Modern Masters Vol. 2: George Perez by TwoMorrows Publishing

M A S T E R S

V O L U M E

Edited by Eric Nolen-Weathington

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M O D E R N

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Modern Masters Volume Two:

MODERN MASTERS VOLUME TWO:

GEORGE PÉREZ edited and designed by Eric Nolen-Weathington production assist by Andy Mangels front cover art by George Pérez front cover color by Larry Molinar all interviews in this book were conducted and transcribed by Eric Nolen-Weathington all artwork contained in this book was provided by George Pérez, Andy Mangels, and Michael Lovitz proofreading by Fred Perry and Sam Newkirk

TwoMorrows Publishing 10407 Bedfordtown Drive Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 www.twomorrows.com • e-mail: twomorrow@aol.com First Printing • November 2003 • Printed in Canada Softcover ISBN: 1-893905-25-x Trademarks & Copyrights All characters and artwork contained herein are ™ and ©2003 George Pérez unless otherwise noted. Sachs & Violens and all related characters ™ and ©2003 Peter David and George Pérez Aqualad, Aquaman, Azrael, Batman, Black Canary, Brother Blood, Captain Marvel, Catwoman, Changeling, Cheetah, Cyborg, Darkseid, Deathstroke, Demon, Eres, Firestorm, Flamebird, Flash, Green Arrow, Green Lantern, Guy Gardner, Hawkman, Jericho, Jesse Custer, Joker, Justice League of America, Kid Flash, Killer Frost, Kole, Lex Luthor, Monitor, Nightwing, Poison Ivy, Protector, Ragdoll, Raven, Robin, Saint of Killers, Saturn Girl, Shining Knight, Silent Knight, Spectre, Starfire, Supergirl, Superman, Teen Titans, Troia, Tulip, Ultraman, Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman ©2003 DC Comics. Ant-Man, Apocalypse, Avengers, Beast, Black Widow, Captain America, Crusader, Cyclops, Deathlok, Dr. Doom, Drax the Destroyer, Fantastic Four, Firearm, Firelord, Galactus, Giant-Man, Green Goblin, Havok, Hawkeye, Hercules, Hulk, Inhumans, Invisible Girl, Iron Man, Jack of Hearts, Luke Cage, Maestro, Mantra, Man-Wolf, Mephisto, Mockingbird, Phoenix, Polaris, Prime, Prototype, Prowler, Red Skull, Rune, Scarlet Witch, Silver Surfer, Snap Dragon Spider-Man, Squadron Supreme, Thanos, Thing, Thor, Tigra, Topaz, UltraForce, Ultron, Valkyrie, Vision, Warbird, Warlock, Wasp, White Tiger, Wonder Man, X-51 ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Andra, Arwyn, Lindy, Solus ™ and ©2003 CrossGen Intellectual Property. Jane, John Carter of Mars, Tarzan ™ and ©2003 Edgar Rice Burroughs, Inc. Swordquest ™ and ©2003 Atari, Inc. Ash ™ and ©2003 Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti. Westwind ™ and ©2003 Kurt Busiek. Hellboy ™ and ©2003 Mike Mignola. P’Gell, The Spirit ™ and ©2003 Will Eisner. Doc Savage, I-Bots, Jurassic Park, Logan’s Run, Miracleman, Miraclewoman, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ™ and ©2003 their respective owners. Editorial package ©2003 Eric Nolen-Weathington and TwoMorrows Publishing.

Dedication To my uncle, Phillip Evans, who bought me my first issue of Adventure Comics along with many others. You are a Survivor, and I am very thankful for it. And, as always, to my wife, Donna, and son, Iain. Acknowledgements George Pérez, for managing to squeeze in eight hours worth of interviews and answering questions he’d heard a million times—and hopefully some he hadn’t—with more enthusiasm than could ever be expected. Andy Mangels, Pérez archivist supreme, for his expertise and for sending a huge selection of artwork. Please visit his website, www.andymangels.com, for information on Andy and his ongoing Pérez Archives project. Tony Lorenz, for tons of useful information. Check out his magazine, Pacesetter, formerly known as The George Pérez Newsletter, for even more Pérez lore and artwork. Michael Lovitz, for sending some much needed artwork and making the book that much better. Special Thanks John & Pamela Morrow, Fred Perry, Sam Newkirk, George Khoury, Rick McGee and the crew of Foundation’s Edge, Marcus Mebes, Jon Mankuta, Shelton Drum, Tom Fleming, Rich D’Allesandro, Jim Mooney, and Vu Nguyen (visit his website, www.george-perez.com).

Modern Masters Volume Two:

George Pérez Table of Contents Introduction by Marv Wolfman . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Part One: “Has Anyone Contacted George Pérez?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Part Two: Enter Marvel: A Young Artist with Enthusiasm . . . . . . . . . . . . 20 Part Three: Making a Mark of His Own at DC Comics . . . . . . . . . . . . 32 Part Four: Bad Endings, False Starts, and New Beginnings. . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Part Five: Can’t Get Enough of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes . . . . . . . . . . . . 76 Part Six: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 87 Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Introduction There are many wonderful artists in comics today, some whose actual art skills—I’m speaking as a former art teacher here—are so mind-boggling that you can look at their drawing in disbelief over how good they actually are. These people can draw rings around almost everyone who has ever been in comics. The problem with many of them, however, is that although their drawing ability is astonishing, they are actually bad comic book artists. Does that make sense? How can you be a great artist and be a bad comic book artist? The answer is comics is not about art per se. It’s about story-telling. The question you have to ask yourself is—is all that incredible skill being used to tell the story, because if it isn’t, then what you’re looking at is art for art’s sake, and that is not what comics is about. Brilliant story-tellers lead you along effortlessly as they weave their magic. They make complicated stories easy to follow. They draw complex scenes in such a way that even if you glance at the picture you can understand what’s happening. Unfortunately, in many cases, these great story-tellers are not always great artists. Sometimes you have that magical merging of talent. Will Eisner was and is a master story-teller as well as being a great artist. The same goes with Joe Kubert, Alex Toth, and a very few others. They tell impeccable stories as well as being great artists. Without slighting others I may not mention, at least one other name has to be added to that list, and since you’re reading this introduction you know exactly who I’m talking about. When I first met George Pérez in my office at Marvel Comics, I saw a young guy who was, if the truth be told, not a great artist. His anatomy was off. His knowledge of perspective was lacking. I’d seen a lot of young artists just like him and never bothered to give them work, and most never got it later, either. They were left with a kind smile and a version of “Come back when you have talent.” George had nothing that should have hinted at the artist to come except for one thing: right from the beginning George was a solid story-teller. You could see an

instinctive knowledge of where to place the characters, when to do the long shots, the medium shots, the close-ups. He understood how to move his “camera” better than many of the more seasoned pros already working at the company. George at that time didn’t have skill to equal his ability, but unlike all those other artists who were shown the door, George stayed on the inside and was given short jobs with the hopes that his talent would soon reveal itself. And it did. George’s art kept getting better and better even while his understanding of story-telling grew stronger and sharper. He very quickly went from a beginning artist who showed promise to a really good artist who was fulfilling that promise. Most artists would have been content. But not George. George took on challenges. He wasn’t afraid to draw. Sometimes every brick in a building. Sometimes ten panels on a page. George was, and somehow still remains, so enthusiastic about his work readers who have never met him can sense the love he has for his job. George took on group books—which most artists run from, screaming in horror. After all, you get the same page rate whether you’re drawing two characters slugging it out page after page or thirty characters populating every overcrowded panel. And since it takes time to choreograph those panels so they don’t look overcrowded, group books slow you down so, at the end of the day, you draw fewer pages and make a lot less money than the guy who simply draws the Hulk beating up on the Thing. But George loved to draw these team books—and he did so with such amazing speed and style that he quickly made a name for himself. Before George, most artists tended to draw their characters so they looked pretty much alike. It was their style and nothing more was expected. It’s the Betty and Veronica gag from the old Mad comics where “Starchie” is looking at the two girls—who, except for the color of their hair, looked exactly the same—and wondered which one was the more beautiful. 4

Yes, artists drew somewhat different faces, but the bodies were the same. Hero A had the exact same physique as Hero B. They moved the same way as Hero C. As George’s skills grew, as he worked to put more character into his art—to make these pencil drawings more like real people—he concentrated on giving each character highly individual faces, their own body shapes and their own way of moving. Nightwing of the New Teen Titans wouldn’t sit on a chair or walk across a room the same way Cyborg did. Wonder Girl didn’t fight like Starfire. Each character—like people in real life— was posed in a fashion unique to that character. Because of this attention to detail, the characters George drew became real. You knew who they were and how they thought. When George left the Titans other artists, other great artists, followed, but none of them made you believe in the characters the same way George did. The artist George Pérez has continued to grow

over the years when many other artists of his generation have become stagnant. His art is fresh and fun because George, as mentioned before, loves what he does. That comes from the person George Pérez, who, like the characters he draws, is bigger than life. George is one of the nicest, friendliest and most outgoing people you will ever meet. If he sees some shy kid at a convention you will hear his booming voice call out to him to come closer and talk. George doesn’t so much enter a room, he envelopes it. If you have never met George, seek him out at a convention. It will be worth your time and when you leave the con you will have made a new friend you will cherish. And speaking of friends, I congratulate my friend, George Pérez, on this book. It’s worth your time, too. Marv Wolfman 6/16/03

Part 1:

“Has Anyone Contacted George Pérez?” GEORGE: Yes, by the time they were married they had moved to New York. My father worked in the meat packing industry and my mom was a homemaker.

MODERN MASTERS: Before we get started I want to clarify the pronunciation of your name: it’s PER-ez, not pe-REZ, as it is commonly mispronounced. With that out of the way, you were born in the Bronx, correct?

MM: And you have a brother?

GEORGE PÉREZ: Yep, on June 9, 1954 in the South Bronx.

GEORGE: Yes, my brother was born 11 months, 11 days after I was—David Pérez—and we were the only children. Even though my parents were both from large families, collectively they only came up with two kids.

MM: Both your parents were born in Puerto Rico? GEORGE: My mom, Luz Maria Izquierdo, and my father, Jorge Pérez, were both born in Caguas, Puerto Rico, the same year, but would not actually meet each other until they moved—I believe the same year, I don’t know the exact year—to New Jersey.

MM: Did you and your brother get along?

GEORGE: They moved themselves. My grandparents still lived in Puerto Rico at the time.

GEORGE: Oh, we got along no differently than other brothers did. We even both aspired to be artists at a young age. Because we were from a poor family, rather than drawing paper we would use the brown paper bags from the grocery store—tear them open and use that as our drawing paper with pencils and crayons. I didn’t even get my first Flair marker pen until I was 13 or 14 years old.

MM: Was it a matter of looking for more job opportunities?

MM: What kind of things were you drawing?

MM: Did they move with their families or on their own?

GEORGE: I believe so, yes. I don’t know what job opportunities my mom was expecting, because as long as I’ve known her she’s only worked part-time. But her ambitions might have been different prior to her marriage. But my dad, obviously, was going to the “land of opportunity” as it were. Both were born in fairly poor areas of Puerto Rico.

GEORGE: We were drawing Popeye... even then we were drawing super-heroes. My brother was more appreciative of the old Steve Reeves Hercules movies—the old Peblum Italian musclemen series. HS was his character, which was Hercules-Samson. I would be drawing more super-hero-oriented characters. There was The Bat—he was a blind guy that had the powers of a bat. This was before there was Daredevil. My very first drawing was on a bathroom hamper, actually. I was about five years old, and it was the Rubber Band Man. It was a rubber band with the head of a man, and if anyone ever found that hamper—which is extremely unlikely.... I’m sure that the head looked a lot worse than the rubber band itself. But I created my own super-characters. The Kleptomaniac Kid [laughter]—I can’t remember how he stole things; I think it was that he would look at an

MM: When did they actually meet and develop a relationship? GEORGE: They were married, I believe, in 1951, because they were married three years before I was born. I’m assuming they probably met in 1949, 1950. Everything else is a blur. I never really asked much about their courtship. MM: They had moved by the time they were married? 6

object and suddenly it would appear in his hands—and other similarly silly characters. I was highly inspired by the Legion of SuperHeroes and their also rather silly names. But we would see who could draw the best Popeye, because we were both cartoon fans. My brother read comics as well, although there came a point as we were in the dawn of our teens where my brother stopped drawing and got into sports more. He became more a kid of the streets, while I would be the one who stayed at home and did a lot of drawing, although we were both good students. My brother was, and still is, a very intelligent, educated man. But we just had a drift at that point, where the thing we had in common was that we lived in the same home, but we had different aspirations and different points of view. To this day we have our differences, but we also embrace our similarities. At one point it seemed that David was going to be the better artist of the two of us, but it became moot when he dropped it altogether. From a child’s point of view I kept thinking he was the better artist. He tended to draw more massive characters; my characters tended to be a little more subtle or wimpy, I guess. [laughter] I don’t think subtlety really applies to a child’s scratchings, but my characters looked smaller compared to his. Granted the muscles were probably ridiculous and nowhere near anatomically correct—just lumps on forms—but to me his drawings were much more super-heroic. MM: Did you both like the same comics or did you have separate piles? GEORGE: Oh yes, we tended to buy the same comics. Either I or he would buy the comic, but we would read the same comics. We didn’t have separate collections.

MM: Did you have other family in the area? GEORGE: We had some family. I remember visiting aunts and uncles and everything else, but I never really got all that close to most of my family. I was pretty much a loner at the time. I tended to find more empathy with my fellow classmates than I did with family members. MM: Was there a family atmosphere where you were living? GEORGE: Because most of our family was in Puerto Rico and we didn’t have a car for a lot of the time, there wasn’t as much of a connection. My brother had a godmother that we were close to and there were some other relatives that we used to enjoy visiting. My mother’s cousins—my second cousins— were a bunch of nice people. I guess I tended to gravitate towards the kids who had more interest in the type of stuff I did. More “American,” for the lack of a better term, as opposed to still feeling connected to Puerto Rico. I was much more connected to my New York environment, so I tended to gravitate towards non-Hispanics. I guess they were closer to my ideals, since I was raised on television. The Leave It to Beaver, Father Knows Best, Andy Griffith type of characters were more the characters I embraced, because it was an idyllic world and the world around me—the lower income housing—was poor and sometimes violent. I subconsciously turned my back on my heritage. I wouldn’t 7

Previous Page: It may not be the Steve Reeves version, but this commissioned headshot is all Hercules. Left: A commission piece of Saturn Girl, member of one of George’s childhood favorites: The Legion of Super-Heroes. Above: A high school period self-illo. Below: An early ’70s, pre-pro Captain America sketch. Saturn Girl ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Captain America, Hercules ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

embrace it until later when I could look at it through an adult’s point of view. But for quite a while—even though we had friends and neighbors and everything else—I always hoped my life would be more like the fantasies that I saw on television or read in the comics. MM: Did you grow up bilingual?

This Page: Two “covers” —Teen Titans (1970) and Justice League (1971). Upper Right: “Dancing Girl” commission drawing. Lower Right: “Stranded,” page 3, from Factors Unknown #2—George’s first published comic work. Inks by Tom Sciacca.

GEORGE: Only for a little while. Once I started school, my mom and dad really wanted to make sure that I had every advantage in the school system. They spoke a little English—my mom spoke English better than my father—but they both tried to speak English at home to David and myself in order to get us more used to it and to associate more with our classmates. At the time, that area of the South Bronx was just changing. There were still a lot of Irish, Italian, and non-Hispanic people in the neighborhoods, so if you wanted to associate with those kids you had to speak English. And of course we were being educated in English, and mom and dad wanted to make sure we had that advantage. I also believe that is why they never discouraged me from reading comic books, because comics was another way of learning English, and in fact probably helped me learn English a lot faster. I learned to read English through comics. In hindsight, of course, they and we kind of regret that we don’t have a greater grasp of our original mother tongue. But for 8

me, English is my first language and Spanish is a faint second language. I wouldn’t even call it a second language, because I really can’t converse for an extended period of time without sounding like a moron. [laughter] MM: You mentioned embracing your heritage more as an adult. Have you ever gone to Puerto Rico to look up your family? GEORGE: It’s not like I did an Alex Haley and started searching for my roots. Lord knows I have enough family there I know that would gladly give me information. The thing is that because we were from a poor family there wasn’t—particularly on my father’s side—much root to find. They didn’t keep very good records. My mom came from a very large family—they’re a very lovely family—but when we visited Puerto Rico, and this is even something my mom bemoaned when she moved back to Puerto Rico for a short time, is that I am very grateful that we are a family that embraced education, that embraced learning. So much of our family in Puerto Rico are farmers or people from the mountains. Their conversation tended to gravitate towards gossip as opposed to anything of real meat. I’m grateful for Mom’s, in particular, high demands of her two sons and that she wanted us to be something, learn something. I find that because of that I don’t really associate as much with my family. Particularly not those who are still living in Puerto Rico, because I can’t converse with them for one thing. Most of them do not speak English at all. I do have some relatives—many of whom have come out of the woodwork lately— who have heard what I’ve been doing and want to know more. And I’m finding that some of the family members have lived interesting lives. I know that one relative who I’ve actually known since he was a kid, works as an engineer at NASA, which is absolutely fantastic. MM: Were there any other artists in the family? GEORGE: Not that we know of. According to my mother—and of course I’ve mentioned my brother before—my father had artistic ability, but unfortunately

since he had trouble with alcohol and lived an unfocused life for a while, it never manifested into anything. He never drew beyond a couple of doodles, but according to my mother, that’s probably where I got it from. My singing voice I got from my father, my artistic ability I probably got from my father, and my gregariousness I got from my father, though I’ve tried to do it without a drink in my hand. [laughter] But the desire to be creative— to actually have an artistic streak beyond just ability, to have an artistic soul—that my brother and I both got from my mother. My brother is now an aspiring actor. So he’s now gotten in touch with his artistic side more and he married a woman who’s a poet—and I married a woman who’s a dancer, so we both gravitated to the arts. I am the only known artist in the entire Pérez-Izquierdo line and, immodestly, probably the only real celebrity in our family line.

forced us to live a life that was probably less affluent than what it could have been. There was a lot of money there that unfortunately we never got to see. My father was a union man, he had a lot of years. He earned very good money, but we saw very little of it. Again, I must emphasize this is also past tense. My father has done a lot to make amends, including the fact that he stopped drinking, stopped smoking, and stopped gambling. My mom and dad are still together to this day, and I’m very, very grateful for that, but during the time we were growing up there was a lot of hardship. When I drew, I drew for escape. It wasn’t until I got to high school that I thought that escape could be a physical escape as opposed to just a spiritual or psychological escape—that I could actually make a living drawing comics. I didn’t know how good a living, just that it might provide me with my passport out of the ghettos and slums of South Bronx. When I was in high school I met my first other legitimate comic fan—a person who knew about comic fandom, who knew about conventions, which at the time I didn’t know about—a man named Thomas Sciacca. I say man, but of course at that time he was a boy, just like me.

MM: Was your deep interest in comics your way of escaping from your father’s alcoholism? GEORGE: Not from the alcoholism specifically, but from the entire poor and violent neighborhood situation. It didn’t help that Dad’s drinking and his gambling

MM: Were you both the same age? GEORGE: Oh, yes. I met him my freshman year. He was the one that took me to my very first comic convention. He found a person that produced a fanzine at that convention, and he and I did a four- or five-page comic that was printed in that fanzine, Factors Unknown #2— which marked my very first printed comic-book work. My first printed work of any kind—in the broadest definition of printing—was in 1969 when I attended a summer camp after my freshman year of high school. It was Camp Rising Sun in Rhinebeck, NY, which was a special scholastic camp, as it were—an international awareness camp wherein half the people who attended were from other countries. I was one of the representatives of New York. And there was a camp paper called The Rising Sun—how original [laughter]—and it featured the very first work ever printed by me, with a circulation of possibly 50— MM: And how many of those did you grab and keep for yourself? GEORGE: I only kept one—at least one has survived. I think my mom has it. MM: I thought you might have tried to scarf them all up to pass around to your family and friends back home. GEORGE: Well my mom and dad had them, but if 9

South—not all, but a couple—who both explicitly and implicitly showed that they weren’t exactly comfortable with Puerto Ricans, with blacks, or anyone who was different than the white Anglo-Saxon. So it broadened my horizons both positively and negatively, but definitely it gave me a better world view. I got to try food I had never tasted before—I had never heard of Welsh rarebit, I had never had anything other than Hispanic style or fast food style foods before. My first barbequed chicken I had at that camp. I’d had chicken, but never barbequed—I’d never even heard of Southern barbeque style chicken. All these things I was learning and enjoying, though I was sometimes a little uncomfortable with that many other boys there since so many of them were also interested in sports, which I had no interest in. They would go canoeing, and I couldn’t even swim at the time. I was from the South Bronx, which was a whole different world. But the options were there for me. There was also an art shack, where we were drawing a wall mural, and I was drawing the X-Men. This was during Neal Adams’ run on X-Men, so that was highly influential and that was the thing I wanted to draw. Of course, I’m drawing the characters a good deal larger, so I can only imagine how out of proportion they were. [laughter] They weren’t even in proportion when I drew them ordinarily, but to draw

they managed to survive through various moves, through my first marriage.... I was surprised I even had one. It is the only surviving copy I know of. The other camp members from that year may actually have all the camp papers. The editors might still have them. They could be floating around somewhere. I’m sure to a Pérez completist, those would be Holy Grails for a collection, because they are my very, very first printed work. MM: Were they just one-panel gags? GEORGE: Sometimes they were one-panel illustrations, sometimes they were an actual strip, sometimes they were full pages... it varied. The editorship of the camp paper changed every week, because they tried to get as many kids involved in camp activities as possible, but I was the constant there. I was the one they always wanted to draw. When I was accepted to go to this camp, they were trying to find people who could contribute different things and who had different talents, and mine was drawing. So, of course, the other campers took advantage of that. I wasn’t the only artist, per se, but I was the only one who wanted to dedicate his life to being an artist. There were other kids who had different artistic abilities, but that person who could play the guitar didn’t have aspirations of becoming a professional guitarist. I, from the time I was 13 or 14, had dedicated my future to becoming a comic artist. MM: That camp, being a fairly prestigious camp, did it broaden your horizons somewhat? GEORGE: Oh, yeah. I not only got to learn a little more about different cultures, different religions—I found out how incredibly naïve I was about other people’s faiths and the like. I had no idea how broad Christianity was. I was from a Catholic upbringing and I was going to a Catholic school, so I didn’t understand anything about Greek Orthodox, Protestantism, or anything else. I was learning that there were different people who had different political views. I experienced my first real case of prejudice there, since there were some people who were from the 10

them that large—again, this was the artistic renderings of a just-turned 15-year-old. But I was getting my first recognition for what I was doing. I was constantly sketching; I had tons of drawings of characters I had done using characters from comics, my own characters. But when I went to Camp Rising Sun, I said, “Okay, I got my first taste of several things: most importantly, my first work getting printed; and, one of my first times doing a singing role on stage.” That’s when I found out I actually could sing. I did some glee club work, but it was then I found out I had a great enjoyment in being on stage as well. MM: Were you one of those kids—and a lot of artists are like this—where you were drawing from as early as you can remember? GEORGE: I was drawing probably from the age of around four or five, which would have been around the same time I read my first comic book. Which is why the first thing I drew on was a bathroom hamper, because let’s face it, only a really young kid would do something that suicidal. [laughter] I don’t know what I was doing with a pencil in my hand, or whatever writing implement I had, but I just started drawing on the hamper which was right in front of me as I sat on the bowl (in the “too-much-information” section of this interview.) [laughter] MM: It sounds as though you got a lot of support from your parents with your art. GEORGE: Yes, my parents gave me a lot of support—but, again my mom was the more influential because of my father’s problems. He wasn’t as much of a guiding force as my mom was. My mom would go to the parent-teacher meetings and watch over our education more. Also my mom was better educated than my father. First and foremost, she would always support us in whatever we did, but she valued an education, because she knew if we were to succeed and get a life that was better than what she had and what Dad had, we needed an education. So she said you can do this, but don’t let it kill your grades. Don’t let this stop you from getting an education,

because—especially as we got older and started to focus on what we might want to do—what if I didn’t get the break I wanted? There were a lot of people she knew who could draw well who weren’t working, and she didn’t want that for her sons. Up until about the second year of high school I was an honor student. It wasn’t until I became more focused on wanting to be a comic artist and finding things I didn’t particularly care for in the school curriculum that my grades started to suffer. I never became anything worse than a B- student, but I knew that what I wanted to do in becoming an artist was so all-encompassing that I couldn’t focus on academia that, for all I saw, was going to end up useless for me in the future—as much of it did end up being useless for me. And all that it seemed to be geared to was to extend my education by going into college, and I didn’t want to go to college. That’s when I started drifting away from being an honor student. MM: Were your parents urging you to go to college? GEORGE: Oh, yes. I’m sure that when I told them I wanted to be an artist they were more indulgent—“Let George keep on drawing. We’re not going to stop him from drawing, but we have to make him want more.” And that meant going to college. From my junior 11

Upper Left: This 1966 drawing of Cyclops is the earliest surviving piece of artwork from George’s childhood. Lower Left: A page from an Inhumans story drawn in 1972, gueststarring the X-Men. Above: While in high school, George portrayed File, the sheriff, in 110º in the Shade. He also drew the cover of the program. Below: Early ’70s, prepro Spidey sketch. Cyclops, Inhumans, Spider-Man, X-Men ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: A 1972, prepro Justice League tryout sample page. Right: Title page for an unfinished Classics Illustrated adaptation of Julius Caesar for First Comics. Next Page: Pages 3 and 5 of George’s Battalion. Written, penciled, inked, and colored by George. Justice League ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.

and senior year in high school, everything I was doing made it pretty obvious to Mom and Dad that I was not going to college. It was not a place I was going to flourish. And since I was not applying myself in that way, scholarships were going to be out of the question, and without scholarships we couldn’t afford college. The first thing my mom said when I graduated from high school was for me to find a job in the comic book industry in that summer, and if I couldn’t, then get another job, whatever it may be. I ended up being a bank teller, which is not a high-paying job by any stretch of the imagination. But it was the only job a high school graduate is going to get. Mom said I was going to have to—not support myself—but do something with my life. Mom was not going to allow her children to be slackers, to sit around doing nothing. I wasn’t going to be sitting around just drawing and, at the age of 18, expect to be supported by my parents. My mom was a savvy lady, and it was just through the greatest bit of luck and timing that I only worked as a bank teller a little over a year before I got my first big break at the age of 19 as an assistant to Rich Buckler, which eventually led to my career. My first professional work was published when I was 20. MM: Did you enjoy reading outside of comics? GEORGE: Oh, yes. In fact, comics got me to really like reading. I admit that I don’t read as much now, because I don’t have the 12

time. Reading was something I enjoyed— reading and writing. That’s something my brother and I shared in common. We both liked reading. I liked reading everything from some science-fiction—which I can’t even remember now, it’s been so long—to the classics. I actually enjoyed Shakespeare, because it taught me things about the language I was totally unfamiliar with. MM: And there’s the acting side of you as well. GEORGE: Exactly. I loved Julius Caesar. It was not only Shakespeare’s shortest drama, but it had dynamic adventure: murder, war, all that good stuff. I liked Edgar Allan Poe. I had a great English teacher who I definitely want to mention. He was my freshman and senior year English teacher. His name is William Kerrigan, and more than any one person in my youth, he was probably the most responsible for the writing bug that came to me. He really, really gave me a great appreciation of the English language—a lot of stuff I appreciate more now than I did then. He got me into Edgar Allan Poe, into Dickens, and

things that had nothing to do with reading, like jazz. He was a DJ for a jazz program on a college radio station. I did my very first short story for him as an extra credit project. He would give you extra points directly on your report card grade. The highest he would ever give was an 8, and gave me an 8++++—my first good review. [laughter] I think, because of Mr. Kerrigan, I had taken the desire to draw and extended it into the desire to create, to write as well, to try to delineate things with words the same way I delineate with line. I should give a public thank you to Mr. Kerrigan. He was a young teacher when I was in high school—30 at the most—so I’m assuming he’s still around now. He’s definitely someone who bears mentioning here. MM: You were writing for extra credit. Were you also writing just for yourself? GEORGE: Not as much. What I would end up doing was I’d come up with plot ideas. I would think of story elements, but never have the discipline to actually write them. So I would have stories—usually casting my classmates. I knew how the story began, the basic meat of it, and how it ended. I guess I was working Marvel-style even then. [laughter] MM: Did you keep a notebook of ideas? GEORGE: Yeah, or I would think of them as screenplays and cast them. This person is cast as this type of character— always using their real names. Most of them tended to be adventure stories, bigger-than-life stories, some science fiction, spy stuff because I was into the James Bond movies. I found that whenever I tried to do stories about urban reality I was really weak, because I had so isolated myself from my neighborhood upbringing by sheltering myself in my fantasy life, that all I really knew about the drug scene and urban crime was what I saw in the movies and on television. Of course, I had a very naïve point of view. One kid pointed out, “Boy you really don’t know anything about drugs, do you?” Of course, in hindsight, that obviously meant that he did know about it. [laughter] I tended to write from my imagination rather than write from reality, and what I knew was highly influenced and colored by the media. MM: Did you combine your drawing and writing interests much or did you keep them separate? GEORGE: I did my own little comics. In fact I had a comic—a team book—called The Battalion. I created the characters—or in the case of one character, co-created with Tom Sciacca—I wrote it, I penciled it, I inked it with Flair pen, I colored it with color pencils—top drawer stuff [laughter]—on white drawing paper, and then stapled it together as my own little comic. I lent it to a classmate one time—big mistake, because he was looking at it in school and the Dean of Discipline took it and tore it in half. My friend was so upset he 13

Above: Battalion’s cover. Below: Gag panel for Cardinal Hayes’ high school newspaper. Upper Right: Splash page for the unfinished second episode of “Death Squad.” Lower Right: Early ’70s, pre-pro Wonder Woman sketch. Wonder Woman ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.

actually yelled at the Dean of Discipline— he wasn’t back the next year [laughter]— but he went and glued it all back together onto construction paper. I have it to this day. It’s the first thing I ever did everything on that I did to completion. So many things I started and did a couple of drawings and that was the end of it, or I would doodle a story with no panels, no sequential artwork, just a bunch of little drawings. Sometimes I would just draw an arm with a fist and say that’s the punching scene. Everything was usually disjointed and not actually finished. That was why my friend was so upset when it was torn in half. MM: When was this? GEORGE: It was either my freshman or sophomore year of high school. MM: Did you get anything out of the art classes in school? GEORGE: Before I entered high school I did apply to an art school, the New York School of Art & Design, and I was accepted. It was the first time I’d ever had to put a portfolio together. An art student who lived in my building helped me put it together. MM: What was in the portfolio? GEORGE: Well this art student—I wish I could remember his name—asked me if I had a portfolio. I didn’t know what he was 14

talking about. He said, “Give me all the stuff you have,” and he separated it by themes—whether it was spot illustrations or pencil drawings or color drawings—and put them in separate sections. Thus he made my first portfolio. MM: So what happened that you didn’t attend the school? GEORGE: The reason I applied at all was because I was attending a Catholic school, and according to their procedures, I had to apply to a couple of regular city schools besides the Catholic high school, in case I didn’t get accepted into any of the Catholic schools as many of them had certain academic requirements. So I was accepted at the School of Art & Design, but my mom’s desire was that both my brother and I continue with a Catholic school education. I ended up being accepted at every Catholic high school I applied to—I had graduated at the top of my class from junior high. So my mom wanted me to go to Cardinal Hayes Memorial High School in the Bronx. I was very, very heartbroken at not being able to go to the School of Art & Design. In hindsight I’m glad because they didn’t have a cartooning course at that time, so I would have been fighting against teachers of fine art who would have looked down on me anyway. Cardinal Hayes had an art class, so I applied for it. That was one of two disappointments I faced when I went to Cardinal Hayes. The other was I also chose Spanish as my second language course, so I could relearn my language. As it turned out, they cancelled the art class the same year I got in, and because I was an honor student they gave me Latin instead of Spanish. That was the procedure at that school. MM: Did you take that portfolio you had put together to the conventions you went to? GEORGE: Yes, but I didn’t have any art training at all when I went to my first convention. I showed my artwork around and was, in my opinion, pretty much excoriated—primarily by Neal Adams. Any other person might have said, “I’m not going to worry about comics anymore.” I was still as determined; I had to try. And at that same convention, I met two men—Jim Glenn and

GEORGE: Yeah, I was already in the business when “Creature Commandos” came out. So I wrote, penciled, inked with a Flair pen, lettered horribly—I knew nothing about comic book lettering—and it was my first full comic story that actually saw print. I wanted full control over the stuff I did on my own, much to, I think, Jim and Pat’s chagrin. I appreciate that they didn’t just say, “Well screw you, we’re not going to print your stuff.” Because I was probably feeling my oats there and had a certain superior feeling. I felt that I drew better than I actually drew then, so why should I take orders? Pat at one point got a little stern. “Hey, this is our fanzine.” And he was perfectly right. My first dealing with editors. [laughter] I’m grateful that Pat and I have remained friends since then. But even though it was a small print run, it was a proud achievement, because here’s my name in print for the first time. When you’re a kid in high school, even a circulation of 250 seems like, “Wow, look at all these people who are going to be seeing my work.” And from that point the bug had become a plague. [laughter] And nothing was going to stop me from becoming a comic book artist. MM: Since you didn’t get the art training from school, did you seek out art books to learn on your own? GEORGE: I couldn’t afford art books. Pat O’Neill, who has done work in the comics trade— who were producing a fanzine called Factors Unknown. They had one issue already done. And this was real fanzine work. They didn’t go through a big printer, they didn’t have a big print run. It was just raw talent from young fans who wanted to produce their own work. It was digest size and even then it wasn’t considered a highend fanzine. There were a few people who scoffed at Pat and Jim. Tom Sciacca and I had absolutely no avenues. There were no overtures. Nobody was coming up to us and saying, “Why don’t you come work with us,” so we were more than happy to go work with Pat and Jim. I guess they were the Charlton of fanzines. [laughter] Tom and I worked on something together called “Stranded” for Factors Unknown #2, which was not very good even by fan standards at the time. Tom was not really an inker, and neither he nor I really knew how to ink. So combined all our weak spots were evident. But with Factors Unknown #3, as usual, my cockiness got the better of me and I wanted to do my own thing. I did a two-part—which ended up being in the same issue—comic called “Death Squad,” which took as its premise the idea of a werewolf, a vampire, a mummy—which was a direct rip-off of Larry Trainor of the Doom Patrol, because he was actually radioactive underneath the bandages—

MM: You didn’t try to find them in the library? GEORGE: Not really. I made the mistake of learning from comics. It wasn’t until I got my first job as an assistant working with Rich Buckler—who actually saw my work when I got out of high school and was showing my work at conventions, trying to get interviews. I tried to join the junior bullpen at DC and wasn’t accepted there. I went to Continuity, where Neal Adams tore my work up again. [laughter] But Dick Giordano was very positive, at least, in his reviews. And then I met Rich Buckler, and he needed an assistant. That’s when I started getting art training. Not just from Rich, but from the

MM: And this was well before “Creature Commandos” started. 15

Marvel and DC characters and they were probably more inspired by Neal Adams’ approach to comics. The characters tended to look... I’m hesitant to say the word realistic, because that’s kind of insulting to Neal. Neal could draw realistically and at that time I couldn’t. So an approximation of Neal’s realistic style, which meant that the characters were going further and further off-model with every drawing. [laughter] It did nothing more than to serve to show that my heart was in the right place. Neal was the first person who pointed out—when I did some inking using a roundtipped quill and ink that I got at a Woolworth’s store—that if it’s not the thing you do best, don’t show it.

Marvel bullpen. Basically I learned because they were all very, very quick to point out what I was doing wrong. And Lord knows that list was getting too long in my opinion. A young artist’s ego doesn’t particularly cotton to hearing an ever-lengthening laundry list of faults. But it was that same cockiness that said I have to show them that they’re wrong. In my rather jaundiced, narrow mind of a cocky, struggling artist, here I am thinking I’m proving them wrong and I can do it, when I’m actually proving them right because I have to force myself to do it correctly. Luckily my love for drawing was stronger than my pride. I don’t like criticism now as then—obviously I don’t get as much now [laughter]—but the fact is that criticism was never harsh enough to turn me away from what I wanted to do. All that stuff probably would not have bothered me had I had an education in art beforehand. I had to get past the hurt feelings of getting criticized for the first time.

MM: But he didn’t actually point out the proper tools you should have been using. GEORGE: No, no, he didn’t. Neal said—and I tell this to people as well— “Because of the nature of comics, if you can’t ink, don’t ink. You’ll learn to ink later. Just concentrate on your pencils now, because your drawing needs work.” A line that I’ve always remembered, “It’s easier to use an eraser than to use white-out.” When Neal looked at my work he said, “You know, with a little work you might be able to get some small work at DC. You’re definitely not ready for Marvel.” [laughter] At that time Marvel was considered the top dog when it came to quality. And, of course, the irony was Marvel was the first place I got work. [laughter]

MM: You had the friend who helped you put together your portfolio. What exactly were you showing people at the conventions? Did you have any sequential art to show? GEORGE: My first convention I had mostly pinups. Then I was told that you have to have storytelling pages. I might have even brought that Battalion book with me, I forget. Again, it didn’t look all that professional because it had been torn in half and glued back together and was drawn in Flair pen and colored pencil. I did do some panel work, and one of the things I had been told my first time out was to not always draw super-heroes. I remember drawing a western page—and here’s a guy who didn’t even know how to draw a horse. So I was drawing a comic-book approximation of a horse based on reading comics, as opposed to getting a magazine on real horses; westerns based on too many reruns of The Wild, Wild West, so it’s not really a western; and, again, faking it and not having any knowledge of perspective. But most of the stuff I was doing was of established

MM: As you’re getting tips from the pros, you’re improving your portfolio— GEORGE: Actually that was the last time I did a portfolio. Most of this happened right after high school during the summer and fall of ’72, so I didn’t have much time to keep drawing new things. After I got the call from Rich Buckler and started working with him, the things they would see from that point on were things I was getting paid for. When I was working with Rich, I didn’t get to do all that much 16

beyond look for Jack Kirby references for his Thor and Fantastic Four work. I had nothing to do with “Deathlok,” at least not the actual series. But he taught me a few things about doing layout work: how a character can be posed dynamically, certain things about drawing characters in a horizontal configuration and trying to put some vertical configurations in the background to make the figures stand out more. He pointed out things that, particularly, Jack Kirby did. I learned things about storytelling, but didn’t have much of a chance to apply them at that time. He gave me a broad outline on perspective. Rich gave me my first credited job when he produced the first story of “Deathlok” in Astonishing Tales #25. There was a gag strip he wanted to do in the back. He didn’t really want to draw it and because of the nature of it it didn’t require much drawing ability, so he had me draw a sequence with him and Doug Moench—who I hadn’t even met at the time, so all I drew was the back of his head—discarding ideas from the drawing board, and out of the trashcan emerges Deathlok. That ended up being my first professional printed work, but the Deathlok figure was drawn by Rich. The only really well drawn character on that two-page gag strip was drawn by Rich, not by me. [laughter] Later on, Rich was supposed to draw a “Gulliver of Mars” story written by Doug Moench for Monsters Unleashed #8. For whatever reason Rich couldn’t finish it, so it was handed over to me as his assistant, and I ended up drawing the entire thing. I was rushed and I was nowhere near the artist Rich was—it was pretty horrible. It was inked in a rush, primarily by the late Duffy Vohland, but Duffy needed help to finish it

on time, so his friends Bob Layton and John Byrne ended up inking some of it. MM: And you were still working at the bank during this time? GEORGE: I was still there. MM: What caused the split between you and Rich? GEORGE: Well, a lot of it was Rich’s desire to use a lot of swipes. I didn’t feel I was growing there and my wife was not happy about it, and there was an unfortunate blow-up where Rich said something along the lines of “the heck with my wife” or something more inflammatory than that that I may be blowing out of proportion just by memory now. It was enough for me to say that no one talks about my wife that way and I don’t agree with the way things are being done here. And I just turned my back and left, of course without any provisions of what I was going to do. Now at the bank during interest period, which came at the end of each quarter, sometimes I would end up working incredibly onerous hours, because at that time you had customers come in that wanted their interest posted—as if it was going to go anywhere—and 17

Previous Page: More High Noon than Wild, Wild West—“The Gunfighters,” from Pérez—Accent on the First “E”. Above: Partially inked page from “Terror Train” (left), which was done while George was in high school, and an unfinished page for “Death Squad” (right) which was done after George had turned pro.

Below: Page 2 of “The Human Drama.” Only two pages of this story were drawn, and they were used as samples in an effort to get work from Warren. Next Page: Two pages of a story done for Warren which was subsequently rejected by editor Bill Dubay.

you would have to mail transactions, which would pile up. So you could start the day going in around 7 o’clock in the morning and not leaving until almost 7 o’clock at night. So I was doing that until one fateful day, I was so tired at work when I was opening up and counting my bills that when I opened up a new stack of twenties, instead of putting the bills in my drawer and the rubber band into the trash, I did the exact opposite. I was showing a $500 difference at the end of the day that was taking hours to find. Finally somebody found it in the trash and I was fired the next day. I was very depressed. I was already married—I was married on September 1, 1973—and I was wondering what the hell I was going to do. I went to Unemployment, totally unsure of how to handle this, filled out the forms, and basically left it to the government to handle it from there. But the day after I filed for unemployment, I received a phone call from Rich Buckler saying that they needed a fill-in on a “Man-Wolf” story for Creatures on the Loose and if I’d be interested in doing it. And that was the start of what would be a permanent career—I never did collect an unemployment check. I was dumbfounded that he didn’t hold a grudge. I would later find out that he was basically acting as an agent for Jim Salicrup who was actually the one who was asking me about doing the “ManWolf.” I guess Rich was the only one with my phone number. But we’ve long since buried any small hatchets there might have been. MM: How was your marriage holding up in dealing with all the ups and downs 18

you were going through? GEORGE: When I first got married I was working as a bank teller. But when I started working in comics it became a real, real focus of my life. I was dedicating every waking hour to comics. I worked at home, which was a small, one-bedroom apartment, and basically the whole space was used for me to draw in. We married young—I was only 19 and Yvie was 18—and whatever pressures face a young couple who don’t know that much about life were exacerbated by the fact I was now so focused on drawing that I really wasn’t focused on the marriage and our differences really started to show. We tried to work together, and at one point Yvie was acting as translator for the “Sons of the Tiger” series when Bill Mantlo created a Puerto Rican super-hero, the White Tiger. Ironically, it was his idea; it wasn’t mine. He wanted the Spanish to be authentic and Yvie was fluent in Spanish, so she handled that. But the relationship was starting to get rocky. The differences between us became more and more prevalent. A lot of tempers were flaring. For those who know me now, they’d probably have a hard time believing that I was a guy who really was a nervous wreck and didn’t seem to be all that happy much of the time. I’m very grateful that it was a very clean divorce. She didn’t ask for anything and we had no children, so when it was over, it was over. She did try to linger for a while as a friend, but once I started dating my current wife, Carol, I told her that it needed to end if I wanted any kind of a life with Carol, and that ended the relationship. MM: Getting back to your time with Rich, what was it like for you to finally see the proper tools of the trade and how they were used? GEORGE: Rich was very good at guerrilla comics. When I first wanted to break into comics, I assumed there would be this big studio, this big drawing board, everyone working together. Working with Rich, well, we’d go into his house, I would use a lapboard—if there was a drawing board, Rich was using it. He lived in a small apartment with his wife and son. He seldom used a ruler; when he ruled the paper, he would just use the side of a piece of drawing

paper. So as far as tools were concerned, as Rich was not inking himself, the only thing that was different was that he had this nice ruled paper that said Marvel on it. [laughter] I still wasn’t learning how to use the correct tools, even with Rich! [laughter] That’s also when I realized that it wasn’t the tools but the hands behind the tools that really matter, at least in penciling. In inking, yeah, there are line weights and fundamental things you should learn. But that wasn’t something I needed to worry about because Rich was primarily a penciler. When he did ink, I think he used a brush, and that was something I could never do, because I’m double-jointed in my hands to the point that I really cannot control a brush. I wouldn’t learn this until I tried to learn how to ink, but that came later. But Rich kind of taught me that one of the joys of working in comics is the ability to draw pretty much anywhere. I learned how to draw sitting in any chair, lying down on my back on a couch, sitting on a toilet. I was at a convention one time—I think it was with Bill Sienkiewicz and his then-wife—and I went to the bathroom and came back with a half-drawn page. [laughter] Basically I was coming full circle from being the four-year-old sitting on the toilet drawing on the hamper. [laughter] I found that the only place I could not draw was the beach, because the sun bounces off that white paper and I’m blind. Beyond that I realized that I can take my job anywhere. MM: Were you meeting a lot of other pros while assisting Rich? GEORGE: One of the people I had applied to work with before I worked with Rich was Bill DuBay at Warren. As it turned out Bill was related by marriage in some way to Rich. They were definitely close. So I would meet him, I would get to go to the Warren offices. I got to see some unprinted Neal Adams Vampirella artwork. And of course when Rich would go into Marvel I would try to go in the same day so they would let me in, and got to meet the production people. I met Frank Giacoia; Mike Esposito; John Verpoorten; Klaus Janson, who was working with Rich at the time; and Don McGregor, who was also a friend of Rich’s. So yes, I started to meet a lot of professionals and it was really exciting. I remember sitting in John Verpoorten’s office and seeing Bill Everett, Bob Brown, and Frank Robbins all come in on the same day. Suddenly these names had faces. One day I was listening to Klaus Janson and someone else and they were talking about this new project they wanted to produce. And they were bandying about a bunch of names— names everyone knows: Buscema, Starlin might have been one. And just the idea of hearing them talking about a new project and imagining and hoping for the day that my name would be in a discussion like that. Where people would say, “Has anyone contacted George Pérez?” I think that day, more than any other, cemented my feeling that I was in comics and I wanted to stay in comics.

Part 2:

Enter Marvel : A Young Artist With Enthusiasm wanted to do Fantastic Four. So I tried to take that largerthan-life style and make it work with my own storytelling and then added little details and decorative things—often to hide the fact that I didn’t know how to draw certain things. I had myself saved by the great Joe Sinnott; he made everything more uniform and kept every character to model. That annual ended up becoming two issues of the regular book months after the fact and I had to add a few pages, so I can see stylistic changes, which again were made a little more homogenous by Joe Sinnott. It was another situation where what I lacked in sophisticated drawing ability was made up for by my natural sense of storytelling and my fearlessness. They saw that with enough experience and enough training, I was made to be a comic book artist.

MM: As you were meeting these pros were you making contacts with the idea of future work?

GEORGE: Not consciously. I mean, I wanted work, but it was still that type of thing where I didn’t want to step on toes too much. I told them I loved doing team books. I think the Avengers was the only one I may have mentioned to Bill Mantlo. As it turned out George Tuska hated drawing the book. Bill, who had become a friend of mine, was willing to try to find me work that would make me happy. When Avengers became available—whether it was permanently or short-term I didn’t know—it was sent my way. Thankfully, even with some of the flaws in my work—including storytelling flaws— Steve Englehart enjoyed having a young artist with enthusiasm rather than an experienced artist with none. At the time when there were no royalties to be had from the sales of a book, an artist would earn the same page rate for drawing a page with a single character as he would a page with a dozen characters. Books like the Avengers were not exactly desirable for the people working under that system. And because I loved it so much I could do it as fast, if not faster, than drawing a single character book. I was in tune with it and so hungry to be known in the business that of course I was going to take a highprofile book like the Avengers. I ended up also getting what was supposed to be just an FF Annual that Rich Buckler was supposed to draw, but for whatever reason he only drew about five pages, so they asked me to finish it since I had been his assistant and should be able to keep the same style. It was a lot more difficult since I didn’t really like doing the Kirby swipes that Rich did. I was trying to avoid doing anything that looked like Kirby, but I had to actually blend in if I

MM: Let’s go back just a bit to 1974. You’re penciling two series: “Man-Wolf,” a standard color comic, and “Sons of the Tiger,” a black&-white magazine strip. You were just starting out, so did you yet realize those series called for two different approaches? GEORGE: Not as much in the beginning, though I would learn later. Ironically, when I took “Man-Wolf” I thought it would have more shadings of horror to it, but Dave Kraft, who took on the writing of the series, wanted to be a little more cosmic, a little more super-heroic. So the series that should have been the darker of the two ended up being the brighter of the two. And the “Sons of the Tiger,” which started out being a homage—or ripoff, take your pick—of the Enter the Dragon paradigm of the white martial artist, the black martial artist, and the Oriental martial artist, ended up becoming much more of a dark, sometimes political series than it was intended to be. Bill Mantlo had a very strong social consciousness and ended up putting that into the series. And Archie Goodwin, when he became editor 20

of the black-&-white line, was the one who pointed out that approaching a black-&white comic should be slightly different. You can work with tonal values in addition to black and white and the action can be a little bit more—not restrained—but not quite as exaggerated, because there are certain times when it should look slightly more realistic. Of course I still didn’t understand that. I drew it pretty much the same, but ironically with less backgrounds, because I thought, “He wants tonal stuff, well, that’s what the inker’s going to put in.” [laughter] So I didn’t put in as much work in the black&-white work and put all the detail in the color work when it probably would’ve worked better the other way around. By putting in too much detail, the colors didn’t look as bright, and by not putting in enough detail the black-&-white work didn’t look dense enough or as realistic as it should. As I got to be better I started to say, “Nah, a comic is a comic whether it’s color

or black-&-white,” and drew them both the same way. They were both action, really. One had a wolf’s head; the other three didn’t. [laughter] And the action— because it was a martial arts comic— couldn’t be too exaggerated, because it still had to look like martial arts. MM: In 1975 you picked up the Inhumans series. How did that come about? GEORGE: Again, Bill Mantlo gave me a call. I think I had already gotten the Avengers. MM: They were published a month apart. GEORGE: Right, I had just started the Avengers and he asked if I would be interested in The Inhumans. I loved the characters from the Fantastic Four. The only caveat was it was already a month late, so I drew my first issue of The Inhumans in one week. Knowing that it was bi-monthly allowed me the luxury of taking it on as a regular series, because I was still drawing very, very fast. I had just gotten Avengers, just gotten Fantastic 21

Previous Page: A 1976 sketch of Galactus and his herald. Above: White Tiger fights The Prowler, from Deadly Hands of Kung-Fu #21, with inks by Jack Abel; and Creatures on the Loose #35, page 11, with inks by Frank McLaughlin. Below: A 1977 self-illo. Galactus, Man-Wolf, Prowler, Silver Surfer, White Tiger ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Above: Inhumans #2, page 2. Inks by Fred Kida. Right: Details from Power Man #27, page 22. Luke does look a little like Belafonte, doesn’t he? Inks by Al McWilliams. Next Page: Avengers #148, page 6, with inks by Sam Grainger; and Fantastic Four #164— George’s first issue— page 18, with inks by Joe Sinnott. Avengers, Fantastic Four, Inhumans, Luke Cage ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Four, “Man-Wolf” was canceled—so I didn’t have to worry about that—so I was doing four team books—three-anda-half books a month. It was an incredible amount of work for a young artist to be doing. I was so excited that I just took it on. The first issue of The Inhumans was the first book that I had real trouble trying to choreograph. Doug Moench’s plot was so dense I could not fit all of it into the number of pages I had to work with. I called up Marvel, who in turn talked to Doug, and then I talked to Doug, and we found a fitting place to break the story with the second half going into issue #2 with a little modification. So as hard as it is to believe, Inhumans #1 and #2 were supposed to be issue #1. MM: That same month The Inhumans #1 came out, you also did an issue of Power Man. GEORGE: With Power Man I was working with Bill Mantlo and they just wanted me to do a fillin. It was also interesting during those times—and sometimes unnerving—to see what different inkers would look like on my work. In the course of one month I had Joe Sinnott on Fantastic Four, Vince Colletta on the Avengers, Frank Chiaramonte on The Inhumans, Jack Abel on “Sons of the Tiger,” 22

and Al McWilliams on Power Man. There’s a real diverse group of inkers! Some I didn’t like on me, some I adored, but it was one of those things where you had to realize that, “Oh, so this is what the assembly line is like.” You can’t always have someone who’s going to be as faithful to you as you would like them to be. My least favorite of that batch were Vince Colletta and Al McWilliams, who—though I didn’t even know who he was at the time—had a long, illustrious career. All I saw was the fact that Luke Cage didn’t look black anymore. I drew Jim Brown and he gave me a slightly homogenized Harry Belafonte. [laughter] MM: Were you actually thinking Jim Brown when you drew him? GEORGE: At that time I was using Jim Brown for every big black guy. [laughter] What Al added as far as being a better artist, he kind of blunted as he wasn’t quite the dynamic artist I was. I was a guy who could draw bigger-than-life, Kirbyesque action characters and I think Al was not the perfect match for that because he kind of tamed it, which didn’t work. And, of course, Vince Colletta was the old workhorse and everyone ended up being inked the same way, which meant getting it done on time, getting rid of any extraneous detail— MM: And sometimes non-extraneous detail.

GEORGE: Exactly, sometimes important stuff would disappear. But Vinny I inherited because he was the inker on Avengers when George Tuska was drawing it. Joe Sinnott I inherited very gladly. Inhumans—Frank Chiaramonte—I’d never particularly cared for his inking anyway, and one of the rare times I actually went in and did some retouching up on the inking myself, using the crudest of tools, using Rapidographs. I added a little more texture work, a little more detail, and some correction work—what I could over the white-out—to Inhumans #1. It’s something I did only because I happened to be in the office that day that the pages came in. I was really unhappy with it and since it was a first issue—and my first first issue with a byline, the first book that I was starting.... MM: Were you seeing where certain inkers were changing your work for the better and then recognizing that you should correct those mistakes in your pencils? GEORGE: The only person that I thought was making my stuff better was Joe Sinnott. All the others I didn’t think were adding anything to the mix—that was my being cocky at the time. I was more upset because they were changing things. When Sam Grainger started inking Avengers after Vince Colletta, I liked Sam’s inking. Sam’s inking might have been a little too slick and didn’t actually correct any of my flaws, just made them look slicker because he’s so faithful. But I didn’t look beyond the fact that he was faithful. When I look at the work now—two decades after the fact—I think, “Gosh, I wish he would have corrected my chins, or had made my noses better.” At the time I was deliriously happy, because all I wanted was someone to ink me faithfully. In the case of Joe Sinnott, I could think, “Because he’s inking my work faithfully it looks gorgeous. Look at that great brushwork.” It wasn’t until years later when I saw a piece of original Fantastic Four artwork that I could see where the faces of my pencil figures were and where Joe’s ink lines were and see how many changes there were. But he did it subtly. It still looked like me, but Joe did do some redrawing while trying to keep the essence of me under there as best as he could. When I was penciling I wanted to see the page in its finished form as much as I could. I would really dig in deep with the pencils so that the pencils looked almost like an ink line they were so dark. When I drew characters in outer space, I would actually blacken in the sky and draw around little, tiny circles for stars. Joe and several other inkers would erase my pages before they’d ink it, because they could follow the impressions that I left. [laughter] I remember one time when I was on “ManWolf”—again doing that high pressure penciling—that letterer Tom Orzechowski had a little note on the page: “Please tell this artist not to press so damn hard on the page. It’s a pain in the ass to try to letter!” The penciler should remember that his is the stuff that’s never going to be seen. His stuff is going to be erased; the inking line is the final line. MM: Early on in that first run on Avengers you drew a “roster change” story arc. 23

GEORGE: Right, it was going into the 150th issue.

Above: A 2002 commission piece of the Inhumans. Lower Right: Avengers #160, page 14. Inks by Pablo Marcos. Upper Right: A 1978 sketch of Sue Storm, Invisible Girl. Avengers, Inhumans, Invisible Girl ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MM: So you were drawing even more characters than normal. GEORGE: I got to draw the roster at the time and, if I recall correctly, got to draw a history of the Avengers, which was a lot of fun. It was a fanboy’s dream. Who’d have thought that would presage my later work? I loved the idea of being able to draw all the different characters in the various ages, and I loved it when characters would make guest appearances. For example, I believe there was a Spider-Man cameo in “Sons of the Tiger” one time. It was “Wow! I get to draw Spider-Man!” At the time drawing these characters professionally was all so new to me, and knowing that they would be professionally inked, professionally colored, professionally printed was all very exciting. MM: In issue #150 you basically drew a framing story around reprinted pages of “flashback” story. Was this to give you a breather or just to save money? 24

GEORGE: I had just fallen behind. There was only so much work a human being could do and it eventually caught up with me. During those early years on into the time I moved to DC, my marriage problems also affected my output. I was not happy at home and it did affect my concentration on my work. MM: Switching back to Inhumans, you did the first four issues and then you left, I assume due to time problems? GEORGE: Yes. Also, it was a fun book to do, but I never really quite caught my niche on that one. I don’t know whether it was working on the very dense Doug Moench plots or whatever, but I never thought I made that as successful as it could have been. I think Gil Kane—even though he probably took it on as another journeyman job—had a better handle on the characters. Probably a lot of it was that, as much boundless energy as I had, I was aware I was really kind of limited in my skills. Juggling that many titles, I had to take shortcuts artwise. After a while I

noticed I was starting to use stock poses and the like. I was starting to stagnate and lose track of one book from another. It was just too many things to juggle mentally. There was also a point around that time where I suffered what turned out to be a nerve pinch. It was severe enough that it started from my neck and affected my ability to draw. I couldn’t control a pencil, even when it meant drawing a straight line with a ruler, because my hand shook so badly. I couldn’t feel the water hitting me in the shower. I had to drop a few things because I wasn’t sure what was going on. It wasn’t until I was diagnosed—and very gratefully, Marvel picked up the tab— that I found out it was a nerve pinch and electromassage therapy took care of it. I had thought my career was over before it really had much of a chance to begin.

much as I enjoyed working in comics, I really appreciated working in comics after I thought I was going to lose it all. MM: Did you feel anything special with Fantastic Four, since it was where the Marvel craze started? GEORGE: The FF and the Avengers both were books I grew up with. There was a certain intimidation that was there, but my youthful brashness or arrogance allowed me to see past that. Working with Joe Sinnott and Roy Thomas was a dream come true. These were icons to me. When I saw my pages inked by Joe the first time, it was like, “Wow!” That really felt like an accomplishment. Joe Sinnott was already a legend and I really felt like a Fantastic Four artist when Joe inked me. If Joe had not been there, I wouldn’t have felt like I was really part of the FF legend. Roy did catch me on the first issue and told me a few things about the way the characters should behave. I put Johnny Storm in an incredibly loud, hip—as I thought hip was in those days—outfit, which was funny and Roy played it up, but had he had his way and there had been time to redraw it.... He couldn’t see Johnny wearing that type of clothing. I was drawing modern youth fashion, but from a ghetto, Puerto Rican point of view. [laughter]

MM: How long did that last? GEORGE: It only lasted about a month or so, but it was a scary month. I didn’t have health insurance, but Marvel was kind enough to pay for the electromassage therapy. I believe Archie Goodwin was the one who followed through on that. I had no reoccurences—it was a one-time thing—but it was enough to make me wonder that maybe I should slow down. A lot of people comment on my gregariousness and joy in working in comics. Well, a lot of that started then. As

MM: From January 1977 to June 1977 your only output was Logan’s Run. After the nerve pinch you went down to the one title. Why Logan’s Run and not FF or Avengers? GEORGE: At the time we all felt that Logan’s Run was going to be a major success. The movie had not been released at the time we started the comic. It was supposed to tie in with the release of the film. I had already started the comic when Archie Goodwin and I got to see a finished print at, I believe it was the Paramount Theater. It was only a fair movie at best, we thought, so we were hoping that maybe we had a chance of the comic book being better than the film because we could do some tricks in the comic that the movie couldn’t afford to do. It was different from anything I had done before. I was not doing another monthly series—I think I had just recovered from the nerve pinch—and I found that the challenge was something I enjoyed. Being a film adaptation I needed to use, as much as possible, the art direction from the film. I became a better artist because I was trying to draw real backgrounds. I didn’t want to fake it, so I received—I couldn’t even get photos— 25

Above: Introducing Box, one of George’s favorite things about Logan’s Run. Page 1 of issue #4. Inks by Klaus Janson. Right: A 1988 drawing of Iron Man. Next Page Top: Compare the pure Pérez version of John Carter (from Pérez—Accent on the First “E”) with the cover of John Carter of Mars #13 inked by Rudy Nebres. Next Page Bottom: Issue #184 marked George’s return to Fantastic Four after a 5month hiatus and was jam-packed with panels.

they sent me slides. I didn’t have a slide projector, so I was looking at these tiny, little slides through a slide viewer and drawing the backgrounds. I think my favorite part— in addition to drawing Box, the villainous caretaker in the ice caverns—was drawing Washington, D.C., and the Lincoln Memorial in decay. I got photos of Washington and the Capitol Building and the Lincoln Memorial, and decayed them myself. I remembered how it looked in the film, but I had no reference for any of those scenes. It was incredibly challenging, but a lot of fun, trying to draw real backgrounds instead of drawing the Kirbyesque buildings and what passed for cars. [laughter] Logan’s Run started to turn my artistic style around where I suddenly became a little more conscious of wanting to draw “correctly.” It made me make a concerted effort to really start honing my craft. It also marked the end of my prolific period, because I just didn’t want to fake it anymore. MM: Once your run on Logan’s Run was over you came back to Avengers and FF, but now you were doing the covers as well, whereas before you hadn’t. Did they have more confidence in your ability? What convinced them you were ready for cover duty? GEORGE: I had the ability to draw the covers, but not the ability to design the covers. At the time all the Marvel covers were designed by usually one of three people: 26

John Romita, Marie Severin, or Ed Hannigan. Very few artists designed their own covers. I really would have liked to design my own covers, but that was the way of doing things then. It was enough of a victory that I won the right to pencil my own covers. I had only drawn one cover up until that time and that was for Creatures on the Loose #34—my second “Man-Wolf” story—and that went through a massive redrawing from John Romita and Tony Mortallaro, who was his assistant. MM: Not long after, you start drawing covers for books you weren’t doing interiors for. GEORGE: Yeah. Because of having done high-end books that had good sales they started asking me to do covers for other books in hopes of making them a little more saleable. My whole feeling as a fan is if you get a Pérez cover or Adams cover or anyone’s cover and then end up getting somebody else in the interior, wouldn’t you feel a little bit gypped? But frankly, after a while I said, “Well, I am getting work, and I kind of like it.” [laughter] MM: You were doing covers for Defenders and Iron Man and— GEORGE: And usually at the request of the writers as well. It wasn’t just the editors. My Avengers, in particular, was very popular, and they wanted to capture some of that audience since Defenders was considered a second-tier Avengers-type group. There were some unusual covers—some John Carter of Mars, which were inked by Rudy Nebres, so try to find George Pérez in there. Those covers were designed by one artist, penciled by another artist, and then inked by a very overpowering artist. I actually have a hard time figuring out which of those covers I drew, because I wasn’t the only person drawing those covers that Rudy inked—and they all looked like Rudy. [laughter] I must add, they probably looked better with Rudy’s inking given my ability at the time.

different things with the layouts. Things you hadn’t done before. GEORGE: Once I had developed enough of a reputation that I could get away with more, I wanted to go back to the type of stuff that influenced me— the 1960s pop art era of comics, where even the standard-bearers like John Buscema were doing unusual page layouts. I did a few things even in the earlier FFs—like using heads for frames—but I wanted to do more of that, because I felt that the page should be exciting. To me, if you’re doing tiers of equal size, then you’re just doing comic strips that are stacked on top of each other. Comic strips are bound because they are horizontal and are pretty much restricted to that configuration. A comic book is built on a vertical configuration. You can play a lot more with it. I consciously try—even to this very day, unless it’s a matter of design—to make the following page different in layout from the page before it. I do not want two consecutive pages to be laid out the same way, unless it’s a deliberate design element.

MM: In Fantastic Four #184, your first issue back, you had a new writer and editor, Len Wein. I noticed that issue had an unusually large number of panels. GEORGE: I think that was me doing “me.” That probably had more detail than a lot of stuff I did. It was a pretty full plot by Len. I think a reason that Len and a lot of writers put a lot in there is that they know that one way or another it’s all going to fit. I look at that now and there are some scenes I might expand. I added a lot of multiple angles on scenes that probably could have survived with just one angle. I would say I would produce fewer panels, but anyone who sees the JLA/Avengers when that comes out will see there are certain pages that are 16-panel pages. At the time I wasn’t as good at pacing it out when I did a lot of panels on one page. I didn’t let the next page open up a bit as opposed to everything being drawn at the size of postage stamps. Ironically, that was one of the things that made fan reaction to that book so positive. Because, no one was putting that much artwork on a given page. If nothing else they must have felt they were getting a lot of bang for their buck.

MM: You’re having to design a lot of new characters, and over in Avengers you’re giving established characters new costumes. Were you eager to put your stamp on the look of these characters? GEORGE: It became like a joke. In the case of the Wasp I noticed that she had so many costumes that eventually I said, “Why not?” I think I was on the book long enough that

MM: When you return to the six or seven panels per page, you were doing 27

issues, then back to pencils and covers for four issues....

what was once just a little bit of an idiosyncrasy about the character became fully part of the character’s persona. I think she went through so many costumes while I was drawing the series, that it became the rigeur and almost mandatory of any following artist that they had to introduce a new costume or three. [laughter] In the case of Wonder Man I was asked to do a new costume. And the one thing I could never control was what a costume was going to look like in color. So when I saw the red and green I said, “Oh, my God. I never counted on that.” [laughter] In those days colors were rather limited and so many of the colorists were fine comic book colorists, but it wasn’t like they had painting backgrounds. “We want these characters to stand out. What are the primary colors we can use that nobody else in the panel is using?” So poor Wonder Man ended up looking like a Christmas ornament, making an arguably hokey looking costume look a hell of a lot worse. [laughter]

GEORGE: I just no longer could maintain the type of schedule I did for years earlier. I kept thinking I could, which is why I kept signing on. I was going through the painful ending of a bad marriage. Not being able to say no when people asked me, “Can you do this?”, then getting further and further behind schedule, and knowing that part of my appeal was the amount of detail and panel work I put into a page, I felt compelled to always do that and that takes time. My biggest problem is when I start getting unhappy or tense, I just start slowing down, thus becoming more tense. [laughter] Then it becomes a vicious circle where I’m not producing the work in a timely fashion. And the work that makes me happy, I’m not fast enough to produce on a monthly title. I was starting to realize that to draw in a manner in which I would be happy was impossible on the schedule that I had to work in. It would be quite a while before I would be able to stay on any series for an extended amount of time.

MM: Well, he didn’t keep that costume very long. You got to change it again not too long after.

MM: How did you end up doing “The Beatles Story,” in Marvel Super Special #4?

GEORGE: Oh, yes, I got to give him the safari jacket. That was a costume that didn’t seem offensive at the time. Now it looks a little out of date, but it didn’t look out of date then. The idea I was going for—and I don’t know if it was my idea or the writer’s suggestion—was a Doc Savage type of approach to the character, where he wouldn’t look quite as super-heroic with the spandex and everything. I consciously avoided giving him jodhpurs—I couldn’t go that far into Doc Savage territory. [laughter] Just trying to make him the reluctant super-hero.

GEORGE: I was a Beatles fan and David Kraft was a friend of mine who had worked with me on “ManWolf” and Logan’s Run, and he mentioned that Marvel wanted to do a Beatles story. I said, “Wow, now there’s a challenge.” I didn’t see beyond the novelty of the project, so I said, “Yes, yes, I definitely want to give it a try.” Obviously David was an enormous Beatles fan and also a music collector, so he managed to find tons and tons of reference. The one challenge with The Beatles is, of course, they’re iconic. I had the challenge of trying to put in a comic what would probably have worked better in a film documentary. And not having any sound, we had to invoke the spirit and the

MM: Over on Avengers you did pencils and covers for three issues, then only covers for four 28

genius of The Beatles without the advantage of their music being there. We didn’t have the copyrights and you can’t play a comic anyway. [laughter] So I fell back on trying to do clever design work. I think “The Beatles” was one of the first books that I really, really went into design—design over storytelling in many cases. I tried to tell a story, but a lot of it was do something interesting with the chapter headings. Do interesting things with the theme of this particular page or with the time frame. If it has to do with Sgt. Pepper’s, do the pop art, Peter Max style. Try to capture the essence of the movie posters or record covers, things like that. I think in the long run it was both successful in that I managed to achieve something I had never achieved before, and maybe a little bit of a disappointment because what we could do at the time limited us. Klaus Janson and I had grown to not be the best of matches. I tried very hard to catch a likeness and sometimes Klaus would either use his own reference or try his own way. Sometimes he kept the likeness, sometimes he lost it, or sometimes he got it better—it varied. The colors—we were using a Baxter style, it just wasn’t a term that was used yet at the time—were still the same process colors used in standard comics, just with the addition of a K (black) plate, and it looked very garish. In today’s age with computer coloring, that book would look a lot better. I like what I did with the artwork, but boy is it painful to look at with those day-

glow colors staring right at you. [laughter] I was very proud of it at the time, and I remember going to England for my very first overseas convention. I was going, “Wow! I’m in England because I did The Beatles!” [laughter] MM: Did that just make you the natural choice to do the Sgt. Pepper movie adaptation [Marvel Super Special #7]? GEORGE: Unfortunately. [laughter] Everything I enjoyed about “The Beatles Story” I hated about “Sgt. Pepper.” It was nearly zero cooperation from the Robert Stigwood company and we didn’t realize that the script was still in so much flux that things we were putting in the comic were not going to appear in the movie and things we didn’t know about were going to be added to the movie. The plot was so convoluted and cheesy—even on the printed page—and after a while we realized it was not really going anywhere. They said they were going to have all these superstars appear at the end of the film and, of course, in the end they couldn’t get them—not that we could have used them anyway, because we didn’t have the license to use their likenesses. Also, I was paired with a very incompatible inker, because the book was running so late. I was doing a terrible job on it, Jim Mooney was a terrible fit for me—though he did the best he could—it was just one disaster after another. It was the one of the nadirs 29

Upper Left: Over the years George has drawn the Wasp in a plethora of different costumes. Lower Left: The Wonder Man “safari” look was inspired by Doc Savage, minus the jodhpurs. Both images shown are recent commission pieces. Above: On the left is George’s Peter Maxinfluenced take on The Beatles during their Sgt. Pepper’s period, from “The Beatles Story” (Marvel Super Special #4), inked by Klaus Janson. Also shown are pages 4 and 26 of the Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band movie adaptation from the ultra-rare Marvel Super Special #7, inked by Jim Mooney. It is quite possible this book was never published inside the United States, of which George is eternally grateful. Beast, Wasp, Wonder Man ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Doc Savage, Pat Savage, Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ™ and ©2003 respective owners.

of my career. I was so grateful that the book never got an American release. I’ve yet to see a copy of “Sgt. Pepper.” I will be stunned the first time I ever get one of those books put in front of me to be signed, because you’d think that in this eBay-oriented world that someone would have managed to find a copy of “Sgt. Pepper,” even if it was in another language. [laughter]

around the JLA/Avengers time, because the reason I did not draw the last of the four Marvel Fanfare covers was because of the headaches that were resulting from dealing with that, which I blamed primarily on Jim Shooter. So I refused to draw the last cover. The cover that was used for the third issue—the one that Bob Layton inked— was supposed to have been the cover for Marvel Premiere.

MM: In the last issue of FOOM—#22—I saw that Tom Palmer had done a painting for the story. Was it for the cover?

GEORGE: Well, actually, with all due respect to Ralph, Ralph had nothing to do with the plotting in that book. Ralph did the dialogue, but I plotted the entire book—for better or for ill [laughter]—on my own. So that would have been my first full plotting credit.

GEORGE: I don’t know if Tom Palmer ever did a “Sgt. Pepper” cover, because I remember Bob Larkin doing a “Sgt. Pepper” cover. Maybe both of them did. You probably have a reference source that I don’t. Above: According to FOOM #22, this Tom Palmer painting was done over a George Pérez sketch. Right: This Black Widow cover was drawn in 1978, but didn’t see print until 1983. Inks by Bob Layton. Next Page Top: The cover of the recent Avengers: The Korvac Saga trade paperback collection. Next Page Bottom: A 1977 sketch of a waving Ant-Man. Ant-Man, Avengers, Black Widow ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Sgt. Pepper’s Lonely Hearts Club Band ™ and ©2003 respective owner.

MM: It just said it was Tom Palmer painting over a George Pérez sketch for “Sgt. Pepper.” But also in that issue of FOOM, it mentioned that you had done a Black Widow story, but that story didn’t actually appear until 1983 [Marvel Fanfare #10-13]. GEORGE: It was a lot of fun at the time, because I was plotting it myself. I forgot who was going to be scripting it—it probably was Ralph Macchio even then. MM: Ralph was the one listed. GEORGE: For whatever reason, I just never finished it. Finally, when they decided to schedule it and Ralph asked if I would finish it, I said fine. So I did a new opening scene—I had to rush through the last part, which is why it seems a little on the rough side—but I penciled that opening scene in the first issue after I had come back to finish the story. MM: That did look a little more developed than the rest of the story. GEORGE: This would have been 30

MM: So if it had been finished the first time, would that have been your first coplotting credit?

MM: I keep coming back to this same issue of FOOM, but it also had an ad for Pérez: Accent on the First ‘E.’ Was that your first professional portfolio? GEORGE: Oh, yeah. At a time when I probably

GEORGE: Well I knew it was going to be special. It was a book that really catered to my desires of being able to draw a lot of characters in a big, epic story. I knew that part of the reason Jim was doing it was because he was going to be able to work with me, so I kind of double-crossed him by not staying on. [laughter] It was nothing personal, I just couldn’t maintain it. He was rightfully concerned because by that point my reputation was preceding me. I had not drawn any book for six months straight at any given time and here we were planning a story that would take about a year to complete. I started strong doing full pencils, then I was doing layouts, and then I just started losing momentum. The intention was to make this a really, really epic Avengers story. “Do it up proud.” Of course, Jim had to have other artists finish up the story, but that’s definitely not his fault. I just couldn’t handle it anymore.

didn’t merit one, but it was very flattering. A gentlemen named Dave Lillard was doing some independent publishing. He had done, I believe, a Neal Adams book as well and he thought doing a Pérez one would be great. I thought, “Well, who am I to argue with that?” [laughter] The only thing I insisted on—in typical fanboy fashion—was that I didn’t see any positive aspect of doing a book without doing something new for it. I didn’t have a large enough body of work to have a retrospective and I’m not a type who does too many preliminary drawings—I usually draw straight to board. So I did over 30 original pieces for the book, which I drew all in pencil. Unfortunately it reproduced as line, so a lot of people thought it was just poorly reproduced ink line. I penciled it so tight that it may as well have been line work. But the book did allow me to draw DC characters for the first time at a professional level. I hadn’t done any work for DC at that time. One mistake—which was one I suggested because I was cocky enough to think my art should sell itself [laughter]—was that the name of the book did not appear on the cover, just the artwork. Unfortunately, you put that on the rack and all you see is the star pattern at the top of the cover, so no one knew what the book was. To add insult to injury, there was a flood at the publisher’s house which destroyed all but about 600 copies, which is why it is such a rare book. Needless to say I didn’t make a red cent out of that. [laughter]

MM: You had been at Marvel your whole career, then after December 1980 you don’t work for Marvel for more than ten years. Did you think you’d be gone for so long? GEORGE: Well, after the disagreements I had with Jim Shooter over JLA/Avengers, I thought I’d be gone for good. But at the time I left Marvel I was already working at DC. In fact, the only reason I “left Marvel” was because I had stopped drawing the Avengers. At that point I was doing Avengers, Justice League, and The New Teen Titans. I knew I might be able to do two, but I couldn’t maintain three, and I dropped the only book I had had a run on already so there wouldn’t be a feeling of unfinished business. I didn’t drop Avengers out of animosity—in fact I was getting along great with everybody—I just didn’t have the time. By dropping my only Marvel title, people inferred incorrectly that I was no longer going to work for Marvel. It wasn’t until the political eruption on JLA/Avengers that I said, “Okay, now I’m not going to work for Marvel,” and it was at that time that I signed an exclusive contract with DC.

MM: One of the pieces in the portfolio was entitled “The Enchantress of Kazo-Nal.” What was that from? GEORGE: It was started in a very, very cheaply done fanzine called Conjure—done... pre-stardom, I guess. That illustration appeared in Accent on the First ‘E’ and never went beyond that. A couple of places have referred to the printing of a Legend of Kazo-Nal book, which is obviously wrong—it was never printed anywhere. MM: When you started working on what has become known as the Korvac Saga, did you feel that it was going to become a story that is so fondly remembered? 31

Part 3:

Making a Mark of His Own at DC Comics chance of succeeding. The previous incarnation of the Titans I thought was lackluster. And even though I read the 1960s Titans when Nick Cardy, Gil Kane, Neal Adams and George Tuska were all drawing it and I loved those, Justice League was the book that I wanted to do, similarly to my desire to do Avengers at Marvel.

MM: Did you find the gradual move from Marvel to DC a difficult transition?

GEORGE: At first I was a little intimidated. It was like I was auditioning for the first time, because I didn’t know how much editors like Joe Orlando or Julie Schwartz knew me. I had only been working in the business about five years or so and whether they kept up with the new people over at Marvel was totally alien to me. So I kind of felt I had to prove myself. If I hadn’t been invited by Marv Wolfman and Len Wein specifically, I don’t know how I would have fared just going in cold. The fact that I had a letter of introduction, as it were, gave me a little more ease of mind. I was still new and felt that what worked at Marvel may not work at DC—a prime example, of course, being Jack Kirby whose work, I think, wasn’t as well received by the editorial staff at DC as it was at Marvel previously. So Lord knows how things might have been different if it hadn’t been for Marv Wolfman approaching me about the Teen Titans book.

MM: How long was it before your priorities between Titans and Justice League reversed in your mind? GEORGE: In the case of the Titans, the momentum started to build on it even from the very beginning. There was good word of mouth and DC seemed to put a lot of support into that book. It was the first of the Bonus Books offered by DC, where they put a 16-page full comic story into the middle of another book—in our case DC Presents #26. As much as I enjoyed Justice League, some of that might have been dampened by the fact that I knew I was working on plots originally written for Dick Dillin, since Gerry Conway was so incredibly ahead of schedule. He had almost a half a dozen scripts already there. Of course, I wasn’t as involved in the story concepts as I would be on the Teen Titans book. When it came time to decide—as I was slowing down more—which book I should take on, it became apparent that Titans looked like it could very well be a successful book. The sales were better than anyone anticipated. Fan and dealer reaction was also quite favorable. This was a chance to do a book wherein my participation was responsible for its success and I could make a mark of my own.

MM: So New Teen Titans was the first offering from DC? GEORGE: Yes, but I had other things that were printed while it was in development. There was a Green Lantern cover that was my very first work for DC Comics and a “Firestorm” back-up series that also came out before Teen Titans. MM: You did four issues of that, as the back-up in Flash, and then the Justice League came next.

MM: With Titans you received a co-plotting credit.

GEORGE: The Justice League came as a bargaining chip originally. I agreed to do the Teen Titans with Marv and Len—I didn’t have any particular desire to do that series—only if I could get a crack at one or two issues of Justice League. That was the book I really wanted to do, not the Titans, because I didn’t think Titans had much of a

GEORGE: Marv has always been incredibly generous about those types of things. He was adamant about my receiving co-plotting credit on the book. He was also personally instrumental in instituting a tier program of payment for creators; at that point there was no pay32

only drawing the JLA, you’re drawing the JSA and the New Gods. Did you have to do any research or were you familiar with all the characters?

ment for co-plotting. You got paid for a plot, you got paid for a script, and that was pretty much it as far as the writing payments were broken up. Before they finally instituted an official payment where a plot can be divided as well, Marv paid me out of his pocket from the plotting fee that he received. Again, an incredibly generous gesture, since most writers and artists, if they work that way, they figure it’s just the normal way of working and what the artist brings in to the actual storytelling is just part of his job. Marv recognized the fact that I was providing a lot more of my own personal contribution to the story and the direction of the Titans, and felt that deserved recognition both in credit and in payment. MM: Your first issue of Justice League was one of the annual crossover events, so you were not

GEORGE: One of the things about that time period was that I was still a comic book reader. I read the Kirby New Gods, I read the Justice League, I read all the JLA-JSA crossovers. So I was very in tune with the characters. The only restriction I had was that I was working on a full script, since that was the way Gerry Conway and Dick Dillin worked. So there wasn’t as much wiggle room plotwise and in some cases I thought, “God, there’s a hell of a lot going on here and not that much space to put it in.” [laughter] So that was a bit of a challenge. And I was still coming out from my Marvel days, so my characters tended to be big and bulky and maybe a touch stiff at times. I still hadn’t gotten down to the style that would manifest itself after working on the Titans past the first year. I don’t think that Frank McLaughlin—who I inherited from Dick Dillin—was a good fit for me. He worked hard, but he and I really did not work well together. I don’t think I ever found my niche with the proper inker on Justice League. I had a few inkers—some of them did better than others—but never really became a team with any of them. Even though Romeo Tanghal and I over at Titans got to a point where we were no longer complementary—my style was going one way and his was going another way—still it developed a real look for the book. Justice League I don’t think ever really had a definitive Pérez look. MM: You did another crossover before you were done, with the Secret Society of Super-Villains.

Previous Page: 1981 Titans illustration. Clockwise from Upper Left: The JLA and Titans square off on the cover of New Teen Titans #4. A Splash page from Justice League of America #185. A 2002 commission of Firestorm, the Nuclear Man. And an ’80s self-illo. Darkseid, Firestorm, Justice League, Teen Titans ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.

look like they would if they had been drawn by the artists most associated with them. I was trying to do a Curt Swan-ish Superman, a Gil Kane-ish Green Lantern, but I found once the inking was done it all became me again. [laughter] It wouldn’t be until later that I started feeling I was doing the characters right. MM: Were you trying to do that more in issue #200, where a lot of those classic artists came in to draw chapters of the book? GEORGE: Actually it was before that. By the time #200 came I was doing the Pérez version. I had started to become more comfortable with the characters. I also realized that Justice League at that point was my book, and the characters should be a Pérez version that follows model but aren’t slavish to the individual creators, because those are diverse styles. I think Bret Breeding did a decent job inking me, but I don’t think we clicked as well as we could have. I think I had a particular prejudice towards inkers who really chiseled out my work, and as I’ve gotten older I’m noticing they put a lot of detail in but they were often too rigid in their linestroke. I was enamoured with this style, but I seem to have grown out of it. I still like detail, but I like a little softness to it. I look at my work from there now and—as much as I thought they looked great then—I look at the characters like Wonder Woman and say, “She looks a little stiff. Her hair looks like it’s been lacquered as opposed to looking loose.” And that’s partially me and partially the inking following my penciling style. One of the things that—despite all the criticisms I may have had when I worked with Romeo—Romeo never made me look stiff. He always made me look fluid—sometimes too fluid when you are dealing with characters who are metallic or stone. Still, there was something more organic there, and I had to try to find the middle ground, also for myself— because the covers I inked in those days tended to look a

GEORGE: By that point Gerry was giving me more of a free hand in the plotting. Gerry and I didn’t develop as close a relationship as Marv and I did, but then again we were working with icons. There were a few things I was able to do that were more Pérez-like in storytelling. MM: There was something unique about the way you drew the character of Killer Frost with the gloss of frost. GEORGE: That was something I carried over from my Iron Man days. I like characters who are shiny. I believe she was designed by Al Milgrom. She was just a wonderful looking character, you know? I loved the name Killer Frost. I loved the design of the character. I just thought she was a sexy, little ice maiden. She was a lot of fun. There were other characters I really enjoyed: the Cheetah—the Silver Age Cheetah—Ragdoll, who was a nice, loose character who couldn’t be drawn stiffly or he couldn’t be drawn at all. I guess to me the Justice League was at DC what the Fantastic Four was over at Marvel, where I think I probably did very good stuff, but I just don’t feel the same emotional satisfaction like I did with the Avengers at Marvel and with the Titans at DC. I had been making a concerted effort to make the characters 34

little stiffer too, so this is not a slam on Bret Breeding. Inking with pen and inking the way I did, the characters tended to stiffen up a bit. I needed to learn how to loosen up. I think Marv Wolfman pointed out one time when he looked at my layouts and then looked at my finished work, that some of the energy and natural roundness of the characters got lost in the final interpretation. The one thing I did enjoy on Justice League, which I couldn’t enjoy on Titans, was getting to draw so many icons. The challenge of drawing Batman as a mysterious character in a group setting, of trying to figure out how the Flash can constantly get knocked down when he’s the fastest person in the story. [laughter] It was the same trouble we had with Kid Flash over in the Titans. And with JLA, I always enjoyed being able to do gigantic battle scenes. The JLA was a little more satisfying than Titans in that they were all these great characters coming in for one big fighting party. [laughter] MM: You said you were comfortable with JLA by issue #200. Were you able to sit back and enjoy being in the same issue as Curt Swan and Gil Kane and the rest? GEORGE: When I saw it in print, I was like, “Oh my God, look how great Brian Bolland’s Black Canary and Batman are. I wish mine were that good. Look how great Green Lantern looks when he’s drawn by Gil Kane.” But no matter what I did with the characters, these guys are doing the iconic version. They are the ones who made them famous. They’re the ones who, if it weren’t for them, I wouldn’t be doing them. So it was an honor, and I didn’t feel intimidated until after it was printed, and by that point I didn’t have to worry about it because, hey, it’s done. [laughter] I did okay and the fans like my

stuff on it a lot, but I saw the fact that I was a good artist. These are the great artists who are showing me that I always have to keep improving in order to earn the status that they have. It was a good lesson in humility. I was proud of my work there, but those guys showed me how much I still needed to learn. MM: Back over to Titans, did Marv have the characters he wanted to use in mind before you were brought on? GEORGE: He had the concepts of the characters, yes, and I was asked to design them. Marv had already worked out what he wanted as the group dynamic and when he described the three new characters— Cyborg, Raven, and Starfire—it was fairly easy based on his concepts to come up with the designs. In all cases my first designs were approved; I didn’t have to redesign any character. The only character that received any kind of tweaking was Starfire, who I figured based on the description, was like Red Sonja in outer space, so she ended up having a visual cue from that. When Joe Orlando passed by and saw the character sketches he suggested that maybe her hair should be longer. That I took to the nth degree and gave her the Mighty Mouse contrail, which as it turned out was not all that new, either, because I believe Phoenix 35

Previous Page: Justice League of America #196, page 23 and the last three panels of Justice League of America #197, page 24—both inked by Romeo Tanghal. Love that Killer Frost! Left: An early ’80s sketch of the Silver Age Cheetah. Above: Page 65 of the star-studded (both on the character side and the creative side) Justice League of America #200. Inks by Brett Breeding.

This Page: George drew character turnarounds for all of the Titans characters, including those he designed himself. Next Page Top: Titans versus Titans on the cover of New Teen Titans #12. Next Page Bottom: The DC Who’s Who entry for the gods of Olympus. Inks by Dick Giordano.

also had the same effect. I just took it to the point of absurdity. [laughter] And Cyborg borrows some of his design from Deathlok, particularly in the half-mask. Instead of the round cybernetic eye he had the slit. The garter belt that people criticized—I said, “Well something’s got to hold it to his hip.” [laughter] This was before I understood anything about bionics or how that type of science-fictiony construction would look. I was just doing something that looked a little different and trying to make it not look so much like Deathlok. Raven was described as a female Phantom Stranger type. And the hood—which I designed to look like an actual bird’s head—was my contribution, along with the fact that I wanted to give her a dress. She did not look like an action character, because she was wearing an impractical costume for action. She definitely was designed for a sense of mystery and a sense of not being a duke-it-out character. Changeling’s character was just a modification of his red-and-white Doom Patrol costume. And we decided that a greenfaced kid really had no need for a mask. [laughter] MM: You said you got fan response almost immediately. GEORGE: I tended to 36

come into the office just to read fan mail and would see what reaction was. In the case of the Titans, Marv had come in and Jenette Kahn also came in saying what reaction was and that the sales were very good. We didn’t have final figures and at that point we didn’t have royalties, so I didn’t really care what the final figures were. [laughter] But they did say that reaction was very, very strong and they were comparing it both positively and critically as DC’s version of the X-Men. If they were criticizing it strictly as a knockoff of the X-Men—which we figured was bound to happen because we took an old team and added new characters and that was pretty much what the XMen did in their revival—and that was the only thing they were commenting on, then I might would have had cause for concern. But they were also commenting positively that it could be a success like the XMen, and that was pretty much what DC wanted. After missing issue #5—I had fallen behind and was doing a bookstore appearance in Colorado—when I came back I realized this book was special, and until the mid-30s I would not miss another issue of the Titans. It was the longest unbroken run I ever had on any series to date. MM: Curt Swan penciled that issue #5. Did you request Curt? GEORGE: No, I believe either Len Wein or Marv wanted to work with Curt on something. I’m not exactly sure what brought Curt to the party. At the time, the idea of having a fill-in didn’t bother me all that much one way or the other because I didn’t think the book was going to be a success beyond issue #6. I didn’t have much of a vested interest or concern in who was going to be drawing the fill-in, so when someone with the reputation of Curt Swan came in, fantastic. And Curt was doing me, because he was trying to keep the same

and the Paradise Island theme and dealing with Wonder Girl and Wonder Woman that would eventually become the foundation of what I would do in the Wonder Woman reboot. It was one of the grander storylines we got to do early on—this was before they went to Tamaran and the more cosmic stories—and it was also the first issue of the Titans that benefitted from DC’s newly instituted royalty program. Companies like First Comics were granting royalties to their creators and the mainstream were put into a situation where to hold on to their major talent they were going to have to start to provide a royalty system. DC instituted a royalty program which, due to the Titans’ phenomenal sales for the company, made it pretty much the Titans royalty program at the early junction, because not very many titles sold as well as the Titans. I think that was when I truly realized how well Titans was doing, because I was getting back-end money and I knew there were other creators who were not.

flavor that was established in the first four issues. So it was kind of strange watching someone who I idolized and who, when I started doing Superman in JLA, I was channeling the Curt Swan Superman, that here he is having to channel me to some degree. It was pretty cool. Around issue #8—“A Day in the Lives”—we really got to take a chance on sitting back and just studying the characters as personalities, as human beings. That I think was the turning point, because then the characters were alive and much more personal, and I dedicated my penciling life then to the Titans almost exclusively. That’s also the issue that I was drawing when I met Carol Flynn, my current wife. It was a turning point in all respects there. In the course of that same time run on Titans I also did a fourissue mini-series with Marv and at least two annuals, so that was a pretty long commitment on a series which I had assumed I would have no interest in past the first six issues.

MM: The back-up story in issue #20— GEORGE: [laughs] Yes, “A Titanic Tale of Titans Tomfoolery.” MM: Whose idea was that? GEORGE: Oh, that was Marv—Marv got silly. [laughter] He just wanted to do an old-fashioned, “inside the Marvel bullpen” type of story—totally silly. The Not Brand Echh type of story, which DC didn’t really didn’t do that much. They had their creators do cameos, but usually they were treated fairly seriously. He just wanted to something really, really dumb. [laughter] It allowed me to do add a little comical twist to my work. It was a fun little tale—it was nice to be able to be silly and laugh at ourselves.

MM: With issue #11 you bring in the mythological titans. Was that something that had been planned from the very beginning or did it evolve into a natural direction in the storyline? GEORGE: Marv was doing most of the plotting and then I would come in and kibitz afterwards, so this was something that he and possibly Len Wein had come up with. I had no real knowledge or interest in mythology, so that story was where I started learning about it. Marv would mention Eos or these other characters—“Who the hell are they?”—so I’d have to look them up and find a way of making an interpretation of them that would fit the super-heroic story we were doing. That particular story arc was pivotal in a number of ways. It got me interested in mythology 37

MM: How did the drug awareness specials come about?

Above: Page 1 of “Runaways, Part 2,” from New Teen Titans #27. Inks by Romeo Tanghal. Right: This back cover image from the first New Teen Titans drug abuse special was also used as promotional art for the second special, which George did not pencil. Inks by Dick Giordano. Next Page Top: Two of the many different looks of Donna Troy—a commission piece. Next Page Bottom: An issue of DC Sampler ran this two-page spread to promote the new Baxter series and the newly renamed newsstand series. Donna Troy, Teen Titans, Wonder Girl ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.

GEORGE: The drug awareness issues were actually an off-shoot of the “Runaways” [New Teen Titans #26-27] story we did, which stands as one of the best non-cosmic, nonsupervillain stories we ever did in Titans. It really was a good story. It got a lot of good buzz and received media attention outside of the field. I don’t know who made overtures with the US government, but they asked about having the Titans featured in a comic book dealing specifically with the drug problem. Of course, the sheer irony of being sponsored by a cookie company necessitating our not being able to use our lead character, Robin, just showed that even trying to do something good you’re still going to get caught in the pitfalls of dealing with commercial licensing. Keebler decided to help finance and sponsor the book after we had already started it. The first issue had already been drawn with Robin in it, and when we realized that Robin was licensed as part of the Batman package to Nabisco, we couldn’t use him 38

in a product with the Keebler name on it. Dick Giordano, who had already inked the book, did the redrawing on Robin to make him the Protector. It looked really strange that here was the Protector doing everything that Robin would be doing. MM: And the reader is going, “Who’s the Protector?” GEORGE: Exactly. Most people, particularly the Titans fans, were not fooled, it’s just that many of them didn’t understand why it happened. When they did the second issue—which I didn’t draw, Ross Andru penciled it—they did it with the Protector in mind, but ironically left out Speedy, who was the one character who actually had had drug problems. [laughter] It had good promotion, and First Lady Nancy Reagan put in her own personal message. I actually was invited to Washington to some type of official thankyou or something, but in one of the weirdest achievements of my career—both because I was just too busy and because I thought it was a bit exploitative—I said no. MM: You “just said no” to Nancy Reagan. [laughter] GEORGE: There was a possibility of meeting the President, but I just said “Thank you, it’s very nice, but I’ll just stay home.” As it turned out nobody met the President, because we were smack dab in the middle of the Iran thing, so he wasn’t available. MM: Issue #38 was the “Who Is Donna Troy?” story. GEORGE: The most personal stories that I can remember knowing were special were “A Day in the Lives...,” “Runaways,” “Who Is Donna Troy?” and “We Are Gathered Here Today,” the wedding issue, #50. But that issue was such a joy

book as well, so I made the decision that Romeo wasn’t ready for penciling on a series like that. He was used to following my line, but it wasn’t his style to be more detailed and his faces seemed to be a little—for lack of a better term—European or Filipino when left to his own devices. The characters were starting to lose their identity, so after a couple of issues wherein I was doing more touch-ups than I should be doing if I was supposed to be concentrating on the Titans Baxter series, we switched over to Dick Giordano and also Mike DeCarlo. While not perfect in getting that same feel, they were closer as far as the crispness that the characters needed.

to draw, it was such a personal story. It was some of Marv’s most dramatic plotting and writing. It was absolutely a perfect story. My only regret is that I couldn’t ink it. I inked the issue before, but this is the issue I wish I could have inked. I did ink the first three pages, but not the bulk of the story. The scene with Donna meeting her adoptive parents for the first time, those were joyous scenes to do. It was a real thrill to work on. Marv and I have every reason to be proud of “Who Is Donna Troy?” despite all the stuff that’s happened to the Donna Troy character since then. This was pre-Crisis, this was before she got rebooted two or three times. It was at that time the definitive and logical origin of the character, taking away of course the idea of Wonder Girl being Wonder Woman as a teenager— that’s the one thing we couldn’t address.

MM: The Baxter series opened up with the five-part Trigon story arc. GEORGE: Trigon was our big-to-do character at the beginning of the first run, so he definitely seemed to be the perfect choice for a good, grand, epic opening for the first story arc in the Baxter series. I was also inking the book totally on my own. It was a lot of fun. We got to explore a lot of stuff we had been building up to, including the retro-origin of Raven’s new look. I had a scene which I discussed with Marv where I wanted to have Cyborg looking at archival footage of Raven and seeing how her face has changed over the course of time. What had happened was that as I grew as an artist and started paying more attention to giving the characters individual faces, certain characters’ looks were changing—Raven in particular. She had a very full, normal face

MM: With issue #41 the title changes to Tales of the New Teen Titans, making way for volume two of The New Teen Titans in the Baxter format. GEORGE: They were being done concurrently at that point. MM: The same thing was happening over in the Outsiders as well. GEORGE: And the Omega Men. MM: Right. Did they show you samples of the paper to give you an idea— GEORGE: I believe they had printed Ronin and other books in that stock, so I they didn’t have to show it to me. I knew that it would hold color better, it was sturdier, glossier. At the time Tales of the New Teen Titans was being produced I started doing just very loose layouts on the book so that more of the finished art was the responsibility of the inker—Romeo Tanghal, initially. Unfortunately, that also marked the end for a while of Romeo’s tenure because it became apparent that he really wasn’t ready for full penciling. Those first issues have a lot of redrawn inking by me. As of issue #37 I was co-editor on the 39

at the beginning and as I started to delve into her character I started to slightly redesign her until she bore little resemblance to her original version. So rather than just chalk it up to stylistic change, we decided to make it a story element which would culminate in the big reveal later on in the story where you see her with the red face and four eyes. So it was one of those “oh, I meant to do that” deals, when it was really just stylistic change. [laughter] Kory’s change we just ignored, but if you look at the first issues and then at the later issues, she’s grown almost a full foot. She used to be the same height, if not slightly shorter, than Robin, and now she was a full head taller than Robin. Those were the little things I did when I decided all the women should look differently. I didn’t address the fact that Raven’s bust got smaller. [laughter] MM: All that mass had to go somewhere. GEORGE: It went into the eyes. [laughter] But one of the things I was proud of in the first issue of the Baxter series was the Bridge of Souls, when Jericho threw Raven into the lair of Trigon. That’s when I congratulated myself that I will never punish an inker any more than I punished myself inking that bridge. It was described in the story as a stone bridge we’ve always seen Raven standing on in the course of the series, but this time I had this great opening shot of all these twisted bodies forming the bridge. Then I realized, “Okay, I’ve drawn this bridge. Looks cool, but now I’ve got extra scenes that that bridge has to keep appearing in! It’s going to be over and over I’ve got to draw that same damn thing!” I was more than happy when I blew it up. [laughter] I then understood something that Walt Simonson told me after drawing the Titans/X-Men crossover. He thought Cyborg had a lot of extra lines, so he made sure he was beaten very early on so he wouldn’t have to keep drawing the guy through the whole battle scene. [laughter]

the pencil tone, and it didn’t quite work out the way we wanted it. It did have the wonderful effect of looking totally different from the rest of the story, but the reproduction wasn’t as strong as we would have liked. Trying to negotiate things over the phone and hearing how it can’t be done, and not being privy to see a final proof to make adjustments—it might have been better. What should have been dark and imposing looked like a mishmash between dark and gray and muddy and overly bright, all on the same page. When Romeo inked issue #3—after I realized I wasn’t fast enough to pencil and ink a monthly series—he just inked normally and we colored it gray in K-tones on the K plate. The original intent with the cover of issue #3 was that the evil Titans were supposed to be drawn in pencil tone and mixed in with the regular inked version of the Titans, but we couldn’t do that. The reproduction couldn’t handle having the pencil work

MM: Issue #2 featured a sequence with your uninked pencils. Was the idea that the Baxter paper would be able to hold the pencils well enough? GEORGE: The biggest problem in doing that sequence—I had certain things in mind for it, but these were the days before we could really do a good, clean scan of pencils and tones the way you can now with computers. So a lot of it did not work. The red effect that was put in was left on a solid red plate so it looked garish. I wanted that to be brown and muted to match 40

and the ink work on the same plate. It was an idea that was ahead of the technology we had available. MM: You really had big storylines carry over into the Titans annuals. That’s something that was rare then and practically non-existent now. GEORGE: It was also something that was very unique for DC at the time. DC’s annuals were primarily collections. This was the first time that DC was doing annuals of original stories, which was something that Marv took from working at Marvel. When Marvel did their annuals they were new stories—sometimes they used reprints as a back-up filler. But Marv was of the belief that—and I totally agreed with him—that these annuals should be something special. They should give you something new for your buck, particularly with comics becoming more expensive. The one thing he did that was unnerving—but also smart, considering if you liked the Titans you had to buy the annuals—was making them the climax of a story built up in the regular series. That in

itself was a pretty gutsy move, saying “Now you have to pay more money to have to see the end of this story.” But it did well. Titans was on an almost unstoppable roll. The momentum was great and we were allowed to do things that were, in the spirit of the times, risky. The Titans was so successful, DC was willing to try almost anything as long as it had the Titans banner on it. And then other books obviously followed suit. I think Titans did a lot to bring some of the innovations of Marvel to DC. Marv was bringing in ideas that he’d already seen be successful and saying, “Hey, it can work for us, too.” MM: Did Marv have the whole “Judas Contract” storyline idea in mind when he brought in Terra? GEORGE: At that point he and I were discussing everything as a unit. It was a true collaborative effort. In fact, many times during that period and later the plots weren’t even written any more. Marv and I would sit down, have a long lunch, discuss it for a long period of time, maybe a couple of phone calls, and I have—had [laugh-

Left: George created a monster when he designed the Bridge of Souls, seen here in New Teen Titans v2, #1, page 18. Below: The initial rough and the final pencils for the New Teen Titans: The Judas Contract trade paperback collection. Teen Titans ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.

Below: A 1996 commission drawing of Slade Wilson, a.k.a. Deathstroke, the Terminator. Next Page: Pages 19-21 of the original, unfinished, and unpublished JLA/Avengers. Deathstroke, Justice League ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Avengers ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

ter]—a very good memory, so I would draw the book from our conversations and then write notes to Marv to explain any different interpretations here or there. So there was no written plot except for the plot that I handed Marv. We were very, very symbiotic in our relationship then—we were truly a team. So with Terra, Marv came up with the idea that he wanted to bring in a new character—similar to how Kitty Pryde was brought into the X-Men—but he knew from the very start that this girl was going to be a traitor and that we were going to be killing this character off—killing her definitely and, as far as we were concerned, finally. We were plotting it always with that in mind, knowing the dramatic irony of every single thing that she said and did. We supplied all the clues logically, because we knew where we were going. Certain things we took chances on because we didn’t have to worry about the ramifications beyond that storyline. One of the primary things was that we had Deathstroke the Terminator have an affair with a minor—this is a statutory rape—and the fact that she is so sociopathic. Since we knew we were planning to kill her and have her meet her deserved end, we didn’t worry about what kind of moral lesson it was. She was going to be punished. Anyone who thought after seeing how truly bad she was that we would find a way of redeeming her was being a little naïve. We wanted her to be as much a viper in the garden as we could. One of the great times I remember in plotting this rather manipulative story is Marv and I sitting in a diner in New York and discussing—obviously without context for anyone who was overhearing us—the death of a 15-year-old girl. Here we are talking about “How are we going to 42

kill off this 15-year-old girl? We’ve gotta make sure everyone sees the body,” and this type of thing, without realizing there might be some heads turning. But only in New York would nobody report us. [laughter] Again, Marv came up with the initial idea and it was a very courageous thing to do. I think they blunted the impact by bringing back another Terra character. That was something I had no control over. Marv was writing the series and he had his own opinion about it, but as far as he and I were concerned Tara Markov was dead. The only thing we had to compromise on in doing Terra was—strictly one of those weird, serendipitous coincidences— Mike Barr on Outsiders had come up with a character with almost the same, exact powers as Terra. So coming up with the characterization for Terra, now she had a brother, which wasn’t in the original plan. We didn’t want Mike to have to make a compromise, because Mike’s character was ongoing. We knew our character had a finale to her, so we compromised. Marv and Mike Barr were friends, so they worked out the relationship between Geo-Force and Terra. MM: And then you did the crossover with the Outsiders during that storyline. In your design for Terra, were the buck teeth a way to give her a look of innocence? GEORGE: Oh, yes. I wanted her to be cute, but not beautiful. She looked like a young girl. I gave her a very substantial overbite, her eyes were wide, her body was slim, she wasn’t particularly busty. I wanted her to look almost elfin, so that when you see her for the first time wearing full makeup and dressed in a provocative outfit where you know she’s just been in bed with Deathstroke that it does jab you a bit. “Whoa, good God! This little girl is a slut!” MM: Were you ever considered for the XMen/Titans crossover? GEORGE: No, because what Marvel and DC were doing was trying to alternate creative teams on each of the crossovers, so that DC would be responsible for the creative team on one crossover and Marvel would be responsible for the next. Marvel was going to be doing the X-Men/Titans. I

wasn’t doing any work for Marvel, and they wanted someone who was associated with Marvel—or at least someone not associated solely with DC—drawing it. It ended up being Walt Simonson—he had drawing power both figuratively and commercially—and he seemed to be a fine choice. The next book, JLA/Avengers, would be a DC-produced book, so I would be the artist on that. After the success of the first X-Men/Titans they thought maybe they should just do that and every other crossover would be another X-Men/Titans book. For the second one they would have looked the other way. I was actually scheduled to do the JLA/Avengers and the second X-Men/Titans book. Of course, when the JLA/Avengers book was scrapped, that killed both projects. That was the end for quite a while of the Marvel/DC crossovers. MM: Gerry Conway was the writer for JLA/Avengers. Were you working Marvel style on that? GEORGE: Oh, yes. I think that was both a benefit, because it freed me to do the type of things I do to expand a story, and a negative, in the fact that—with all due respect to Gerry—this 43

Below: Call yourself what you like, but you’ll always be Marvel Boy to us. Fantastic Four #164, page 11. Inks by Joe Sinnott. Upper Right: Page 29 of Swordquest #1, and page 31 of Swordquest #2. Inks by Dick Giordano. Lower Right: Model sheet for the Monitor.

was just a job to him and there were enormous plot holes, including stuff that seemed to be out of character for some of both the Marvel and DC characters. “They’re only acting this way because it gets us to this next point,” as opposed to acting in character and letting that motivate what happens next. With Len Wein’s—who was the editor over on the DC side—blessing I took the plot, which I assumed was approved, and started working on it, making changes as I went along in order to plug up the plot holes and take care of the story logic. The first of what ended up being an avalanche of misunderstandings, miscommunications, and just plain dumbness was when, after I had already finished 21 pages, I received a call from—I believe it was Len—saying that I should stop drawing the book because the plot had not been officially signed off on from Marvel’s side—from Jim Shooter, specifically—and Jim Shooter had major, major problems with the story. Of course, I was angry. “You mean I’ve been given an unapproved plot?” Unfortunately it became a firestorm after that—a big pissing contest between the editors over at Marvel and the editors at DC—and I, myself, tended to put more of the blame on Jim Shooter. I might have been unfair in hindsight, but a lot of the stuff that was being brought out was stuff I was taking care of as I went along. This dream project was being halted by what I thought were such trivial concerns. And I felt Jim, of all people, should have known he could trust me a bit more, because I used to do the same thing when I worked with him on the Avengers at a time when he wasn’t as familiar with the characters. 44

I had been filling holes in the plot as Jim provided them, because there were some things he didn’t yet understand about the Avengers. It just ended up being one thing after another—accusations both from DC and Marvel towards each other—until I realized there was a lot more private politics that seemed to be going on which were killing the book I really wanted to work on. After a while I became very bitter about the entire thing. It was never more apparent to me that, as much as I love drawing comics, it’s still a business, and politics and petty squabbles can kill a project, even such a potential money-maker. MM: Roy Thomas came in at some point to help correct some of the problems. GEORGE: Roy came up with a plot and tried to use as many of the pages that were already drawn as possible. And, of course, being a Roy Thomas plot, all of a sudden I’ve got a scene with Aquaman and the Sub-Mariner set in World War II—the Invaders might have been somewhere in the background. Only Roy! [laughter] I had never thought of that as a conscious trait of Roy’s, even though he brought in a Golden Age character in my very first Fantastic Four story when he brought in Marvel Boy. He did it in the Avengers before I ever drew the book, back when I was just reading it as a fan. Roy loves these Golden Age characters. They just seemed new to me, but they’re nostalgic for Roy. I may be speaking unfairly here, but I don’t think anything was going to please Jim at that point. I think Jim was personally affronted that, as far as he felt, he was being sidestepped in the production of the book— even though he wasn’t the editor, I believe Mark Gruenwald was. But he was editor-inchief and he had final say. The book was killed and it tore a hole in my heart, both because of the amount of pleasure I was being robbed of and the money I was being robbed of. I wasn’t going to see royalties on a book that wasn’t going to see print. I did get paid the page rate for the entire book, since everything that happened was not my fault. But it still left me feeling enormously cheated. It was at that point that I said I was not going to work at Marvel again while Jim Shooter was the editor-in-chief. My anger

was leveled straight at him. Whether it was justified or not, that’s the way I felt at the time. I was doing covers for the “Black Widow” story I had done and I called Allen Milgrom and told him I wasn’t going to draw the last cover. It ended up being Art Adams’ first printed work at Marvel, because he did the cover instead. MM: Speaking of Roy Thomas, was it around this time you worked on the Swordquest mini-comics for Atari with him? GEORGE: I can’t remember the time frame, but I think it was after I was exclusive at DC. It was an interesting challenge. It was nice doing a sword-&sorcery, fantasy-type story. It was a lot of fun—there was a lot of great design work in there. It was interesting to try to draw digest-size, because I knew the pages were going to be shrunk down so much and certain things had to be added in—the clues—which many times were done in the inking stage or the lettering stage. I had to provide a little more openness in my artwork—at least that’s what I was told—and I did that in the first issue. The panels were larger—a lot more air in there—and Dick Giordano’s line was crisp and clean. When I looked at the first issue I thought it looked too open. It had great reproduction, it had magazine stock, so it looked too coloring book-ish to me. So the next issues I did old George Pérez. It was absolutely a fun thing to do, and I was really disappointed when they cancelled the entire project because Atari went bust on that thing. I had a great time and it wouldn’t be until I started working at CrossGen that I was able to do anything like that again. In fact I see some of the things I’ve done at CrossGen that echo some of the things I did on Swordquest.

GEORGE: I think the initial ideas were worked out by Marv, Len Wein, and Bob Greenberger. I don’t even know if, when they were conceptualizing it, I was even attached to it. I’d heard that John Byrne might have been approached, because Marv didn’t think I’d be available for whatever reason. So when I found out about the project and said I’d definitely be interested in doing it—I believe John had bowed out anyway—they didn’t bother looking any further, because I was a logical choice. I was excited about being able to draw all these characters and about the ambitiousness of it as far as Marv’s desire to clean up the DC universe. I saw it was definitely going to be a once-in-a-lifetime book. MM: How tightly was it plotted? Were the plots changing as you went along? GEORGE: They tried to get plots set up, but of course it was a very, very complicated affair since it tied in to almost every title in the DC universe. It required cooperation and input from other writers, most notably Roy Thomas, who was handling the Golden Age characters, and they were going to be the most affected by Crisis on Infinite Earths. So there were a lot of negotiations. When I first got on the project I wanted to be as uninvolved in the actual plotting as possible. I would just draw it and add my storytelling finesse from there. The only input I gave was the title, Crisis on Infinite Earths. It wasn’t

MM: How were you introduced to the concept behind Crisis on Infinite Earths? Were you in on the initial plot? 45

Above: Cover to the Crisis on Infinite Earths Index. Right: The aftermath of Crisis. Crisis on Infinite Earths #12, page 40. Inks by Jerry Ordway. Next Page Top: The cover of Crisis on Infinite Earths #7 sandwiched by two commissioned revisitations. Next Page Bottom: Long before the Power of Shazam! series, Jerry Ordway inked George’s version of the Big Red Cheese. All characters ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.

until issue #5 that I became co-plotter. Marv sent in a plot, which went through the process, where the ending of issue #5 was the same as the ending for issue #4— the supposed death of the Monitor—and nobody caught it. That’s when I decided they might need one more head in there, particularly someone who was used to working with Marv. I think they might have been intimidated by Marv’s success to the point they were less than forward in criticizing anything he might do wrong, although Marv always wants somebody to point out any mistakes he makes. MM: What kind of input did you add to the series as it developed? GEORGE: Of all the issues, issue #11, “Aftershock,” was the one I had the most involvement in plotting, because I really wanted to do a story where all these heroes sat back and reacted to what had happened to them. It was a tough thing to do in a story so monumentally large, so epic in its scope. MM: Crisis was developed before Secret Wars was over at Marvel, but Secret Wars actually made it onto the stands first. Did that have any effect on what you were doing? GEORGE: Not meaning to sound snotty, but one of the things Secret Wars was showing us was what we didn’t want to do. Secret Wars, to us, 46

seemed to have no real purpose other than getting all these characters together—it was basically a slugfest. For its intentions it did well, but it didn’t seem to have the labor of love stamp on it like Crisis did. Everyone involved in Crisis was in it for the sheer love of the project, and from issue #1 to issue #12, that love on my part did not wane. I don’t think Mike Zeck was as enthusiastic at the end of Secret Wars. I can’t speak for him, but that was the impression that I got. When issue #12 came, we were reaching the end of a very exciting race, but I was still exhilarated. DC was quite happy with it and asked if we wanted to go on for a 13th issue and we said absolutely not. [laughter] They got their wish, in a way, with our working on The History of the DC Universe that followed. MM: The cover of issue #7, the death of Supergirl cover, has become—along with Action Comics #1 and Fantastic Four #1 and a few others—one of the most imitated covers of all time. GEORGE: And Giant-Size X-Men #1.

MM: That too. But it’s got to be in the top ten at the very least. How do you feel about that? Did you think it would resonate so deeply and for so long?

the start of the Silver Age and that “The Flash of Two Worlds” was the start of what would become Earth-2. The Flash was the linchpin to all these events.

GEORGE: Well, it’s very flattering. That particular idea was inspired primarily from a Jack Kirby Thor cover. I had seen the John Byrne death of Phoenix cover, but it didn’t register at the time—it might have been subconscious. But later I looked at—I believe it was an old Lois Lane comic—Superman holding Lois Lane with a ring of characters at ground level in mourning, too. That one was eerie. That one I didn’t even remember having ever seen before. [laughter] But that seems to be the closest in actual layout to what I did for the cover of Crisis #7. Unlike the death of Lois Lane, the death of Thor, and the death of Phoenix, there was no sense of finality to any of them—Phoenix at the time was supposed to. With Supergirl, this was meant to really kill the character and show that in this series anything can happen. That’s probably what people remember more. Of course, I probably put as many characters into that one cover as all those other covers combined, which I think is what a lot of people also remember.

MM: The sales on the Flash comic weren’t that great, either, so that probably made DC more amenable to the idea. GEORGE: Sales probably had some effect on some characters. If Supergirl’s movie had succeeded, she may not have died. But the movie tanked, and that was her last chance at reprievel. [laughter] But in the case of the Flash, putting all those references in early on fell into Marv’s master plan. MM: How tight were your breakdowns once Jerry Ordway was brought on to do finishing inks? GEORGE: My breakdowns are considered by industry standards the equivalent of most people’s pencils. They were fairly complete. Jerry always said that everything that he needed was there. I started doing breakdowns with issue #4. When Jerry

MM: You’ve said that the Flash actually was dead in issue #2 and you were simply getting him subtly to that point as you progressed through to issue #8. GEORGE: One of the things that Marv had said from the very beginning was that in order to make the series dramatic and show that anything could happen, he wanted the Flash killed. Of all the characters involved, the one character that he wanted killed in the series was the Flash for no other reasons than that he was considered 47

MM: You also drew a lot of entries and covers for Who’s Who. How much of your time was that taking?

came in with issue #5, he added a whole new panache, because he’s such a great illustrator and has a great Golden Age sensibility. The man knows how to draw shadows. He took it up a notch, and we now had another person on the book who loved those characters. I also commend Jerry that as easy as it is for an inker to overpower the penciler—and Jerry’s style is very distinctive—a lot of me still showed through. I learned a lot from working with Jerry. People who look at the stuff I do can see that I still have some of the Jerry Ordway influence in some of my faces. I have a great regard for what Jerry brought to the table on Crisis on Infinite Earths.

GEORGE: The covers are what took the longest. The reason I was hired was because I developed what I ended up calling the interactive montage, where all the characters interacted together in one big scene. Everyone at DC liked that approach, so they wanted me to do all of them. But they did take a long time. I stopped inking after the second one and left shortly after. I came back to do a few more, but my entries were limited to the characters from Titans and Crisis. Anal as I was, I was very upset that one of the characters from the first issue—I believe it was an old Wonder Woman character—was not given to me on the list, so it did not appear on the cover. It’s stuff like that that ticks me off. [laughter] I did let Len Wein know that I was not happy with the idea that the cover was missing a character. [laughter] MM: Not long after Crisis you contributed to Batman #400. Of course, you end up with the scene with all the villains grouped together. Was it just set in people’s minds that if there’s a big group involved they should come to you? GEORGE: One of the drawbacks of the reputation I built for myself is that I constantly have to live up to it. Once they know you’ve done it once and enjoyed it, they’ll just keep throwing it at you. I had no one to blame but myself. [laughter] There are times when writers will deliberately try to make

MM: At what point was The History of the DC Universe considered as a follow-up? GEORGE: Right about the time the last issue of Crisis was done. DC wanted to extend the shelf life of the Crisis story and Marv had an idea of doing that history as issue #12 of Crisis. The story got so large that we needed all 12 issues just to tell the basic story, so The History of the DC Universe ended up becoming a stand-alone series.

things simple and I will doublecross them. In the case of Crisis, the cover of issue #5 with all the heads originally was a design—suggested by Marv Wolfman at the request from my wife who wanted to see me do something a little simpler and not kill myself—of one or two, at the most three or

MM: What adjustments did you have to make for that where you were basically doing text illustrations? GEORGE: It took me a few pages to get into the swing of doing standalone illustrations. The first few pages tend to look like separate panels of a book that isn’t quite all there. It wasn’t until I got further in that I said the heck with it and started doing one big illustration and had Marv write around it. I found myself enjoying the design work for the majority of the book—there were circles everywhere. [laughter] And I was getting to draw characters I didn’t get to draw much in Crisis. I was becoming the Richard Chamberlain of DC—I was getting all the mini-series. [laughter] 48

four, floating heads above the exploding Earth. Of course, it ended up being 96 heads by the time I got through. In the case of Batman #400 getting to draw all those villains was fantastic. The fact that it was a short segment— only about 5 pages—gave me the chance to ink myself, which I don’t get many opportunities to do because I’m so slow. I did get to ink myself on a few pages of Crisis—and one page I inked Jerry Ordway— but it happens far and few between. MM: Coming as a result of Crisis and the Superman reboot, you got the opportunity to ink Curt Swan on the last issue of Superman. GEORGE: That was such an absolute joy. Julie Schwartz approached me about that— I don’t even know why he thought of me. MM: I assume you had made it known around the office that you were a big Curt Swan fan. GEORGE: Yeah, I guess so. I was scheduled to ink both chapters, but with so much work going on at the same time I couldn’t finish the second issue [Action #583], so Kurt Schaffenberger did the final one. I would have loved to have done the conclusion to that story, because I had an enormous amount of fun inking Curt Swan. I was concerned—because I was doing a little extra shading and stippling and things—that Curt might have thought I was going a bit overboard. Julie did think in a couple of places I went a little overboard, but when Curt Swan met me while I was inking it, he shook my hand. He was overjoyed with what I was doing over his pencils. I could have gotten no greater compliment. That still stands as one of my all-time favorite projects that I’ve worked on, because in addition to working with Curt Swan, it was written by Alan Moore and lettered by Todd Klein. It was pretty much a class act all the way. MM: Did the whole 1960s feel to the story enhance that in any way for you?

GEORGE: Oh, yes. It was like the book I grew up with. Alan was tossing in everything. “Oh, my God. Look, it’s Pete Ross!” [laughter] MM: When was it decided that you would spearhead the Wonder Woman reboot? Was it kind of a reward for your work on Crisis? GEORGE: It probably went back to the Titans story where we introduced the titans of myth and Marv got me into Greek mythology and the look of Paradise Island and everything else. The look and design of the Wonder Woman mythos I found fascinating and I had thought of a story for Wonder Woman which would have had her go through a very Ray Harryhausen-like adventure—a gauntlet, a contest that the gods would put her through, similar to what the gods did in Jason and the Argonauts. So Ray Harryhausen and Marv Wolfman were two of the biggest influences I had in doing Wonder Woman. This was a story idea I had even before Crisis, but when they devolved Wonder Woman in Crisis I thought that was pretty much the end of that. When they decided to reboot her, at that point I really wasn’t looking for a monthly series. I was pretty worn out from working on such work-intensive books like Crisis and History. John Byrne along with Marv Wolfman and Jerry Ordway had rebooted 49

Previous Page: Crisis on Infinite Earths #6, page 12, inked by Jerry Ordway, and a Medieval illustration from History of the DC Universe #1, inked by Karl Kesel. Top: Commission drawings of Batman and femme fatale, Poison Ivy. Below: Pete Ross’ dramatic entrance in Superman #423, page 10. Pencils by Curt Swan. All characters ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.

Superman, and Frank Miller’s Dark Knight redefined that character and David Mazzucchelli and he were working on Batman: Year One, but—without getting into specifics— almost no woman in the DC offices liked what was being done with Wonder Woman. They had a nice, classic bridge that Kurt Busiek and Trina Robbins did, but for the main title they were trying to find a direction. It was like they had given up—Marv Wolfman had volunteered, but they considered his changes too drastic, and others had brought in failed proposals—and they settled on a script by Greg Potter that no one seemed especially happy with, but it was something they could at least work with with some handson editing. The artist—who I won’t name—that they ended up getting they all knew was going to be a big, big mistake. So I walked into the offices one day and Janice Race, who was the editor of Wonder Woman at the time—she and I were already friends—was bemoaning that it was going to be something they were not going to be proud of. So I thought of that Wonder Woman story I had wanted to do and said I’d like to do a mythological Wonder Woman—a similar approach to what Walt Simonson did on Thor. I said, “If you give me time to develop it, I’ll gladly work on the first six issues.” That meant I would be working with Greg Potter, taking what he had done and compromising in a bit of what I wanted to do. I didn’t want to throw away everything he had—he was the writer. Janice was so happy she kissed me—and when Dick Giordano found out about it he nearly kissed me, too. [laughter] A week after I came on to Wonder Woman, Janice quit comic books. She went on to book publishing, I believe, so I lost the editor before I even had a chance to put down a single line. Thankfully, at my request—and I’m sure DC wouldn’t have agreed unless they knew how good she was—Karen Berger was brought in as the editor, because I felt very strongly that I needed a female editor on that book. I needed someone who could give me a female sensibility. The end of issue #1 was only about 2/3 into where the plot was supposed to end in Greg’s original plot. I added so much that all of his original plot couldn’t fit. Diana became Wonder Woman at the very end of the

story instead of 2/3 of the way through the book. Since Greg came from Boston, that’s where Wonder Woman was set. As of issue #2, more and more of my influences were showing through and it was quite obvious to Greg that they were approving my work over his. Even though I was trying to get both of us in there, there was just some stuff I disagreed with, including when Wonder Woman first comes to man’s world and has a priest—a male figure—as her mentor, and the fact that she’s almost raped. I thought it was a little misogynistic. But with the changes I was making, I think Greg decided that maybe it wasn’t for him and he bowed out after issue #2. I wanted to script the series, but Karen—who I give a lot of credit to—was not going to let my fame and clout supplant her judgement as an editor. She thought I wasn’t ready for writing and probably needed someone to handle the scripting. Len Wein was brought in because not only is he a talented writer, but he was also instrumental in helping Karen when she was starting out in editorial. From that point on it took my tone. Len did the scripting but had nothing to do with the plotting. MM: So were you working basically Marvel style? GEORGE: To some extent. The plots had to be written so that Len would know what I wanted, but I would just give an outline to Karen. Then I would annotate the artwork for Len. I had certain ideas about what I wanted and Len was from a different—even though we’re not that far apart in age—there was a difference in our approaches. He was much more into the old-style, Stan Lee, Roy Thomas type of dialogue, and I wanted a little less of that in the book. I didn’t like sound effects for one thing. I don’t like characters talking a mile-a-minute during a fight scene. But for the most part he was doing a fantastic job, and Wonder Woman did find a unique voice. She was similar to the original, but she had a real mission to perform. Things like her not speaking English when she arrives in patriarch’s world, the lack of technology on Paradise Island, and the firm anchoring of the mythos to Greek mythology as opposed to an amalgam of different mythologies were from a real conscious effort 50

to establish that voice. The story I had originally wanted to do eventually was used at the end of my first year. MM: “Challenge of the Gods.” GEORGE: So I finally did get to do the story. I was leading up to it from the beginning. There were a couple of detours—I had to squeeze in a Legends tiein somehow. Because of Legends I had to make her part of the DC universe and involved with those other characters sooner than I would have wanted. I wanted her to be an outsider up until the time that “Challenge” was finished. I was also faced with a Millenium crossover, where suddenly I had to shoehorn a Manhunter into the storyline. I’m not the only one who had to make sometimes clumsy compromises in order to fit the latest crossover—an unfortunate by-product of Crisis on Infinite Earths. But I had a great time developing Wonder Woman and the female cast. My first actual scripting for Wonder Woman was in issue #8, in “Time Passages.” A couple of the diaries were actually written by me. In the case of Vanessa it was totally written by me, and the others I think I wrote and Len rewrote based on what I put down. In some cases I just put down ideas, so that when Len wrote it out it looked like two different voices were speaking. MM: I want to expand on the aspect of focusing on the Greek pantheon. More often than not in comics, the Greek and Roman gods get all mixed together, but I really liked the fact that you used Heracles and you later had the conflict with Hermes and Mercury. Was it your idea from the beginning to have Heracles and Hermes become so ingrained in the plots? GEORGE: Heracles—I knew he was the catalyst for the Amazons moving to Themyscira and was responsible for the capture of Hippolyte’s girdle in Greek mythology. Heracles was pivotal in the Wonder Woman storyline in that he was the

first man to step foot on Themyscira. As a demi-god, he counts as a man as opposed to a god. That came from a question that Karen Berger asked me when we were trying to stay true to some of the old tenets that Moulton established for Wonder Woman— one of them being that man cannot step foot on Paradise Island. She asked, “Why? If these people are preaching equality doesn’t that make them elitist? It’s very easy for them to say, ‘Yes, we want equality,’ when they’re safe on their own island no one else can come on.” I thought of Heracles only because he’s the one who did them dirt. He’s the one who needed to apologize for what he did, because if it wasn’t for him they wouldn’t be there. If it hadn’t been for Karen’s observation, I may not have put that into the story. Hermes—from the very first issue you could tell that he was going to be a little more special, because he was one of the few male gods who was spotlighted other than Zeus—because he was the leader—and Ares—because he was the main menace. I think when I researched Hermes and realized he was also the god of thieves was when I really thought he might be a lot of fun to work with. It was an author named Raymond Feist 51

Previous Page: “Bullets and Bracelets,” from the OverPower trading card game. Above: A challenge befitting a true Greek heroine. The cover of Wonder Woman #13. Left: A 2001 commission drawing of Wonder Woman in action. Wonder Woman ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.

who made an offhand comment that physical laws shouldn’t apply to the gods and they probably live in a world like an M.C. Escher painting. Suddenly that clicked in my head and I redrew the panel where Ares is in front of the court of Zeus. I redrew the entire floor so that it looked like it was going every which way and proceeded to follow through with that in the designs of Mt. Olympus. MM: You took over the scripting with issue #17. What was it that convinced Karen you were ready? GEORGE: I wanted to get to some more personal stories— stories that were personal to me. I said I really, really wanted to write this story. Of course, the first ten pages were the most heavily edited things I’ve ever done. Karen was ripping things apart—again, she made me a better writer for it, but I had to rewrite the first ten pages I handed in. She wanted to hold me to a standard that was up to what she would expect from anyone following Len. I found that I was having too easy a time divorcing George Pérez the writer from George Pérez the artist, because as George Pérez the artist I was noticing that George Pérez the writer was doing things that, if it were Len Wein the writer, George Pérez the artist would be upset about, like writing too much. [laughter] I was covering too much of my own artwork and not letting my artwork tell the story at times. I was overexplaining myself. I was doing the type of stuff that I criticized other writers for, but Karen set me straight. One of the things that I enjoyed about that first issue was that there’s not really much that happens. It was a good characterization issue, which is where I think I’m strongest. It allowed me a good way of getting into the characters and showing people what my undiluted voice was on Wonder Woman. I was very happy with it, but the whole mystery thing with Circe was, in hindsight, probably a little heavy in the scripting, because there was a lot to describe, and maybe a little overambitious for a threeissue arc, because I ended up having to squeeze the ending in. I love doing plays and watching plays, so the idea of all these characters interacting with each other was what I found interesting. To me they were all performing and were wonderfully alive. The research I did for that issue in order to establish that Wonder Woman comes from Greek heritage and is not an American woman really helped cement that. I have to thank Theofilos Venturas—who appeared in the book as a character as well—who came from the island of Cepholonia where the story was set and provided me with all the Greek translations. He was very, very helpful—I met him while doing a community theater show. MM: Was there any particular inspiration for issue #20, “Who Killed Myndi Mayer?” GEORGE: Lord knows I watched L.A. Law and those types of programs which show the hucksters who manipulate either the law or business practices in order to get their way. I just wanted to do a story that was a straight mystery. The fact 52

that it was done through the character of Indelicato and the book he was writing was just a good storytelling device. I was also heavily influenced by Alan Moore’s approach to writing by this point and all these unusual approaches to writing and points-of-view. It’s also one of the rare times we see Wonder Woman kicking butt. It was just a nice change of pace and dealt heavily with “nothing is what it seems.” That led to what is probably my personal favorite Wonder Woman story, “Testament,” a fivepage story that appears in Wonder Woman Annual #1 that I wrote, penciled, and inked. If you can’t see an Alan Moore influence there.... [laughter] All the dialogue reads totally sequentially, and it’s only when you look at the artwork that you notice that the dialogue is actually switching time periods. What seems to answer a question from the panel before is actually a new scene. MM: Issue #24 starts out with this huge battle of the gods and big action scenes, and then you end it with a little character piece about menopause. GEORGE: One of the things I loved about doing Wonder Woman was that these were women. I wanted to investigate the female psyche. One of the greatest compliments I ever received came from a woman who wrote in after reading an issue of Wonder Woman. She was genuinely surprised to find out a man had written the story. Having a young girl who would eventually go through her first menstrual cycle, her mother was going through menopause, the coming of age of Diana herself, who was seeing these things for the first time— the subject of rape. There was a story where one of her sisters was very hesitant about going to patriarch’s world and was saying, “You’ve never been raped!” Diana is

the only innocent on Themyscira. So Wonder Woman ended up being sometimes preachy, which I think was my own fault, but I wanted to take advantage of the fact that this was the iconic female super-hero. MM: Was your giving up the penciling concurrent with you going back to Titans? GEORGE: Yes. I was earning guaranteed royalties on Wonder Woman. Whatever the sales were, I had a certain minimum guarantee— John Byrne had a similar deal with Superman—in order to encourage us to stay on these titles, as DC was concerned that the novelty value may wear off after a year or so. Wonder Woman did well the whole time I was drawing the book, but I felt that I could do better commercially by going back to the Titans. In hindsight, there were a few issues I probably would have wanted to draw. I would have loved to have done “Chalk Drawings,” though I think Jill Thompson did a great job. MM: Let’s talk about the unfinished Titans graphic novel. GEORGE: Actually there were two versions. The original one actually saw print, but it saw print as the “Who Is Wonder Girl?” story arc that appeared in The New Titans #5053

Previous Page: Wonder Woman #2, page 10 (top), shows Hermes acting as tour guide. Wonder Woman #1, page 4, shows the Eischerinfluenced Olympus. Inks by Bruce Patterson. Left: This layout was originally intended for a poster, but was never printed. The lower image of Wonder Woman was later used for the cover of Wonder Woman Annual #2, which was then painted by Julia Lacquement. Below: One of those quiet moments George loved to write in Wonder Woman. Wonder Woman and all related characters ™ and ©2003 DC comics.

Above: The cover of New Titans #50, which was then painted by John Stracuzzi. Below: Mock cover for the Titans: Games graphic novel. Right: A page from Titans: Games. Next Page: Titans: Games, pages 15 (bottom), 37 and 38 (top).

54. Realizing that the Titans graphic novel storyline really did have a time limit wherein it would remain valid, they said, “Let’s use it for #50.” Rather than waiting until I could finish it while working on Wonder Woman, we spread it out into a multi-issue story arc. DC still wanted a graphic novel—I was paid in advance for a graphic novel—so it meant starting one all over again. By this point Barbara Randall—who became Barbara Kesel, who is now my writer on Solus—Marv Wolfman, and I decided it would be best to come up with a story that wouldn’t be tied directly into continuity. So we came up with the idea of Games, which was a big cat-&-mouse game involving King Faraday, an obscure character from DC’s history [originally appearing in Danger Trail #1-5, 1950-51], and using different types of games as motifs with New York as a giant game board. For example, we had Raven in the Cloisters in a dilemna with floating statuaries, like a gigantic chess game. The brickwork on the floor of the cloisters was in a grid like a chessboard. Jericho was caught in a type of card game where the cards all represented works of art and his field of battle is the Gugenheim Museum. There was a lot of research that went into it. There was also a scene that took place on top of the World Trade Center. And since the World Trade Center was endangered, you can see 54

why I have real mixed feelings about ever having that book printed now. Although Marv and I have talked about the idea that the World Trade Center could be erased and redrawn as another building, there’s just something that bugs me about the idea of erasing the World Trade Center from my artwork. It ended up being a very complex story. I was the initial plotter—Marv was my coplotter in this case—I was coming up with the ideas, the visuals, how things were set up, and the conclusion of the story. It kept growing and growing and as I was drawing it I was also trying to work on a regular monthly series. I take blame for the book not being completed, but DC has to take some of the blame because they were the constant serpent in the garden tempting me all the time, offering me all these great other little jobs until it got in the way of my finishing the book. [laughter] I was getting a lot of great assignments. I was the golden boy of DC Comics, but I was also stupid enough not to know when to say no. Many times the editors offering me the work had no idea where I was in my regular work, so they were assuming that “yes, I want to do it” meant “yes, I am able to do it.” I made a

and later War of the Gods, I was becoming known for unfinished projects and being unreliable in meeting a deadline. It would be a few years before I could recover from that professionally. The sheer irony is that during the worst part of my professional career as far as books being late or unfinished it was also the most profitable time of my career! [laughter] I earned more money during that time, but I did not have any real satisfaction during those years.

lot of stupid decisions like that until Games became late, late, late. I was paid, paid, paid, but nothing was being given. Eventually, since I was no longer doing the Titans series by the time I was only half-way through Games, things were changing that threatened the impact of the story. The killing of Jericho in the regular series made any threat to Jericho in the graphic novel pretty much a non-issue. To my mind it started becoming an empty story. There was no sense of real danger any more. What started out as a proposed 64-page story ended up becoming a 100-andsomething-page story—I think it was 120 pages by the end of the plotting, of which I drew nearly 80. I was starting to lose focus and it was at the start of a really bad time in my career where I was becoming the king of the incomplete projects. With what happened with Games

MM: Getting back to Wonder Woman, when you switched to plotting only and Mindy Newell was brought in to script, how did you work with her? GEORGE: Mindy was a dream to work with. Mindy is obviously a very strident feminist in her ways—a more arch voice sometimes—which I think was 55

Right: Layout for New Titans #57, page 9. Below: Design drawing of Eres, who ended up being a trouble-maker not only for Wonder Woman, but for scripter Mindy Newell as well. Next Page: From start to finish: the layout, pencils, and finished inks for the cover of Batman #438. Batman, Dick Grayson, Eres, Robin, Starfire ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.

needed. She gave me a definite point of view, and I liked Mindy as an individual—she and I were friends—and I wanted to work with her. I told Karen that if I was going to have another person dialoguing I would prefer if it was a woman. Mindy added a different set of nuances to the characters, but the most infamous was in the Eris storyline when we had the ambassadors and religious leaders of the world go to Paradise Island. As I plotted it, it was pretty strong in dealing with prejudices and misconceptions and misunderstandings and just plain intolerance. Mindy took it even one level further—made it even more strident—and some characters who were insulting became incredibly insulting. I liked it, as did Karen, because that’s the whole point of the story. Mindy was a loose cannon and letting them have it and I was loving everything she was doing. Karen liked it, it got lettered, and then for some reason, I don’t know how, it got upstairs, and they were concerned that characters were sounding anti-Semetic, that races, religions were all being insulted, that people were going to write angry letters and bomb our offices. The whole point of the story was that these people were wrong. The funniest part was when they called in anti-women and anti-Jewish watch groups, meanwhile Mindy Newell, Karen Berger, and Jenette Kahn are all Jewish women and each of them approved the darned story! [laughter] I think DC might have been coming off a similar publicity nightmare and didn’t want another, so they made a preemptive strike and Mindy was the target of it and her script was pretty much gutted. MM: It was around this time that you were working on “Batman: Year Three” and “A Lonely Place of Dying,” the crossover between Titans and Batman. There was a portfolio that came out of that with the covers to those issues as well as additional plates. The contrast in those pieces with those big areas of black really made the rest of your detail work pop out. 56

GEORGE: The thing is I agree with you. I think the great thing about doing a character like Batman is that there’s something solid for the detail to stand out against. I didn’t get many chances—at least at the time—of drawing shadowy stuff. Knowing it was going to be reproduced in black-&-white, the color that was used on the covers was all secondary. In some cases it was slightly muddy, because it was not designed for color. I deliberately designed it for black-&-white. I was inspired by Brian Bolland and his shadow and line work. I got into his work shortly after Crisis. MM: Did you have to adjust at all when Jill Thompson replaced Chris Marrinan as the new penciler? GEORGE: Jill had a much more feminine Wonder Woman than Chris. I did not write for Jill—I may not have played to Jill as well as I could have. Jill works better when she can do bigger panels.

MM: Which she did in issue #45. GEORGE: Right, and actually that challenged me, because I was so used to breaking a scene up. That was a little more difficult to work with. Jill and I had a difficult time working with each other. She was trying to compromise for me and I was trying to compromise for her, and while I thought she gave a real sense of design and elegance to Wonder Woman that she’d been missing, I think she and I didn’t mesh well. And that’s probably my fault more than hers, because she had a certain style and I had a hard time writing for her. I was giving Chris the same type of plots that I gave myself, which meant very complex, lots of panels on a page. Jill was trying to find her voice with Wonder Woman and I really wasn’t letting her do it. She wasn’t involved in the storytelling so we really didn’t talk much. Again, that’s my fault. I should have opened communications. Jill and I are good friends and she won’t be surprised to hear me say this—in fact she’d probably say the same thing about me—I loved the look of it, but it was harder to find my Wonder Woman in there. There was some good stuff though—when she went to man’s world there was some nice stuff there. And “Chalk Drawings” was much more of a story that Jill really could handle, because it didn’t have the Pérez bombast. It was a good, quiet story, and I think Jill and I worked really well together on that one. And Mindy Newell handled the dialogue marvelously.

remember where I got it from—was the idea that since she killed herself in the garage her parents have yet to go back in there. I got the idea for the title, “Chalk Drawings,” from a trip to the fair and seeing a beautiful rendering on the pavement and knowing full well that it was going to be washed away. MM: Did you get to choose the list of contributors for issue #50?

MM: How did “Chalk Drawings” develop?

Above: Breakdown pages for Action #643. Brett Breeding later finished the artwork. Right: Promotional art for Wonder Woman #50. Next Page: The cover of War of the Gods #1.

GEORGE: Karen and I liked doing socially relevant stories, so I told her I really wanted to do something with teen suicide. She thought I was building up to the suicide of Eileen, Vanessa’s girl friend, who did seem to have a somber look towards life with her father and having to take care of her brother. She looked like the logical choice. But I wanted to turn it around to the girl who had everything. She had high standards to constantly live up to, and Eileen was so used to her life she knew how to survive and was determined to survive. I had done some study, and Mindy Newell, who was a nurse, knew a lot about the psychology of suicide, so that’s why that story ended up being such a strong one. My favorite little scene—and I don’t 58

GEORGE: There were some I suggested, but Karen had made friends with a number of artists as an editor—I believe she was just starting the Vertigo line—and she just wanted to get a lot of different people with many of them not being associated with Wonder Woman. Of course, the prize find was Marie Severin. She had never worked for DC before. MM: In Secret Origins #50, you revisited the type of text illustrations you did in History of the DC Universe, with the Robin origin story. GEORGE: I’m particularly proud of the one that surprised people—the scene of Batman swinging from the rafters of the circus tent, which was almost entirely a black-&-white piece. There’s almost no detail in there— it’s just straight contrast. People expect me to noodle every single thing on his utility belt. It’s kind of nice to surprise them. Also, in that same issue I got to ink Carmine Infantino on the Space Museum origin. That was fun. Again, I was inking an icon.

Part 4:

Bad Endings, False Starts and New Beginnings In some cases—like John Ostrander and Marv Wolfman—they wanted to cooperate and tried to do the best they could. John was incredibly helpful, including suggesting the usage of Indian gods and tying in with Firestorm. And Marv tried as best he could to tie-in with Titans. But for the most part the book was floundering and, for a book that was supposed to focus on Wonder Woman and be the crossover of the year, I was unpleasantly surprised when Armageddon came out as “the crossover of the year.” It was like we were working in a vacuum. So War of the Gods ended up becoming a very unpleasant experience and not what I wanted it to be. Adding fuel to the fire, my disgruntledness led me to be careless with my deadlines, so that the crossovers did not work chronologically. Part of that was bad coordination, the unfortunate placing of an assistant editor in charge to replace Karen, and my own disgruntledness. War of the Gods was the beginning of the end of my relationship with the Wonder Woman character.

MM: Which project were you approached with first, War of the Gods or Infinity Gauntlet?

GEORGE: I think War of the Gods was just taking longer, since it was tied in to the Wonder Woman series and I was trying to lead up to that. Much to my regret, I ended up doing two crowded mini-series at the same time, though I knew I was not going to be drawing War of the Gods. MM: How did War of the Gods develop? GEORGE: Originally it was a gigantic overview from me. I plotted it out with all the tie-ins I wanted to have and discussed it with Karen Berger. It was supposed to be called The Holy Wars, but they thought that was too religious a title. The idea was for it to be a celebration of Wonder Woman’s 50th anniversary. Unfortunately, during the course of War of the Gods, Karen Berger— who was pregnant with her first child—had to take maternity leave. The biggest problem I had was trying to make it a tie-in to the Wonder Woman series. DC might have felt a little less confident about a crossover series centered around a female lead, as opposed to Batman or Superman or some of the stronger selling characters. We were fighting an uphill battle in trying to do the crossovers the way we wanted to make it work. And by the time the series was coming out it was quite obvious that, in some cases, I had done overviews that the creators of the tie-in books never saw—the editors never got them to them. So there was a crossover that no one seemed to know anything about.

MM: Was it your decision to have Son of Vulcan a central character to the story? Was he used because of his mythological association and the fact that he was an obscure character that nothing was being done with? GEORGE: I think both were pivotal in my decision. Son of Vulcan had a Roman mythological reference that I wanted to use. Shazam was used for the same reason— even though he had Zeus in his name, he also had Mercury, the Roman Hermes. It was a desperate ploy to find somebody tied to the Roman pantheon. [laughter] 59

So Tom DeFalco did what was absolutely his right and duty to do as editor and called Ron Lim in to fill in on the last half of issue #4. He told me at a convention, and I said, “I think you should have Ron finish the series.” I knew that with the way I was feeling, I’d just go back and cause the same problem all over again. I always felt that Ron Lim should have been the one to draw Infinity Gauntlet anyway; he drew all the Silver Surfer issues that led up to it. But to show that I respected Tom DeFalco’s decision and had no animosity towards Tom or Marvel, I offered to ink the covers over Ron. I didn’t think it was right for me to insist on still penciling the covers. Also by inking Ron’s covers it showed the readers that I was cooperating and showing my support after leaving the book; if I had penciled the covers, they might have assumed they’d been done ahead of time. In hindsight, when I saw the royalties that came in on the first issues, it wasn’t exactly the smartest move. [laughter] My petulant behavior probably cost me tens of thousands of dollars. But I knew that I just couldn’t stay on it. All I had were characters in outer space, which meant no getting my jollies by putting in extra characters. And it seemed that Thanos was just talking to the heroes, knocking them back, talking, they come back, he knocks them back, he talks some more—it seemed really, really padded

MM: Were you glad to be working for Marvel again? It had been almost ten years since you had done any work for them. GEORGE: Oh, yes. I believe the person who offered me Infinity Gauntlet was Jim Salicrup, and Jim and I go back a long ways. He was proud of the fact that he was responsible for getting me back into the Marvel fold. MM: Part way into Infinity Gauntlet #4 you gave up the penciling assignment. Were there any problems between you and Marvel as a result of that? GEORGE: I was having a hard time keeping my enthusiasm up. I was becoming overly critical of the books I was working on. With Infinity Gauntlet, I felt that the story did not warrant six double-sized books. I had gone into it with a certain idea, Jim Starlin had his own ideas—and, of course, Jim had been doing Thanos for years and it was his character, so I know the problem wasn’t with him, it was with me. I just started losing interest, and as a result I was slowing down. Part of it was that it was being done concurrently with War of the Gods, which was highly stressful. 60

to me. One regret I do not have about leaving was that I really wanted it to be the last Thanos story. When I found out along the way that they were already setting up a follow-up story—Infinity Quest or Infinity Crusade, whatever it was—then I knew it wasn’t what I’d hoped it to be. MM: How long after Infinity Gauntlet was it before you started on Hulk: Future Imperfect? GEORGE: It wasn’t that long a gap. My wife, Carol, read one of Peter David’s novels and then found out he was also a comic book writer. She said, “If you ever get a chance to work with Peter, that might be nice”— she liked his writing. So I approached Peter, Peter approached Bobbi Chase, his editor at Marvel, and Bobbi came to me with the two-part Hulk graphic novel. It had already lost Sam Kieth and, I think, Dale Keown, so Bobbi was ecstatic that I wanted to do it and it

would retain the star clout they had hoped for. But it all started with Carol. MM: Once you started Hulk: Future Imperfect, did you devote all your time to it? GEORGE: Oh, yeah. I wanted to ink it and I’d never inked a project that large before, so that was definitely a time-consumer. I thought Peter had a wonderful plot and there was a lot of challenge to it. When Peter wrote the sequence about the museum where an elderly Rick Jones was keeping a lot of the Marvel artifacts, “Which artifacts should I use?” Peter suggested the ones that were plot-specific—the surfboard; Captain America’s shield; the snuffbox with Jan’s ashes, as well as other urns; Wolverine’s skeleton— and I believe he had the idea of the Sentinel’s head with the Thing’s remains in there. He had a few and I multiplied that 61

Previous Page Top: Breakdowns to War of the Gods #1, page 33. Note that the series was originally to be called The Holy Wars. Previous Page Bottom and Above: Pencils from Infinity Gauntlet. Left: George had hoped Infinity Gauntlet would have the impact of being the last Thanos story. Captain Marvel, Wonder Woman ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Drax the Destroyer, Firelord, Hulk, Iron Man, Mephisto, Scarlet Witch, Silver Surfer, Sub-Mariner, Thanos, Thor, Warlock ™ and ©2003 DC

by ten. When I started sneaking in other companies’ relics, that’s when it started becoming fun, and, of course, the fans absolutely went ga-ga over it. There were a couple of things the colorist, Tom Smith, did—including one that was just a misinterpretation of the coloring. When the Hulk and the Maestro enter the museum, they’re going into what was later described as the giant Green Lantern power battery from Oa. That’s not what it was drawn as—it was just drawn as an archway, but by Tom coloring it green it became the power battery. [laughter] I was not drawing the book as fast as I wanted to be, and when I was inking issue #2 it became evident to Bobbi that if I continued at the pace I was going, the book was going to be very late. Bobbi wanted to get someone else to ink it, but I didn’t want anyone else to ink it, so I doubled up my work speed. I didn’t sleep for three days in order to get that book out on time. It was such a rigorous ordeal that afterwards my wife came

home and found me slumped in my lounger in front of the TV—and I can never fall asleep sitting up—and I was out. It took her a couple of tries to wake me up, and she thought I had had a heart attack and been killed by the schedule. [laughter] MM: Was the marketing with the book done any differently, because it seems it was a little more violent and sexually open than the typical Marvel comic. It was more like the black-&-white magazine line or the Epic line had been. GEORGE: I think Peter and Bobbi wanted to do a Hulk that as a graphic novel would have a longer shelf life. You have to keep it a little more adultoriented—not to the point of being prurient, but just dealing with a more mature approach to the character. I don’t think it was all that different from what Peter was ordinarily doing in the series. It’s just that he had the advantage that, with a bigger price tag, it was going to be aimed at people who earn a salary for the most part. We had concubines, but didn’t show sex; there was no nudity. It was a PG-13 really. MM: And this leads us to Sachs & Violens. Obviously, you worked well with Peter.... GEORGE: Yes, and interestingly, like Hulk: Future Imperfect, it was another story Peter had hanging around that he wanted to work with someone on. I believe he and Jo Duffy had come up with it earlier on—I don’t recall fully. But Lee Weeks was associated with it for a while—I had seen a couple of character designs he had done—but for some reason it didn’t go anywhere. When the Heavy Hitters line was introduced as part of their Epic imprint, Peter approached me about it. The one thing that Peter did not know was that I’m very big into certain fetish fields, so this was right up my alley. He had the basic idea, including a lot of the first story, already worked out, and when I came in he asked for my input, which was pretty much limited to making J.J. a Latina, because I had a specific fetish model I wanted to use as my source material. 62

I’ve since learned from people in the fetish field that Sachs & Violens was a fave, because they recognized the names I put into the artwork on signs and so on. It was just a fun, kinky, little book. But, again, in order to put that kind of effort into it, it suffered from the same thing all Pérez books suffer from when I’m trying very hard to give the fans a real, best-of experience: it was taking too long. I inked the first two issues, but the last two issues— which came in late—had to be inked by Arne Starr and others, and I don’t think they held up quite as well, because their inking style was a little more simplifying and cleaner than mine, which tends to be a little more gritty and textured. It kind of felt like I screwed Peter, because I couldn’t get that book out on time. To do my best work takes time, and trying to do that on a monthly schedule and keep a steady income I can survive on is not that easy.

al act. If I recall correctly, I was actually holding back. I didn’t want to go too far into the R-rated territory. Not having read Peter’s dialogue as it wasn’t done yet, Peter’s use of the fword in the story was something I didn’t know about. There was one specific panel where I had J.J. walking out of the room and I deliberately drew her so high that, even though you could see her butt, I thought, “This is where the word balloon is going to go.” I drew the butt just so Peter would know I drew a butt—and I can draw a butt—but Peter made sure that the word balloon was clear of the butt. [laughter] It wasn’t until the third issue that I drew her fully topless. I guess I was cynical about how far Marvel was going to let us jump off the diving board. MM: You were obviously hoping for it to be a success, because you were pushing the statue, there was the “Do you want to see more?” blurb at the end of the series.... Were you really hoping for a second series? GEORGE: The series warranted it. Marvel wanted a second series—it’s not like they were stopping us. Sachs & Violens was one of the rare hits of the Heavy Hitters line. Peter and I even worked up a follow-up story, but I couldn’t

MM: Was there any kind of editorial influence imposed on the story? GEORGE: They pretty much let us do what we wanted on that book. It was kind of cool. Since there was no taboo—we didn’t show an actual full-penetration sexu63

Previous Page: Illustration for Peter David’s text story, “The Last Titan,” published in The Ultimate Incredible Hulk trade paperback; and a commissioned headshot of the Maestro. Upper Left: Cover rough for Sachs & Violens #1. Above: This photo of George and Carol was taken in 1986 by Andy Mangels. Below: Preliminary sketches of J.J. Sachs.

Above: Two-page spread from Sachs & Violens #4. Inks by Arne Starr. Next Page: George’s first work for Malibu was Break-Thru, as seen in this page featuring Mantra. He then moved on to UltraForce, which featured many of their solo heroes such as Prototype and Prime, as well as new heroes such as the Pérez-designed Topaz. Sachs & Violens ™ and ©2003 Peter David and George Pérez. Mantra, Prime, Prototype, Topaz ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

maintain the schedule. I needed something else, and I believe it was around that time I got the offer from Malibu wherein I could produce less work for far more money. The industry was changing and the page rate was becoming astronomically high in the indy market in order to get established pros to work for them. As much as I enjoyed Sachs & Violens, it cost me too much. Because of its nature it would never have had more than a niche audience, and I couldn’t dedicate that kind of time for that little a return. Peter and I talked about doing Sachs & Violens as an illustrated novel, but I couldn’t work on it as a comic book series and Peter had no desire to work on it with anyone else. MM: Malibu had a lot of good talent. You mentioned they paid very well—how was it in comparison to Marvel and DC? 64

GEORGE: Malibu came about after Topps had me ink Gil Kane on Jurassic Park. John Byrne was originally supposed to be the inker, and by taking on the job I inherited John’s entertainment lawyer. In that era a lot of artists had entertainment lawyers in order to negotiate deals, because there was a lot of money to be had. We were kind of drunk with the excesses then. Harris Miller represented me on Jurassic Park and I kept him on and—because he was California-based—he learned about Malibu, was negotiating for a lot of the other talents at Malibu, and called me up about my doing work for Malibu. Because of his involvement there, my rate was probably at least three times what I was earning at Marvel for the same work. Being typically me, I said, “If you’re going to use me, you might as well use me on a team book.” [laughter]

on already existing characters. “Why am I drawing Prototype when I’d rather be drawing Iron Man? Why am I drawing Prime when I’d much rather be drawing Superman?” And even though I designed Topaz, I never developed an emotional attachment to the character. The one character I enjoyed the most was Ghoul—and Pixx, because she was for me Terra. She was a cute, little character who was destined to die—in her case, heroically. So I was— what always happened in that era—slowing down. Somehow getting triple my page rate didn’t seem quite as profitable when it was taking me four times as long to draw a page. UltraForce never grabbed me, and when I followed with I-Bots over at the late, lamented Tekno Comics it was because I was making decisions based on the ridiculous money they were throwing at me. Tekno was paying me more than Malibu. But, even from the very first issue, as much as I tried to build enthusiasm I really wasn’t all that interested in the characters. I tried to be, and for the money I thought I should be, but that’s when my wife asked me the question which has haunted me to this day, “Are you really afraid of succeeding?” Every time I was offered big money projects, I ended up not being as

MM: It was Break-Thru first, then UltraForce. GEORGE: Again, utilizing me in all the ways people associate with my work: crossovers and team books. BreakThru was the one that was initially negotiated and it went fine—Al Vey did a wonderful job and it was successful. And it meant I could do my best work and still earn a good living. On UltraForce #1, Jerry Bingham came in to help out with the penciling, because it was scheduled and I was already set to go on vacation. It was just bad, bad timing. I laid out the entire book, but didn’t do the complete penciling, so that didn’t help my reputation any because there was no way people were going to know what happened. But the thing with UltraForce was I quickly grew discontented, because I missed the characters I grew up with. I always felt like UltraForce and some of the other heroes of the Malibu universe were just copies or variations 65

enthused as I thought I would be. I guess part of my ego was bruised, because no matter how much promotion these books were getting, they weren’t setting the world on fire. Malibu never did become the next Image—it folded and was sold to Marvel. Tekno never even got off the ground. By the time I came in on I-Bots they had already had premieres for the rest of their titles, all of which kind of tanked because they were using non-comic book people for a lot of them. When I look back at some of my UltraForce and I-Bots work, in some of those issues I was doing some top-drawer work and nobody saw it.

then expanded on. As far as the characters themselves and the specifics of the world they live in—that was Howard. Steven Grant then took it from there. I couldn’t get into the swing of it. I was starting to feel that, “You know, I’m not having fun doing comic books.” That was a scary experience. I also felt—with all the new talent coming in and the work Image was doing—that I was becoming anachronistic, a has-been. I knew that I had to start turning my career around or eventually the phone would stop ringing. MM: With these projects that you were losing interest in—Infinity Gauntlet, UltraForce, I-Bots—you were just there to draw. Do you think after having done Wonder Woman for so long that you needed more creative input in order to maintain that interest?

MM: Tekno had big names like Asimov and Spillane and Nimoy on their books, but those people weren’t directly involved with the books beyond a basic idea. Do you think that hurt them as well? GEORGE: Oh, I’m sure that didn’t help. In the case of Asimov’s I-Bots, Isaac’s entire input was half a type-written page or so that Howard Chaykin

GEORGE: I think it was the reverse. Working on War of the Gods I realized that working with company characters you can only do so much. Writers have the

steepest hill to climb in selling a story to an editor or company. Ideas are hard to sell. As an artist, I have it easier. If they like my artwork, I’m pretty much safe. After War of the Gods and after a Giant-Man mini-series that became a story arc in the Avengers book, I found out that I don’t want to be a writer for the mainstream. It’s too much work. When I eventually came back to Avengers, it was with the condition that I would not be involved with the writing or the plotting. My contribution to the plotting would be after the written plot was in front of me. MM: After Malibu was sold to Marvel you worked on the UltraForce/Avengers crossover. GEORGE: I felt like I owed something

to the people at Malibu, and the idea of working on the Avengers again... “Hmm, why not?” At one point there was even the possibility of my doing both chapters, but there was no way to do it—I was drawing the second book while the first was being drawn, so I was going in blind. But one of the things I relish about UltraForce/Avengers was working with up-and-coming writer Warren Ellis, who I got to meet in England around the same time I was working on the book. It was a slightly subversive take on the Avengers, and since the UltraForce characters became more interesting once I tied them in with the Marvel characters I did enjoy that immensely. I actually had a very, very good time. MM: How about that two-page spread? GEORGE: Oh, yes, all the characters from the creators that Harris Miller represented. That was a lot of fun. It also marked the first time I drew my Crimson Plague characters—Shannon, DiNA:, Gladiator, and Tribune. Warren just gave me so much to play with. It was a phenomenally fun book, and, of course, didn’t 67

Previous Page Top: The cover image for a fan magazine promoting I-Bots. Previous Page Bottom: Pencils for UltraForce #0, pages 4 and 5. The character Ghoul was George’s favorite of the Malibu universe. Left: After Marvel bought out Malibu, Avengers/Ultraforce wasn’t long in the making. Shown here are the wraparound covers to Avengers/UltraForce #1 and UltraForce/Avengers #1, which together formed a nice poster image. Below: Early pencil design for Codename: Firearm. Avengers, Codename: Firearm, UltraForce ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. I-Bots ™ and ©2003 Tekno Comics.

really do anything in sales because neither the Avengers or UltraForce were particularly big sellers at the time. MM: What happened on what was supposed to be the Giant-Man miniseries? Right: A 1993 pencil sketch of the Silver Surfer. Below: A 2002 commission drawing of Giant-Man and Wasp. Next Page Top: The cover of Silver Surfer #115. Pencils by Tom Grindberg. Next Page Bottom: Illustration from The Ultimate Silver Surfer trade paperback.

GEORGE: I tended to write stories that George Pérez would draw, and unless I was working with an artist who was in tune with that same type of approach to a story it wouldn’t work out. In the case of the Giant-Man mini-series which they folded into the Avengers, the artist was one of the new kids on the block who were hired because they needed to fill a lot of pages at a time when so many comics were being printed. He was not a particularly good artist and he was, unfortunately, a very poor storyteller. It made trying to write it an incredible chore. I would describe scenes with multiple takes and end up with one gigantic image, which I then had to do an entire bit of dialogue for. How I envisioned the story and how I had to finish it in order to compensate for the artwork really disenchanted me. It was the same thing at the start of Silver Surfer—and I inherited the artist on that one, so obviously he had been doing fine before I came along, so I’m not going to put it all on him. But Tom Grindberg and I weren’t a good match. Scot Eaton, who replaced Tom, was a better match for me, but by that point I was going into worlds that I don’t think Marvel was comfortable with, because I was taking the Silver Surfer pretty much out of the Marvel universe. I had the great support of Mark Gruenwald, whose idea it was to do this type of story, but then Mark died suddenly 68

and—like losing Karen Berger on Wonder Woman—the only other person who was willing to fight for my vision— skewed as it might have been—was gone. So my time on Silver Surfer was pretty much up, and at that point I decided it was too hard to do a character so it suits the needs of so many other people who have a proprietorial right to the character. After starting with Ron Garney—we discussed a lot of stuff and thought it was going to be a lot of fun—we realized that the idea wasn’t going to get anywhere. So I left Silver Surfer without ever explaining what happened when the Silver Surfer got back to the regular Marvel universe. The entire arc I had done has been since forgotten and left unexplained as to what the hell happened. MM: How do you feel about the Silver Surfer/Superman crossover? GEORGE: It was fun. It may have been a joke that I laughed at and no one else did, but it was just a nice little throwaway. It was nice to do something that didn’t have a lot of stürm und drang. I was also grateful that I had Ron Lim, because Ron is a lot closer to my storytelling style. So that was a fairly easy write. I think that was my one really fun writing chore during the latter part of my brief

lot, was Dan Jurgens. I was building up to a scene and he just gave me a gigantic shot of the character and his face is rather stolid and unemotional. It wasn’t quite as dramatic as I’d hoped it would be. It did the job, it just didn’t quite go as far as I wanted. I found that to be a bit of a quirk in Dan’s style when I inked him later on on Titans. But in hindsight, he does tell the story.

writing career. MM: In Spider-Man Team-Up #2 you actually scripted over Roger Stern’s plot. Was that the only time you worked that way? GEORGE: I believe so. I had trouble with Tom Grindberg’s storytelling, and Roger seemed to have had even worse trouble. He said he couldn’t write it. I read Roger’s plot and noticed how many times Tom would sacrifice storytelling for a fancy shot or construct a scene where there was no place you could logically place a word balloon. The one advantage I had— and it might have been because Roger was so experienced a writer and used to being able to work with storytellers as opposed to my being inexperienced as far as working with other people—that I found artistic ways of putting the dialogue in. Even though it may not have been the best place to put it, at least it read correctly. Just being able to handle the dialogue was actually a nice relief, because I’m pretty good at dialogue. Roger’s a much better plotter than I am and a much more straightforward plotter than I am, so I just had fun writing Spider-Man.

MM: There had been talk around Ralph Macchio’s office of doing an Avengers: Year One mini-series and you were approached about writing that. Is that correct? GEORGE: It was bouncing back and forth between writing and drawing it and just writing it. Towards the last negotiation we did I was seriously considering drawing it myself. Angel Medina was tied to the book at that point as the artist, so if I didn’t do it it was going to be him. That one was a hell of a lot of fun. I was very proud of the plot I came up with. Since I was doing a Year One, I was referring back to existing stories and creating a story around that. Kurt Busiek would later touch upon it when he was writing Avengers, because he was given the plot with the possibility of it still being done. Kurt asked if I would change a couple of things or let him do certain things, because he had certain ideas when he was going to be doing Iron Man. It was all ready to go and then Marvel negotiated with Jim Lee and Rob Liefeld to do Heroes Reborn and that killed it. The first issue was called “Haven or Hell”, and a lot of it dealt with the Avengers’ origin through the point of view of Jarvis. It was inspired by Kurt’s Marvels, in which he was using the reporter’s point

MM: And you got to do it again a couple of issues later. GEORGE: When I wrote the Avengers one. MM: And that was a big one. You had four pencilers and three inkers. GEORGE: And with varying degrees of success. Darick Robertson surprised me; I was very pleased with him. Oddly enough the one artist I was really looking forward to, but his storytelling was one of the weakest of the 69

of view. I got to play around with characters who hadn’t been seen in ages, like Nurse Jane Foster. Jarvis even had a romantic interest in that issue. MM: In the fall of 1996 you went back to a new version of the Titans, this time strictly as an inker over Dan Jurgens.

Above: A panel from Ultraforce #8 showing what a George Pérezdrawn Avengers: Year One mini-series might have looked like. Inks by Keith Aiken and/or Mark Morales. Right: The cover to the 1996 Heroes Convention program book featured the original Teen Titans penciled by Nick Cardy, the newest version of the Teen Titans penciled by Dan Jurgens, and the New Teen Titans penciled by George, all of which George inked. Next Page: Early sketch of Plague, soon to be renamed Crimson Plague. Teen Titans ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Avengers ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

GEORGE: I wanted to work on my own project, Crimson Plague, but when Dan came in talking about the Titans I said, “Hey, if you’re looking for an inker I’d love to ink it.” I enjoyed inking and thought it would help finance Crimson Plague. That’s when I found out how—not persona non grata—but how hesitant DC was about hiring me after the debacle of War of the Gods and of Games and so many other projects that came and went by the wayside. When Dan Jurgens went to editor Eddie Berganza and then Eddie suggested it to the higher-ups at DC, they were very reluctant for me to be working on a monthly title, even in the inking capacity. It wasn’t until—after Dan asked for assurance from me, as did Eddie— they went to bat for me and said, “We trust George Pérez. George says he’s going to be staying on this book and we trust that he’s going to do his best. He wants to do the book.” I managed to stay on the book for 15 consecutive issues without the book ever shipping late. And I had a lot to live up to, because Dan is incredibly fast. He had issue #3 done by the time I 70

finished issue #1. I like to think I made a nice contribution to the book. In fact, one of my great feelings of pride was that I was nominated for an Eisner for inking the Titans book. Unfortunately, the Titans book tanked in sales. Money I was hoping would help finance my Crimson Plague project wasn’t there. I inked two pages of Superman: The Wedding Album over Jim Mooney and earned more money in royalties inking those two pages than I did on my entire run on Titans. After that and the financial failure of Crimson Plague I was in deep financial squalor. That’s when I decided that the only way I was going to survive in this industry was to get back into the mainstream and do a monthly, hopefully highprofile series. Then Ralph Macchio called me up at the end of Heroes Reborn and asked if I’d be interested in getting back on the Avengers. Originally I was asked to be the writer, but I turned it down because I hadn’t read the book in nearly 20 years by that point. Then he said it would probably do much better if I would pencil the book. And I said, “I think it’s about time.” I hadn’t

fans I had met and friends I had met through other circles—as characters who would be dotting the storyline. Some of them in major roles, some of them in minor roles, and other characters just created out of whole cloth. I first met a gentleman named Bernie Mangiboyat, who owns a comic shop in Fayetteville, North Carolina, and I met his fianceé, DiNA: Simmons, who was a Wonder Woman fan. As a comic artist, seeing a stunningly beautiful woman saying that she’s a big fan is just a dream you don’t think will ever be realized. [laughter] I asked if I could use her as the model for the character Plague. Joe Quesada used her as a model for one of the issues of an X-title he did, so we’ve all acknowledged the fact that DiNA: is a beautiful woman. When discussing her character with DiNA:—who was very enthusiastic—the character soon became much more interesting. Plague was just going to be a foil to the Gladiator, but I scrapped my entire Gladiator concept after drawing a few preview pages and redirected the focus to Crimson Plague. Gladiator had been set in “current” times, and Crimson Plague became set off in an indeterminate future. The idea of the character’s blood being an acidlike weapon, similar to the blood of the alien creature in the movie Alien, came from DiNA:’s question—since it was a human female as opposed to an alien— “What would happen if the character menstruates?” Thus, Crimson Plague became a totally, totally different type of story. When I needed a Ripley type as her adversary, someone who was hunting her down, I met a young lady at a dance school my wife was attending—a beautiful, young redhead named Shannon Lower. I asked her if she would like to be a comic book character—she read X-Men, but wasn’t as much into comics then as she is now—and she said yes. I realized that if I got enough people to populate this book, they’ll all be buying it and buying copies for their family [laughter], so it was an entrepreneurial way of making this work. Also, it was a great challenge to me as an artist to draw a book where, unlike when I draw a crowd scene in a regular comic and I have to draw 15 different faces, in Crimson Plague that’s 15 different times I have to go

built up the bad reputation at Marvel as I had at DC, so they were much more inclined to say, “Sure, let’s give George Pérez a try.” There were naysayers who didn’t think my style was commercial any more. My fellow creators were taking odds on how many issues I would last before I needed a fill-in, with six being at the high end. So to say I had a lot to prove when I went back on Avengers is an understatement, because I knew this would be the make or break of my career now. I told them I would work strictly for regular page rate. I wasn’t trying to get the old, high-end money. A, I didn’t think I could get it, and B, I didn’t think it would be available anyway. It turns out my lawyer, Harris Miller, negotiated so that I would be getting a 100% bonus for every issue completed, so I was getting double my page rate. Thank God for my lawyer. [laughter] If it wasn’t for him, I probably could not have lasted on the Avengers as long as I did, because I was able to do my best work and was being paid enough to make it worth my time. And, of course, that started my resurrection. MM: Let’s talk about Crimson Plague. It started out as a concept called Gladiator. How did the Gladiator idea originate? GEORGE: The Gladiator idea came from a conversation with Julie Schwartz years ago when Julie asked if there was a Batman story I would like to do. I came up with an idea that dealt with Nightwing coming into a police morgue, finding the body of a John Doe, and knowing that it was Batman. The face wasn’t recognizable as Bruce Wayne—and at the time I didn’t know about DNA identification—he retraces the body and its history from the scars. A pretty morbid, little segue into the story. It covered all the history that occurred since they split up. The Gladiator was a character who also had a history of former partners who had since died. I wanted to create a female, Catwoman-like villain for Gladiator, and came up with the character who was originally just called Plague, and who then transmuted to Crimson Plague. One of the things I was doing with Gladiator—as I did with Wonder Woman—was trying to use real people—from comics 71

to a reference file in order to draw those faces accurately. I learned a lot about drawing faces working on Crimson Plague. Comics were still at their high point, but it was starting to turn, so my timing was bad. I dedicated a lot of time and a lot of money to the comic. I had to pay the colorist, Tom Smith, out of my own pocket. I wanted DiNA: to make public appearances, so I had to take care of her expenses, pay to have her costume made—my wife and a gentleman named Tom Snyder helped construct her costume and Shannon’s later. So there was a lot of money going out and not much money coming in, because I had to wait on the sales of the book. I had to spend so much time penciling and inking the book—and since I was so emotionally involved the pages were taking a long time—in addition to dialoguing, and I made the mistake of putting it on the schedule and was still drawing issue #1 when I should have already been working on issue #2. When I started it, it had no specific publisher. At one point I was considering doing it at Image, and then I met Joe Quesada and Jimmy Palmiotti at a convention when they were doing Event Comics, and they were quite willing to release Crimson Plague, and I liked them. MM: You first did an ashcan with Heroes Aren’t Hard to Find and Shelton Drum for the 1996 Heroes Con in Charlotte, North Carolina. GEORGE: Exactly, yes, which was DiNA:’s first public appearance—not in costume, but just the idea of her being able to see herself kicking butt. She was so happy. There were so many people I worked with who were truly excited that they were going to be comic book characters. Never underestimate the ego of a comics fan, or even just a general person on the street. In an issue of the Titans Baxter series during the Trigon story there was a news reporter—a gentleman named Larry Garter, who happened to be my wife’s former boss. I asked her if Larry might like being put into the story, and she said, “Yeah, but I don’t know if he’ll get much of a kick out of it. He’s a businessman.” He had that [reference] picture framed alongside the printed page, alongside the original artwork. [laughter] He was ecstatic about being a comic book character; Carol was totally surprised. And in Crimson Plague it was

multiplied by close to 240 people. But, as I said earlier, when the Titans book failed, I was caught in a situation where I was heavily, heavily in debt. The first issue came out in June of 1997 because we had already committed ourselves to raising money for the Burned Children’s Fund in Charlotte, North Carolina, and I didn’t want to screw the charity. After the book came out and looking at the ledgers, the advance orders, and figuring out how much I was earning per page based on the profits, I couldn’t afford to stay on the book. Issue #2 of the first printing of Crimson Plague never came out because I couldn’t afford for it to come out. That coupled with the failure of the Titans project was part of the decision-making process that eventually led to the Avengers. MM: When you came back to the Avengers in ’98, did you have a set number of issues you wanted to reach? 73

Previous Page: The logo, the original character design, and three of only four pages drawn for Gladiator. The pages were eventually used in Crimson Plague #1 from Gorilla Comics, but with the faces redrawn to match the new models for the characters. Above: A trading card featuring Quesada and Palmiotti’s creatorowned character, Ash.

Right: Avengers v3, #1, page 11. Inks by Al Vey. Below: The only page George drew for Kurt Busiek’s series, Westwind, which was to be published through Gorilla Comics. Next Page: The cover to the unpublished Crimson Plague #4— which was later used as the cover to The George Pérez Newsletter #3—and preliminary sketches of two members of Crimson Plague’s cast. Avengers ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Westwind ™ and ©2003 Kurt Busiek.

GEORGE: Because of my recent inability to maintain a schedule, I was hoping to at least be able to last a year just to prove people wrong. I had no set end in mind. Mostly my goal was to get on a book that I hoped by doing my best work would be a financially successful book as well. MM: After you had been on Avengers for a couple of years, Gorilla Comics started coming together. How did you get involved with that? GEORGE: Kurt called me—that’s all it took. [laughter] At one point it wasn’t specifically Crimson Plague that I was going to do, but since I wanted to put the book together, that’s what I brought to the table. Thinking that the Avengers would help pay for that, and being the totally incompetent businessman that I am, I made one stupid, stupid mistake which unfortunately snowballed. Some of what happened with Gorilla was that we were dealing with somebody who was a crook, was misleading, who lied, and we found that certain things that we thought were already taken care of hadn’t been paid for, so we had to pay for it out of our own pockets. So we were in debt from the very beginning. I made the big mistake of trying to be fair to the fans when I had to reprint the first issue of Crimson Plague because it had been over three years since the last time it appeared. I did a double-sized issue with new material incorporated with the old material, but kept it at the same cover price. The one thing I didn’t think of until my royalty statements came in was 74

I still had to pay for the printing of the full double-sized issue. With my printing costs doubled, I earned absolutely zero on that first issue of Crimson Plague. I was in no way able to absorb that kind of loss and to this day I’m still financially recovering from Crimson Plague. I considered doing Crimson Plague as a book that would come out when I get it done as opposed to worrying about any kind of schedule—at this point Gorilla was falling apart and there were no worries about it being a Gorilla title—just so I could have a feeling of closure. But then two things happened. At the same time Gorilla was being banded together, I was offered work by up-and-coming company, CrossGen. I was so blinded by the potential of Gorilla that I didn’t want to work at CrossGen. But Mark Alessi was pointing out all the flaws that we seemed to be having at Gorilla, without knowing all the facts, but by being a smart enough businessman to see major problems we were blind to, including a lack of working capital. It wasn’t something I wanted to hear, but in hindsight, of course, Mark was

incredibly right. Then at the same time, DC and Marvel—when Joe Quesada takes over as editor-in-chief of Marvel—finally decided they were going to go ahead with a JLA/Avengers crossover project. It was because of JLA/Avengers, and not because of CrossGen as some people thought, that I killed Crimson Plague. I couldn’t really go to my wife and tell her that I preferred doing a book where we were going to be losing at least five grand each issue instead of doing a book that would probably wipe out every single debt we had. [laughter] After so many years, I had, in essence, a bidding war going on for me, and it was a win-win situation because I ended up not having to choose between them. I got everything in one shot. The only thing I gave up, through my own decision, was Crimson Plague, although technically, since Crimson Plague was a pre-existing commitment, I could continue on with it if I wanted to.

of the younger members of our cast passed away, and her character was slated to be killed by DiNA. That’s just a little sour with me now. Even though she probably would not have minded, her husband probably would not have minded, there’s that feeling of “it’s too late now.” MM: So it’s not even something you would work on in your spare time, as you are with finishing up JLA/Avengers, and doing a page here and there? It’s just out of the question now, basically?

MM: Would it be something you would consider doing through their Code 6 program? GEORGE: Not in sacrificing working on a regular series as a CrossGen employee. I don’t think that would be fair to them. They’ve been too good to me as a company. Crimson Plague will probably not see a revival. It will be my Ms. Mystic. [laughter] Also, just recently, one

GEORGE: Yeah, pretty much. The only thing that might happen if I so chose—and again, it’s so farfetched I don’t know—is do it as an illustrated story, where it’s text with illustration the same way Peter David and I discussed doing a follow-up to Sachs & Violens. And if I’m not worried about making any money on it, I could always do it as an Internet comic. One of the great things about writing it that way is I wouldn’t have to worry about people turning me down. My career is always going to be as an artist first and as a writer a far, far distant second, but I can live with that because I genuinely love to draw.

Part 5:

Can’t Get Enough of Earth’s Mightiest Heroes But I definitely believed in what CrossGen was doing, and when they offered me the idea of doing CrossGen Chronicles, initially it was to be on a freelance basis. I wanted to show support for the company, but I really wasn’t ready to give up the opportunities I had as a freelancer. And added to the negotiation problems, it was around that time that I received word that with Joe Quesada ascending to the throne as editor-in-chief of Marvel Comics, and one of the things he wanted to address was reviving the JLA/Avengers project. So I was approached by Tom Brevoort as well, saying this project looked to be a go. My wife acknowledged that if I had to make a decision between JLA/Avengers and CrossGen, JLA/Avengers would be the project I would choose. JLA/Avengers did not become actuated until Mark Alessi—who wanted to make sure that if I went to CrossGen, it would be with no regrets—said I should demand a dropdead time for Marvel and DC to offer me a contract on paper for JLA/Avengers, so I would know it wasn’t just talk. I got the last piece of the contract on the last possible day— they got in right under the wire. [laughter] So I went to CrossGen and informed them, “Now I’ve got JLA/Avengers. This is a project I’ve been wanting to do for practically my entire career. I thank you, and I’ll fulfill my commitments and finish off CrossGen Chronicles, but then I have to leave.” Mark Alessi, with the approval of the entire CrossGen staff—because an exception cannot be made without the entire staff agreeing to it—thought I’d be more valuable to them as an employee, and that I should finish my commitment to CrossGen Chronicles, but as a

MM: What about CrossGen’s pitch made you think you should be working there as opposed to doing something like the Avengers?

GEORGE: The Avengers was pretty much about done. I had gotten to the point that it was getting a lot more difficult to handle the monthly title. I was getting tired and didn’t think I was producing the best work I could do— although the fans seemed to disagree, and that was the same argument I had about the Titans, so what do I know? [laughter] It was somewhere along the line of my having already deciding to leave Avengers and the gap when I was still working on Crimson Plague for Gorilla that CrossGen came into the picture and I received a call from Barbara Kesel. Mark Alessi felt that was the best way to approach me—with someone I knew personally—so she was the one who actually came in with the pitch and asked if I would meet with Mark. When I went in to CrossGen, part of it was that I was a bit tired and the idea of doing a book that would be a quarterly and earning a regular salary plus all the insurance coverage and all the other profit sharing and things was very, very tempting. But the reservations I had with CrossGen were that I was used to drawing super-heroes and I had tackled work at companies for financial benefit and found that I ended up becoming unhappy. And I didn’t know if I’d end up feeling the same way with the CrossGen properties. And as an employee, I would be exclusive to them, which would mean turning my back on doing any more work for Marvel or DC. 76

JLA/Avengers,” that would have killed it. The only reason it was to exist—in Joe Quesada’s mind and in the minds of most of the others at Marvel and DC—was as a “George Pérez started it, George Pérez should finish it” type of thing. Joe Quesada declared there would be no further Marvel/DC crossovers on his watch, with this being the grand exception. MM: How was the rest of the creative team for JLA/Avengers decided upon?

staffer. I was retroactively—to the beginning of 2001—made an employee of CrossGen wherein I had all the insurance and perks covered and would be given a one-year leave of absence upon completion of CrossGen Chronicles. October of 2001 was when my sabbatical officially started. So during that time, my work was overlapping between CrossGen and the JLA/Avengers project, and after October JLA/Avengers was my sole income-producing work. If it hadn’t been for Mark putting both a great amount of trust and a great amount of worth to my participation in CrossGen, the JLA/Avengers book might still be in negotiations now. Of course if it would have taken this long for negotiations, the project would be over because I would not have been involved any longer. I am immensely flattered that this project lived or died on my say-so. If I had said, “No, I do not want to do

GEORGE: When the project was originally being discussed, it was with the possibility of Kurt Busiek and Mark Waid working together, since Mark at the time was writing JLA. Of course, by the time Marvel and DC put it all together, Mark was no longer working on JLA, because he had gone over to CrossGen. Kurt and I had worked together on the Avengers, and he was my first and foremost choice to write the book. The only other things I requested were that the book not be put on a schedule until there was enough drawn that we knew it would come out in four monthly installments; that I wanted to ink myself, which meant it was going to take a good deal longer; and that I wanted—with the exception of me as inker—the creative team of the Avengers working on it. That meant bringing in Tom Smith, who during my entire run on the Avengers never had a chance 77

Previous Page: A gorgeous commission sketch of Sojourn’s Arwyn. Left: This rejected cover was intended for Avengers v3, #2. Above: George amidst the roses in a 1997 photo by Andy Mangels. Below: The Avengers and Justice League faceoff in this 1996 commission piece. Justice League ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Avengers, Scarlet Witch ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Arwyn ™ and ©2003 CrossGen Intellectual Property.

Above: Avengers v3, #3, pages 10 and 11. Inks by Al Vey. Next Page, Clockwise from Top Left: Pencils from Avengers v3, #10, page 5. Pencils from Avengers v3, #21, pages 3 and 4. “Wonderkurt” drawn for a WonderCon program book. Avengers ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Kurt Busiek ™ and ©2003 himself.

to do his own color separations. He did get to do that after I was off the book, and he did his own color separations when he worked with me on Crimson Plague, and I liked the one-on-one relationship there. His work was usually farmed out to a lowball separator overseas and it tended to show. I was a little jealous of Alan Davis and Kieron Dwyer and everyone else who did the book after me, because they got Tom doing his own work. Kurt had his own requests, such as Comicraft to do the lettering, since he had worked with them on the Avengers and had a great relationship with them on Astro City. I also agreed that my pencils on JLA/Avengers would be very tight, as if they were being drawn for somebody else to ink, just in case the book finally got on a schedule and I was not able to finish inking it. All these little things just were to make everyone feel a little more comfortable with the idea of me doing such a major project. Because it wasn’t on a dead78

line, both Marvel and DC had confidence in the project. So far every single person involved with the book realizes that, yes, I am putting everything but the kitchen sink into this book. I am not taking any shortcuts on this project. This definitely is the consummation of my entire career as a super-hero artist, so I hope it’s something the fans will end up liking. MM: Were Kurt’s health problems— though he’s getting much better now—a cause of concern for the project with you or Marvel or DC? GEORGE: Because the project was so long-term I wasn’t that concerned about it. I would have been more concerned if we were on a tight schedule. Then there would have been concern not only because of his health, but mine. Despite the diabetes and the rumors, my health was in a lot better shape than Kurt’s was. Mine didn’t really stop me from working. The only time diabetes ever really effected me was

in the color pages and Dan was not signing off on them. It was getting very frustrating, because it meant pages were not getting finished. Then Dan was fired from DC— having nothing to do with JLA/Avengers, because we never went over his head—that would have been unfair. Since Mike Carlin came in as the DC editor on the project, things have been going incredibly smoothly. None of the pages that had come in while Dan was the supervising editor on the DC side had yet to be signed off. The last correction of one of the pages came in today. The time from when Tom sent in his first version to the time we signed off on the final version was a grand total of two days, as opposed to waiting weeks to get a feedback from Dan. That had been a major stumbling block. Plus it also slowed down the plots, because Dan’s ideas seemed to sometimes be totally polarized from everyone else’s ideas. But, of course, he represented DC and we didn’t want to have any political harangue about it. Despite everything, by the time Mike Carlin came in, all the plots had been approved, it’s just that issue #4’s plot took four to five months to go from Kurt’s original plot to the final

when I was laid up during my run on Avengers with a blood clot in my leg, so I had to go to the hospital until I was cleared. And even then I drew two pages in the hospital bed. Kurt’s problems stopped him at times from even being able to think clearly, and Kurt was getting very frustrated by it. I do worry about Kurt because I’m a friend, but he keeps surprising us all with his tenacity. MM: What about the editorial influence on the book? Are you having to work closely with the editors in order to appease both Marvel and DC? GEORGE: Tom Brevoort we obviously had a working relationship with from Avengers. Dan Raspler, with all due respect, was the toughest one we had to work with. Not because he was the outsider, the only member of the group who was not part of the Avengers team, it’s just that his way of working was really nonconducive to our working styles. I think Dan was a bit of a technophobe, so he didn’t like looking at computer screen interpretations of the colors and wanted to wait for print-outs, which are not the most accurate. So we were making a lot of corrections or suggestions 80

approved revised plot. A lot of it was just waiting on our end for Dan to get to it. Dan wasn’t always there when we needed him, but Mike is always there when we need him. Plus, Mike was the only other person on this project other than me who was involved with it 20 years ago. He was Mark Gruenwald’s assistant editor at the time at Marvel. We are talking seriously of dedicating JLA/Avengers to the memory of Mark Gruenwald, as Mark is the only person who was involved in the original project who’s no longer here to see it. And Mike paid me the compliment a while back of calling me up and saying that this is a book Mark would be proud of. MM: Speaking of the original story, a lot of people have seen it—or at least parts of it—in various magazines and on the Internet, and I believe DC and Marvel are planning on putting the pages in a JLA/Avengers collection once the new story is published. Since so many people already have some knowledge about the original story, are there any homages in the new story harkening back to the original? GEORGE: Interestingly, if they want to see an homage to the basic style of the original JLA/Avengers, all they have to do is look at Crisis on Infinite Earths. There were a lot of similarities in the story structures there. But there is definitely a tribute to the original story that never was, including a reference to it—I believe it’s in issue #3—

wherein it’s referred to as a past adventure with the JLA and Avengers. How that happens is something they’ll find out when they read the book. So I get to draw my homage to my cover for Comics Interview with the two teams facing each other. Yes, there is an acknowledgement and tribute to the original story and the characters are dressed as they were at the time. The funny thing about drawing that homage was that I realized how much I had changed as an artist over almost 20 years. The arms are too short, the ears aren’t quite in the right place here, and here I am trying to slightly correct myself from 20 years ago without going so far that it doesn’t look like an homage anymore. If I correct all the anatomies, then the arms would now be covering something that they weren’t covering before. MM: The only other time I can remember you drawing an homage to your own work was the Mighty Mouse cover with the death of Supergirl pose. GEORGE: Right, and I didn’t have to worry about anatomy with that one. That might 81

Previous Page Top: Long before JLA/Avengers, the Avengers crossed paths with the Squadron Supreme (nee Squadron Sinister) who were JLA dopplegangers. Avengers #148, page 1(inked by Sam Grainger) and the more recent Avengers v3, #6, page 11 (inked by Al Vey). Previous Page Bottom: This 2002 piece was done for a charity auction. Left: One of the most highly anticipated matchups of JLA/Avengers is depicted in this 2002 commission piece. Below: Cover art for Comics Interview #6. Batman, Justice League ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Avengers, Captain America, Squadron Supreme ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Right: Runner-up for “Most Anticipated Match-up,” Superman vs. Thor in another 2002 commission piece. Below: CrossGen Chronicles #2, pages 7 and 8. Inks by Dennis Jensen. Next Page Top: CrossGen Chronicles #2, pages 17 and 18. Inks by Dennis Jensen. Next Page Bottom: Cover art for CrossGen Chronicles #3. Inks by Bob Wiacek.

be the only homage to my own work. I’ve done some for private commissions, and of course I’ve done homages to other people’s covers. MM: Going back to CrossGen Chronicles, you hadn’t really done any other fantasy work besides Swordquest. Did you have to change your approach at all or were you able to apply the same techniques you use in your superhero work? GEORGE: I found that fantasy was a much better fit for me than I originally anticipated. One of the things that makes the fantasy stuff and the superhero stuff different is the highly exaggerated action. I found that as long as I remembered my Curt Swan influences, the DC influences from when I was growing up, I was able to tone it down enough so that it wouldn’t look out of place in a story that should have a sense of real people in a fantastic setting. All my years as a movie fan—as a Ray Harryhausen fan, Hitchcock, Ford, all these great directors—allowed me to be able to just tell stories. It was very liberating; I enjoyed it immensely. Which is why I have

no regrets at signing on as an employee of CrossGen, because, yes, it is a good fit. I had a great time doing the pirate story—though boats aren’t exactly my bread-and-butter—drawing these fantasy-like galleons with hundreds of crew members and a war and just the entire Errol Flynn—à là Philip K. Dick or something [laughter]— approach to a story. I had an even better time when I did the Meridian story, because of the Alice in Wonderland type of feel to it. That was even more fantasy-oriented than the seafaring story spinning off from the Scion series. So I knew at that point

there wasn’t going to be the same problems there were at Tekno and Malibu. Of course, the great safety net I had was JLA/Avengers, so if I ever got tired I had the ultimate superhero book to get my fix of that type of action. I was getting the best of both worlds. I had a great time working on CrossGen Chronicles. It was a nice way of doing different types of stories and stretching both my artistic and my compositional muscles a bit. MM: You did a lot of interesting things with the layouts in that series, particularly issues #2 and #3. Did the quarterly schedule allow the time to experiment more?

There are times, like in the case of the first CrossGen Chronicles book, in the original plot by Ron Marz, I had three double-page spreads in a row, which I railed against. “No, no, no, wait a minute. I can’t have everybody screaming in this. I have to pull it back.” I found ways of doing the stories without always going to a double-pager. But the stories and plots are that broad. There was a lot of stuff in Barbara’s story, so I didn’t have as many places to put big, big scenes. But even then there were quite a few pages that had nice vistas. There was the double-pager that had the fair, where Barbara suggested a few things and I could take whichever ones I wanted. Of course, not much to her surprise, I used everything she mentioned. [laughter] I left out one thing, but I replaced it with another. [laughter] That was a benefit of a quarterly schedule. In doing a monthly I knew I’d have to resort to a few tricks to be able to get it out. There are much larger characters on some pages. What I probably would have done as a single page for another book I spread out to two, because there’s room in the storytelling and it’s the only way I can keep a monthly schedule. The amazing thing is how few people actually notice.

GEORGE: Yes, the quarterly schedule helped a lot. That’s the challenge of doing Solus now, I’m working on a monthly schedule. You can only do so much noodling, as it were. Also one of the things that’s different in the entire CrossGen line is that their stories tend to be longer arcs, wherein they sometimes have deceptively little going on in an issue—sometimes there is little that’s going on because that’s the way they like to pace it—so there’s a lot of room for really large scenes. Avengers, because of the number of characters I wanted to spotlight, even when Kurt tried to open up the book I kind of closed it up on him by putting in more panels. On most of the CrossGen books the casts are a good deal smaller and most of the time unfamiliar to me, so I can’t really do as much personality stuff because I don’t understand them enough to do so. So I just give them a nice broad canvas. 83

still has to go on. I only have 192 pages for that story. [laughter] MM: Solus in a way harkens back to BreakThru in that you’re working on the book that ties the universe together.

Above: CrossGen Chronicles #3, page 1. Inks by Mike Perkins. Right: CrossGen Chronicles #3, page 12. Inks by Mike Perkins.

One of the things I have going for me is 29 years of experience. So a large scene to me is easy. Another person might have had a harder time coming up with something that dynamic. For me, I can do something that large and that dynamic and it’s very easy. It’s the subtle stuff, the more intricate stuff, the extra detail that’s synonymous with my style, but really it’s the big, broad stuff that’s part of what’s kept me popular— the fact that I can do a lot of detail work but never lose the bigger-than-life aspect of what comic books can do. The bigger and grander I draw, the more the fans seem to like it. There are a few double-pagers in JLA/Avengers, but many of them have panels inserted in them, because, hey, the story 84

GEORGE: Yes, and actually, after a while that became a burden I wasn’t as happy with. We had discussions and I think we’re going to be addressing it. I wanted to something wherein I got to do—like CrossGen Chronicles—a lot of different types of stories. But even I did not know until the series had already started how much of a linchpin—in their own words—to the rest of the CrossGen universe the book would be. It’s a responsibility I didn’t anticipate and after a while started railing against, because I really didn’t want to do something similar to when I was on Superman, wherein I didn’t feel like I was doing a complete story because the story may taper off into another series. Depending on how my schedule is, I may be drawing a scene that has been contradictorily drawn by someone else or either of us would be waiting for the other because it’s the same scene. That’s the type of stuff I, frankly, don’t enjoy. I spoke to Barbara about that and that it wasn’t exactly what I had in mind, but after later finding out what CrossGen has in mind for it I now know why they hired me. What I thought was just a burden is actually a compliment. A linchpin book where everything ties in, if they didn’t have an artist that people wanted to see, it could really tank. If people pick it up because it’s a George Pérez book it might spin them off to other CrossGen books. Hopefully they’ll enjoy the book either way, but if I weren’t on the book they might not even pick it up. When I wanted to do a monthly title, it really wasn’t my intention or desire to be the hub for the CrossGen universe, but now that I’ve had a chance to mull it over I’ve started to understand the decision more. It was my own decision not to be involved in the creation of the series, because I was still working on JLA/Avengers and I just didn’t want to be part of that. I wasn’t even a part of it when I was working on Avengers. Kurt and Tom were the ones

who had to go through the headaches of putting a story together; I just added my two cents with the characterization. In Solus that’s a little tougher because I don’t understand the characters yet. They’re new characters and I don’t read the CrossGen titles. That’s not a slam against the CrossGen titles, I didn’t read the Avengers when I drew the book. I, frankly, don’t read too many comics any more. So a lot of the things that are second nature to Barbara are totally alien to me. When she throws names into the plot, I have no idea who she’s talking about. The learning curve is very high. When I was doing CrossGen Chronicles the company was only a little over a year old. There’s a lot more in the CrossGen universe now. They have some big plans afoot for Solus and for me, so I’m putting my trust in them. Once the CrossGen work is the only thing on my plate, I may go in a little more seriously from the story point of view as opposed to just being there as an artist, just to understand what the hell I’m doing. But judging by reaction from the CrossGen fans, they seem to be happy with my work there. If they have any complaints it’s that it’s a little confusing as a story, and I feel so great because that’s not something I’m guilty of. I don’t know what’s going on either! [laughter] I am the Lindy character from Solus, the character that

doesn’t know what the hell is going on around her. That’s probably why she’s my favorite character. One of the great things on this book—and all CrossGen books, which is unique to the company—is that I and the entire creative team, in addition to editorial, are involved in the proofreading of each issue. We get to see the finished product and make any corrections before it goes out. Everything from punctuation to color changes—the only thing that can’t be changed is the line art. But to have that kind of final say on a regular title is very unique. I didn’t read Avengers, but I have to read this one. [laughter] MM: So far in Solus, each issue’s been a different world with a self-contained story. Down the line will there be longer arcs set within a single world? GEORGE: I hope so, because I don’t want it to be a super-hero, science-fiction version of The Fugitive where you have a character roaming from story to story and leaving each episode. MM: Quantum Leap may be more accurate. GEORGE: Quantum Leap, exactly, wherein everything’s self-contained and then he’s out of there. Even if you have an interest in the characters in the new story, there’s no real investment in them because they’re gone and you’ll never see them again. CrossGen has worlds that are established, but you can only do so much with them because you don’t want to bring about the resentment of the fans of the regular series. Solus is a book with a plan—I know some of it, but I cannot tell—that involves the entire CG universe. I understand where things are going now. Again, it’s not their fault I’m not at the meetings. [laughter] I live two-and-a-half hours away. MM: Does having to design a new costume for the lead character, Andra, each issue slow you down at all? GEORGE: It slows me down only when I have to draw covers. Covers are drawn way ahead of schedule for solicitation purposes, and there’s only so far ahead Barbara can work; she also has other books to do. So there are times when I know the basic idea of what is going to be done without having the faintest idea of what the lead character is wearing. There’s one cover where I’ve designed it, but I haven’t drawn it yet because I don’t know what she’s wearing in that issue. That is a bit of a frustration. I don’t have a default for the lead. In fact the costume I used on the cover of this book was originally what I thought was going to be her default costume. That costume was designed when the concept was different. As it turns out, it was a costume she doesn’t wear except for the first issue and if she ever goes back to Heliotrope, to Lindy’s world. I wanted to get ahead on covers for a change, but I can’t. 85

going to be in, whether it’s a new one or an established one, and then I have nowhere to go. On one of the covers we did a big, big closeup of Andra’s face. Not only because I wasn’t sure what she was going to be wearing, but I wasn’t sure what the story was about. Barbara came up and said, “Here’s an idea for a cover,” and if I had known what the story was about I might have chosen a totally different type of cover. Unless I’m working five months ahead of schedule—like that’s ever going to happen [laughter]—I’m caught with being a bit blind as to what my artistic options are for cover designs from issue to issue. MM: Solus appears to have a definite direction the story is heading. Is it meant to be a finite series?

Above: Cover art for Wizard #121’s CrossGen Special. Inks by John Dell. Next Page Top: This self-illo was drawn for an article which appeared in the Orlando Sentinel. Next Page Bottom: Lovely headshot of Wonder Girl. Batman, Starfire, Superman, Wonder Girl, Wonder Woman ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Captain America, Hulk, Human Torch, Iron Man, Spider-Man ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Arwyn, all characters ™ and ©2003 CrossGen Intellectual Property.

MM: I assume that when Andra visits an established world that you look through issues of that series— GEORGE: To get a style sense, sure. And some of those are a lot of fun. Different artists have different ways of doing costumes, and I have to evoke Steve Epting from Crux, I’ll be doing Brandon Peterson from Mystic—even though he hasn’t drawn the book, his is the style that everyone follows—and the same thing with Brath and Andre DeVito’s stuff. So I do do research, and she’s supposed to be wearing something that’s evocative of that but not exactly that, so I have some freedom. It’s only frustrating when I do a cover and I don’t even know what world she’s 86

GEORGE: That I’m not at liberty to say. There was talk of it being finite, there was talk of being a series that would just change along the way. We have not made a definite decision, but at CrossGen things are pretty much unpredictable. Characters live and die like crazy. With the exception of titles more recently, like Brath, none of the CrossGen books are named after their lead characters, which means even lead characters might die. I frankly don’t know yet what the future is for the two leads of Solus. That’s another thing that sounds strange—I have two leads. I have no supporting cast! [laughter] It’s the smallest cast I’ve ever worked with on a regular basis. MM: So Andra and Lindy are both seen as leads? GEORGE: I consider Lindy as much of a lead as Andra. Andra, of course, has the most to do with the CrossGen universe and what happens to it, but to me Lindy— if she wasn’t there, no one would know what’s going on. MM: So she’s not just a female Rick Jones. GEORGE: She’s Dr. Watson to Andra’s Sherlock Holmes, where Watson is there to explain what Holmes is doing.

Part 6:

Storytelling and the Creative Process nice, little, inbred society. [laughter] So I think I’ve learned more. My characterization on faces is better— not that I didn’t do good faces, but I think I draw more realistic faces now. That’s my Crimson Plague by-product. As far as storytelling is concerned, I probably was inspired by many other comic artists. There are things I can do now because I’m a better artist and I’m more comfortable doing them now.

MM: You said going back and looking at the original JLA/Avengers you see how much you’ve developed over the years. In what ways do you feel your style has developed as far as your figure drawing and your overall approach to a page? Is it a matter of keeping a similar approach but refining your skills?

GEORGE: I think it’s more refining skills and learning more. One of the things of not having a formal artistic education is that my foundation was a little weak, so I was building up on it little by little. Subtle things like how to draw the musculature on bodies, proportions, how blacks can be used to create mass, how to mold the body. Those are the things I was learning as I was going along. Using the example of JLA/Avengers from 20 years ago to now, when I was doing JLA/Avengers I was still primarily doing the Teen Titans book. My characters tended to be a little light. I notice my legs looked a little thin. I didn’t throw bodies into perspective as much as I should have. Although I did do it, I wasn’t as comfortable with it as I have later become. Also other artists have come into the field since then who have inspired me in various ways. The entire Image school, for lack of a better term, did not exist when I did JLA/Avengers, and there are certain positive things I picked up from them— which, of course, they say they picked up from me. It’s a

MM: Logan’s Run is where you started using photo reference and you were using it very heavily then and again in Crimson Plague. What about the projects in between? When do you typically use photo reference? GEORGE: I started to use reference particularly for things in the real world, because otherwise super-heroes have nothing to look super-heroic against. For vehicles and the like I would try to get reference, because I can’t draw vehicles from memory. I have no real love for mechanics, so I don’t have an understanding of how they’re built and I have to have some kind of reference to draw the basic linework. Putting characters into “real” backgrounds as opposed to always, what I call, Kirby backgrounds—Jack created all these incredible buildings, but none of them really existed. I try to find a mixture where I put real buildings with some sense of real architecture to define even the fictional building so they’re not quite as outlandish or “Wow, look at all the great brickwork. Where are the windows?” And remembering now that when I do downshots that it’s not just draw just buildings, but remembering the fact that there are streets down there. With folds in clothing, by using photographs for things like that, then I’m doing my interpretation of reality as opposed to doing my interpretation of another artist’s interpretation. If I needed a photograph for a reference for a background and traced the photo on a lightbox and then did all the drawing, I’m still drawing the background. I haven’t copied anybody’s artwork by doing that. I’ve 87

Below: While they’re not in a Miss America pageant and they’re not exactly Amazons, this 2001 commission piece is an excellent display of how George differentiates between the women he draws. Upper Right: Unused design sketches for Titans character, Azrael, which were abandoned when José Luis Garcia-Lopez came on board as the new penciler. Lower Right: Wonder Woman visits “the other side of the island” in this 2001 drawing.

taken a recognized shortcut, as artists have done even for drawing portraits. I hated to swipe, but I could swipe from a photo since I was still drawing the thing. That was one of the reasons I kept the Wonder Woman series in Boston. It challenged me to draw her in a real environment. I could play as much as I wanted with Themyscira, but Boston gave me a sense that Wonder Woman was in a real world and that I should try very hard to keep her real. It was a need to be able to diversify. If I hadn’t made a conscious effort to draw things realistically, to use photo references, I don’t think I would be comfortable working for CrossGen, where subtlety is a bit more necessary. All the artists I appreciate on that level—Curt Swan, Neal Adams, Wally Wood, all those people—they all used photo references to learn. MM: With the work at CrossGen, is the photo reference used to make the fantasy settings seem more real? GEORGE: I seem to be channeling more

movie art direction, I guess, depending on the type of world. The most recent issue of Solus—#4—I was harkening back to art deco science fiction, 1950s science fiction, which is what also inspired Carmine Infantino, Gil Kane, Steve Ditko. So people were seeing a lot of that in there. Yes, I was channeling them, but with the knowledge they were filtering the 1950s sci-fi look of the time. It was real only in the sense of an art director’s view of what the future was going to look like. One character I drew—just to give him a distinct face—I imagined as a Jewish friend of mine who has what people would consider a stereotypical Jewish face. His was the face I chose; he just happened to be Jewish. I have a much broader view of what is beautiful, what is handsome, and it isn’t always the cookie-cutter face, even on the super-hero. I gave characters broken noses, or a slightly effeminate lip. They had to look different from each other. I compare it to a Miss America pageant. After a while, if you look at enough Miss America

pageants, they all look alike, unless you really look at their faces and realize they are similar, but they are obviously different women. That’s the whole idea I used when I did the Amazons on Paradise Island. A woman could have a slightly more aquiline nose, or her cheek bones might be a little too roundish, but they’ll still be attractive, because the Amazons are described as beautiful women. But just because they’re beautiful women, they don’t all have to look like Barbie. So using photo reference—shooting from life, as it were—has helped in developing my style along the way. I started with Curt Swan, who was very much the Norman Rockwell of comics, and went away from that into the Kirby phase when I joined Marvel—everything bigger than life, everything caricatured to a great degree, not very much reality, mostly stylization—and then went to DC and went back to a more naturalistic style, taking all the things I learned in my Marvel years and finding a way of marrying them to each other. I can do a story that is subtle and do it well. I can do a story that is impossibly grandiose and do it well. I can apply myself to various kinds of stories which I never could have done 25 years ago, even 20 years ago. I don’t think I knew enough about shadow work that I could have done a convincing horror story in those days; I think I can now.

to explain the cave where the demons were. MM: You often worked with large casts of characters. Did you ever have to keep a chart of what certain characters looked like? GEORGE: I kept xeroxes of my work, so I would refer to my own previous pages as opposed to doing character sheets. I do very little separate design work unless I’m requested to. The Titans were designed on separate sheets, but for the most part, once I’m on a series I don’t have much time to worry about doing design work. I will draw them on board and make sure I draw the characters in various angles, so I can refer to those story pages later. The same thing with laying out a page. Many artists do thumbnails and then blow them up and go over them. I very seldom do that. I did do that on a few pages when I was doing the Titans graphic novel. In the case of the JLA/Avengers, only once in the entire bulk of pages drawn did I ever do a thumbnail, because I was trying to compress a three-page sequence into two. I wanted to see if I could do it, so I did it as a thumbnail first because there was going to be a lot of trial-and-error. But for the most part I go directly to board. A lot of artists, particularly newer artists, find that amazing that I do not do any separate thinking or design work. I pretty much have a good idea how I will design a page when I start. There are not many changes; the only erasures in composition might be because the head is too high and I need room for dialogue, so it means moving the border a bit to allow the writer a place to write.

MM: With something like Themyscira, or any other large setting you use over and over, do you ever map out where things are for story continuity purposes? GEORGE: I didn’t map Themyscira out rigidly, because I like the idea of a certain amount of freedom. I did do an establishing shot looking down so we knew where the main buildings were, but I didn’t show the entire island—not only to free myself, but to free anyone else who ended up taking over the series afterwards. You saw the one side that had all the buildings, but you never saw the other side. When I wanted a scene with a field and there’s no room with all the buildings on top of each other, it was on the other side of the island. That’s where they always went on Gilligan’s Island—the other side of the island. [laughter] It left things open. In my mind I had certain set places I knew I would always go back to— the infirmary, the oracle’s chamber, the queen’s palace, and the hallway of fallen heroes. There had to be an “other side of the island,” because that’s the only way 89

MM: On those rare occasions when you know you’re going to be inking yourself, how loose do your pencils get?

Above: Rough layout for a Superman anniversary poster. Right: George’s take on Mike Mignola’s Hellboy in a 2001 commission piece. Next Page: Pencils and inks for Avengers v3, #23, pages 9 (top) and 19 (bottom). Notice in the bottom-left panel of page 9 the changes made to T’Challa’s face to reflect his then-current look. On page 19 you can see that in some cases even George “X”s in the blacks. Inks by Al Vey. Superman ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Avengers ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc. Hellboy ™ and ©2003 Mike Mignola.

GEORGE: Well, I tend to pencil just as tightly for myself. There are other artists who can do a lot of their drawing in the ink. I’m not that comfortable doing my drawing in the ink. I’d rather erase with an eraser than correct with white-out. The only concessions I make on a monthly title is I pencil a little looser—I fill in all the blacks—because otherwise I could never get the book done. But there is enough for any other inker to work with. I want it as wrench-tight as I can make it for myself, because I’m not so confident in my line that I would trust it to be done solely in ink. I want all the interpretation to be done in pencil. People who have seen the xerox pages of JLA/Avengers are surprised at how wrench-tight they are—sometimes ridiculously tight, where I’m filling in blacks where I could just put “X”s in. I do that just so I have an idea of what the weight of the characters looks like. I don’t have the ability of someone like Mike Mignola who knows in his mind how everything is going to look in black-&-white. He does such high contrast work, yet when I look at his originals his black areas are just “X”ed out. He knows how the black and white areas are going to balance. I need to actually see it, so I tend to over-render on the pencils. When I go to ink the big black areas I have to erase so the ink doesn’t just lie on it like an oil slick. 90

In some cases pencil can only go so fine. The tiny faces are the things where I do some of the drawing in ink, because I can’t get as much detail in my pencil as I can with a really, really fine quill—I use the finest tipped quill I can. MM: So when you ink, you generally follow your pencils very closely. GEORGE: Even the layouts I would give someone like Al Vey—which by other people’s descriptions might be other artists’ full pencils—I consider a little too loose for inking myself. I think it’s overthinking on my part, because when I ink other artists—even though his work was fairly tight, Dan Jurgens’ pencils were his layouts and he said there was room for interpretation—I don’t seem to have as much trouble drawing on somebody else’s work and adding my own touches. It’s a strange double-standard I put on myself. MM: You’ve inked some big names—Curt Swan, Gil Kane. When you’re inking someone like that, do they still expect you to put in the George Pérez touch? GEORGE: Depending on who the artist is—some of them, it’s just a job and they don’t care. When Dan Jurgens hired me, of course, he was expecting the George Pérez touch on it.

Other artists—like when I inked Carmine or Curt Swan—I don’t think they had any kind of expectations or even knew I was inking it. When I inked Curt Swan on “Whatever Happened to the Man of Tomorrow?” I put in all these extra little flourishes which sometimes worked and sometimes may have gone a little overboard. But in the end what mattered to me was that Curt Swan loved it. I’ve been inked by other people and one of the things that every penciler appreciates is when the inker has put his best effort into it and tried to honor the pencils. At no time did I try to redraw a Curt Swan face. Faces are the one thing I am very careful about. I don’t like when the faces I’ve drawn are redrawn— unless it’s editorially mandated—so I am incredibly careful of adding my own flourishes to other pencilers’ faces. Sometimes I have a specific reason why I drew a face a certain way, so I’d like the inker to at least honor that. If they can bring in something that makes it a little better and stays within the basic framework of the face, that’s fine. Jerry Ordway did some marvellous stuff with shadow work which I was not skilled enough at the time I drew Crisis to have done on my own, but have since learned from. Then, of course, I didn’t mind it. There were some places where I thought it might be a little too Jerry Ordway—it didn’t look as much Pérez. But there were other pages where it was definitely my face and Jerry Ordway added his finesse to it. I heard someone mention when he came in as a penciler and hired a specific inker, he was disappointed when the inker was so faithful to his pencils it didn’t look like the inker contributed anything. His pencils were there, but the reason the inker was hired was because the inker had a certain style they wanted to use. When they hire me as an inker, they know they’re expecting to get a very chiseled, high-detailed interpretation of their work. I’m flattered when anyone asks. I love inking. I wish the business was different that I could earn a living just being an inker for a few years, but for better or for ill, it’s penciling that people want to see me do. MM: Have you ever had colorists that weren’t able to work around all the detail you put in your work? GEORGE: In the old days, yes, of course, because the printing and the coloring was so different. The limits of how much you could color and how well it would reproduce made that a nightmare. I didn’t think a lot of my work looked really good in those days. I may have been a bit ahead of my time—I had to wait for technology to catch up with me. MM: At any point during that time, did you ever consider simplifying your work to have it work better with color? GEORGE: Once I simplified my work, to me it just ended up looking like a coloring book. One of the toughest parts is that when I drew my work I didn’t think of color all that much. I was drawing just to see what the finished artwork would look like on my end, because if the coloring was bad, at least the linework held up. 92

Previous Page: Over the years George has had the opportunity to ink many of his influences, such as Gil Kane—as seen here in the cover of Jurassic Park #3—and John Buscema—as seen here in the back cover of Rune/Silver Surfer #1. Left: George inked John Byrne’s pencils for Action #600. Shown here are the cover and page 28 of that issue. Below: George penciled this cover to Action Annual #2, which was later inked by Jerry Ordway.

Now the opposite is true. Certain things I no longer draw. I no longer draw clouds in the sky; a colorist can paint clouds a lot better. Sometimes I might put in an outline if I want the clouds to have a certain shape, but they paint over that. Certain effects I don’t have to do anymore. In the old days, the relationship between the penciler and the inker was important and the colorists were kind of an add-on. They were there in order to provide a color comic, they weren’t always the greatest of storytellers. Now coloring is so much a part of storytelling, that colorists are becoming recognized participants in the storytelling process. When computer coloring came in, for a while people were just dazzled by the idea of, “Ooh, we can do millions and millions of colors.” So we got some incredibly garish and flamboyant pages that on their own worked fine— sometimes beautifully—but didn’t tell the story. Eventually the real artists proved how you can use this technology and make it work for the medium. Now you’re finding a whole crop of great graphic artists who are coming in who understand storytelling and aren’t always bound by the old traditions of comic book coloring. They’re creating a whole new language. People

who have been coloring comics for years are being reeducated. Now the relationship between the penciler, inker, and the colorist is very, very important. CrossGen is a company that recognizes that, which is why the coloring department is so highly recognized, so highly respected. They are as much a part of the creative process— including being in on storytelling sessions— as anyone on the creative team. That way they can understand what the story is and create a color scheme for it. In JLA/Avengers the challenge is you have so many characters that are all wearing primary colors. So how do you work primary colors into the story, and if they take 93

Rick and Larry get through with it. When I ink myself I can’t control it; I’ve got to noodle anyway. Tom doesn’t have to put as much texturing into the coloring on JLA/Avengers, because I’m inking all that stuff on my own. It’s the old school in me.

up all the primary colors, what naturalized colors can you use in the backgrounds and still make it dynamic looking? It’s interesting to look at the JLA/Avengers coloring Tom Smith is doing and the Solus coloring that Larry Molinar is doing and seeing that Larry has a lot more freedom with what he can do because we’re creating worlds.

MM: You’ve designed many characters over the years and you try to give each one a very individual look. Do you ever get stuck trying to come up with a look? How do you get around it if that happens?

MM: It used to be that the rule was everything that you need for the image to tell the story should be in the line art. Do you feel that that is not necessarily the case any more?

GEORGE: There are many times I feel stuck, and sometimes I think I have to be careful not to always make it look like George Pérez designed it. There are certain tastes that are my own that may not be other people’s tastes or may not serve the purpose of the character. Just because I like cleavage doesn’t mean the character should have cleavage. [laughter] When you’re working on a regular series and you’re designing so many things so quickly, you sometimes try to find a common denominator. I like bracelets because I think it cuts down the wrist a little and gives the guy power in the forearms. I also like belts. I know the late Gil Kane hated belts on characters— that’s why the Green Lantern is so nice and streamlined, and I think he was mandated to put a belt on the Atom. Some people don’t like capes; I like capes, because I like the flow, even though sometimes capes don’t work for a character so you have to pull back on them. If there’s anything that’s unique to my style, it’s that my costumes tend to have a lot of doodads on them, but then again so did Jack Kirby’s. Jack would sometimes change the costume from panel to panel as he would draw. I like a certain asymmetrical look, like in the case of Starfire—she has a bracelet on one arm and not on the other. I like diagonals, like when I created Troia, she had the one shoulder thing. I’m prejudiced towards long hair, because I like drawing long hair on women.

GEORGE: The line art can now be the guide. There are certain things—if I draw a hand firing a beam or something with a glow, Larry might feel free to remove the black line and just put the suggestion of the hand, because then it looks more fiery. There’s a scene in the first issue of Solus where I had the character flying out of a flame from what looked like an exploding nova in outer space. The original pencil-&-ink showed her as being made up of outer space—she was supposed to be in shadow with stars speckled in. By the time Larry got through with it, she looked like a fireball. He totally reinterpreted that, including modeling some of the body structure, since we had her as an outline she needed more modeling to give her a three-dimensional look. He came up with a concept that actually worked better. When I drew it I didn’t understand as much of the history of the character, that she’s supposed to be from this orange, glowing thing. When I have to put in blacks on the figure work and casting shadows, usually they stay sacrosanct. But with the Pérez rocks, the Pérez rubble, I would draw my old Jack Kirby/Joe Sinnott-inspired rocks, but now you do grain—or noise as it’s called—with the computer coloring which makes it even more rocky. Doing a monthly title, now I can get away not having to draw every single noodled grain into it knowing that it will look more like rock by the time 94

designed costume.” [laughter] MM: With your penchant for photo reference, do you try to keep up with fashion trends?

When I draw short hair, it’s because I have to consciously say not everyone has long hair. People’s clothing have patterns on them; not everything is flat. They also have extra business—it could be jewelry, it could be embroidery, whatever. I like that complicated look. There’s a sense of design, a sense of craftsmanship on it. Of course, in a comic you not only have to draw the character but color it, and the character then has to go on from panel to panel with all that extra detail. It was something that, while I liked it, it was a bit of a nightmare for other people to handle. Wonder Woman’s hair I made into waves and curls instead of her rather straight hair she had before. I thought it made her look more Greek and it was a lot more fun to draw. A lot more fun for me, a pain in the butt for other people. [laughter] I did the same thing with the Scarlet Witch, where her costume became a more complicated gypsy outfit. She had all the beads and chains and coins on her costume, and a very tightly-curled hairstyle. I like stuff that makes the character interesting, that you can never draw them half-heartedly or second-naturedly—I have to pay attention. Sometimes I would draw a page and spend half the time drawing hair, but it makes the characters more interesting to me. To me it adds a sense of reality that not everybody has the best taste, so some people are going to have flamboyant costumes. Of course, I could use that as an excuse for drawing a bad costume, “No, no, no. This guy just has bad taste. I knew he had bad taste, so I gave him a badly

GEORGE: I do that because my wife is very heavily into fashion—she’s a seamstress. When she saw my first issues of Titans when I met her—which would have been around issue #8—she was quick to point out, “These characters’ fashions are a good decade out of date.” Of course, all those books from 20 years ago are very trendy now. It’s amazing how cyclical fashion is. But my wife, Carol, made me more aware of real fashion. And what’s fashionable depends on who the characters are. Some characters are square and are not trendy, and some characters are the height of fashion, so you should be aware of modern fashions depending on the age of the character. One of the things you have to realize when you design a character and use modern fashion as your touchstone, you know that within five, ten years that costume is going to look very outdated. You hope to find a classic, middle-ofthe-road costume. Superman’s costume is garish—the trunks outside 95

Previous Page: A 1982 drawing of Starfire— notice the one armband—and commission piece of Troia, featuring her short-hair look. Left: These two commissioned headshots of Wonder Woman—both done in 2002—highlight the “waves and curls” in her hair that George felt “made her look more Greek.” Below: Scarlet Witch in her “more complicated gypsy outfit.” Starfire, Troia, Wonder Woman ™ and ©2003 DC Comics. Scarlet Witch ™ and ©2003 Marvel Characters, Inc.

was the characterization. Not necessarily the characterization of the lead character, but the reactions of the characters around him or her. I found those types of stories a lot of fun. As an artist I enjoyed drawing action, but as a writer I did it just to keep the conventions of a comics story in there. I think one critic described it pretty accurately that my work tends to be very fannish, because of the fact I dealt with the personalities more. I wasn’t as concerned with the normal progression of hitting particular action points in the story the way good comic book writers do. I think I did good comic writing on Wonder Woman because I had a specific vision of Wonder Woman—a certain thing that made her unique— that insular type of storytelling where I dealt a lot with characterization, with the world around her, with people’s reaction to her. I would have spotlight stories where it wasn’t about Wonder Woman, it was about people talking about Wonder Woman. Everything still centered around her—I didn’t lose my focus on the lead character—I just found delving into

the pants thing is something that people mock— but he’s iconic now. You can’t really change Superman without people screaming. It doesn’t matter what fashion dictates, it’s how Superman should look. When I was doing Wonder Woman, the proposals before mine had the idea of altering her costume. Well, they did that once with the Diana Riggs, powerless Wonder Woman deal. But I came in and said I would keep the costume and come up with an explanation as to why she wears it under the dictates of the story. As much as you’d like to play, you have to understand that fashions may change, but comics fans are pretty hard to move. [laughter] MM: I know you haven’t written much in a while, but you have written quite a few stories in your time. How did your approach to writing develop over the course of your career? GEORGE: The thing that was satisfying in my career as a writer—and frustrating— was that the thing that interested me more 96

the mind was more exciting than just finding a way of choreographing the next fight. What worked with Wonder Woman I don’t think worked well when I first started on Superman. Silver Surfer was the same thing; I was deconstructing the Silver Surfer as a character. It was a feeling that all the action stuff had pretty much been done. Drawing him away to the other side of the universe— as Mark Gruenwald used to say, “The universe is so large, but he always seems to be going to the same places”—where they’d never heard of him and playing with that, and stripping him of everything that makes him unique so we could study what makes him unique—that’s the stuff I like. I don’t know if they actually make good comics—at least good-selling comics. Thankfully, Wonder Woman was iconic, and while I was drawing the book people were willing to forgive me my excesses. [laughter] When you are a writer, you are the one that has to come in with an idea and then

Previous Page Top: Breakdowns for Action #643, page 13. Brett Breeding later finished the artwork. Previous Page Bottom: Commission of Wonder Woman in her go-go outfit, which she wore during her powerless phase. Left: Layout for the cover of Batman #437. Below: Layouts from pages 3 and 9 of New Titans #59, later to be penciled by Tom Grummett and inked by Bob McLeod. All characters ™ and ©2003 DC Comics.

you watch as other people start tearing it down. You kind of feel like your child is being criticized or bullied. “Your child can’t sing,” or, “Your son is going to have to be left back in school”—you get very defensive. Whereas when I draw something they say, “Oh, that’s cool,” and that’s pretty much it. [laughter] As a storyteller, I can get my jollies through adding storytelling elements in the artwork. When I first started writing, another writer came up to me and said, “Well, I guess you’ll never be working with a writer again,” because so many artists, when they start writing their own stuff, that’s pretty much it. But I like the challenge of the collaborative process. I like the surprise elements of working with another writer, because they may come up with something I’d never think of, and then I have to find a way of surprising them. MM: What do you think of the current trend of writing specific arc lengths with the idea of the story becoming a trade paperback. Is that something you would be comfortable doing? GEORGE: If I were writing that way, I would feel uncomfortable with it. I think it straitjackets creativity when everything just becomes a 98

story arc, where if you want to do a stand-alone story you have to see how it would work as part of a six-part package. It’s another reason why I don’t want to write anymore. I like the idea of spreading the market out a little further, but it’s like the tail wagging the dog— now we’re writing it for that purpose as opposed to doing some good stories and saying, “Ooh, these are so great, let’s collect them.” But I can’t deny the need to get books out in a different format so that other people will be willing to read it—people who wouldn’t be desirous of picking up a monthly series. There are pros and cons—aiming everything towards that I don’t think is the best way to go, but quite honestly, I can’t think of another way around it.

George Pérez

Art Gallery

100

Colossal Covers

101

Classic Confrontations

105

106

107

108

Charming Couples

109

Fantastic Family

111

112

Avengers Assemble

114

115

116

The Hall of Justice

117

118

Titans Together

119

120

Cross-Company Conflict

121

122

Pure Cheesecake

123

Bring on the Baddies

124

126

The End

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MIKE WIERINGO

KEVIN MAGUIRE

by Jorge Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $5.95

by Jon B. Cooke & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $15.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905566 Diamond Order Code: FEB063354

by Roger Ash & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $5.95

by Todd DeZago & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905658 Diamond Order Code: AUG063626

by Jorge Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905665 Diamond Order Code: OCT063722

More volumes are coming soon! Go to www.twomorrows.com for updates!

CHARLES VESS

MICHAEL GOLDEN

JERRY ORDWAY

FRANK CHO

MARK SCHULTZ

by Christopher Irving & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905696 Diamond Order Code: DEC063948

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905740 Diamond Order Code: APR074023

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905795 Diamond Order Code: JUN073926

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905849 Diamond Order Code: JUL091086

by Fred Perry & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905856 Diamond Order Code: OCT073846

MIKE ALLRED

LEE WEEKS

JOHN ROMITA JR.

MIKE PLOOG

KYLE BAKER

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905863 Diamond Order Code: JAN083937

by Tom Field & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905948 Diamond Order Code: MAR084009

by Jorge Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington (128-page trade paperback) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781893905955 Diamond Order Code: MAY084166

by Roger Ash & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490076 Diamond Order Code: SEP084304

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490083 Diamond Order Code: SEP084305

CHRIS SPROUSE

MARK BUCKINGHAM

GUY DAVIS

JEFF SMITH

FRAZER IRVING

by Todd DeZago & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $14.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 97801605490137 Diamond Order Code: NOV084298

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490144 Diamond Order Code: NOV090929

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490236 Diamond Order Code: AUG091083

by Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490243 Diamond Order Code: DEC101098

by Nathan Wilson & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490397

RON GARNEY by Jorge Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490403 Diamond Order Code: OCT111232

CLIFF CHIANG ERIC POWELL by Jorge Khoury & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490410 Diamond Order Code: APR121242

by Chris Arrant & Eric Nolen-Weathington (120-page TPB with COLOR) $15.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 ISBN: 9781605490502 Diamond Order Code: OCT131328

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

BACK ISSUE

ALTER EGO

82658 97073

COMIC BOOK CREATOR

DRAW!

JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

BOOKS FROM TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING AMERICAN COMIC BOOK CHRONICLES: The 1950s

BILL SCHELLY tackles comics of the Atomic Era of Marilyn Monroe and Elvis! (240-pages) $40.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.95 • ISBN: 9781605490540

1960-64 and 1965-69

JOHN WELLS covers two volumes on 1960s MARVEL COMICS, Wally Wood’s TOWER COMICS, CHARLTON, BATMAN TV SHOW, and more! 1960-64: (224-pages) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-045-8 1965-69: (224-pages) $39.95 • (Digital Edition) $11.95 ISBN: 9781605490557

The 1970s

JASON SACKS & KEITH DALLAS on comics’ emerging Bronze Age! (240-pages) $40.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.95 • ISBN: 9781605490564

us new Ambitio FULLseries of DCOVERS AR COLOR H nting each e m cu o d f comic decade o tory! book his

The 1980s

KEITH DALLAS documents comics’ 1980s Reagan years! (288-pages) $41.95 • (Digital Edition) $13.95 • ISBN: 978-1-60549-046-5

AGE OF TV HEROES Examining the history of the live-action television adventures of everyone’s favorite comic book heroes, featuring the in-depth stories of the shows’ actors and behind-the-scenes players! (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95

MARVEL COMICS:

LOU SCHEIMER

VOLUMES ON THE 1960s & 1970s

CREATING THE FILMATION GENERATION

Issue-by-issue field guides to the pop culture phenomenon of LEE, KIRBY, DITKO, and others, from the company’s fumbling beginnings to the full maturity of its wild, colorful, offbeat grandiosity!

Biography of the co-founder of Filmation Studios, which for over 25 years brought the Archies, Shazam, Isis, He-Man, and others to TV and film!

(224-page trade paperbacks) $27.95

(288-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29.95

HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT

Shows step-by-step how to develop a new comic, from script and art, to printing and distribution! (108-page trade paperback with COLOR) $15.95 (bundle with companion DVD) $29.95

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

GEORGE PÉREZ George Pérez is one of the most popular and influential comic book artists of his time. His career spans almost thirty years, during which he has drawn nearly every existing Marvel and DC Comics character, as well as quite a few others. His vast body of work includes AVENGERS, FANTASTIC FOUR, JUSTICE LEAGUE OF AMERICA, NEW TEEN TITANS, CRISIS ON INFINITE EARTHS, and WONDER WOMAN. He is also the artist of the most highly anticipated event in comics history, JLA/AVENGERS. But it is his flair for great storytelling and his unparalleled attention to detail that make George Pérez 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.