Meadows ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

Above: Preliminary sketches for the Liberty Meadows pool party storyline.

Next Page: Another “money shot” layout along with its finished art for Mighty Avengers #4, page 16.

Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho. Lindy Reynolds, Ultron ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MM: When you actually sit down at the drawing table and you’ve got the gags more or less worked out, is there a lot of trial and error trying to work the timing and the visuals out?

three strips at a time, and work on those simultaneously. Sometimes I would just concentrate on one strip at a time. A week with a lot of physical gags, I would do two or three at a time.

FRANK: In the beginning, yes, lots of trial and error on separate papers. But as things progressed and I got into a routine, I would work out the dialogue, the panel breakdowns, the timing, the character placements, everything on the actual board or on the margins of the board. Lots of erasing and white-outs. You should see some of my Liberty Meadows originals; they look like they went through World War III.

MM: Was that to make sure you weren’t repeating yourself?

MM: Would you draw them in consecutive order, or would you go back and forth between them?

FRANK: I would loosely thumbnail two or 78

FRANK: Yes, and just to make sure there’s a certain flow.

MM: Does your approach to writing change when you’re writing for comics as opposed to newspaper strips?

FRANK: It really doesn’t change much. I have to kind of switch gears around a bit.

Instead of four panels, I have to think of the overall 22-page story for a comic book. Once I have the story in mind—this is when I’m writing and drawing my own

stuff—then I go back and break down each page. I approach each page as an individual comic strip.

write a comic book, I write scenes—I visualize a bunch of scenes. I used to write each scene on an index card.

Once I have enough scenes mapped out I try to figure out a story. It’s kind of like writing a term paper. [laughter] I’ll mix and match different scenes, trying to get from Point A to Point B of my general outline in the most natural fluid way. I used to use the index cards, but now I just go straight to the board and then shuffle the boards around.

The whole writing process is the most time-consuming part of the job. When I’m drawing, I know exactly how long it will take me, depending on the images and the scene. I can knock out a cover from start to finish anywhere from a day to three days, depending on how elaborate it is. It takes me two days to do an interior page, pencil and ink. But for the writing, it’s hard, because you think of something simple, and as you start writing it evolves and changes. The next thing you know, what you thought was going to be a 1-page script suddenly morphs into a 20-page script. I’m still figuring out my process for writing.

MM: So you want each page to have its own story and have its own punchline.

FRANK: Right. Each page should have a beginning, an ending and have some sort of a punchline, whether it’s dialogue or a visual. In most cases, I use both the dialogue and the artwork for the punchline. I try to emphasize one panel as the “money shot.”

A lot of people ask me where I get my ideas, and it’s kind of hard to explain. It just comes to me. I just have a lot of ideas floating in my head, and something will trigger it, like watching TV or reading a book. Something will trigger it, and all these random ideas will suddenly gel.

When I get writer’s block, I do a lot of physical activity, like mow the lawn, wash dishes or lift weights.

That usually helps me get past the writer’s block. There’s an old saying, “Occupy the body to free the mind.” My ideas usually come to me during completely random manual tasks. I mean, half the time I get my ideas when I’m in the shower. Then I just have to try to remember them afterward.

Going back to the newspaper strip, my writing process is pretty simple. Until recently, I’ve been writing backwards. I would have the punchline first, and then I’d go back and figure out how to set it up. My humor stuff is very punchline driven.

MM: When you’re writing for yourself, do you tend to follow where the story takes you? Will you veer off the plan if some aspect of the story sparks another idea?

FRANK: That’s the fun thing about writing and drawing your own stuff. I usually have a rough idea of where I want to go, and half the time I don’t get there. [laughter] Something new will trigger other ideas. When I

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Above: A “quiet moment” from Marvel Knights Spider-Man as Felicia and Mary Jane tell Peter his secret identity is no more. Peter doesn’t seem to be taking it well.

Next Page: Carol “Ms. Marvel” Danvers opens up to Steve “Captain America” Rogers in this nice moment from New Avengers #15. Carol’s posture in these panels reflects her emotional state.

All characters ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MM: What do you consider to be your strengths as a writer, and what aspects do you think you still need to work on?

FRANK: The part I really need to work on is character stuff—the quiet moments. I pretty much have the action and humor down well. I can map out a complex action sequence and humor gag down cold. It’s just the quiet stuff that the real writers do well that I need to focus on.

MM: What do you look for in a comic?

What are you trying to achieve with your work?

FRANK: There are three things I look for in a comic book. One, is it well drawn?

Comics is a visual medium, so clear narrative art is paramount to me. Two, is it entertaining? And that comes down to the writing. If it’s not well drawn, it can still be entertaining if it’s well written. Three, can 80

I learn something from the comic? Is this guy doing something interesting that I can learn from, like a different way of storytelling? The comics should hit at least one of these three points for me to pick it up. If the comic hits at least two of the three points, then it’s a good comic. If it hits all three, then it’s a masterpiece.

Like all my peers and countless others who have come before me, I’m trying to create the best stories and art I could possibly create with my abilities.

MM: What are some of the books out there that you enjoy?

FRANK: When I was growing up I was a hardcore Marvel fan. Their books were more topical and very exciting to read. So my tastes have evolved from that, and I still read a lot of Marvel comics. Not because I work for them, but because I enjoy Marvel comics. [laughter] I used to read Spider-Man

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Below: Illustration featuring one of Frank’s favorite characters, Wolverine—and Storm, too.

Next Page: Frank likes Invincible so much, he drew the cover to issue #14, shown here.

Sentinels, Storm, Wolverine ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Atom Eve, Invincible ™ and ©2007 Robert Kirkman and Cory Walker.

until JMS went on a weird tangent. I read Brian Bendis’ Daredevil—he had a fantastic run on that. His “Underboss” storyline is one of the best stories that I’ve read in a long time. I occasionally pick up Fantastic Four. I used to read X-Men, but it got too confusing.

I’m reading Mighty Avengers [laughter] and New Avengers, so I know what the hell I’m drawing. I love The Ultimates, by Mark Millar and Bryan Hitch. Holy cow, talk about a legendary team in the making. I think Bryan Hitch is one of the best artists of our generation. Great, clear sequential art. Pretty much everything that Mark Millar is writing.

I really enjoyed his Wolverine story, “Enemy of the State.” Wanted was another fun book.

In the last several years I’ve been following creators more than companies.

Right now I’m reading The Walking Dead, by Robert Kirkman and Charlie Adlard. I’m just dying to see what happens next, because Kirkman has a pretty wicked sense of humor, and he’ll throw you a curveball like you won’t believe. I’m also reading Invincible, by Kirkman and Ryan Ottley.

Ryan Ottley is one of the most underrated artists right now. His stuff is beautiful, clean, and brilliant. I’m surprised that Marvel or DC hasn’t snatched him up yet.

MM: Have you checked out Rocketo, by Frank Espinosa?

FRANK: Oh, yeah. It’s one of my favorite books of the year. My friend, Ugo, is a big Rocketo fan, and had been urging me to read it since day one. For the longest time I resisted it, because of the artwork. I’m a big fan of the realistic, illustrative style, and Espinosa’s highly stylized art put me off initially. I don’t mind stylized art, it’s just one of those things that I have to get used to it. So Ugo sent me the first collection of Rocketo, and I had a long trip somewhere and needed something to occupy my time. I said, “You know what, Ugo has never steered me wrong.” So I decided to give it a chance. I sat down and started reading it, and by the tenth page I was into it. I read the whole thing in one sitting, and the next day I went looking for the second collection. As I was reading it, the artwork started to connect with me—it made sense, you know what I’m saying? It’s kind of hard to explain. As I’m reading it the artwork drew me in and everything made sense, to the point where I can’t see any other art style on this book. Rocketo just blew me away—the scope of the story, the idea and the cleverness of it. It’s a fantastic book.

I also read Fables, because I’m a big fan of Bill Willingham. I know I’m missing some books... Usagi Yojimbo, Stan Sakai.

That was the same story as Rocketo. I resisted it for the longest time, until my buddy gave me some of the collection books. I read them all on the plane ride from San Diego Comic-Con and loved them. Usagi Yojimbo is so simple yet complex. Stan Sakai is highly underrated storyteller. Talk about dedication to his craft, he has done over a hundred issues non-stop at this point?

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MM: Do you think you could work on one book for that long?

MM: Where do you see yourself over the next few years?

FRANK: Well, I’ve been getting a lot of movie offers.

Nothing major, a lot of independent stuff. I see myself working for movies down the road. It seems like a natural progression from comics to movies, at this point. I’m trying to turn Zombie King into a movie with myself as the director. But who knows?

FRANK: Uh, no. [laughter] I have a pretty short attention span. I can see myself doing a book for three or four years, but then I’d have to move on. What else am I reading? I only read collections now. I gave up on the monthly comics, because I don’t go to the comic shop on a regular basis so I’d tend to miss issues, and I just don’t have time to track down those missing issues.

MM: Do you study film in whatever spare time you might have?

MM: Do you see the comic industry moving in that direction? Do you think that has to become the business model at some point?

FRANK: Yeah, I’m a big film fan. I’ve been reading a lot about how to make films, and I have some friends who work in the industry. I’m a very hands-on guy. Once I actually commit myself to filming, I should be able to pick up a lot of the techniques. I’m at a crossroads right now. The next few years will be a very interesting journey for me and will dictate where I’ll end up.

FRANK: I think the business model we have right now is a good model. I think we will always need the monthly comics. The regular monthly comic books, at this point, act as advertisements for the collection books which is the driving force of this industry. Sales will go up and down, but overall, they will stay pretty steady— for the next ten years, I believe.

MM: Are you interested in animation at all, or strictly live action?

FRANK: Live action at this point. I’ve done concept drawings and character designs for a couple of independent film makers, and that’s where my focus and interest lie.

MM: As an independent creator you really have to pay close attention to the direct market as well as the bookstore market.

FRANK: You can’t have all your eggs in one basket. And all the comic book companies are building up their book market wings. The better book market penetration you have, the better you’ll do in the long run.

MM: Do you have a list of favorite directors?

FRANK: I have a long list of favorite directors. Just off the top of my head... I really enjoy Frank Darabont’s work. I think The Shawshank Redemption is one of the best films of the last hundred years. Darabont can do no wrong in my eyes. The same goes with James Cameron, Ridley Scott, Michael Mann, and Peter Jackson. Some of my favorite films are by these guys: Shawshank Redemption, Blade Runner, Aliens, Last of the Mohicans, and The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

MM: What advice would you give to someone starting out in comics today?

FRANK: There’s no secret to drawing. All you have to do is do it. Practice makes perfect. Be cool, stay in school. [laughter] In all seriousness, if you have a passion for it, just do it. Don’t let anyone stop you. Just do it.

MM: Do you think that passion is the key to creativity?

FRANK: Oh, yeah. If you don’t have passion for it, it will show. Fans will pick up on that pretty easily.

Comics is a very difficult field, and if you don’t have a passion for it, you won’t last long in this business. So be true to yourself.

Artwork ©2007 Frank Cho.

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Frank Cho

Liberty Meadows ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho

Art Gallery 85

Previous Page: Cover art for Liberty Meadows, Vol. 3: Summer of Love, a Liberty Meadows collection book.

Right: Preliminary cover art for the second printing of Liberty Meadows: Summer of Love. Frank later changed Brandy’s pose and added a frog on her right arm for the final artwork.

Below: Preliminary sketch of best buddies, Oscar and Truman.

Next Page: Pencil sketch of Leslie and Ralph getting into trouble with their time machine.

Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

86

87

Below: Cover layout for Liberty Meadows, Vol. 2: Creature Comforts.

Right and Next Page: Layout and line art for the cover of Liberty Meadows, Vol. 4: Cold, Cold Heart.

Page 90: Cover art for Liberty Meadows: Cover Girl, a collection of cover art in its various stages from the Liberty Meadows comics and books.

Page 91: Cover art for Marvel’s Trouble #1 (the Second Chances edition).

Page 92: Phantom Lady convention sketch and an usual commission piece showing the first meeting of Phantom Lady and Casper the Friendly Ghost!

Page 93: Cover art for Amazing Spider-Man #48.

Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho. Mary Parker, May Parker, Spider-Man ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Phantom Lady ™ and ©2007 DC Comics. Casper the Friendly Ghost ™ and ©2007 Harvey Entertainment, Inc.

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90

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This Page and Next: Preliminary sketches and finished art for Marvel Knights Spider-Man #8.

Spider-Man, Venom ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

94

Left: Page from Marvel Knights Spider-Man #5.

Bottom Left: Spider-Man sketch.

Above and Below: Preliminary art for the back cover of Frank Cho: Sketches and Scribbles, Book Two. Next Page: Finished painted art for the back cover of Frank Cho: Sketches and Scribbles, Book Two. Dr. Octopus, Mary Jane Parker, Spider-Man ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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97

Artwork ©2007 Frank Cho.

99

Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

100 Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

101

Liberty Meadows and all related characters ™ and ©2007 Frank Cho.

Above: This Tarzan watercolor painting was part of Frank’s 1996 tryout for Dark Horse Comics.

Next Page: “The Encounter.”

Tarzan ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc. All artwork ©2007 Frank Cho.

102

103

Dejah Thoris ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc.

Artwork ©2007 Frank Cho.

104

Dejah Thoris ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc.

Barsoom, Dejah Thoris, and all related characters ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc.

106

Barsoom, Dejah Thoris, and all related characters ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc.

107

Barsoom and all related characters ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc.

108

Tarzan ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc.

109

Pages 104 (top only)-108: Frank’s interpretations of Dejah Thoris, the green Martians, and the white apes of Edgar Rice Burroughs’ John Carter of Mars (aka, Barsoom) novels.

Page 109: Edgar Rice Burroughs’ Tarzan of the Apes.

This Page: King Kong rules!

Next Page: Unfinished opening page to a Cavewoman story.

Barsoom, Dejah Thoris, Tarzan, and all related characters ™ and ©2007 ERB, Inc. King Kong ™ and ©2007 Universal Studios, Inc. Cavewoman ™ and ©2007 Budd Root.

110

Above: Preliminary Shanna the She-Devil sketch.

Next Page: Variant cover art for Witchblade #80.

Shanna the She-Devil ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Witchblade ™ and ©2007 Top Cow Productions.

112

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Left: Pencils for the cover of Ms. Marvel #3.

Right: Spider-Woman pin-up art.

Below: Superman sketch.

Pages 116-117: Nude pencil studies done at the 2005 Massive Black Creative Workshop.

Brood Queen, Ms. Marvel, Spider-Woman ™ and ©2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Superman ™ and ©2007 DC Comics.

115

Artwork ©2007 Frank Cho.

Artwork ©2007 Frank Cho.

117

THE MODERN MASTERS SERIES Edited by ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON, these trade paperbacks and DVDs are devoted to the BEST OF TODAY’S COMICS ARTISTS! Each book contains RARE AND UNSEEN ARTWORK direct from the artist’s files, plus COMPREHENSIVE INTERVIEWS (including influences and their views on graphic storytelling), SKETCHBOOK SECTIONS, and more!

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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

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BACK ISSUE

ALTER EGO

82658 97073

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR

DRAW!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR

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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.

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FRANK CHO Monkeys! Dinosaurs! Beautiful women!

These are the things Frank Cho loves to draw... especially beautiful women! Luckily for his fans, he excels at it. In 1997, the writer and artist introduced Liberty Meadows to the world, which quickly gathered a dedicated following. The winner of many prestigious awards—including The National Cartoonist Society Award and the Charles Schulz Award—Frank Cho ranks as one of Marvel Comics’ top artists, and his work on Liberty Meadows, Shanna the She-Devil, Spider-Man, and The Mighty Avengers—among others— prove his worth as a true Modern Master!

MODERN MASTERS is an ongoing series of books celebrating the lives and work of the greatest comic book artists of our time.

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978-1-893905-84-9 Characters TM & ©2007 their respective owners