I Have To Live With This Guy! by TwoMorrows Publishing

“I HAve To

LIVE With This Guy!”

by Blake Bell

Featuring: The lives of the Partners & wives of top comics creators!

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TwoMorrows.Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

“I HAve Too

LIVE With This Guy!” by Blake Bell

C HA P T E R a n d V E R S E THE TRENCHES

1. Adrienne & Gene Colan 2. Virginia & John Romita 3. Lindy & Dick Ayers, Loretta & Ric Estrada

- 6 - 24 - 38

THE THREE WISE MEN

4 . A n n & Wi l l Ei s n e r, M u r i e l & J o e Ku b e r t , J o a n i e & S t a n Le e

- 54

THE MAN WHO WOULD BE KING

5 . A d e l e & Ha r v e y Ku r t z m a n

- 84

Published by TwoMorrows Publishing, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605 919-833-8092 • www.twomorrows.com ©2002 Blake Bell & TwoMorrows Publishing ISBN 1-893905-16-0 First printing, September 2002 • Printed in Canada All reproductions in this book are copyright by the respective copyright holders, as indicated in conjunction with the individual illustrations, and are used here strictly for historical purposes. All prominent characters are trademarks of their respective holders. The views expressed herein are not necessarily those of the publisher. 2

LOSS

6 . J o s i e & Da n D e C a r l o 7. A n n e T. M u r p h y & A r c h i e G o o d wi n

- 1 02 - 116

INDIE , UNDER , OUTIE

8 . D e n i Lo u b e r t & Dav e S i m 9. Melinda Gebbie & Alan Moore 1 0. Ed S e d a r b a u m & H o wa rd C r u s e

- 12 6 - 148 - 164

FROM HERE TO ETERNITY

1 1. J a c k i e Es t r a d a & B a t t o n L a s h 12 . J u l i e & Dav e C o o p e r

- 178 - 19 6

Cover art adapted from Bill Everett cover to Spellbound #2 (Apr. 1952). Original image ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. Pg 1 image from Bill Everett cover to Adventures Into Weird Worlds #6 (May 1952). Original image ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc. Cover Design by Blake Bell and John Morrow Interior Design by Blake Bell Production Assistance by Eric Nolen-Weathington

Dedicated to Luke and Jen on the homefront, Len and Corey for 20+ years of comic memories. 3

INTRODUCTION Trina Robbins really hates the idea of this book. She suffered under the misimpression that the book was a glorification of the male race in the comic book industry. The reality is this book is about partnership. I have no idea why men and women get married. If I was a woman, I’d view the entire edifice as one big sexist, repressive joke. As a man, I can’t escape the notion that it’s an arena men try so hard to enter, only to spend the majority of their time trying to escape. A priest once told me marriage had been implemented by religious and societal leaders to ensure you didn’t sin and you paid property taxes (the allusion being that a single person rents more, spends less, and can’t be categorized for easy census processing). As of this writing, I haven’t even signed a contract for the authoring of this book, so why would I sign one authoring the demise of precious independence? Comics are famous for its narrow gaze, missing the sleeping giant outside their door. The night of the Eisner Awards at the 2001 Comicon International: San Diego, I was fortunate enough to mingle with the aristocracy of the industry. While the men talked shop and swapped jokes, a story missing from this medium’s history was revealing itself. I will always be bored with other men because I’ve allegedly been one for over thirty years. All that night these creators clung to each other—most rarely seeing another artist until the same annual event—but if one looked close enough, one could peer into the eyes of their female partners to discover the naked truths about these creators and their lives together. Artists objective enough to dress themselves down without pretension—creators able to truly peel back their own layers—are a rare breed indeed. If you believe the majority to be of the ‘Absent Minded Professor’ variety, would they be even capable of such honest evaluation, if only due to the myopia forced upon them by toiling in an industry demanding fully-realized product on a monthly basis? You’ll read a great deal in the next two hundred pages about the hardships and struggles this industry can inflict on these (sensitive?) creative individuals. Yes, it is an industry whose corporate hierarchy views the artists making them wealthy as cogs, but please remember throughout that these artists truly love what they are doing and (with a few minor monetary adjustments) would be doing nothing else. As I watched artist Jill Thompson sprint up to the stage for every award won at that Awards show, the love of the medium is palpable. It, in spite of the industry, produces gems of creativity, but not without assistance, guidance, patience and friendship from the creators’ partners. This is not a book about spouses listing off the accomplishments of their creative partners. I could have queried the creators, or the history books, to bring you that dry tale. This is a tale of partnership in all its forms, in all its eras, in all its splendor.

CHAPTER ONE

ADRIENNE &

GENE COLAN

“If anybody could draw a hand on a doorknob and keep your interest, it would be Gene.” The above is a “rubber chicken dinner” line from Stan Lee, former editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics, but truer words have rarely been spoken about a style as unique as Gene Colan’s. Stan Lee encourages every artist during the 1960s through Marvel’s front door to draw like Jack Kirby except for two—Steve Ditko and Gene Colan. They arrive at Lee’s door fully formed, and alterations of their fundamentals would be akin to spraying water on a fiery oil slick. But the talents of the above three artists fill Marvel’s coffers more than their own pockets. The comic book industry has a work-for-hire history, ensuring a creator receives no compensation—other than one’s page rate— even for creating pop culture icons such as Ditko’s Spider-Man, or Kirby’s Hulk. If you don’t step into the engine of the company, if you don’t leave to make greater monies in the animation or advertising fields, you stay because you just love drawing comics. That love can leave you beaten and broken. Industry swoons and fads can see a freelance artist gasping for air, with a family to support, and no hope of pension or medical benefits. The artist and spouse may think the job on the table will pay for the month’s necessities, but one industry slump, one bout of illness, even a work-free vacation brings home the reality that the gerbil’s wheel of pumping out page after page has to spin non-stop. Step off for a breather, or a drink, and you may never get back on board. You’ll find even fewer people who love as hard and as faithfully, and perhaps as blindly, as Adrienne Colan. One is unlikely to find someone so protective of her mate in all aspects of life—the emotional, the physical, the financial and the ego. She is a perfect example of what the male freelance comic book artist, under this industry’s ‘big top,’ requires: a safety net for a partner who will walk a financial and emotional tightrope, never being able to see beyond the next job on the table, or even if there will be one. Is it truly the love of the medium, the industry, the finished page in front of the artist that keeps people like Adrienne and Gene Colan coming back for more, even into the twenty-first century? It’s September 21, 1926 and Gene Colan is born to the Bronx. After attending George Washington High 6

School, a public school focusing on gifted students in the visual arts, Gene falls under the tutelage of illustrator Frank Riley and the Japanese surrealist Kuniashi. Pen and ink prevent him from an early grave in World War II, where Corporal Colan spends two years in the Philippines producing art for the Special Service in the Army Air Corps. With so many peers off at war, Gene finds work at Fiction House in 1944 drawing Wings Comics. Hired for sixty dollars a week, he arrives at Stan Lee’s office doors in the Empire State Building of 1948. The early work is nondescript, but during the 1950s, Gene’s trademark flourishes begin to shine through, especially in the horror genre. It does him no good. The floor falls out of the industry in the middle 1950s, aided by persecution by government, media and P.T.A. organizations. Stan Lee’s company claws back dramatically in 1957. The hands of Gene Colan pump gas for a living at a local service station, while he chases jobs at the nadir of the industry, Charlton Comics in Derby, Connecticut, known for the lowest page rates (and quality of product) in the business. Ten years of working in comics—Gene is left with nothing. He finds work in New York at the Paul Sherry studio, drawing stick figures for educational films. Any attempts at flourishes are quickly crushed by an art director only concerned with the client’s requests for the bland. And what is expected? If you can’t make it as an artist, you either pump gas until you are gray, or you take what your talents afford you. At least it was work. No child of The Depression is going to hang on a wing and a prayer. With the comic industry in tatters, what chance does a freelancer like Gene Colan have? In the eye of the hurricane, who loves you enough to reach in and pull you out? It’s 1942 and Forest Hills, NY, trumpets the birth of Adrienne Colan. Her Broadway dreams are dashed in 1955 when her parents’ dream of owning a home places the young teenager miles away in Fairlawn, New Jersey. Adrienne comments, “It was really just twelve minutes over the George Washington Bridge, but when you’re a teenager, and you can’t drive, Manhattan is a world away. I was absolutely thrilled for my parents and totally bored Left: Gene & Adrienne’s wedding picture, 1963. out of my gourd! Below: Gene’s work for Marvel Comics in the 1950s. “I wasn’t exposed to art much. From fourteen until the end of high school, it was initially Elvis Presley. The Beatles came and Elvis Presley was over. It was like I closed the door. I couldn’t listen. At the same time, there was Motown. I still love jazz: Miles Davis and the Modern Jazz Quartet, and Dave Brubeck. I introduced Gene to Brubeck’s Take Five album. “Through all those, there would be Frank Sinatra; Frank Sinatra doing and singing anything. I watched Frank’s films and had every single album.” The influence of Adrienne’s father will dominate how she’ll regard, and manage, Gene and his career. He’s a small business owner in Queens, his independent spirit transposed onto his daughter, to Gene’s ultimate benefit later in life. “When we used to live in Queens, my father would get on a truck at three in the morning,” says Adrienne. “He would go to the manufacturing plants that produced meats like corned beef, pastrami, salami and hot dogs and distribute them to the restaurants, delis and diners. He made out really well and tucked the bucks away. “It was always his dream to have his own manufacturing plant and soon enough, he did, in New Jersey. My dad had an expression all his life. He said, ‘A peanut stand, but my own.’” Her father’s home by three in the afternoon, 7

allowing Adrienne to develop a mythical image of the man. “He was a hero to me. He built his own darkroom for photography and won awards. “He didn’t grow up with a life of privilege to say the very least. He was the oldest of four boys, from a broken home. He was supporting the entire family at the age of eleven plus two immigrant-divorced parents. He married my mom and wound up still taking care of his parents and my mother’s parents. “My mother was like Imelda Marcos,” laughs Adrienne. “She had a gazillion pair of shoes! He built her a whole closet just for shoes! He went on to build exquisite furniture for the house. There was almost nothing he couldn’t do. He built his own stereo cabinet. He even put together the radio parts. “My mom’s entire life centered around the family, our Jewish culture, beauty parlor Fridays and maid three times a week, no matter what. She’d read two, three books at a time, many of the struggles of the Jewish people and family life. “They fought about two things: ‘Your family stinks—no, your family stinks.’ The other was my mother’s shopping. Bills would arrive at the house, they would disappear into their bedroom and I could hear him just quietly confronting her. Before you knew it, plates were flinging, tears flowing, and cupboards were slamming!” Music dominates Adrienne’s memories of her father, and explains its importance in her own life. “My father liked great symphonies. He was very diverse and had the first record album that was on the unique sides of Jerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck. They had like an ensemble called ‘West Coast Jazz.’ It was just so progressive and so fantastic. He would bring home the album to West Side Story and then go see the show. “My Dad would play Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, and stand in front of the stereo, pretending he was the conductor. He was a very modest and quiet man but, in the privacy of our own home, he really let go with complete abandon. He’d also be completely blown away by Sergeant Pepper’s—that particular album knocked him out.” Adrienne enrolls in secretarial school, taking her right back into Manhattan every day. “School would let out and I would take the subway up to Harlem visiting record shops and such until Harlem signaled they didn’t want me. It wasn’t me not wanting them. Towards the end of 1960, early 1961, it was clear to me I wasn’t welcome in the neighborhood and so I didn’t go.” Single, with girlfriends, working in New York City in the summer of 1962, the group is always on the look out for “Mr. Right.” Adrienne’s twenty year-old life will take a dramatic turn when she and friends decide to go away one weekend to Tamiment, a singles’ resort in the Poconos of Eastern Pennsylvania. “It’s the first night and everybody goes out on the veranda after dinner. It’s just swarms of people. I had always told my mother, when I married, I want it to be like Tony and Maria in West Side Story. They meet at the dance and everybody else seems to disappear. “It seems like everybody coupled off within seconds. All that is left is this huge gooney-looking guy and I am with a very gooney-looking girlfriend. She’s very, very tall, and awkward. I was really quite pretty in my day— slim and dark-haired. This gooney guy starts walking over and I thought, ‘Oh, brother, he’s going to pick me. He’ll never go for Rochelle.’ Sure enough, he does—I can’t even attract the gooney guy! “I’m sitting alone on the wall by the veranda. I look over to my left—another man appears. He hesitates, then takes another few steps towards me, as if he’s trying to keep his options open. I’m thinking ‘I’m a thin, 20year-old, dark-eyed, dark-haired, cute little chippy in my best little summer, spaghetti-strapped dress, so what gives?’ “Now,” laughs Adrienne, “I’m getting cranky, like, ‘Come on!’ “He does come up to me and says, ‘Would you like to take a walk?’ We take a little walk, give a kiss, and just love one another instantly.” The man is Gene Colan, alone at the resort (“definitely girlfriend hunting,” says Adrienne), on a sugges8

tion from his cousin Helene. “My immediate impression is ‘No airs, without guile, and handsome.’ He is shy in the most attractive way—like Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper was shy. He has a way about him that is not stupidly macho. He’s good with conversation but not in a chatty way, like it’s all about him. My instant impression: he’s rock solid—stable.” While the 1950s may be viewed as the most conservative decade in twentieth century America, that doesn’t stop a thirty-five year old Gene from engaging a woman fifteen years his younger. “I loved the idea he was older,” says Adrienne. “We talked about spiritual things right away; just basic belief systems. There was a positiveness about him—a gentleness. He was also very handsome. I loved all his features. I thought immediately, ‘What a terrific nose. I’m going to have gorgeous children!’ After we were married, he told me it was the first thing he thought of too!” Adrienne has Tony and Maria in her head, but Gene resets all her expectations. “The only thing I spelled out was ‘Tall, dark and handsome’ and Gene wasn’t. His hair was sandy colored. He was bald in the middle, although not as tragic as he made it then! I just looked at his facial bones and features. I thought he was really very handsome and had a great butt! You know, it was all there. “Gene told me his age right away because he felt he owed it to me to be honest. Prior to him, I was dating a dentist my age and it got boring. My mother was salivating in the corner, dying for me to marry him. It was every Jewish mother’s dream to marry their daughter to a dentist or a doctor, but I just couldn’t. He listened to elevator music! I couldn’t believe it. I felt like I was with someone ancient.” Exhibiting extreme courage, Gene drives Adrienne home, making a beeline for her parents’ place. “My father was very pleasant, but I know that my mother wanted to kill him,” laughs Adrienne. “A) he’s thirty-five—every mother’s dream for her twenty-year-old daughter; and B) he was born Jewish, but his family were practicing Christian Science. Still, she said, ‘I knew this was going to be the person you were going to marry, because you had never said to me before, ‘Mom I met a man.’” Three months later, they are engaged. She knows Gene as an artist, but has not yet discovered his history in comics. Gene has shown her some of his paintings done in his private time, so Adrienne is in for quite a shock when she meets him for Above: more Gene work for Marvel Comics in the 1950s. lunch at the Paul Sherry studio, on 47th Street. Left: Adrienne recently married, 1963. “It’s these stick figures for school films, for driver’s education or health,” laments Adrienne, “like in slide form you grow up seeing. I couldn’t believe it. Suddenly, him being an artist was of interest to me. I just couldn’t believe that one could paint the way he did, and yet to earn a living he had to draw stick figures! I’m huge on ‘injustice.’ I was immediately struck by what it must feel like inside a human being, to not be able to show it—express it—reach beyond it!” The image of the bullpen at the Paul Sherry studio plays in sharp contrast to the antics of Stan Lee running crazy in the late 1940s Bullpen of Marvel Comics, where Gene tutored under his mentor, Syd Shores. Says Adrienne: “Gene would try to embellish a little, put some folds in the jacket of the kids running after the ball

between two cars. The art director wouldn’t allow it. It was nothing against Gene, but he knew his client would not accept that. It had to be a formula thing. Gene was just frustrated, sad, and tired.” Once Adrienne discovers Gene’s love of comic books, she’s determined to end his soul-crushing days at the Sherry studio. “We got married on Valentine’s Day in 1963. We went down to City Hall, grabbed a hot dog and went before a judge. He needed a secretary to type out the marriage certificate and said, ‘Does anybody know one?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, me!’ He says, ‘Well, sit down, you’re going to type your own.’ “We married and spent the weekend at the Waldorf Astoria. Then came reality. We moved into a cheap old hotel, the Bretton Hotel, for a month in Manhattan on the Upper West Side until we could get ourselves an apartment in Queens. This was a rooming house hotel that had seen better days, but it had a bedroom, a living room and it was right on Broadway. As far as I was concerned, that was great. “Gene had to set up an art board in the living room. He had a little western story, ‘Fury In The Streets!’ from Stan he was working on after hours that was published in Kid Colt #112, but no promises of anything more. He was upset he wasn’t really back in the comics industry. Before we were married, he really didn’t speak about what he had already accomplished, just of his hope to get steady comic work again. He was hoping maybe after this job, Stan would make a commitment, but Gene would finish a story and then maybe he’d get one short a Above: splash page from Kid Colt #112, Sept. 1963. while after. Nothing was steady or hot. Right: splash page from Ben Casey #6, June 1963. “He had no xeroxes or issues of comic books he had drawn. I just had the examples of his paintings and the current Kid Colt story to know he could draw. The most compelling thing about Gene was he was an ‘artist’ to the depths of his being. There was no considering anything but art. Neither he nor I gave that another thought—ever.” Symbolic of the scratching and clawing a comic book freelance artist endures comes in the form of the first job Gene receives shortly after their marriage. With only the odd five-page story thrown his way, Dell Comics hires Gene to produce a thirty-five page Ben Casey story in March of 1963. “Certainly, we were afraid to hope there would be more,” says Adrienne, “especially since Gene was not familiar with this company. He didn’t think there would be any future, because he had no past with Dell. He wanted to be in comics, but he didn’t want to be with DC Comics. He really had his eye on being back at Marvel.” The Ben Casey job is the break point for Gene and Adrienne. It leads to the first of many career-altering moments with which Adrienne will assist Gene. “The minute he got the Dell job, I told him to go and quit Paul Sherry. He said ‘Are you crazy? We’ll starve!’ I remember riding home on the subway and I said, ‘I would rather starve than see you work beneath what you are capable of as an artist.’ He quit immediately with only the Dell job between us and nothing. We had nothing because, three months after we married, I was pregnant and quit my job.” The significance of Adrienne’s belief in his career is not lost on the artist. “She has always been marching to a different drummer,” says Gene. “From the day I met her, she had this inner strength that could make you believe almost anything. She made me feel things could happen that I never thought would. “I hated the Sherry studio. There were moments when I actually fell asleep at my art table. She sized up 10

what I was doing and what a waste it all was. All I remember was I found myself walking out with Adrienne on one arm and my art table being dragged along with the other. A taxi was hailed and all three of us drove off into the sunset.” Aside from the Ben Casey job, Gene has no other work at the time. Thanks to the financial strain, the story—so many pages—seems to take forever. “By the time he did it,” says Adrienne, “we were down to absolutely nothing except a penny jar. He had to take fifteen pennies to buy his token to get the bloody check from Dell!” Adrienne can laugh about it now, only because Stan Lee and DC Comics begin calling, still with little promises, but at least enough steady work to relieve the emotional burden of being a freelance artist without a steady gig and a child on the way. Even with additional money from DC Comics, mostly on drab romance stories, returning to work for Stan Lee and Marvel Comics remains Gene’s dream. “Frankly, we prayed over it. Later in 1964, DC approached him about working exclusively for them, but he had a bad taste in his mouth with one of the editors there who gave him a very rough time back in the 1950s. He never really had it easy there—very intimidating.” Editor Robert Kanigher not withstanding, DC’s page rate is superior, but it never offers Gene the freedom, or the joie-de-vive, of Lee’s Marvel. “There were other questionable requests and a heavy-handed, serious approach to work at DC and Marvel was always a good ‘fit’ for Gene. He liked simply being given the assignment, being left alone, and not picked on when he would deliver it. He loved Marvel stories. To Stan and Gene, it was truly playtime, like ‘Hey Kids! Let’s put on a show!’ They were very (are very) boyish, instinctively sweet and fun loving— both of them.” Finally, in the spring of 1965, the call comes. “We were in our second apartment in Queens, already with our daughter, Nancy. A call comes from Stan in the evening and he wants Gene to work there exclusively. Gene said, ‘Well, what are you offering?’” In the early to-mid-1960s, Stan Lee is not above using the “Why, you’ll be working for Marvel” line when trying to hook artists he desperately needs (knowing he could count on them to consistently produce product). John Romita also experiences Stan’s familiar call, offering far less than DC, feigning indignation at the refusal, but always calling back the next day with a five-dollar page rate increase that cinches the deal. Gene Colan has a quiet pride about him, and does not leap at Stan’s bait. Says Adrienne, “Stan got a little huffy and said, ‘Look, forget about it. I don’t need this. Quite frankly, we’re getting a lot of artists from Spain and can pay them way less than you and they’re sensational. We are not going to need you anyway.’ “Gene said, ‘Alright, Stan,’ and ended it cordially. The phone rang the next morning. We were thrilled. Five dollars a page was money for us at the time! Marvel was truly where Gene wanted to be working, but he just felt it wasn’t right for Stan to ask him to be exclusively Marvel, offering nothing other than being exclusively theirs. Gene and Stan have never been able to be cross with one another for more than a minute.” The dream has been achieved. By the summer of 1966, Gene begins his nine-year run on the Lee/Bill Everett creation, Daredevil. The work is steady enough for Gene and Adrienne to move into their own home. There would be twelve years of creative harmony before the walls come crumbling down in the worst way imaginable. The greatest myth of Marvel Comics in the 1960s: there’s actually a bullpen, a gang of

Above: Gene with fans in the mid-1970s. raucous comrades, whooping it up all day in the tiny offices at 625 Madison Street. Such is the charm of Marvel Comics during this “Silver Age of Comics.” Stan Lee’s hyperbole makes you want to believe it all. Like ninety percent of all people who come through Marvel, they work at home, or in their own studios. In his earliest days at Marvel, Gene, Adrienne and baby live in their Queens apartment; one room devoted to the baby’s nursery, a living room/dining room combination, a tiny little kitchen, and their bedroom. In these cramped quarters, a freelance artist must be able to exist in harmony with his environment. Distractions are the work-for-hire’s worst enemy, but the toll is not the artist’s to absorb alone. “Gene had a corner of our bedroom. He’d get to work around 10 a.m., but then the days would end at midnight, 1 a.m., 2 a.m. and very often not. I would go to sleep with the light on. He put in so many hours to do as much work, and be as perfect, as he could.” With Gene trapped indoors by his career, the age difference finally becomes a factor, manifesting itself in the cultural divide between the woman in her early twenties and the man closing in on forty. “I would say in my twentyyear-old enthusiasm, ‘Want to go to Woodstock?’ Like who wouldn’t? How can you not be part of it? He would say, in his thirty-six-year-old voice, ‘What? Are you nuts?’ There was some stress in that regard. “He also came from an era of showing a lot of attention and respect to parents. In 1963, I’m still twenty years old. I grew up with East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Splendor in the Grass with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. He looks back now and thinks I had every right to expect to see concerts more and parents less... and he adores the Woodstock album!” The lack of time spent together due to work takes the greatest toll. “It wasn’t too bad in Queens because he could work up to nearly the last minute, and a restaurant and a movie were nothing more than a walk or five minute drive away. When we moved out in 1966 to the suburbs—which was Gene’s heart’s desire—my feelings hadn’t changed. I wanted to stay in the city—that was the lifestyle I liked. “I said, ‘When did you know you hated the city,’ and he said, ‘When I was six!’ He always felt it was crowded, doesn’t like the pace, found people intolerant and had some really bad experiences. He’s been held up, chased after with knives, but I have been pick-pocketed twice, maybe three times in Manhattan and I see no dark side. I just feel alive. I think if he never saw the city again, it would be too soon. He tells me now that he enjoys the city going back more as a tourist,” smiles Adrienne, “but I don’t believe him.” The dichotomy is that Gene’s work for Marvel has such an urban, downtown Manhattan feel to it. Says Adrienne, “In spite of himself, what is more interesting to draw? What’s more edgy than a street scene, interesting architecture, garbage cans, and chain link fences? He worked from reference he had already been collecting since 12

1946. He kept it current by taking pictures of street scenes. Even when we lived in Queens, even when we moved out to New Jersey, and even living here in Vermont, when he wants a particular scene, we simply go into the city with his camera. Most of his reference material is his own angles and perspective, but Gene has an extensive file of pictures of everything from every imaginable source. I usually say, ‘No magazine or book is safe around him!’ “For all the eighteen years we stayed in the suburbs, those were very tough years, in terms of the hours he put in. He’d come out of his room maybe for lunch and definitely dinner, which we’d have with the children, then right back to the art board. He’d come down for certain things. We’d all say, ‘Daddy, come down for The Waltons. Let’s go!’” Luckily for Gene, he’s an artist who prefers background noise when he draws. In the days of their Queens apartment, daughter Nancy “wasn’t more than six footsteps away,” says Adrienne. “Day or night, raising her never interfered with his work.” Their son Eric spends a great deal of time looking over his father’s shoulder. Such is the trade off of having your father around twenty-four hours a day, just within reach, but forced to be a million miles away in the fantasy world he’s creating to make sure the roof stays over their heads. “On one hand, it was all right for the children but looking back on it, it wouldn’t be what a modern father would consider proper raising of a child at all. Gene didn’t like sports, so he didn’t take Eric to any kind of games. On the other hand, Eric was a born artist too; he didn’t feel he missed anything. However, when I’d leave to shop or run an errand, he’d sneak in and show the kids scary movies. I wanted to kill him!” The insane assortment of sounds emanating from Gene’s in-home studio may be responsible for his unique style. “We’d get calls from friends,” laughs Adrienne, “‘Turn down the volume!’ It could just blow your eardrums out.” Gene’s ambient music consists of classical and modern classical music and... sound effects? Says Adrienne, “In those days, he was big on reel-to-reel or eight-track. He would record dialogue from the audio of films and would play back entire films for himself while drawing, driving me nuts. It was horrible because, most of the time, he was not playing the kind of music I wanted and, even if he did, it was just unbearably loud. He would just be in his own world.” There’s no escaping the stress of trying to raise children, who are on their own body clocks, while a freelancer burns the midnight oil. “I’d be in the bedroom trying to sleep, but not really. The light would be burning in the next room and I would have to say, ‘Will you come to bed already?’ “We would see parents on the weekend, mostly mine; therefore, we could count on one day of the weekend where he would not be working. When they’d leave, though, he’d go back to work. My Dad rigged him up an art table in their basement so Gene could work while visiting in Fairlawn if it was a real tight deadline.” Two factors play into Gene’s decision to never say never to Stan Lee’s constant supply of stories—money and ego. “There was a fear,” remembers Adrienne, “definitely about money, but Gene loved being put on all these titles at Marvel. He loved the opportunity to show what he could do. “It was also about ego. If he has a shot to do X, Y, and Z characters all in one month, he wants to be the one to do it. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a famous artist. I think that’s dear and sweet and it charmed me.” As with most artists from the 1950s and 1960s, Gene is completely oblivious to any sense of fandom. To whom is Gene showing off? “His editor, himself, and the fans he imagined were reading. He hoped they noticed he was trying to make it feel more like a movie, more like going on a trip, where you’re suddenly not aware of anything else but the reality of what’s on the pages/screen. Artistically, that really turned him on very big.” There are traps involved in the artistic process, and many not of the creative variety. Gene takes on the artistic reins of “Dr. Strange” and the door to a bottomless pit opens. Gene almost falls in. “He began to take amphetamines to keep pace,” says Adrienne. “Eventually, I demanded he stop those pills. I feared he’d bring on a heart attack. He then discovered cough syrup with codeine, but eventually stopped all those things.” Letters to the editor are the only connection a creator may have to the readership, but it isn’t until comic book conventions begin spawning in New York that artists like Gene feel the impact of their work. Adrienne remembers her and Gene attending one of the first conventions ever, across from Madison Square Gardens in the late 1960s. “Whoever was running this convention secured a balcony level of this hotel. We didn’t know what to expect. We walked into the lobby and Gene was besieged by fans. Before he could even get upstairs to his table, he was in the lobby drawing sketches and signing autographs. It was so flattering. We were both dumbstruck! 13

“That was the first awareness that ‘Wow! There’s something going on here! There are specific fans that know specific artists and gosh, you’ve got a bit of a name!’ We couldn’t wipe the smile off our faces the whole train trip back to New Jersey. It began to snow and Gene and I thought this was the most romantic night of our lives— like a movie.” For a proud man like Gene, who has seen the bottom, this adulation only eggs him onward. For Gene it also helps cement his bond with Stan Lee. “They were gentlemen of a certain era,” says Adrienne, “cordial, sweet by nature, ‘except if you talk about money!’ Gene would always say.” From a working perspective, Stan allows Gene the freedom to be the storyteller. “Stan would just call and give a five-minute synopsis of a seventeen-page story and it just didn’t get better for Gene. Even when he would do wrong on a rare occasion, he would get a call from Stan saying, ‘Enough with the car chases, Gene!’” Gene becomes famous for cinematically shooting scenes at different angles, not hesitating to draw out a scene for full emotional, or physical, impact. “What Stan would say was ‘The pacing! Why do you use the whole page for Tony Stark putting on his tie? And a whole page with the hand on the doorknob!’” Lee knows how to handle each artist’s unique ego—especially the fragile ones. “Even in those days, the complaints weren’t intimidating,” says Adrienne. “It was almost like a loving, ‘I know I’ve got a mad, little genius scientist here. I’m not going to harm you or make Above: recent fan commission piece. you change.’ It was almost like Right: original art for cover to Howard the Duck #4, July 1976. begging with ‘Watch the pacing!’” The early 1970s see the Comics Code Authority relaxing its rules on the inclusion of all things ‘horrific,’ including vampires. Gene commences work on what many will consider his signature series, Tomb Of Dracula. It’s a difficult series to author because the central character is a force of evil. Written by Marv Wolfman, the series spawns the vampire hunter, Blade, now with two Hollywood movies under his belt. Marv continues the Gene-happy trend of simply telling a story, rather than an overly wordy script with text panel-by-panel breakdowns. 14

“Marv was deeply respectful and appreciative that Gene would monkey with the script in order to display the visual the way he interpreted it. If Gene felt like combining or cutting a page in half to make that page a cliffhanger, he would pace it himself. In all those years, Marv never said ‘boo.’” Scripts enter the household, but Adrienne believes imposing her point of view on Gene in this way would be akin to his days at the Paul Sherry studio. “I have never seen or read one script in all our years together. I’ve never heard the taped synopses Stan would give him. I was only aware of the duration of the phone call, because very often I’d be sitting there in his room. If they ran ten minutes, that was a long conversation; five minutes would probably be more accurate. I have never given any direction or my point of view. My eyeballs, and my children’s eyeballs, should fall out if anybody thinks I am lying or even bending the truth!” Two exceptions to this rule develop. “When Gene was working on Howard the Duck with Steve Gerber, I’d hear him in his room, day and night, roaring with laughter. He’d say, ‘You have got to read this!’ He’s just had the greatest admiration for Gerber. I’ve never known Gene to relish working on anything as much. “The other was DC’s Jemm, Son of Saturn. ‘This Greg Potter, he’s terrific,’ and he would always ask me to read the opening. Each story would start out with a special preface that would be in a box or a scroll in the first panel. It was always very thought provoking and would set the tone for the story. “I would see the pages as published comics,” says Adrienne, “for the simple reason that all those years Marvel was sending him the monthly or bi-monthly subscriptions, I would always shout out, ‘The package is here!’ It was the manila envelope with the rubber band around it.” Adrienne provides Gene with enormous validation while pouring over the finished books. “I would always play this game—especially in these past years where he’ll get just a small story fit in with other people’s work— where I’d always say, ‘Now there’s this and that. Oh, and then there’s this.’” The “this” would be Gene’s work. “I’d line them up and it would make him smile—very quiet, very humble, but he’d smile. My point was even if you thought, ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,’ his would be the one that would make you stop.” Gene appreciates two artists the most and the incoming package of books provide a monthly ritual for husband and wife. “He ran for two comics—Buscema’s and his own. There would be a silence that would fall over us looking at Buscema’s. Gene also feels John Romita is brilliant—the quintessential American artist. “Gene would check out maybe Joe Kubert or Gil Kane, but it was John’s that took his breath away and by whom he measured himself. Other than the ones mentioned, there would be like a relieved ‘snicker’ on my part that Gene’s was superior.” Gene is obsessed with having the reader always being able to follow the story from the art and Adrienne herself rarely reads the actual stories. “Gene always wanted to keep the suspense alive for himself,” says Adrienne, “so whether it was Marv’s or Steve Gerber’s or Greg Potter, he did not read ahead with scripts he would get. Of course, if it was just Stan’s synopsis, there was nothing to read.” Within Gene’s work, she recognizes photos she’s taken for him, or ones he has taken of the children and her. “He would use Playboy a lot for Clea or the Black Widow. He always needed somebody with a raincoat on, or a broad-brimmed turned down hat and a gun or a rifle! We have more photos of Eric in some sort of ridiculous falling type of position in his underpants, so Gene could get the body structure. Our daughter despised it, but she would be a woman or a man in a particular position from a particular angle and light source. We have the most bizarre collection of family pictures!” Gene refrains from using popular models or actresses of the day, swiping beauty parlor magazines for his very specific files: women looking three quarters to the left, women looking up, women screaming. “There’s like ten different categories,” says Adrienne. “Doctors throughout the world are missing magazines that are all in my home!”

Gene continues his dream ride, working without interference for a company he loves. Consistent work gives him a sense of security, financially, emotionally and creatively, but it is all about to be ripped out from under him. The Devil in Disguise, as the song says, is Jim Shooter. Martin Goodman owned Marvel Comics since the 1930s, but if you ask half the kids in America, Stan Lee runs the show. As long as it was the Goodman’s family business, Stan could stand as a buffer between the business realities and creative needs of his artists. After Goodman sells out in 1968 to the conglomerate Cadence Industries, the buffer begins to weaken. Stan himself steps down in September of 1972, leading to a parade of writers thrust into a position forcing them away from the creative side of the business. None of Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway, or Archie Goodwin last more than three years each—Conway for only a month. Goodwin, considered by all to be the consummate editor, returns the company to profitability. He is keenly aware that proper people management gets the most of out of individuals with varied egos and unique personalities. Goodwin resigns in late 1977, leaving the door open for one of the most contentious men to ever walk through the doors of a comic book company. On the first day of 1978, Jim Shooter becomes the editor-in-chief, lasting ten years in the position before being ousted by the corporation and burned in effigy by its creators. Born in 1951, Shooter is a comic book prodigy, selling three Superboy stories to DC at the age of fourteen. Shooter appears at Marvel as an associate editor in 1976, also writing for The Avengers, Ghost Rider and Daredevil. Once assigned the role of leading the company, Shooter distinguishes himself from his predecessors by jumping into the financial end with great vigor. All too appropriate for the 1980s definition of corporate mogul, Shooter soon simply wants it done his way or the highway. There may never be a story more symbolic of creator-versus-businessman in the comic book industry than the story of Gene Colan and Jim Shooter. Gene’s fall from the high towers of Marvel, a fall from which he will never truly recover (in terms of consistent employment), underscores the thin tightrope every work-for-hire artist in this industry walks on a job-to-job basis. It becomes quite clear, quite quickly to Adrienne and Gene that Shooter either hates Gene’s style, or believes him to be incompetent as an artist. To this day, the bile Adrienne exhibits when mentioning Shooter’s name is incredibly vivid. One can argue the intent of Shooter, whether it is personal against Gene, or simply a professional man guiding his company’s ship in the necessary direction, but one can’t argue Jim Shooter almost breaks Gene Colan financially, emotionally, spiritually, and artistically. Financially, Shooter most certainly turns the Good Ship Colan into the Titanic, but of immediate concern to Adrienne is Gene the man. “The corrections were just so unbelievable,” she laments. “It was the amount of the corrections and the nature of what Shooter would ask. “In all the years I had been married to him, I never ever heard him ask me anything about a script or what should be drawn. There we were, in a Chinese restaurant in Red Bank, and he’s asking me about a panel. He’s saying, ‘This is what I drew but this is what’s being asked of me. I just can’t see it because if I did, then the person who’s supposed to be flying on the top of the room would be on the bottom of the room.’” Across the table, Adrienne’s watching her husband return, spiritually, emotionally, to the Paul Sherry studio. “That was exactly what was going on. I was literally watching him just emotionally crumble in front of my face. It was a horrible thing to watch. He didn’t want the corrections, but he didn’t want to lose his job. Those were years where you got better contracts if you were in good favor. Those were years where Marvel was giving you vested interest.” Jim Shooter fires Gene Colan. 16

Stan Lee temporarily smoothes over a return, warning Gene about the cliff on which he’s standing. Gene returns, but the corrections keep coming. To be attacked on a creative level is one concern, but Gene now has a family for which has to be provided. It’s pulling the proud man apart. “I didn’t even realize all of that stuff was factoring in for him,” says Adrienne, “in terms of why he was allowing himself to be tormented this way. He couldn’t even understand what was being asked—notes saying ‘your artwork defies the laws of gravity’—things that would undermine his confidence.” As she had done for Gene at the Sherry studios in the early 1960s, she finally has to confront Gene to help him say stop. “It must have been within that week I came into his room and asked, ‘Why are you continuing this way? Why aren’t you quitting? Is it because of me, the children, the whole suburban thing, the house, the cars and the stereos?’ “All these years he’s at his board, when the family comes in and talks to him, he would always not even stop work. But now, he stopped his art, turned around and said, ‘Yes.’” Adrienne marches into her son’s room and types her husband’s resignation. She says they ask him to stay for a six-month trial period. Stan Lee attempts to mediate by long distance, but he’s already off to set up the Marvel Hollywood offices, and is no longer a buffer. “The vice-president at the time, Mike Hobson said, ‘I’ll talk to Jim, see if the two of you can...’ blah blah blah. “They got Jim to write this so-called apology letter. In fact, Virginia Romita called and said, ‘Gene, hold on; you’re getting an apology letter.’ Left: Gene self-portrait for Tower Of Shadows #6, July 1970. Below: Gene posing for stories—left: mid-1980s, right: 2001.

“But it wasn’t an apology letter—it was just whatever fantasy world Shooter’s in. It was his version of an apology letter, but it wouldn’t have mattered because it wasn’t an apology that Gene wanted. He told Mike Hobson and he told Jim, “I only want one thing: I just want creative license. Just leave me alone. That’s all I want.” Exactly what Jim Shooter thinks he will accomplish trying to alter the style of a thirty-year veteran is unclear, but he will not relent. “Shooter said, ‘I can’t do that,’” remembers Adrienne. “Gene said ‘Well, I can’t work here and I don’t want any trial period.’” In the summer of 1981, Gene takes his last walk into the Marvel offices. “Jim stood there,” says Adrienne, “and stared out a window while Gene talked and tendered his resignation. Gene walked out of Marvel and people— including John Romita—came out of their doors with their thumbs up. It was like something out of a movie.” Adrienne’s role in Gene’s life will take a dramatic turn. They will be partners in the truest sense of the word. Gene handled the money in the pre-Shooter days, but the aftermath leaves him a man who cares to focus solely on the creative. “Once a year it was a little bit nerve-wracking having to ask Sol Brodsky for a raise and it was always like pulling teeth. Not because of Sol, but just because it was hard to get raises. You’d get fifty cents to a dollar. Outside of that, there was no politics.” After the Shooter years, Adrienne not only continues handling of the household finances, but she becomes his manager. She never goes back to work after raising the children. “I really just worked for Gene to facilitate him being able to draw. I stepped in and did negotiating contracts for him. Post-Shooter I really had to because it makes Gene very nervous. When he has to talk business or numbers or contracts or dates, it’s like he may as well be back in third grade and the teacher may as well be teaching trigonometry! ”The only thing I really felt I missed out on was those eighteen years not being in Manhattan. As far as a career, I was just thrilled to see Gene evolve, to see those original pages come to life and hear compliments from the editors and writers. It was gold to Gene and it was like platinum to me.” After tendering Gene’s resignation, Marv Wolfman, who has been working on Gene for a year, has no problem coaxing Gene over to DC. “Before Gene took the resignation letter in, Gene called Marv and said, ‘Do you think there’s room for me at DC?’ Within an hour, Marv called and said, ‘You’re hired and we’ll work on Night Force.’ “We knew when he handed in the resignation,” says Adrienne, “he could literally just cross the street, but we had to forget that we lost a lot. We lost a lot of benefits, insurance, savings, he was working towards a pension—a savings plan where they added equal to it. We got that—what we had put in—but those kind of good times were over. At least he was able to continue to be gainfully employed and even go over there with a contract.” The already-present offer notwithstanding, the reality is Gene has little choice. 1981 is not the time to be out of the mainstream loop with a mortgage and a family. He may make even more money in advertising, but creatively that would leave himself a husk of the man he was at his peak. But DC Comics has never been Gene’s home. Night Force is not a mainstream super-hero book; neither is his project, Nathaniel Dusk, with writer Don McGregor. Gene’s contract with DC comes to an end. They would use him in whichever way they could—on Batman and Wonder Woman—but Gene is a ship lost at sea. By the summer of 1988, there is nowhere else to go. “Then I really started actively helping 18

Gene with his career,” says Adrienne, “choosing projects, taking up teaching, selling original art, negotiating contracts.” What is left for the couple is living on a project-to-project basis, jumping to and from smaller, independent companies like Eclipse and Comico—neither of which survive the 1980s. Feelers always have to be out, in case the roof caves in on a job. With Shooter gone from Marvel, 1989 sees Gene and McGregor back at Marvel— “back” being the word, as Gene is restricted to anthologies and one-off jobs. “Make no mistake,” says Adrienne. “It has been nerve-wracking to keep his career afloat. A lot of manipulation, a lot of flexibility, a lot of keeping ourselves together emotionally—it could often be unpleasant. We had to give the impression of not being needy, that we were busy and gainfully employed. “This comes full circle. Remember that man I met in Tamiment that had no guile? Well, I had to go beyond being a secretary and sharpen my own street sense. I could pull it off better and he was grateful for some relief. Business can be tough, especially to sustain success without losing one’s principles, humanity and mind.” With the children out of the house, they move into a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. “We had the whole bedroom set up like an art studio and had a fold out futon bed for sleeping. I had my own office—also in the bedroom—but Gene’s whole art studio, it was beautiful built-ins. In a sense it was a nerve-wracking time, but we Above: page 8 of Marv and Gene’s Night Force #14, 1982. were very close. We found ourselves arguing less, Left: pencil sketch of Gene’s Dracula, 2002 . excited about living in New York for as much as he hates it. There’s always a movie being made outside our door. I’d go do some shopping and come flying back saying, ‘DeNiro’s on 67th Street!’” Gene Colan has a heart attack in 1989, and Adrienne’s sense of “legacy” becomes more acute. “I’m not a teacher,” says Gene, bristling to Adrienne’s suggestion about the School Of Visual Arts, but Adrienne puts together the outline for the course and the syllabus. “I said, ‘Just get yourself hired.’ I told him how to get himself hired. ‘Go in there to the president, don’t let it be about you. Ask how you can be of use, and that you have your own approach to teaching, and it’s a hands-on approach, and it’s one of positive reinforcement.’ “It was not just strictly to have a financial base or some sort of an income, but also for the nobility of doing the right thing. He just has a lot to offer as a human being and particularly for sensitive artists, being one himself. “I told him how to do the interview. He literally rehearsed it again and again. I waited outside in the lobby at the school and he nailed it! They needed him to write up a thing for the catalog; they all think that Gene was able to do it, but no. That was my end and I just rose to that challenge. I don’t even know how. I don’t think my twelve months at secretarial school, when I was seventeen, prepared me for that. Maybe it’s genetics and my total belief in Gene’s excellence as an artist and as a man.” Her father’s example taught her well. “We muddled through,” says Adrienne. “Marv was calling with a project from Dark Horse, Curse of Dracula, or an editor from a particular company. There seemed to be a small network of professionals out there.”

The couple moves to Vermont in 1991. “He tried to commute once a week to the School of Visual Arts every Friday—and did it for a couple of years,” says Adrienne. “I would take him to the Albany, N.Y. train station, which is an hour-and-a-half ride, and then nearly three hours by train—this is one way—and then to do two backto-back classes just to keep an income coming in.” The 1990s bring the industry to its peak (the success of Image Comics and one million copies sold of the second X-Men title) and quickly back down to its lowest valley (Marvel’s bankruptcy and overall sales diving by almost seventy-five percent by decade’s end). Artists from Gene’s heyday, artists from the 1940s to the 1960s, are deposited on the curb, and most vanish from sight. Gene’s page count, which once stood at over 500 in the mid-1960s, is reduced to fifty-five in 1993. “We held it together,” says Adrienne. They essentially have to until 1997, when events begin to unfold that resurrect the reputation, the career and, most importantly, the will to live for Gene Colan. “It all started when Gene was invited to visit a comic book store, That’s Entertainment, in Worchester Massachusetts. You may as well have said the moon,” remembers Adrienne. “I don’t know why, I just felt we should accept the invitation. I’ve been keenly aware of Gene’s age ever since he’s been in his mid-sixties and since his heart attack in Manhattan, around 1989. “‘Oh, I’m not being paid...’ he crabs. ‘Do the right thing,’ I say. ‘If fans want a little sketch...’ Right: Illustrating Gene’s layout skills, The Harrowers #2, 1994. “‘Well, I’m gonna charge,’ he threatens. I Below: Black Widow/Daredevil commission, 1999. say, ‘No, you’re not. Make it a day where you’re not going to think about you. You’re going to think about giving, not receiving.’ “The store manager, Ken, was working on a computer and I said, ‘Oh, I’m so afraid of them! I did a couple of little things and he saw I already understood the concept of it. He said, ‘If you ever want to learn about setting up a web site, Kevin Hall’s the guy for you,’ and he introduced us. “We were supposed to be at the signing for two hours, but we stayed maybe four or five. When we were leaving, there was a little electrical light out when we opened the car door. To Gene, all things have the same value. A cancer diagnosis or a light out on the door: the same level of hysteria,” laughs Adrienne. “Kevin was outside and he just took care of it. He calmed Gene’s fears, that nothing tragic was going to happen to us on the way home.” Several months later, Adrienne gets up the nerve to buy a computer and re-connects with Kevin. “I said, ‘Let’s work on a web site and eBay.’ That was it—the beginning of great career independence for Gene and deep connections to his fans worldwide.” Kevin sets up an official e-mail list for Gene. “That’s when Gene really came to understand just what’s out there,” says Adrienne. “There are all these young men who grew up on his comics, who have grown into men of accomplishment, who could understand Gene’s artwork indicated a maturity and depth. The one thing Gene did understand, when he was working in the 20

1960s, was it was probably not going to be understood by most six-to-nine-year-olds. Stan always told Gene, ‘That is your audience, Gene—sixyear-olds.’ “Gene understood that but couldn’t help himself. He needed to stretch as an artist. We knew other artists were more popular because they appealed more to the masses, like Romita, and Kirby, and even John—because as powerful as their work was, it was clear.” Adrienne is correct in her assessment that Gene’s artwork has many levels; levels a child could grasp, but deeper levels an adult could appreciate. Jim Shooter’s platform was to knock out all the levels he could, believing only then would Gene appeal to a mass audience. “And that’s why Gene’s main criteria— his main criteria—is artistic freedom,” says Adrienne. “Every project, that’s the only thing he wants and literally insists upon. “In terms of managing his career, I said to him, ‘From this point on, we’re not going to accept just anything.’ You always want to be paid as well as you possibly can, but I said, ‘Different companies are going to have different budgets. We’re going to base the decision on how interesting is the project; how much do you want to do it; and if the pay is lousy, we’ll go for the exposure on that one.’ It would be hard for most men to give themselves permission to prioritize the project, not the pay. I’m kind of proud some of my thoughts are a little outside the box.” Whether it be invitations to conventions, the rebirth of the fanzine (in actuality, the prozine), or just fandom’s realization that, in ten years, everyone of their heroes will be long gone, the Internet helps to lead a minirevival of the Silver Age and Golden Age artists. This revival also helps to build interpersonal connections between artists who never before socialized, never before traded stories together. “Gene didn’t understand in those years how much was available to him in terms of friendships. For example, he would put John Buscema on such a pedestal; he was intimidated to call him. One second he’d be all humble and intimidated, and then he’d get his back arched and say, ‘Well, I mean, he never calls me.’ “That would be his way of saying to me, ‘I feel like a baby—an idiot—calling him.’ Same thing with Tom Palmer: ‘He doesn’t call me to socialize; I feel like a jerk calling him.’ He wasn’t a card player so he wasn’t ‘one of the guys.’ Marv or Ernie Colón, or a whole group of them, would get together, play poker or whatever and Gene was not asked. He comes off somewhat aloof. He’s painfully shy around people and doesn’t know what to say.” Gene’s dream of reaching out to those fans has not altered from the 1950s until today. At the 2001 San Diego comic convention, a black man in his thirties—during the panel on Gene’s artwork—asks Gene about how he knows so much about black people. At the end of Gene’s explanation, the fan shouts out, “Black people love you, man!” “That was just so extraordinary,” says Adrienne. “It was like this great reward at the end of it all to discover that whatever he’s been doing in his art, and in portraying black people, that they know. It’s got soul; all his faces have soul. “When Gene draws a black person, they are not caricatured. He would rather draw a black face. It’s like the soul is deeper. They’re just more interesting to him. It’s his artist’s eye and his good experience in the Air Force

with black servicemen, as opposed to white servicemen from the South that were jerks. The nature of the black servicemen was, no matter how hard or frightening the circumstances, they always found a reason to laugh and blow it off. We have some fine art paintings of black people sitting on their porch he did in the days where he lived in a home in New Rochelle and there was a black community there. Times were different— they didn’t necessarily really welcome him, but he got away with taking some photos.” One watches Adrienne buzz around a convention table and knows she shares the same experience with a Carrie Above: Gene, grandsons David & Maxwell, Adrienne, 2002. Nodell or Lindy Ayers. They are the caretakRight: Jack The Ripper commission in pencil, 2002. ers, the “managers of the shop,” leaving their husbands free to perform. “I know Virginia Romita’s a devoted wife,” says Adrienne, “and she was terrific for John in that she knew how to be a company woman. The only other wife I’ve ever met is Marsha McGregor, Don’s wife. I see some of myself in her. She gets in there to help Don through the life of a freelance creator, but is involved in acting and has her own life.” The process of daily living for Gene, now in his mid-seventies, is an exact one. “If I get up early, he gets up early. He’ll walk the dog, maybe go to the post office in town, but he’s always been one who can’t gather himself quickly. He needs to get dressed, shaved, and have breakfast. Just that stuff takes like an hour-and-a-half. I’m different—everything is bing, bang, boom. Maybe that’s why New York and I fit. I’m just more of an ‘ants in your pants’ kind of person. “Now Gene would rather do a commission. At this time in his life, he likes tackling one main pin-up project than to tug along with a story—particularly one that doesn’t interest him. He almost doesn’t have that in him anymore. The only recent story he’s done that he just loved doing, and because of it the time went quickly, was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s enjoying Doug Petrie’s scripts and is currently doing his second Buffy book.” With multiple prozines flooding the market, with conventions and the focus companies put on reprinting of various works—the Marvel Essentials and DC Archives—the impression one receives is artists from the 1950s and 1960s may have suffered in the early 1990s, but now they’re doing much better now. This is not the case. As spiritually healing as the past four years have been, the financial recovery has not matched. “Definitely not,” says Adrienne. “It’s just the opposite. The cost of living is tough these days.” Commissions don’t roll in every day for the Colans, and Marvel’s latest editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada, flat out says he can’t market older artists. “He will command and get paid more per page,” she says. “Dark Horse is pretty generous, but usually because they’re studio-backed projects, so the money is available. “Marvel and DC—the projects offered so far are insignificant and the page rate is insulting. He doesn’t want to go out doing filler stuff.” Adrienne is focused on her husband’s legacy and is willing to gamble that work will always be present, while the worry may be she’s pricing her husband out of the market. “Here’s an example of how ridiculous and hard-nosed Marvel is. They called him for an elaborate superhero pinup. He asked for $400—which is nothing. They said their budget was $350. Would you believe they let him walk?” Is love blind? Few love as hard as Adrienne Colan, and few respect their husband’s talent more. “He’s not going to lend his great talent, his great name—this is me, he will never say something like this—and he will just feel bad and feel demoralized, but I put the words to it to get his ego back up. “The conversation around here goes like, ‘Your fans will pay you better than them. They’re riding on your great name and they can’t even stretch it for $50? He is a marquee name for them and if they have a budget of $350, and they can’t even pay him $400 for a pinup they’re going to make a fortune on? No.” But Gene is not on the Top Ten list of favorite artists in Wizard Magazine (the Teen Beat of the industry), and Marvel won’t make a fortune even on the Spider-Man movie. Adrienne walks a tight rope between reality and 22

keeping her husband’s confidence high. Certainly, Gene’s talents haven’t abated one bit. Few in the industry from his era are still drawing. John Severin, Russ Heath and Colan (when dedicating themselves completely to a project) are the three most able to lay claim to the fact the quality of their artwork has not diminished with age. “As far as his emotional state, his mental outlook, and just his whole sense of how he feels about life, he’s just never been happier. He would never be able to accept a monthly comic now, but it’s the best time of his life. The money isn’t the be all and end all. There’s no sadness here, no bitterness because it’s been a great career and a great life. We love one another and have been very fortunate in the past several years, living up here in Vermont, to have made some extraordinary friends. A couple of them are artists—not comic book artists—and that’s of great satisfaction to him. “He’s still collecting photo reference. There is still art on his desk every day to be drawn.” Extraordinary talent doesn’t make a career. If you don’t own the company, or your creations, you will be crawling your way in the dark, hoping the sharp edge to your left is not a cliff over which you’re about to spiral off. “She’s my biggest fan and most severe critic,” says Gene, “hardly ever wrong in evaluating where I went wrong on any of my work. She has been the driving engine in my life that has never quit. She will always be my North Star.” Marriage can be like crawling around in the dark. You reach out your hand and realize you’d rather not be in the dark with anyone but this person who truly loves and respects you, your work, and your desire to remain in an industry that brings your life as many cliffhangers as you have drawn on the last pages of so many stories.

CHAPTER TWO

VIRGINIA & JOHN ROMITA Above: John Romita, age 18, and Virginia Romita, age 17. There is but a singular difference between the careers of John Romita and Gene Colan: one was driven from The Company—the other embraced it. As a consequence, while Colan fell off the mainstream radar, Romita’s profile has never abated. Work is always on his table. The name “Romita” is a testament to the only given in the industry: if you climb into the engine of The Company, you will likely drive away with a Cadillac, not a jalopy. Arguably, Gene Colan’s talent exceeds that of John Romita’s. Ask Romita and he will modestly (almost punishingly so), dismiss his efforts as inferior to the likes of his peers at Marvel Comics, the Steve Ditkos and Jack Kirbys. “I keep wanting to hit him on the head,” says Virginia, “and say, ‘Stop being so humble. You’re terrific.’ It’s the way he is.” There are three keys to John’s career health: his connection to, and the elevation of, the Spider-Man franchise; becoming an employee of the company; and a clean, polished style that presented little difficulty in communicating a story to readers young and old. Simply put, John Romita is the Norman Rockwell of comic book art. Few in the industry rise from farther depths to such a pinnacle. He also has the distinction of “being married” to the same woman since he was eleven. Perhaps no other woman can say they followed their husband’s career from chalk drawings on the streets of Brooklyn to newspapers all over the world. “I was born in Brooklyn, in Williamsburg,” says Virginia Romita, “and John lived downstairs. He moved into my building when I was about nine. He first lived across the street for a short period of time. He was very shy. One day he walked in and said, ‘Hello,’ and I was so shocked, I nearly tumbled down the stairs! That was my first crush.” Williamsburg, Brooklyn, in the early 1940s, is a ghetto neighborhood according to Virginia. “It was just apartment houses and tenements across the street. We were in a house made of up of six apartments. It was very poor, no heat—just the stove in the kitchen.” Without television and video games, families attend Church for entertainment, and kids hit the streets. John hits the streets with chalk in hand. “We didn’t have much money,” says Virginia, “and did a lot of walking 24

because we didn’t have cars or even bikes. We were a large group traveling from church to church going to all of their dances.” John is the neighborhood artist, but the family can’t afford pen and ink. Asphalt is John’s earliest drawing board. Whatever scars will exist in Virginia’s subconscious from the poverty of her early life, time and remembrance of the budding courtship will wash the bad memories away. “There weren’t any cars parked against the sidewalk, so John would do these big drawings in the streets. They could go on for blocks, just with chalk—a one-hundred-foot Statue of Liberty. Of course the rain would wash it away, and when he got older, the guys would begin asking for nudes,” laughs Virginia. “I disapproved and told them I was very disappointed in John.” Poverty is such a factor that sometimes, one comic book has to support an entire block. “Comic books were very important to us,” remembers Virginia. “One person would buy a comic book and everyone got a shot at it. John was one to draw super-heroes like Superman and Batman in the streets. “I liked the simple stuff like Archie. We looked at them as much as we were able because comic books were not the kind of thing we could purchase. If I had a comic, my father would call my brother and I to dinner and if we did not immediately come, he’d come in and tear it up. We were very obedient!” The independent streak that will serve Virginia well in the lion’s den of Marvel Comics saves her from a life of poverty of her own. “My mother wanted me to quit school and go to work with her in the garment industry. They were both from Europe. It was Depression time. They only cared about making a living and, of course, I had to contribute also. But I did finish high school—at least that—and immediately went to work.” With John living downstairs, and her upstairs, Virginia relishes the free spirits in the close-knit Romita household. “My father was one of the strictest men ever created,” says Virginia. “The only real freedom I had was to go downstairs and listen to them all singing. John’s house always had music. His father’s friends would play guitars and mandolins. John’s sisters, all three of them, sang. I thought, ‘Oh, my God. That’s great having a family like that,’ whereas it was just my brother and I. Those were good days.” In fact, Virginia’s love for John almost has her evicted from her own home. Virginia’s father, a stern disciplinarian, doesn’t take too well to a couple of teenagers getting too cozy in his own home. “One day,” says Virginia, “my father saw John put his arm across my shoulder. He spoke to me later in the evening and said, ‘Is he your boyfriend?’ I say, ‘No.’ He said, ‘Did you let him kiss you?’ I said, ‘Yes, I did.’ He said, ‘Don’t do that anymore.’ I said, ‘No!’ and he smacked me,” laughs Virginia, obviously at ease with the memory now. “He said, ‘Alright, you have to leave the house’ and I said, ‘Alright!’ But my mother said, ‘No, no, no! You can’t do that!’ He never discussed it with me again. “I fell in love with John three separate times. I chased him until he caught me. By about seventeen or eighteen, I was stuck on John, but with my father, you had to have that ring on your finger. He adored John, and when we became engaged, he was very pleased.” Her father may be strict, but as long as John is willing to work, his career choice of “artist” is not a concern. “There was about a month where John didn’t have any work,” says Virginia. “That was many, many years later. When we got married, he was in the service and getting Army pay. We got married from that same house: 229 Ellery Street.” John Romita and Gene Colan’s careers are mirror images. Both Colan and Romita consider Milton Caniff (of Terry and the Pirates fame) their “god.” Both appear at Marvel around 1949, are let go in 1957, move to DC and then rejoin Marvel within a year of each other in the mid-1960s. John wants to be an illustrator, but like many artists, comic books are chosen as the launching pad. His entry to Marvel Comics in 1949 is covert. He’s ghosting for an artist named Lester Zakarin, who takes credit for all the art chores, but actually John is doing all the penciling. When Stan Lee asks for changes, Zakarin panics and tells Stan he can’t draw in front of people—he needs absolute quiet—and then runs the pages over to the New York Public Library, close to the Marvel offices in the Empire State Building, for John to correct. “John and I really started going together after high school,” says Virginia, “and I remember the first check he earned doing work, ghosting for Lester. He bought everybody these wonderful presents—a blue velvet skirt was one of mine. It was such an exciting moment for him.” Stylistically, Romita’s artwork of the 1950s is an uneasy hodge-podge of influences when compared with the slick look that will develop in the 1960s. But John is a producer, just what the industry values most in the “Golden Age” of comics. Even when drafted into the service in 1951, Lee still feeds John scripts. 25

In the Korean War, John’s artistic ability saves him from the front lines. His honeymoon, however, almost gets him thrown in the barracks. “He wasn’t aware he couldn’t leave the country,” says Virginia, “so we went to Quebec City for our honeymoon. Once we were in Canada, he suddenly thought maybe he shouldn’t be leaving the States without letting someone know where he was. His Major, Major Tobin, came to the wedding and no one asked where we were going. He said, ‘Oh God, if they ever found out, I’d be put away!’ Fortunately they never did.” Three months into their marriage, Virginia is expecting their first son, Victor, and never goes back to work until she begins her time at Marvel, almost two decades later. During the 1950s, however, Stan Lee and Joe Maneely are just names. “I hardly ever went into the city after our second child. As the boys got much older, I went into the office and met people, but it was always in-and-out.” The life of a freelancer in the 1950s is as turbulent as the Jersey shoreline. “John worked all the time. For him, it was a job. It was not pleasant times. When the page rates got cut, he had to do more pages. When you’re freelance, you don’t know how to pay your bills because you never know when that check is coming in. I needed a more regimented life. We had no medical insurance, nothing. Those were anxiety attacks I would have. John would have them too, but being the man of the family, he would never burden me.” As difficult as it is for the family financially, the peculiarities of his creative process take a physical toll on the freelance artist. “He couldn’t seem to create early in the day,” remembers Virginia. “Lunch, breakfast, and dinner would distract him. The only time he worked steadily was after everyone went to bed and he could work through the night. “John was a volunteer fireman in our village, and he was at the tail end of a job he had to get in for Stan before we went to Bermuda on vacation. He got called out because there was a fire in a freight car on the tracks between Floral Park and New Hyde Park, and it couldn’t be put out for twenty hours! We got to Bermuda, finally, but John slept two days away to make up for the sleep from finishing the job and putting the fire out! “We just didn’t chip away at each other. We disagreed on many things: where to put the furniture, whether we should go out or stay home, or visit my parents in Connecticut because he had a deadline to meet, or a job to get. Fortunately, I didn’t need a very active social life; just the one we had with family and friends was good enough. “It worked very well when the kids were young. He’d take them to the park and play ball with them. He spent a lot of time with them. That’s why he has a good relationship with them now. However, when he had a deadline he had to meet, there was no playing with the kids. He put his time in, with very little sleep, working out of the attic for peace and tranquility. He had a window he was able to look out.” The artist becomes well known in the later 1960s for the pin-up quality of his women, but Virginia’s only experience posing for John is lethal. “The only time he ever asked was when I was expecting. I wasn’t too happy with how I was looking, so I thought, ‘Well jeez, now I don’t feel too bad.’ “He got me a jacket, put it on me, sat me down and said, ‘Alright, fold your elbow.’ I said, ‘What do you want to do?’ He says, ‘I want you to fold your elbow. I have to see how the creases are from the arm on the man’s jacket.’” Ah, the sensitive male artist—“I was devastated!” laughs Virginia. “I thought he was going to do something to make me look great. All he wanted was to see the folds on the man’s jacket on my arm. “He didn’t discuss his work then

because he would get a full script. It’s not how it got to be later on where he was able to plot from some sort of breakdown. I would come in and look. Sometimes he would bring it downstairs, so he could be a part of the family. In the 1960s, he’d sometimes get stuck on a particular plot and what I said wouldn’t always help, but it would help him to think in a different direction.” In the 1950s, the rush to deliver a job (and to pick up the next one) allows for “hands on” experience for Virginia. “He’d ask me to erase his pages. Sometimes he’d have me drive to deliver pages, and he would be in the passenger seat erasing pencils from around his inks. That’s how I’d see his work. It’s not as if I had made any kind of study of what he was doing. I just thought it was important that he earn money to pay our bills. “We delivered when Stan was living out on the island to save time. I’d sit out in the car. I didn’t go into Stan’s house. He would go, deliver the pages, get in the car, come home and go to sleep. He was exhausted because he had pulled an all-nighter. “When he worked for DC Comics, you brought in the work, you got a check and you went home. Once I delivered one by train when I was about eight months pregnant, because he’d started another one. I went into Manhattan and just left it at the desk. I used to take care of the bills, too. Later, he just took it off my shoulders. That made me very happy.” Comics may have started as a job, but Romita soon took his artistic chores seriously. “John wanted to be a magazine illustrator,” says Virginia. “It was very hard for him because he realized that’s not where he would be able to earn a living. So John said, ‘I’m going to try to be the best damn artist there is.’ That’s when he really decided to buckle down. Of course, then he’s slowing down because he’s taking more time with what he’s doing. It was really hard when Stan dropped John.” In early 1957, Stan Lee cuts Marvel’s output to the bone. In the space of a year, John’s page rate drops from $44 to $24 per page. When the final cut comes, Romita has spent two to three days doing production work on a western story, whatever he can to pull in money for the family. Stan’s secretary calls John and tells him to stop work on the story. John asks for a hundred dollars for the work done, but never sees the money. John tells Virginia to tell Stan Lee to go to hell if he ever calls again. He will not return to Marvel for eight years. John himself is unable to escape the Colan-like fate of having to take on another job to make ends meet. “We were on thin ice financially,” says John, “with two youngsters in a tiny bungalow—four small rooms and a Above: self-portrait of John from Marvelmania, 1969. smaller attic studio—so I took on a paper route. For Top Left: panel details Marvel Tales #152, Aug. 1952. three years I delivered 300 daily newspapers six days a Bottom Left: Virginia, recently married, Nov. 1952. week and 450 on Sundays. I earned about $120 a week that we had to bill and collect monthly ourselves. “Virginia wrote out bills, mailed them and we waited weeks for checks to come in—ranging from five to twenty dollars. Some folks didn’t pay until she and I drove around to collect in person. I won’t go into what those newspapers did to our family car! I was a zombie for those three years and heard not a peep of complaint from Virginia. Anything we have now is never enough to compensate her.” “That’s when he went to DC Comics,” remembers Virginia, “and immediately got a rate increase and things picked up. He didn’t care about not working for Marvel. He was happy to be earning a living. It worked out well, because we had just moved into the house we’re in now.” Much like Colan, Romita days at DC Comics are a seemingly endless wash of drab romance stories that

eventually short-circuits his creative wires. The page rate goes from $24 to about $38, but doesn’t top the $40 a page he’d been getting at Marvel before the cuts came, so the jump can be viewed as Pyrrhic at best. Each editor at DC protects their own stable of artists, and if your editor loses interest, you are finished. In 1965, John’s clock at DC is punched. They shut down the romance department. “It was traumatic to all of a sudden not get work from DC,” remembers Virginia. “Jack Miller, an editor at DC, came in and said, ‘You’re a freelancer, go find work somewhere else.’” The turn of events pushes Virginia back into the work place. “For a week, we didn’t know what we were going to do. I went to work for Van Eiderstein. It was horrible. I worked in the office, but they had a plant that would pick up all the dead creatures or horses, or whatever was dead, and process them, turning them into all sorts of horrible things—feed, etc. “The men would come into the office from the plant with all sorts of horrible stains on their papers. You’d want to wear gloves to handle them. It was a good paying job, and I thought it would be all right... until I got in there.” The comic world is on the verge of losing the Romitas for good. John is hired at BBD&O, a large advertising firm, for $250 a week on a Thursday, and calls up Stan Lee about his new job. Stan talks him into Above: self-portrait in mixed medium, 1996. returning to Marvel for the same salary; a promise Right: Daredevil #12 starts it all, cover-dated Jan. 1966. Romita fools himself into thinking Stan would be able to keep. Virginia is free to leave her new job—almost. “Someone had gone on vacation and so I had to stay at least until she comes back from vacation. I was there a month. I was fully prepared to leave after only being there a week. I think they would have preferred if I had left.” One of John’s conditions of returning to Marvel: abolishing the freelance life. John has the self-awareness to know he needs a nine-to-five schedule at the Marvel offices. It is the smartest decision of his life. Instant access sees Stan turning to John in every crisis, every situation. While it may seem Stan is taking advantage of John, it is great training for his eventual job as Art Director, thus ensuring John will be an employee of the company with all the benefits this would allow. Time-wise, John has gone from job-to-job status to a job lasting him until retirement, while almost all other artists of the 1940s and 1950s fade away with little to show for their toils. “He’ll never say he loved all that hard work,” says Virginia. “They’d ask him to do a job, a painting or whatever, and he would never say no. It just was not in him to say no. I think he wanted to do so many different things and felt he didn’t have the time for it, but this was a paying job and this is what he would do. “He had anxiety about being an Art Director because he didn’t know how he’d perform. Stan got dependent on him and John tried to please him. It’s how their relationship developed. It was good training for John. It made him a bit of a nitpicker, a perfectionist.” Because of his job, events occur that will alter family life forever, and produce the “Romita Legacy” at Marvel. John Salvatore Romita Jr. is born August 17, 1956—a younger brother to Victor—in the family’s tiny bungalow in Queens. “They never paid attention to what their father did when he was doing the romance—never even looked. When he started doing Daredevil, John Jr. would just hang over his shoulder watching every stroke he made. 28

“That’s when Jr. decided he was going to be an artist—he was nine. His father would be drawing at the board and Jr. would be in a corner with loads of paper, penciling madly. He wouldn’t let us look at a single thing. He filled up the trash up to the wazoo, but said he wasn’t ready for anybody to look at it.” Imprinted in Virginia’s mind is Avengers #23. John receives the Don Heck penciled pages in the fall of 1965, and the kids go wild. John’s published work had been around the house before but this is different. “They just never looked at them until that Avengers book. They then began to read every comic book that he brought into the house.” John Jr. remembers the cover to Daredevil #12 as a total revelation, the one most responsible for leading him to be an artist. “After seeing him do romance covers for so long,” says John Jr., “the kisses, the females and everybody doing the exact same thing they always did—working those endless hours and totally bored with it— this was a total departure. For the first time, I asked what was going on. He explained, ‘This guy is a super-hero. And this is Ka-Zar and he’s got a giant sabre-tooth tiger as a pet.’ “’Whoa! What do you mean he’s blind?! His senses? What’s a sense?’ In that quick conversation, my life changed. My brother and I looked at Metal Men and Hawkman, but we never really connected to that because he didn’t do them. I started doodling as soon as my father started doing super-heroes.” Jr.’s desire to enter the comic book field is unusually ferocious for a youngster. The artistic streak he exhibits is foreign to mother and father. “He was determined to work in comics. He took art classes and, of course, they thought he was too ‘comicy,’ but it just blossomed.” John Jr. may have a famous artist in the house, but he doesn’t follow his father’s style, and has little interest in his input. “Jr. was crazy about John Buscema stuff,” says Virginia. “He preferred not to show his father anything. If he did, Senior would correct him, and he didn’t want to be corrected.” “That carried through into college,” says John Jr. “I was ashamed of my stuff. Now, we don’t know where the artwork is—they think I threw it away. It’s similar with what I went through with my brother, who is a brilliant man, and my grades in high school weren’t as good as his. I had a rough time in my own head. I was the shortest guy in my group of friends, and I was not as good an athlete—typical childhood angst. “My mother gave me the intestinal fortitude to keep it up. She was always supportive and told me I was great—the way a mother should, but she was especially believable. I’m similar to my mother in ‘guts’ more than I am my father. He’s very easy-going and level-headed. Like my mother, I’m a tad explosive. I get fed up and say, ‘Screw you all!’” The 1970s begin and father has become Stan Lee’s right hand. Not only has Romita taken over from Steve Ditko on SpiderMan—as far back as the summer of 1966—but he has become the company’s Art Director. He has permanent employment. Jr. accompanies his father to the office on off-days from school. “Little by little, he got friendly with the people there and Marie Severin offered him some work,” says Virginia. Son is put on staff with father—a recipe for trouble. “His father didn’t recommend him for any position. He didn’t want anyone to think he was trying to push his son on Marvel. Jr. actually was the last person offered the job.” As to the quality of his son’s work, John has trouble believing his son is worthy. “His father never felt it was good enough, says Virginia. “Between them, they kept this distance. Jr. felt as long as someone at the office liked what he did, that was okay. “There were no hidden feelings,” says Virginia about father’s lack of push for his son at the company. “It’s not as if Senior tried to stop him from getting work. He just wouldn’t recommend him for any particular work. Despite all of that, a lot of his peers thought that he got in there because of Senior.” Virginia had spent the 1950s and 1960s worrying about her freelancing husband not having enough work, and now has to experience the same fears with her own son. “I thought, ‘Well, this

kid isn’t going to get any work. He’s gonna starve.’ But he just persevered.” One of Jr.’s strengths—also one of the obstacles he will have to overcome—is his social skills. “Comics was something for the weekday,” says Virginia, “and the weekend was just fun and games with friends. There was this weekend cruise in New York Bay and the ship had spread a net across the empty ship-board pool. About a half-a-dozen or more of the Marvel people fell right into it! Luckily, they didn’t hit bottom! This big net supported their weight across this pool. I guess the ship wanted to make sure no one fell into the pool in a tipsy fashion. “Senior sees how Jr. has improved. By the 1980s, Jr. had become a good storyteller, but was doing ‘breakdowns’ to save time. The downside was that the ‘finishing/inking’ was not what he wanted. So, he decided, ‘If I do full pencils, the inking will be closer to my style.’ This meant longer hours and less income. It took years, but he did it. His father was thrilled because he thought Jr. might have become a ‘hack’ artist.” “I was irresponsible back in my twenties,” says John Jr. “I got way behind schedule a couple of times and was told my check would be held back if I was under quota. “So I started doing the minimum amount of work required. No one really gave a crap I was doing the X-Men. I had done Spider-Man and Ron Frenz went on the book and was getting all the adulation in the world. I always felt I was being ignored and treated like a second-class citizen because of my father’s name. I took a step back and did a secondary character like Daredevil. I did full pencils, as opposed to being regarded as just another cog in the wheel just doing breakdowns. That was a crossroad in my artistic ability. I was making a lot less money, but I was happier.” “John Jr. now has a wife and son and works very hard,” says Virginia. “He set a world record for doing sketches to help with his niece’s medical bills. We just did that in a New York hotel and he was up forty-eight hours straight.” A difference in approach is now noticeable to mother. “Jr. is better, working from early morning, sometimes into the night. Most times he tries to have his evenings and weekend free. His father was never that disciplined.” Mother and father know their son well. By the time Jr. takes over the reins of Thor in early 1998, his work has improved dramatically, putting him aside the Kirbys and Buscemas in terms of pure adrenaline and power. At the turn of the century, it also puts him back on the book his father helped make famous in the 1960s—the Amazing Spider-Man. The youngest Romita son has established himself a beachhead at his father’s old company as perhaps the most popular artist—certainly the most consistent; qualitatively and quantitatively. “He worked so hard for that,” says Virginia. “You have to admire him. He just never quit. His income was reduced by half and I thought, ‘He’ll never stick to it,’ but he did.” The apple doesn’t fall too far from the tree. John Jr.’s wife, Kathy, shares similar tales of woe about her hard-working husband. “With the industry the way it is now, he has to do a lot more work. It’s hard to plan our vacation time because we never know exactly how everything is going to be with shipping. Unfortunately, Johnny is 30

the last stepping stone. If a writer like J. Michael Straczynski gets behind or caught up in another project, then Johnny has to get it caught up to the shipping date. He has to drop everything.” John Jr. is also cognizant of how his art has blurred the lines of his professional and personal life. “We were told my wife couldn’t have any children because of a horrible car accident. Suddenly she got pregnant while we were engaged. We moved up the wedding plans, but I was in the middle of a horrible deadline. Due to her physical problems, there was a fear she could die during the birthing process. We wanted to get married quickly and get her under the coverage so there would be no fear of bankruptcy. She had already gone through that due to medical problems. “I was working on scarlet Spider-Man, or ‘regular’ Spider-Man, or ‘adjectiveless’ Spider-Man. She had to have our son by caesarian. They said it would be 5 p.m., but they wanted her in there at 8 a.m. It was during the week and there was a nasty deadline. Cathy said, ‘They’ll put me on medication and I’ll be sleeping away all day, so sit in the room and work.’ I worked almost up until the baby was born.” Understanding from your partner is key when economics force you to work on your wedding night. Says Jr., “I was told by a couple of assistant editors if I didn’t get done by this time, I was going to miss a bonus and we couldn’t spare the money at the time. There were a lot of mitigating circumstances, but the truth is I worked on my wedding night with the full intention of taking a honeymoon down the road.” But father and son are only half the legacy of the Romitas at Marvel Comics. Lee, Kirby, Ditko, Romita, Buscema, and Colan may make Marvel look like a creative powerhouse on the outside, but by the end of the 1960s, the innards look like a tornado has run through it. The men had created anarchy out of chaos, and it takes a woman with the moxy of Virginia Romita to come in, clean house, and get the company’s standards of professionalism up to snuff. “When my older boy decided he didn’t Left: father & son on cover to Marvel Age #111, 1992. want to teach anymore,” says Virginia, “he applied Below: John Jr., Virginia and Victor, early 1960s. for a job at Marvel to become an editor. I thought, ‘Oh, my God, if Marvel goes under, there’s four of us out of work!’” You can blame Virginia’s tenure at Marvel on the family’s narrow driveway. With both sons, and father, out of the household all day, Virginia begins to pine for a career again. “I didn’t start working for Marvel because of the money— I got lonely. I hadn’t developed a really good social life. That’s one of the regrets I have—my social life was being with John and my sons. “I thought I’d stick price tags on cans at the supermarket. I was determined to get a job I could walk to. We didn’t have room for a third car in our driveway. That’s when John said ‘Would you come in and straighten out my office?’ It was about the time he had been asked to be Art Director.” “Straightening out his office” turns into straightening out a company. “You have to understand,” says Virginia. “Marvel was so disorganized. No files were kept and no one knew where anything was. You had to go digging in piles of stuff to look for Xeroxes. It was terrible. I loved to organize. They thought I was a genius because whenever something had to be found, I would dig it up and find it. Marvel was a God-awful mess.” When John Sr. first joins Marvel, he goes into the office three days a week. Once he 31

becomes Art Director, it’s everyday, but John’s job doesn’t end at five o’clock. “It’s not as if he just worked at the office. Early on, he got a weekly salary, but he had to earn it by a quota of pages. So it was a continuation of freelance, but a little more regulated. “After a while, he didn’t have to keep a quota and they made him Art Director. He had boxes of art submissions that he couldn’t get to. I didn’t get paid, I just went in to help him.” Nancy Murphy is head of Marvel’s subscription department. When her assistant falls ill, Nancy turns to Virginia. “Now I was getting paid,” says Virginia. “I was getting twenty-five dollars a day, the three days I went in. I was delighted, now that I was making money.” John, however, wants his wife, and office helper, back. “John said, ‘When are you going to come back and help me?’ I said, ‘Well, Nancy needs me.’ I wasn’t going to go back to not getting paid. I mean, I loved him, but my God! “He then spoke to Stan, saying, ‘I’d like her to come and work for me, I need the help. Can we pay her $25 a day?’ So I left Nancy and worked on a per diem for him, three days a week.” After having not worked for eons, the woman managing the money for the household develops a rather clingy approach to the funds she’s earning. “This was such a stupid thing I did. Every time I got paid, I’d cash it and put the $75 in my wallet. I had to hold it. My wallet got so thick I couldn’t fit any more money in it. “John said, ‘You can’t walk around with all that money. Why don’t you put it in the bank?’ I said, ‘No, I can’t.’ He said, ‘Well, what are you going to do with it?’ I said, ‘I have to think about it’ and I bought us a TV.” When questioned as to why she kept a firm grasp on the mounting wad of bills, Virginia laughs, “because it was my money. If I had put it in the bank, I wouldn’t be able to touch it! I got over it. It hurt me to give that money to buy the TV, though!” She finally meets Stan, but it is still only in passing. “It was just meeting in the hall. He’d come in, talk— a word here and there—but there was not some sort of social life involved. “I thought he was great. A little hyper, and I would get upset when John would have to make these crazy little corrections. A lot of times I would stay late at the office and help do some of the production, running to the Xerox or whatever John would need. That would irritate me a little bit, not so much at Stan, but having to do this painstaking work, what I thought were petty corrections. John had the patience to just do them. “When the pages would come in— whether it was John Buscema’s or Jack Kirby’s— everyone would just flock around the Xerox machine and admire them. They wanted their own copies because John Buscema—but I think Jack Kirby too—would do sketches on the back of the pages, so the artwork was Xeroxed front and back.” Just don’t mention the owner of the company. “I only knew him the short time he was there until he sold Marvel. He wouldn’t have known me. He was a paper clip counter. We won’t talk about Martin Goodman.” There’s no deadline like a syndicated strip deadline, and Virginia does not look back on that with fondness. “It just never ended because he was doing the Spider-Man strip and his job. We just never saw light of day. He figured when it was big enough, he would give up his job as Art Director. It had to be proven to him first. At some Characters TM & ©2002 Marvel Characters, Inc.

point, he felt it wasn’t going to get as big as he thought it would be to satisfy him, so he decided to give it up. “When John began to do the strip, they gave Marie Severin some of his responsibilities and I went to work for her. Whatever she needed—correspondence or answering submissions for her—I did just about everything.” When Shooter is handed the reins, he strips Marie of her duties and has her on staff only as a senior artist. Virginia is offered the position of working with Lenny Grow, the production manager. Under Shooter, Lenny doesn’t last long. Stan Lee leaves for Above: Virginia’s favorite picture of father and son, late 1990s. California and the company needs Left: San Diego comic con program sketch, 1975. someone to run his New York office. “I began to feel like the kiss of death,” says Virginia. “Whoever I worked for was moved out. I said, ‘I can’t work for Stan’ and Shooter said, ‘Work for me.’ I became Shooter’s secretary. I loved it. He was a wonderful boss.” Gene Colan is not the only artist in Shooter’s early days to run afoul of the new editor-in-chief. As proof of Shooter’s ability to polarize a workplace, both Romitas compliment the man in his pre-Secret Wars days (the 1984 maxi-series which launched Shooter, and his ego, into a rarified air). Ms. Severin, however, does not share the Romitas’ initial opinion. “She’s a great artist,” says Virginia, “but she became a little unhappy with how Shooter ran things. She expected to have a little more say in who was working for Marvel. Shooter didn’t want, or like, that.” Marvel Comics has two prominent women working for them in the 1970s at only the beginning of the feminist revolution. Comics has always been a male-dominated industry, based on male-fantasy fulfillment (of a questionable, subconsciously, homoerotic nature). The deck is stacked against a member of the opposite sex making headway in the company. Marie and Virginia are trailblazers in this respect, and do face hardship on the job; Marie especially. “It was a stressful time for her because everything changed at Marvel. At one point, Stan decided he wanted the title of Art Director. He was looking for a higher salary. Instead of giving the title to Marie as Art Director, he made her Art Editor. That was the beginning of the end for her. She was so upset about that. She felt it was done to her because she was a woman. I would have been a little angry myself.” “Marie treated me like a king constantly,” says son John. “She disregarded the fact I was my father’s son and said, ‘I don’t care, as long as you do the work.’ I think everybody there mistreated women without really making a conscious effort to do it. They were second-class citizens. ‘They’re not artists!’ Marie, being a brilliant artist, was always frustrated because she wasn’t getting her due. Marie had hard feelings for not being considered the Art Director when my father was taken off for things like the Spider-Man strip. It was not against my father, but against Jim Shooter and the fact that she was a woman.” Virginia believes her experience to be the opposite, except for one man. “I got along with everyone except Barry Caplan. He was vice-president of finance. He thought I was being given a salary and not doing any work. If I went to lunch with John and we would meet him on the street, he would say, ‘Hi John.’ It was like I did not exist. It was so insulting to me, but you can’t say anything. “At some point he decided he would test me. He’d call me up and ask about certain bills or about certain machines. He was just testing to see if I knew what I was doing. It took a long time before he was convinced that I wasn’t there on John’s name.” John Jr. remembers the earlier days when opinion of Virginia’s worth is questioned. “Because of her stature—she’s four-foot-ten—before they knew how tough she was, there were jokes like, ‘There goes Virginia, the little General.’ It was derisive in a comedic manner. Until she got more power, she wasn’t really taken seriously.” 33

The employee can’t fault her perfect memory, but Virginia notes the reputation is achieved under less than ideal circumstances. “The truth of the matter was I was taking some medication to relax the stomach condition I had at the time. This affected my ability to remember things, so everywhere I went, I had a pad and pencil in my hand. Whoever said a word to me, I’d write it in my pad to make sure I wouldn’t forget. “John would say, ‘Could you go get me...’ and I’d reach the door to his office, turn around and say, ‘What did you want me to get?’ I’d get so desperate and so frightened when I couldn’t remember. I had this grand reputation of being efficient and not forgetting anything. In reality, it was my problem. Once I stopped my medication, it got better.” She is the ultimate employee at Marvel because when they move her into any position, any department, she has it completely re-organized within months. “Any job they gave me became a challenge. When I was Shooter’s secretary, he asked me to become Traffic Manager. There was no one there to tell me how to do it. It was just something I had to work out by myself. “He gave me a hard time because nothing immediately showed. He had his own ideas on how it should be done. Over a period of a year, I got a little bit frustrated and we had a few disagreements. “When review time came around, he said, ‘Gee, I thought you’d be so great as the Traffic Manager. When you were my secretary, you could do everything.’ I said, ‘Being your secretary was a snap. You were being very supportive. When I became Traffic Manager, I feel like I was dumped out in the cold. You didn’t give me any help at all.’ We had this wonderful chat and he left me alone after that. I gradually got things on schedule. They were good years with him.” Readers don’t see Virginia’s name on a comic, but they wouldn’t even be reading the book without the job she performs as Traffic Manager. “I had to set up the schedule about six months in advance. I go into each editor and tell them, ‘You haven’t even gotten the current book out,’ and I was telling them they were already late on the next three books. They would look at me like I was out of my mind,” laughs the most feared person at Marvel. “That was a big joke. What they never expected was I’d be able to hear who was doing what—which artist was doing too much work. I relied on all the vouchers to figure these things out. I’d be able to tell an editor every-

Above: Traffic Manager Virginia’s weekly scheduling meeting, late 1980s. Left: 25th anniversary for the couple by Marie Severin, 1977. thing he had going on, which was a bit of a shock for him. He didn’t even know himself what he was doing. “Shooter was very supportive. I would tell the editor, ‘You’ll have to get someone to help, or the artist has to work a little faster.’ They would use me as ‘the bat.’ They would call them up and say, ‘Virginia is on my back! I’m in so much trouble, you gotta help me out!’ This is the reputation they built for me. It was a big joke, but these poor artists believed the editors. I started trying to get them to care. “I had to have ‘the editor of the week’ sign. Whoever had the best improvement in his work that week, I’d put up it on his door. When I think of it now, I just die,” laughs Virginia. “They took it well. Of course, Mark Gruenwald thought it would be a lot more fun if I chose the worst editor of the week!” As the Marvel “Empire” begins to grow, so does Virginia’s workload. She is organizing the schedule for every Marvel line. “Every time I turned around, there were more books. I would have weekly meetings with all of the editors. The one thing Shooter said to me when I took over the position—‘You have nothing to do with the artists. That is the editor’s responsibility.’ The Traffic Manager, at one time, did call up and ask the artist about the pages.” That didn’t stop Virginia from slipping in a call to her own flesh and blood every so often. “I used to call up John Jr., saying, ‘Where are your pages? You know they’re looking for your pages.’ “He’d say, ‘Well, I’m not feeling so good,’ and I would say, ‘I don’t want to hear any of your excuses! This is the Traffic Manager. You just get those pages in. I’m really tired of this John,’ and I’d just hang up. “Then I’d call back, ‘This is your mother calling. What’s wrong? You sick? Are you feeling alright?’” Clearly, there were benefits and negatives to having parents in the industry. How long does it take Virginia to whip the whole Marvel line into shape? “Forever,” she says. “One time, I finally had them all at seven weeks, from shipping and doing the lettering on the boards. “That’s when Shooter got a little wacky, I guess, where now he felt he could tell them what to do because he had this margin of safety. He could tell the artists how he wanted them to do stories, and have them rewritten and redone with corrections by the carloads. That seven weeks just went back to what it was before. That was hard for me to see happen because I took so much pride on having improved it.” 35

Somewhere Gene Colan is reading this now, and nodding empathetically. “They still call it, ‘The Virginia Schedule’—she did the impossible and took no crap,” says son, John. “Shooter did a lot of undermining because he wanted to play Art Director. ‘Regardless of the schedule, I want this done! Send it all back and redo it!’ He was slightly meglo-maniacal. He took advantage of their friendship and obviously felt no threat from her. That may have been chauvinistic in itself. I don’t know if he was malicious—I just think he was himself.” After Shooter is terminated, Tom DeFalco becomes the Editor-in-Chief and adds Production Manager to Virginia’s plate. “I had about twenty-five people in the Bullpen working for me. Don Guzzo was my assistant. There were a lot of ‘nightmare jobs.’ They would want a rush Christmas card design and sent the request to the Art and Production departments with a due date up top saying ‘Due Date: Yesterday.’ You only had one week from scratch to having the actual cards to go out to clients, or all our people—artists and such. You had to get regular work done, and these, too.” From straightening out John’s office in the late 1960s to the corporate world of Marvel in the 1980s, personal warmth has to be generated on the floor. “It was shocking how it became big business. How do you describe just a few Xeroxes here and there to becoming a well-oiled machine? You had to crank out a tremendous amount of work. “When Archie Goodwin was still at Marvel, the company was giving everyone a hard time about coming in on time in the morning. They were talking about putting in a time clock. One morning, John and I got in early and, in Mark Gruenwald’s office, there was Archie in bare feet, a nightcap on, wearing a nightshirt with a candle in his hand! He said, ‘I wanted to make sure I got in on time!’ Somewhere, there’s a picture of that floating around. “Everything was PR and Merchandizing. ‘Now we have to publicize this book so we need a cover on this.’ Conventions became the rage, as did public appearances, going to bookstores, and the comic book shops.” Whatever inter-company politics she had to face, Virginia is not prepared for the “War to end all Wars.” “The War,” she remembers solemnly. “It was scary. We went to San Diego when the war with Jack Kirby’s original artwork was really, really hot. Anyone who worked for Marvel was threatened. People were told, ‘Anyone that sees a Marvel person, throw a rock at them.’ “We were just employees going to the conventions. One time we went past a balcony and somebody spit down. It was ugly. When we were sitting at the table doing a little bit of work—and the people would come to visit us—you just didn’t know what would happen. You’d have this bit of anxiety and they ended up being very pleasant. But it was a very anxious moment—all over Jack Kirby’s work.” “There were no hard feelings between John and Jack. The hard feelings were Jack and Stan, and Jack and Marvel, but there’s no way you could say, ‘Hey, I have no part of this.’ If you worked for Marvel, you were a part of it.” Virginia will not look back at her first San Diego convention with fond memories. “They put us in a hotel overlooking a park that had all drug addicts in it. In those days, the city of San Diego was awful. It was really run down and dirty. We were looking out the window and there was a terrible fight going on in the park. We didn’t go back there for a number of years. When we did go back, San Diego was on the upswing. “The way it became boggles the brain. Comics changed from just being a job to, all of a sudden, being a creative thing. Where conventions became very popular, John’s autograph was being sold for five dollars. He wasn’t paid—the kids were selling the auto36

graphs he gave them! “He did a sketch in the 1970s, and joked to the fourteen-year-old that he would sell it. The young fellow said, ‘Never!’ In the 1990s, he admitted selling it, and begged John for a replacement. He explained he was in tuition debt and had to sell it. He got another sketch from John with an added a P.S. ‘I told you so.’” As with the Colans, conventions were truly the first sense an artist would have that this was more than a job. “When you go to conventions and see the fans, they’re talking about your work like it’s some masterpiece. I was thrilled because I was so proud of John and it made him feel good to know that his work was so well received.” “Once he started working in the office and going to conventions, he was always in demand. He always had work, never had enough time to do it—getting letters, phone calls, and offers to go different places. We’ve been everywhere—Hawaii, Australia. How he’s kept his modesty is something I don’t know. He has no ego -none at all. “You have a lot of egos now. At these conventions, they have these panels with a lot of the artists before John’s time, and they always say, ‘This was always just work.’ I’m not saying there weren’t any artists with egos, but it seems all of them are that way now. They think they’ve been blessed by God, and they’re not.” Both John and Virginia retire from Marvel in 1996, but not at her insistence. “He was the one that wanted to retire. I was shocked. I wasn’t going to go into the city without him. I was hoping I wouldn’t go into this state of depression that you hear so many horror tales about people that retire. I thought it was going to be awful, but all of a sudden, we were on this continuous vacation. It was such freedom. We go out to breakfast every morning. I don’t know how to cook breakfast anymore!” Virginia grins at memory of their retirement ‘roast’ in 1996. “Mike Carlin’s speech was special. I really laughed when he said the ‘Virginia Schedule’ was being used at DC because it worked so well at Marvel. He ‘strokes’ very well! “Quite a number of people stood up. John always had his ‘Raiders,’ the kids who remember him helping them develop in an art form very difficult to get into. Now they’re mature men, so there were a lot of warm moments at the party. That’s something we can’t forget.” John Jr., who had taken abuse for being his father’s son, has a different reaction. “I was totally sad about my father retiring,” says John Jr. “I wanted them to stay up there. It made it fun. People say retirement is for old people and he still isn’t old! It just put a number to his age. That also bothered me.” After retirement, Marvel signs John to a less time consuming contract that expires in 2001. John does not renew. “We have no complaints with Marvel with how they treated him. They gave him Top Left: Virginia at the Mary Jane wedding party, 1987. stocks, a good salary, medical benefits, and Bottom Left: Virginia and John at their retirement roast, 1996. savings—they did well by him.” Below: the Marvel Comics’ Romita trio at home, late 1990s. From abject poverty to one of the most beloved figures in the industry, Romita beat the odds. Many artists with more talent never came close. Few had the smarts, and timing, to maneuver themselves into a position that would sustain them after their monthly comic days were behind them. Says John about Virginia, “It takes a special kind of mate to be with a freelancer. Without Virginia’s support and patience, I don’t believe I would have had a long and successful career in comics. She then had to walk a tightrope as Traffic and Production Manager for years with a son as a Marvel artist, for which she deserves two medals.” In a dedication to a book John wrote, he says, “She had a right to expect more and sooner but waited until I got it right.”

CHAPTER THREE

LORETTA & RIC ESTRADA

What do you do—what does this industry do to you— if you don’t have the natural talent of a Gene Colan, or the guile of a John Romita who worked his way into the company and the security within? What if you don’t sublimate your artistic voice for every passing fad? What if all you do is tell a clear, concise story in sequential format? The Army calls them ‘foot soldiers.’ The comic industry calls them expendable. Dick Ayers and Ric Estrada—whose origins couldn’t be less similar—will never be the flavor of the month, never ones to ride a hot trend, but they both have an underrated (some say long-forgotten) ability to present a narrative that can lead one’s eye easily across a page in an industry where pictures and words are supposed to combine to present a unified whole. If a Gene Colan, Kirby or Ditko can get handed the short stick, what chance do a couple of veterans have in this medium? Perhaps there is no more heroic a tale than the struggle of one person’s fifty-year uphill battle, and another’s ability to raise eight children, suffer huge medical debt and abandon the comic industry just to physically survive. One assumes the persons are Dick and Ric, but the real heroes of this tale are Lindy Ayers and Loretta Estrada. Charles Lindbergh makes his historic flight from New This Page: wedding pictures, Dick & Lindy, 1951. York to Paris in 1927. A pair of recent immigrants take note of the Previous Page: Ayers’ Sgt. Fury sketch, 1999 occasion to name their daughter, Charlotte Lindy. Born in and Estrada war art, 2001. Passaic—a town in New Jersey—Lindy spends her early childhood living on a seventy-five acre castle estate in Tarrytown, New York; her Swiss father a gardening superintendent of huge estates in the Westchester County area. The Depression sees many large estates lost, and the family retreats to Scarsdale, continuing to live on the land of others. “He always had a staff of about eight working for him,” says Lindy, “because, in those days, his gardens had to be in magazines like Better Homes and Gardens. The rich were always competing with chefs or gardeners, so you had to produce!” One of the fringe benefits of her father’s job is rifling through piles of comics stashed in the garage on the estate. “One of the chauffeurs, Edward Nord, had a lot of time waiting for the bell to bring up the car. I grew up with Batman and Green Lantern. I don’t remember Marvel heroes like Captain America, since I always liked DC Comics.” Of German descent, her mother—a cook in New York City for Stanley Isaacs, Borough President of Manhattan—can’t protect Lindy from the anti-German sentiment on U.S. shores at the outbreak of war. “When I was really little, because my mother used to talk German to me, some little kid called me a Nazi—this was when Hitler first came to power. I didn’t know what a Nazi was, but after that I never would speak German. In high school, I took German but it was a mental block.” Listening to Roosevelt’s post-Pearl Harbor address from her high school auditorium inspires Lindy to join the 39

war effort. “I volunteered for everything. When I graduated high school, the government tested us and I scored very high on shorthand, so they offered me a job at the Transportation Corps. I was too young, or I would have enlisted. “I had relatives in the war on the German side. We lost a lot. One of my cousins was a doctor and was lost on the Russian front. We couldn’t communicate or write letters, because everything was stopped. We didn’t know until afterwards if the family had survived. “After the war, our jobs were terminated and I went to work for the Waldorf Astoria hotel, which was interesting, because the United Nations was there. We used to hide behind the curtain up on the balcony and listen in.” While Lindy’s husband-to-be is serving his time in the Army, life for Loretta Estrada in northern Wyoming couldn’t be more different. During the War, someone has to make the food to feed the nation, and Loretta is born to a farm and cattle ranch owner four miles south of the Montana border. With a population of 200, the paved streets and bright lights of Manhattan are only a dream to a girl who rides a school bus fifteen miles over open prairie roads. “My father looked a lot like Ernest Hemingway,” says Loretta, “and wore the little small mustache right above the lip that was very popular during the 1930s. He wasn’t very tall, but very, very stocky—very strong.” From Mormon pioneer stock, her mother’s resilience and talent for singing and piano has a profound influence on Loretta. “You grew up canning everything and provided for yourself if you lived on a farm. From this, I developed the ability to know, whatever life hands you, you’re going to make it through somehow.” Loretta also indulges in reading comic books at a young age, but the content is far more regulated than Lindy’s, given Loretta’s parents’ strict religious and moral beliefs. “She would allow us to read historically based—or the really silly, funny ones, like Donald Duck or Archie—comic books. She would not allow us to read romance comic books. She thought they were absolute trash and she would not allow us to read anything really violent. We never had an issue about super-heroes because we just weren’t interested. I read one I now realize Ric probably illustrated. It was the Teddy Roosevelt and the Rough Riders strip.” The one-room country schoolhouse with six grades at one time leaves the young farmer’s daughter painfully aware of the difference in lifestyles between her and those ‘in town.’ “We went shopping once a month in Powell, Wyoming, about 30 miles away, which had maybe 2,000 people in it. It seemed huge to me.” Her dreams of a career in music are dashed by a desire to grant her father’s wish to have someone in the family in the medical profession. She becomes a physical therapist instead. “During our first year of marriage,” says Ric, “she often shocked me with her clinical descriptions of her physical therapy cases—broken clavicles, fractured tibial plateaus, dislocated scapulas. Her glorious medical jargon dumbfounded me, let alone her enthusiasm. Eventually this dumb cartoonist steeped in the wham-crash-ka-boom lingo of comics got used to her scientific speech.” “I had no idea I would end up marrying an artist,” says Loretta. “I had a dream when I was growing up—I would go to the chicken yard to gather eggs, which was one of my chores. When I got there, it had turned into a ballroom and I was wearing a beautiful ball gown, dancing with a dark stranger; and then the dream would end. That dream reoccurred periodically in my life until I met Ric and then it stopped. To me, that was, ‘Okay, you’ve met the stranger, now just take it from here.’ “Growing up, my sisters and I would play games and somehow, I was always going to New York. I remember when the first Barbra Streisand TV special came out. My family wasn’t interested, but I was totally fascinated. One of the colleges to which I applied that had a good physical therapy program was New York University.” In the fall of 1967, Loretta makes her way to Manhattan. While regrets linger over a chance not taken in the field of music, her immediate concern is dealing with 40

the culture shock, as well as heading out with no pre-planned accommodation. “I flew a red-eye flight because it was the cheapest way to go. I arrived just before daybreak and my first impression of New York City was of all the lights. I still cannot believe my over-protective parents put me on an airplane and did not know where I was going to be staying. When I graduated from college and got my first job and had my first paycheck in hand, I worked with a voice coach for a couple of years.” “She has a crystalline alto voice,” says Ric, “ and I love her piano playing. I hate her vocalise—that is, her singing warm-up exercises. Those ten-tofifteen minute ‘aaa-aaa-ooo-aaa-ooo’ could drive the monoliths on Easter Island batty. On the other hand, she hates my snoring, so we’re even.” Religion would become a major concern of Loretta’s life in New York, and will be directly responsible for her meeting her future husband. For Lindy, her name provides an initial attraction for the returning war veteran, Dick. Laughs Lindy, “In those days, when boys saw an airplane, they thought it was Charles Lindbergh up there, and they’d wave to him. Being named after him had a little influence on Dick dating me.” Above: Estrada page from E.C. Comics’ Two-Fisted Tales #30, 1952. Lindy spends part of the Top Left: Loretta in Wyoming, October 1959. summer of 1950 at Candlewood Lake Bottom Left: Loretta head shot, 1965. where she would first meet Dick. “I took a liking to him, but I didn’t think anything of it because I was dating someone else. He looked German because he had blonde hair and blue eyes. He was shy and handsome, but still he was fun. He got engaged to this gal, and it didn’t work out. About five months later, someone said, ‘Why don’t you ask Lindy out?’” The two marry six months later. “Dick was working on Ghost Rider, for Magazine Enterprises and living in White Plains with his parents. We lived with our parents in those days, then you got married and left home. “Dick would tell of his father and grandmother reading the comic strips to him and encouraging him to make up stories with his toy soldiers. His father started him drawing stick figures and then making them ‘talk’ like they did in the comic strips. “His earliest memories are of sitting on his father’s lap and having Popeye read to him. He’d say his grandfather, who was a brakeman on the train from New York to Buffalo, would bring home piles of newspapers and his grandmother read the comics to Dick as he sat on her lap. “One Sunday, Dick’s father made up the dialog as he read the comics to Dick. This was when he discovered Dick could read them himself because Dick told his father he wasn’t reading what it said in the strip.” “When I first met Ric,” says Loretta, “I thought he was a weird Greek.” Her Polish father is an incredibly devout Catholic, but her mother’s dedication to the Latter-Day Saints

Church will be her greatest influence. “When my father and his brothers moved from Nebraska to Wyoming to start their farm and ranch, they built a Catholic Church on the property. The priest came from a town thirty miles away every Sunday to say mass right on the property. My parents shared a firm belief in God. They just never agreed on which religion. “When I first went to junior college, I felt a hole in my life and started investigating all kinds of faiths. I felt real warmth and acceptance from the people in the Latter-Day Saints Church. I was finally baptized in 1968. “One Sunday, the missionaries came up to me and said, ‘We’d like you to meet our newest member,’ and they introduced me to Ric, who they had recently baptized. I was actively involved in church. There was a singles group that met once a week for a religion class, and did other activities. That’s where Ric and I got to know each other. “He was eccentric; unlike anyone I had ever known. He was the first person I had met more than casually who actually made a living as an artist.” Ric’s journey to their Church—like Loretta’s— follows a winding road. He had been living in Germany with his second wife and had bottomed out, fired from a job at a major newspaper. “The tradition,” recounts Loretta, ”was you had to give the parting party to everybody—you had to pay for it. He got extremely drunk and ended up punching his boss. He left praying to God—‘This is not the person I set out to be. Help me find me.’ Above: Estrada sketch of WWII German ‘stick grenade.’ “The next morning, two Mormon missionaries Right: unpublished Ghost Rider art by Ayers, 2000. showed up at his door and said to him, ‘Good news. The Gospel of Jesus Christ has been restored to the Earth.’ Ric said to them, ‘I never knew it had been taken away, but come on in and tell me about it.’ They began to present him the theology of the Latter-Day Saints Church.” Ric studies with the missionaries in Germany, but can’t make a commitment, instead returning to New York with his wife. The marriage crumbles, leaving Ric desirous for some sanity and peace in his life. His search leads him to Loretta’s church. “I can really be rather obtuse,” laughs Loretta. “At least, at that time, I was. In December of 1969, Ric gave me a book by Kahlil Gibran entitled Secrets of the Heart. I read it and said, ‘Gee, that’s a nice book.’ “In February, a mutual friend knew Ric had some interest in me and orchestrated a birthday party for him. Shortly after, Ric invited me to lunch. I must be really weird because that day at lunch I knew I was going to marry him. “About a month later, he took me to a Chinese restaurant, bringing me a white rose and a red rose. I was scared to death because I knew he was going to ask me to marry him. He told me the white rose was for my purity and the red rose was for my sweet intensity. He was, and always has been, a gentleman. “At the same time, he’s very competitive and—he would really hate to hear this—was really good at going to any extreme to ‘one up’ anyone in any situation. Several friends were at my apartment, but there were a couple of guys who obviously had some kind of interest. I remember him telling a story and just acting it out to the absolute extreme to the point of absolutely landing on the floor, just to be much more obvious than the other guys.” Despite the nineteen-year age gap, the couple marries after a six-month engagement. “He looked, and acted, much younger. The only thing that made it very real was he had a daughter only eight years younger than I. 42

“You could say we got married twice. We were married in Manhattan, flew to London, were married in our temple in London and had a honeymoon in England and Scotland for three weeks. Latter-Day Saints believe being married in one of our temples—we call it a ‘sealing ordinance’—seals a husband and wife together for all of eternity. We’re not only talking about ’til death do you part’ —we’re talking about from here until infinity.” “During the first months of our marriage,” says Ric, “we’d periodically visit a tiny health food store near our Greenwich Village studio apartment. She’s a health food nut and little did we know then we’d be raising eight children on these nutritious, but prohibitively expensive foods. No wonder I’ve had to crank out cartoons like a popcorn machine all these years to keep up with those organic macaroni bills! Eating scrambled seaweed and tofu burgers is definitely an acquired taste! “Like the women in her family, she’s also an inveterate back seat driver. I learned this during our wedding and honeymoon in England. We’d rented a car to drive from London to Edinborough, and were grappling with the hair-raising hazards of left-hand traffic. “Every few minutes she’d instruct me to shift to second, put on the brakes, steer to the right, etc. I began to feel truly insane. ‘Look,’ I said, “do tell me about outside traffic conditions, but don’t tell me how to drive a car, please?’ At times she’ll shriek, ‘Look out!’ at the sight of a leaf blowing in the breeze in front of the car. I simply say a quiet prayer, repeat my meditation mantra, take a deep breath and assuage my apoplexy.” “Right off the bat, Ric baffled my family,” said Loretta, “but they liked him. My father was just a dig-inthe-dirt, hard-working kind of guy. He just had no reference point for somebody who made a living by putting some lines on paper. My dad would leave in the morning to go do farm work and come back for the noon meal and Ric would still be drawing.” “With your friends, if you’re going to marry an artist, it was like going to a funeral,” says Lindy. “They wouldn’t say, ‘How are you?’ All they would ever ask after we were married was, ‘Is Dick working? Does he have work to do?’” Dick is entrenched at Magazine Enterprises—also working for Stan Lee at Marvel—but is about to get a rude awakening. The Comics Code Authority smacks him upside the head, and he loses his entire M.E. gig and his spot on Marvel’s Human Torch Comics title. “The Comics Code was a nightmare,” says Lindy. “It was a particular frustration for Dick. We didn’t even mention he drew comics to many of our friends. I used to be very active in the PTA and we’d have fundraisers. One time I brought some comic books and they said, ‘We have to get rid of these! We can’t give these away!’ “Our kids’ teacher always said, ‘What does your father do?’ They hated that. They’d rather say he was a garbage collector than in comic books. Our friends had five kids and their father wouldn’t allow a comic in the house. A few years ago, his grandson, when he heard his father knows Dick Ayers, said, ‘Oh, can you get him to sign an autograph.’ Fred had to bow to Dick after all these years and say, ‘My grandson thinks you’re the greatest.’ “It was considered trash. It bothered Dick, but he loves to tell stories about it now, though.” If an artist lives as far away from New York as White Plains, a trip to the offices, or to visit peers is time away from the drawing board, leading to a direct impact on the bottom line. “When he lost M.E.,” says Lindy, “he had to make the rounds. It was our first anniversary, I was pregnant, and went to church and lit a candle.

“Dick went to meet Stan, who had the Ghost Rider there on his rack and he got work. I met Stan at a Marvel holiday party at the Algonquin Hotel in New York City. He was very handsome and looked just like my favorite actor, Lee Bowman, with a trim moustache. I could see why Dick thought so highly of him, but we really didn’t have much contact. “We never really had many of the artists up here in Westchester. We did go to Long Island to a New Year’s Eve party at Syd Shores’ house and Don Heck would be there with his wife. We all had the same ‘it’s a rough life and business’ story. We had a lot of friends, but no artist friends. Maybe that was good in a way. “Even with all that work at M.E., I never met Vin Sullivan. When we married, they sent us a little wedding gift, but Dick never saw him again until 2001. Dick didn’t like to take his work to the city because you’d be wasting time on the train. We mailed it a lot in those days.” Day-to-day, the numbers rarely add up for what the family is putting into it, and Lindy’s frustration gets the better of her at times. When a job is mailed in, the money for it—including insurance—comes out of the family’s pocket. “The companies didn’t supply the paper, the brushes, the ink—nothing,” says Lindy. “We were never reimbursed—ever. It wasn’t too many years ago, when he did something for Marvel, they said, ‘Oh, we’ll give you brushes, paper, etc.,’ and Dick couldn’t believe it; all these Windsor-Newton brushes that were so expensive! Marvel did give paper in the 1960s when they wanted artists to draw the same size to fit the copy machines. “The post office is pretty close by. I would do most of the mailing. Dick was here to Right: Dick & Vin Sullivan meet for the first time in 50 years, 2001. baby-sit, so I wouldn’t have to put the kids in the Below: splash to Dick’s Uncanny Tales #34, Aug. 1955 (for Marvel). car. One time—because my mother ended up living with us, and she was an elderly, short little lady—Dick put the work on the roof of the station wagon, and drove off. She was running after him, screaming, ‘The work! The work!’ It was so cute to see this little, old lady running down the street.” Omnipresent is the insecurity from trusting the U.S. Postal Service. If a package goes missing, no company will reimburse for work not received. “We did have one job that didn’t turn up for about three months. It was lost in the post office under some bag. Insurance was part of your expense. “In junior high, our son Steve took pages (including the splash) from the original art to Fantastic Four #19 that Stan had given to Dick for show and tell. It was never returned by the art teacher!“ Part of the family’s expense means buying the published comics with their own money. “You wouldn’t get any books and Dick was cheap! He said, ‘I’m not going to buy them.’ By the time he was on Sgt. Fury, we were on a mailing list, but when he started inking Kirby, no. “A lot of guys would go to the Marvel offices and they’d have a rack there, and you could help yourself, but Dick never went in. I know with the original artwork, an artist told us there was a stack of originals, and you’d just help yourself.” In the late 1980s, when Marvel finally returns the stored original artwork of Kirby et al, 44

the Ayers (as did the Colans) let it all go at once for pennies compared to its worth now. “There was one shipment. It’s a mental block because we sold it, much to my chagrin. I was furious and still am,” laughs Lindy. “There was one lump sum, which was very little, and who he sold it to didn’t pay us for a very long time. I thought, ‘Oh God, there it goes.’ It was hard then because it was new to sell the work. “It’s heartbreaking because artists don’t have any concept of money. They don’t shop much; at least Dick never shopped. One time, there was a blizzard and we needed bread, so Dick walked to the store and gave the guy eleven cents for a loaf of bread. The guy said, ‘When was the last time you bought a loaf of bread?!’ He probably thought Dick was from outer space! “I would handle all the household finances, mow the lawn—a push mower—and the painting. I did it all. Elaine, our first daughter, said to me the other day, ‘You use to come home from work and not even take your coat off. You went right to the kitchen and started dinner.’ I’d do the laundry, working until about 11 p.m. at night.” Getting paid is difficult, and expensive, even though Dick keeps a superior set of records of each book drawn. “When the check would not come in, he’d call every day. I’d say, ‘God, that costs money to call New York. We’re not making anything! “I liked DC Comics. They were really nice. I never thought Marvel was organized. You had to beg for your check. They tried to say, ‘Well, you didn’t meet the deadline,’ and, of course, Dick always made the deadline, so they’d try to say, ‘Well, you didn’t meet the deadline when the vouchers go in.’ They’d always have some excuse.” When the bottom falls out of Marvel in early 1957, Dick is forced to abandon comics and work at a greeting card company for ten months. “You just have to do what you have to do, to make some money. Dick never really complained about it. One other job was for a bank, but everyone would say, ‘We won’t hire you because you’re a freelancer. The minute you get work, you’ll be out of here.’” Dick is a producer, and when Marvel begins anew in late 1958, Stan calls him back, primarily to ink Jack Kirby’s monster stories. Artistically, Dick believes the focus on inking inhibits his growth as an artist, but Lindy takes a more practical view. “When he was doing Kirby’s work, I used to get furious. I’d say, ‘I don’t see anything on this page! It’s just outlines!’ There wasn’t anything there. I said, ‘It’s like doing two jobs!’ Being of Swiss origin, I’m that way and would say, ‘That’s not right.’ Still, we needed the money. We had four kids and my mother to support.” “I remember the comic books more from before we got married,” says Loretta. “I’d go to Ric’s apartment and after dinner, he’d be at his drawing board. I’d sit next to him and watch his hands. He’s ambidextrous and I was totally enamored of the way his hands moved across the page, just watching how he handled the pencil—the incredible facility. I was blown away to see him do one thing from one angle and he’d do it from the other with the other hand.” Ric is most well known for his 1970s work on the DC Comics line of war books. While he would do plenty of other projects, the war stories affected his entire personality in a very tangible fashion. “He was doing a lot of romance and war; some of the Bob Kanigher material. There was a huge difference in his personality—much more tension and aggression —doing the war comic books. “The Latter-Day Saints Church was looking for an artist familiar with the comic book format to illustrate the New Testament for Children. That was when I realized how dramatically his personality changed depending on the story content. When he was illustrating war comics, he was more aggressive and reactionary; when he was illustrating the New Testament, he was peaceful and approachable. His personality during those six months was incredible. It was much easier to broach a subject, have a level conversation, and come to a resolution on the subject. “Ric has a really hard time leaving his work—ever. We’d sit at the dinner table and, instead of having a conversation about family concerns, we just got to listen to the whole story about something at work told from every 45

conceivable angle. He couldn’t turn the tape off. That’s been my biggest struggle. Where is there a window of time for other things besides this in our lives? There is more to life, but every conversation comes back around to that.” “On our fifth or sixth wedding anniversary,” says Ric, “we agreed on a verbal diet. During our candle lit dinner at a quiet little restaurant in Westchester, NY, we chose to speak about... botany! We listed flowers, bushes, trees, herbs, weeds, forests, jungles, woods; anything vegetal. We soon found out it was a subject about which we knew nothing. We never did it again.” The act of artists who draw war stories engaging in endless research for one drawing is mind boggling to Loretta. “I’d never known people could be so interested in the details of how things are created. Ric researches to make sure the guns are right or the right canteen is with the right war. Everything has to be accurate. There have been times I felt I was drowning in it, even losing track

Above: Estrada WWII sketch, 2002. Right: Boogie nights with Ric & Loretta, Nov. 1970.

of myself at times; losing track of who I am.” Loretta is jolted awake when Ric comes home and relays a conversation between him and one of his coworkers. “This guy was bemoaning the fact that he just couldn’t find the right girl. Someone asked him what he really wanted. He said, ‘What I want to do is find a slave babe like Ric did.’ “It was a real shocker to me, the impression he had—‘There she is, doing all this and still being a really cool looking, sexy lady.’ That comment was a major eye-opener to me. I said, ‘Time for me to get a life.’ That’s maybe the case for a lot of the spouses. They’re the person who’s there so the artist can be the artist. “We live in the desert and Ric literally forgets to drink water and eat. I actually bought a timer and sent it to work with him so he’ll drink another cup of water. You have to drink at least a half-gallon a day or you die, dry up and blow away. He can walk into a kitchen and not even figure out what to eat because he’s so preoccupied.” That preoccupation, the consumption of time dedicated to drawing, can leave visible scars on the family unit. “A few years ago, we decided to home school our three younger boys. I asked them what the positive side was and one of them said, ‘I got to know Dad better.’ “That was a huge issue for a long time for me because when you’re the mom, you see the needs. For example: the boys were supposed to go out on a scout outing that started at six at night. You had to leave at three, so it wasn’t pitch dark when you’d be setting up your tent. “I’d say that to Ric in every way I knew how, and somewhere around six, he’d pull into the driveway and they’d have to pitch their tent in the dark. That would create a lot of tension. Invariably, the default person for packing would be me, making all of those necessary preparations so they could have that activity and experience together.” “I’m bowled over by Loretta’s networking family skills,” says Ric. “After staying at home for thirty-one years raising our children, she often complains—rightfully so—of feeling isolated. She may have no idea—or care about—what illustration or story I created last week, but she knows exactly where each player stands on her vast family chessboard. “She also took over our bookkeeping and finances. I was delighted. I hate numbers—she loves them, yet she’s often in a tizzy for having fallen behind on this or that bill. She’d croak if she heard me say she’s driven. I’ll soften it by saying she’s intense —in health concerns, nutrition, finances, child-raising, scheduling, moral views.” The insecurity involved in being a freelancer rarely sees the artist turn down work. Not knowing when the next project may come can lead to being taken advantage of one’s time. “A few years ago, a friend of ours referred to us this guy who needed a little help with illustration. Ric ended up doing tons of work for this man at no charge. “The man would come to our house to ‘work’ on this project and I didn’t want to see him walk in my 46

front door and I’m a really friendly person. It took Ric a long time to finally have the courage to say, ‘Excuse me, but I’m bowing out of this project.’ For Ric, the biggest difficulty is the concern for the other person and what they might need. “That’s a really good characteristic, but it completely drains the person who’s doing it. Even our children were resenting that time rightfully due them was going to this man and his project. Ric had so little time with the family and then this man comes over and sucks up entire evenings, three, four, five hours; that was very depleting. That’s one of the areas Ric has had to learn to know how to draw the line.” The respect Ric has for his faith, family and women is a line that can be traced back to its antithesis witnessed while growing up in Cuba in the 1930s. “He came from an extremely macho culture,” says Loretta. “Much of the moral looseness of that culture really repelled him. He was very much bothered by seeing women in his family disregarded by spouses who had no compunction about being unfaithful. But at the same time, he has much of the very machismo thing—the man is the provider, the protector. “His mother worked as a teacher but once we had children, Ric really had a hard time with the idea of me going out to work. As a consequence, it never did happen. I would say, ‘It might be wise if we were both working,’ but it came back to how do we take care of all these children we have if we were both working? Part of it was he felt he had to be the provider; like if I worked, there was something seriously defective about him.” Ric openly admits there were demons to exorcise, mainly from spending his childhood in the war zone that is Cuba. “Cuba has never been a peaceful place,” says Loretta. “There was always some sense of anxiety. Then there was the circumstance of his personal heritage. Ric lived in a family situation where the role models were confusing. “Ric’s mother was in her thirties when she had an affair. It turned out to be with a married man and Ric was the product of that affair. To find a solution to the ‘problem,’ his biological father—who would not divorce his wife to marry Ric’s mother—found an associate willing to marry Ric’s mother to provide the ‘front’ of a normal home and a surname for Ric. “His mother and his biological father continued their liaison. She was married in name only. The father who gave Ric his surname lived in the home but was virtually a non-entity. The biological father came every day to visit but was basically not accessible. “Ric had this split model in his mind of what a father was like at home, neither one of which was the whole model. He had a lot of demons in that department. His mother had cautioned him as a child never to talk to anyone about this story because you didn’t know whom you could trust living in that culture at that time. Ric didn’t tell me until several years into our marriage because he had promised his mother. It took him a long time to realize that didn’t mean he couldn’t talk to his wife about it. It took him a long time to get some stability in his own personal life.” Ric’s illustrative style works beautifully for period pieces and grizzly war scenes, but it is not in step with the hyper-realists like Jim Steranko and Neal Adams. Consequently, Ric’s work takes a few knocks over the years. Wally Wood once said, “I guess Ric Estrada has given me the most trouble. The only way to make an Estrada page look like anything would be to erase the pencils and start all over.” Loretta laughs amusingly, remembering a time when Ric’s own agent made a derogatory comment. “I was just so myopic that I didn’t conceive there might be an element of truth in it. The biggest amount of 47

criticism was when he started in animation with art directors, directors and producers who each made their criticism. At first, he was very protective of his ‘creations.’ “How did I deal with it? I listened a lot. And then, finally, when I couldn’t listen any more and I’d said all I could possibly say, I would just say, ‘I can’t listen anymore.’ “Initially, he took criticism very personally because he never had to deal with anybody’s criticism before. Being an only child, he didn’t have to tussle for anything or cut his teeth on interpersonal relations in the family. When we were living in California, he would be so upset by the sibling rivalry in the house. As he got more and more into the animation studio setting, he’d come home with political tussles and be so frustrated. I’d be able to say, ‘You’re getting a taste of the sibling experience.’” Ric himself knows his work is debated by fans and critics alike, once quoted: ‘My so-called lyricism stems from my approach to drawing as a flat design, rather than as three-dimensional bulk. Fans never cared much for my work. In fact, fans in England once wrote that American comics suffer from the deadly disease of Estraditous.’” This is in the 1970s, when Ric is drawing close to 500 pages a year. Few who watch the man while speaking in public would ever guess he is anything but a confident storyteller. “The insecurity comes out,” says Loretta, “when he gets home and second-guesses everything he said, or did. He does that a lot.” Drawing 500 pages a year is not uncommon for Dick Ayers either. “Eat, then to the drawing board,” says Lindy. “The whole world revolves around it. I always tell the girlfriends of young artists they really have to love this business because it is rough. It’s their whole lives—it’s all they talk about morning, noon and night.” Lindy is also a critic of Dick’s work, much to his frustration at times. “Sometimes he had a tendency to draw small heads, and I’d say, ‘Oh God! That’s not right!’ and he’d get all mad, but he’d change it, because he knew I was right. He never much liked to be criticized, but that was the only time I would.” Dick’s daily routine runs counter to his peers. He rarely works nights, preferring the solitude of the early morning. He rises at 5 a.m. to avoid the distraction of the children. “He’d be so engrossed in his work,” says Lindy, “that their running around getting ready for school wouldn’t bother him. He’d read to them when I was getting dinner. That was their quality time. “Working upstairs in one of the bedrooms, he had a gate there. The kids would just walk by and say, ‘Hi Dad,’ and wouldn’t even go near him. The house could burn down and he’d say, ‘Well, it’s too bad. I’ve got to draw. You take care of it, Lindy.’” Only occasionally would Dick descend to bounce an idea off the overworked mother of four. “One night, Stan needed a story and Dick couldn’t come up with any ideas. I said, ‘Why don’t you do a story about a nun behind the scenes?’ Dick said, ‘He won’t go for that because it’s religion.’ He mentioned it to Stan, who said, ‘Oh, that sounds good, do it!’ Even then, I only suggested it because I wanted to go to sleep!” Another of Lindy’s ‘duties’ was to play host in the 1950s to Dick’s in-house assistant, Ernie Bache. “He came up from New York everyday. Ernie was one of these low-key, easy-going people, and he’d miss his train so I’d have to pick him up at the station. “I had kids, I’d have to give him lunch, and he’d eat and talk to me about Scientology—he was way ahead of his time on that one—and I’d have so much to do and here I was being polite. I’d say to Dick, ‘I get stuck with Ernie and you’re up there working!’ Then I’d have to take him back to the station. It was extra work. I don’t think Dick realized it. Ernie was such a smoker. He died at 48 years old, but part of my ‘job’ was keeping Ernie happy.” 48

Lindy’s favorite work of Dick’s is the Ghost Rider, but not just on artistic merit. “It bought my wedding ring!” she laughs. “My ring cost $250 and that’s what he got for the book. We blew it on one little ring— so extravagant! “I loved reading the horror stories, liked the Westerns, but wasn’t much for the Fantastic Four and the super-heroes. I loved the war stories. I always say he should do a humor book because he remembers many humorous war stories. He did Sgt. Fury and would talk to me about details from personal experience he would put in there.” Above: splash panel from Dick’s Marines In Battle #1, 1954 for Marvel. There were times Left: splash from Ric’s Our Army At War #272, 1974. when Loretta was morally opposed to the content of Ric’s art. Ric drew Devilina for Atlas Comics in the 1970s and everything about the project insulted Loretta’s sensibilities. “It had to do with drawing women in a way that objectified them. Even talking about it makes me nauseous in the pit of my stomach. To this day if a fan comes up and asks him to sign it, I want to retch on the spot.” Loretta’s life is consumed with anything but assisting Ric with his career in the 1970s. She is embarrassed by her inability to recite the names of Ric’s peers, but with Ric consumed by drawing, she has to pick up the slack at home. “During that time he was doing comic books, we had about six children all under the age of ten. I crushed a knee joint and spent a year in and out of hospitals and surgeries. Life was pretty hectic for us then. In addition to that, we had our very clear commitment to full activity in our church, which is where a lot of energy went. “When we were first married, we met a couple where the husband was a comic book collector. He was the first person I ever met who actually kept those old junkie comic books in special covers carefully filed in several file cabinets. I thought this was as weird as you could get. To me comic books were those piles of things I put under my bed when I was a kid. That’s as far as my imagination went. I really didn’t understand the value of what he was doing. “If I walked past Robert Kanigher on the street, I wouldn’t have a clue. I’m not even sure I would know Joe Kubert. Joe Orlando was really, very nice. Murray Boltinoff was a very complex, difficult personality, but mostly I was at home in the playpen. “We lived in the same town as Jack Kirby and went to their home only once. It was 1984, so he was considerably older. Joe Orlando and another artist were in L.A. on business and we visited the Kirby home. It was absolutely lined with his work. It almost overwhelmed me. I felt I was in the Jack Kirby Museum. I immediately personalized it and felt very inadequate that I hadn’t framed any of Ric’s work and didn’t have any on our walls. “It was just like a shrine to Jack’s talent, and I’m sure Roz did that to validate him for whatever reason, but I remember feeling I just couldn’t do this in my house. There has to be room for the kids’ speech competition plaque, room for a family to breathe there. I felt almost suffocated by being so surrounded by so much, but at the same time, I understand what she was doing. I guess I didn’t do that for Ric because he probably didn’t need it. “I do remember Jack using very crude, harsh language and Roz indicating to him it was shocking me. She was just trying to get him to tone it down,” laughs Loretta, “and he was not getting the message.” Ric saves his career, his family and his health by leaving the industry for animation. Dick can’t shake his first love and pays the price in the 1970s, when artists from his generation are viewed as ‘dated.’ With both men having large families, medical benefits are difficult to acquire and viewed as gold by Loretta and Lindy.

In 1952, Lindy has their first daughter, Elaine, on a wing and a prayer. “I thought my company would pay, but they said no. We pay for every kid after that, too. In the 1950s, if you wanted to pay the doctors in cash, they were happy. There was no paperwork. For a baby, they would charge $200 for a delivery, so you’d just save up every month. We never had hospitalization and didn’t go to the doctor often because we couldn’t afford it. To this day, Elaine remembers me telling her, ‘Take an aspirin! Take an aspirin!’” Only in the mid-1960s, when she went to work for Life Savers—the candy company—did she have any coverage. “Benefits were great because Dick got sick and had surgery. One big operation and you’d be wiped out.” In the middle 1970s, Dick is forced to take work at General Foods as a night watchman. “He said the most degrading thing for him was he had all the keys and had to lock the gate. It was a big complex near White Plains. It was at night, so he could work days when he did get some work. Right after he started working for them, he got this attack. It turned out it was his gallbladder. He was jaundiced, and in ICU for a long time. “My company was so nice. They sent him flowers and everything, and Marvel? Nothing—it hurts you sometimes. I remember a party at Marvel’s Park Avenue office and they never would announce, ‘We have a couple of freelance artists here—Dick Ayers and Don Heck—so let’s give them a hand.’ “After all the years, you’d think, ‘Was this all there Above: Cap/Wonder Woman sketch by Ric, 2001. was?’ DC was very different. They had a lot more class than Top Right: Sgt. Fury inker John Severin & Dick, 1999. Marvel. It’s like we’re nobody, but even today, at the shows, Bottom Right: Ayers/Severin page, Sgt. Fury #78, 1970. Dick acts like he only worked for Marvel.” Marvel casts him adrift in 1974 and the memories still burn for Dick, but he also remembers the support of his partner, Lindy. “Professionally it was a mighty bad time for me—and Lindy. Marvel was reprinting just about everything I’d done; the westerns, the war stories and even the work I’d inked. With Sgt. Fury they’d alternate, one month reprinting an issue I’d penciled that Severin inked and the next month it’d be a new story I’d penciled that Vinnie Colletta inked. I was not comfortable competing against the Furys I did with Severin. I wasn’t assigned enough work to support my wife, four kids and my mother-in-law. “When I was put in the ICU, it was Lindy’s company, Life Savers, that saved us, and our house. I even received visitors from guards I served with, but Marvel? I had not one visitor or card. It is Lindy who, as my partner, has always seen to it that I get to keep on doing what I love to do—draw comic book stories.” Dick has to rely on his peers to get him back as the main breadwinner for the family since Marvel had finished with the man who had worked slavishly for them for almost twenty-five years. “It was Neal Adams who got me back to work. One day I read in the paper that he and Jerry Robinson had championed Joe Shuster’s cause for recognition for creating Superman. I had worked for Joe and wanted to phone and wish him well, so I phoned Neal to get Joe’s phone number. Neal said he hadn’t seen my work in a long time. I told Neal my situation and he had me come right into his studio and then sent me to DC and I was assigned Kamandi, Freedom Fighters, and Unknown Soldier.” But by the mid-1980s, work at DC dries up and Dick makes the rounds working for Archie Comics and others, but he is mostly cast aside as a product of a generation where flashy pin-up art was a far second to clear, concise storytelling. “Dick sort of resigned to the fact he was getting old and near retirement,” says Lindy. “I was 50

still working part time. Fortunately, we paid our mortgage early in our life otherwise we couldn’t have lived in this house. We’ve lived here fifty-one years. He read one book after another for five years.” Dick is a forgotten man until the rebirth of a cohesive fandom movement in the 1990s. Like Colan, Dick is swept up in a nostalgic wave of respect that returns visibility, and some actual work, to the forefathers of the industry. Dick takes part in a National Cartoonists Society boat cruise and meets AC Comics’ publisher Bill Black. They form a connection that sees Dick working on new material for the first time in ages. Black specializes in reprinting 1940s and 1950s Western comics and Dick’s work from that era is a mainstay for AC. “Bill sent us a copy of reprinted work, and Dick sent him a bill!” laughs Lindy. Like Colan, Dick has benefited tremendously from the Internet, financially and emotionally. “It’s morning, noon and night,” says Lindy. “He’s doing many recreated covers now. Richard, our son, helps with those. It was a financial bonus out of nowhere.

“Marvel’s Sotheby’s auction was a highlight. He was so elated because John McEnroe bought two of Dick’s pieces. At the auction, John had on a baseball cap and sat two rows in front of us. “Back in the 1950s, companies would forward him mail but it was sporadic, even when he was doing Sgt. Fury. Even then, it was a fan saying, ‘That wasn’t a Russian ship you drew’—some little critical detail you’d get from those kind of people. The Ayers’ e-mail list started about three years ago. Back in the old days, the fans and artists were shy, but on the Internet you let loose. You don’t know the other person, so you feel you can say anything.” Dick spends a good half of every day drawing. He is now two years away from his 80th birthday. Dick wanted to write his autobiography, but Lindy suggests doing a virtual tale of his life in comics. Dick has drawn almost fifty pages and he’s still not up to the 1960s; a clear sign the man plans to be drawing for a long time. Ric also is forced to take non-comic jobs to support the burgeoning family. In the early 1970s, Ric works at a company called Longines Symphonette, suffering through the dry mechanics of designing record covers. For the rest of the decade, Ric freelances in comics, children’s books, educa51

tional and business volumes; whatever is available, and the family’s budget has to adjust. “He never had a period of time where there wasn’t a job on the drawing board,” says Loretta, “but sometimes the job was a $25 illustration for somebody. There were periods of incredible feasting and then periods of incredible famine.” While Dick and Lindy are saved by her benefits in the 1970s, the same decade is cruel to the freelancing Ric. “Our fourth child was born in 1976. I crushed a knee joint the night before she was born, had a whole bunch of different problems, and we were in huge medical debt overnight, yet it was the year we bought our first home. “After Ric freelanced for several years, he had the opportunity to go to Mexico and illustrate history for the Mexican government. We went there for about eleven months in 1982. We had six children, and the youngest was only four months old. It was a year the peso was devaluated down to one-quarter of its value from the time we entered the county. The value of the income was one-quarter of what it was when we came in. We barely made it out of Mexico with the shirt on our back.” The family moves from there to California, and it is only when Ric is working in the animation industry at Hanna-Barbera for eleven years that he receives the benefits not afforded to him in comics. “We’d been in our home for about six months and Ric said, ‘You seem much more relaxed since we moved to California.’ We had great medical insurance through the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Union and a steady income every week. I said, ‘I know I can buy food every week.’ “When we moved to California—when our benefits became active—I took my children to the dentist, the insurance kicked in and I paid like twenty percent. If I had a child who needed acupuncture—even diverse things like that—she was covered. It was an incredible safety net, especially in a family the size of ours. “This last year Ric’s been battling advanced prostate cancer and he became extremely ill. He was writing his funeral service. He’d lay on the bed curled up in a little ball, on so much pain medication he looked like a little junkie. He’s on a treatment that’s got it all in remission right now. He’s finally starting to regain some stamina. “He worked so many years in the motion picture/cartoonist industry that he has medical benefits through his retirement plan from the Motion Picture Screen Cartoonists Union. That wouldn’t have happened in comic books. I will be forever grateful to the Union. With the combination of our little daughter’s health needs and Rick’s health needs right now, we’d be in major trouble.” But Ric is like Dick, and can’t shake the simple love of telling stories in comic book format. Ric’s greatest battles have come from responsibilities to his family versus a return to the low pay/no benefits world of comics. “He’d dream of doing comic books again,” says Loretta, “because it was a simpler time in our lives. With the size of our family, there were times when he felt very caged and cornered by it. There’s also the teaching we received in our church about the importance of the family and the responsibility of each parent. In that regard, he has a conscience that won’t quit. “He loved doing the continuity of the story. He also loved the fact his work was essentially respected in that when he turned it in, there might be one or two corrections, but the way he set it up on the page was accepted. “When he got into animation, virtually every other line was nit-picked to death until he felt there was really nothing of him that ultimately appeared on the screen. Even now, Ric is directing 52

the made-for-television/direct-to-video Princess and the Pea series in Mark Swan’s studio here in St. George, Utah, but he doesn’t feel the personal investment he felt in comic books.” Since living on the West Coast, the San Diego Comic Con has become Ric’s one true connection to the industry he truly loves. To Loretta, the scope of the show, and Ric’s need for that connection, can be overwhelming. “When I walked by the exhibition hall, this wall of what appeared to me to be total craziness blew me away. Last summer, we brought our special needs’ child. This was a huge mistake because she was on overload the whole time. As a consequence, she became difficult to handle. I will not put her through that again.” Ric’s main connection at the show is the ‘Big Five Dinner’—a gathering of war comic book fans that most of the artists of that genre attend, including Dick Ayers. “It’s really good for Ric to get the strokes,” says Loretta, “maybe because he felt I’m just totally blasé’ about it—‘Okay, that’s what you do for a living, let’s move on.’ I guess what happens is I just deal with all the practicalities at home.” The dinner event is a non-profit exercise and artists donate artwork to be auctioned. Ric uses the opportunity to indulge his true love. “One of our daughters is expecting a baby, so we’re still debating if I’m going to go, but Ric is going, whatever happens. I said, ‘How many pieces are you planning for this year?’ My suggestion to him was to limit the number of pieces, because I see the amount of time, energy and emotion he puts into them, and I’m concerned he doesn’t have the stamina to do that this year. “Immediately, he said, ‘I have this piece, this piece, this piece and this piece planned. I’ve already got some of them sketched out.’ It becomes almost a compulsion to him to plan and execute it. I really don’t get it and that’s okay.” One of the concerns for many participating in this book is the worry they’d come across as embittered with the industry, the resulting life and at the artist in the man. “I was concerned about sounding petty and disloyal if I express my feelings and frustrations about, for example, Ric’s absent-mindedness and obliviousness to certain things. If you can’t take the heat, get out of the kitchen: ‘Why did you marry an artist in the first place if you can’t deal with it?’ Sometimes he was drawing because he enjoyed drawing and other times because the mortgage was due. Ric is very much aware I have that struggle inside of me and he sensed that’s what my reticence was.” Says Ric, “You can read—and not between the lines—the struggles between a man who lives in the clouds of creativity and a woman with her feet firmly planted on the hard-edged world of practicalities. She’s put up with my quirks—I’ve put up with hers. We love each other, in spite of ourselves. “It’s an accepted view—not a fact—the wives of artists have to put up with a lot. I’ve met the wives of doctors, lawyers, policemen, engineers, accountants, shopkeepers and garbage Top Left: Dick and Lindy at a convention, late 1990s. collectors—I’ve heard similar concerns Bottom Left: Dick with his Fantastic Four #20 recreation, 1999. voiced by all. Artists and our wives are no Below: Eight is Enough—the entire Estrada clan, 2001. special breed. God, love and a wonderful chemistry brought Loretta and I together and has turned us into something quite different from what we were at the start—better, I hope. It hasn’t been easy, but it is quite good, and isn’t that what marriage is all about?” The two men never created or owned a syndicated strip, ran a company, or operated a school, but the industry wouldn’t exist without the tireless efforts of their kind. The men draw heroes all day long, but the true heroes reside beside them, giving the gift of time and absolution, allowing them to enjoy their chosen path, and supporting them when they have no choice about the road they must take.

JOANIE

STAN LEE

CHAPTER FOUR

MURIEL & JOE KUBERT

Much like one can link the paths followed by the Colans, Romitas, Ayers and Estradas, the same can be said of the wives of three of the most significant creators, and businessmen, in the history of the comic book medium. Ann Eisner, Muriel Kubert and Joanie Lee all meet their husbands within three years of each other, after all three men appear together near the birth of the industry in the late 1930s. The similarities do not end at the chronological. All three men will reap their earned rewards as business juggernauts, allowing their spouses to live a much different life than that of the struggling freelancer. All three will either own their own creations (or can lay official claim to that status) or cement their place in history by the attachment to the companies for which they will work or run. One will find the traits of their fathers in each of the men these women will marry. Ann Eisner’s father is a stockbroker who owned his own firm until his passing. “You could say I was born with a tarnished silver spoon in my mouth,” remembers Ann from her earliest upbringing in New York City, “since the peddlers and impoverished immigrants amongst my ancestors had preceded me by at least two generations on both sides. I always thought of myself as American. We didn’t speak anything but English in my home.” Towaco, New Jersey, in the early 1930s, houses no more than five thousand people, but a small, neighborhood business, Fogelson’s Supermarket, is run by a man whose mantra in life is “get at it and get it done,” says Muriel Kubert. Apropos considering she will marry a man perhaps matched only by Will Eisner for his creativity and business savvy. There’s little ‘New York’ about Joanie Lee’s origins. Born in Newcastle, in the north of England, her father is in the building business; her grandfather writes poetry. “I am a ‘Geordie’ as they call us,” says Joanie, “from Tyne Side; one of three sisters. I crossed on a blacked-out ship, the old Mauritania, while the Above: Joanie Lee modeling, late 1950s. Japanese war was still on. I’ve been an American Below: Muriel Fogelson Kubert with sister Lenore, 1938. citizen for two years now, even though I could have become one fifty-five years ago. That’s how long Stan and I have been married.” If one travels to the Imperial War Museum on Lambeth Road, across the Thames river from downtown London, one can experience a recreation of what it was like to live in war-torn England when the Nazi bombing rained down on the English skies. “We had an air raid shelter at the bottom of the garden. One night when the dive-bombers came over, I remember cheering when some planes were blown out of the sky. We’d run into the shelters when the sirens went off, but after the first year we didn’t bother. We just got used to it. America had been safe from all that, with two oceans to protect her, but nobody anywhere is safe anymore.” Unlike today, when a child sees the movie version of Stan Lee and Steve Ditko’s creation, Spider-Man, and is more likely to buy the video game rather than the comic, reading is a family event in Ann’s household. “My father would bring home the Sunday Funnies and we would read them 55

avidly—the Katzenjammer Kids, The Timid Soul, Tillie the Toiler, Little Orphan Annie, Maggie and Jiggs, and that ilk. I didn’t care for most toys girls of my age played—I always wanted books. I couldn’t then, and still can’t now, draw a straight line.” Art is taken as an easy elective at Booton High, while Muriel’s turntable spins Glenn Miller and Frank Sinatra. Highly adept with numbers, Muriel graduates from high school at sixteen, and majors in Business Administration at Rider College, New Jersey. MurieI’s skills in business— typing, shorthand and bookkeeping—will be invaluable to her future partnership with Joe. When confronted with the person of Joanie Lee, one cannot help but feel one is playing Lawrence Olivier to her Vivien Leigh. Joanie’s own oratory skills can be just as sweeping and dramatic as her husband’s. “I studied Elocution at the London College of Drama,” says Joanie. “I had little parts in pantomime. Reverend Moody once said to me, ‘My God, if Joanie had been around then, Shakespeare would have wanted her for his plays because of her wonderful voice.’ But, alas for me, Shakespeare wasn’t around in my time.” Her ability to perform for an audience of one, or a thousand, can only be matched by her husband’s same verve for hyperbole. What brought her to New York City? “To find Stan Lee!” laughs the actress, model, and writer, with four parts humor, but one part conviction enough to convince you she is very likely not joking. Ann Eisner’s life changes forever on Labor Day 1949. Nonplussed about the burgeoning comic industry of the 1940s, Ann is completely unaware with whom she will be spending an afternoon car ride to Maine. “It’s rather a romantic story,” recounts Ann. “My older sister at that time was widowed, and she had her two boys in Maine. I lived in New York, as did Will. I was working but got time off to visit her. “Arthur, a friend of Will’s, was dating my younger sister. He said, ‘This friend of mine and I are going to drive up to Maine this weekend, if you’d like a lift.’ I thought that was wonderful, but I didn’t know Will wasn’t the least bit interested in taking someone along. Where I was going would take him out of the way.” They do take Ann along, but she is daunted by the level of sophistication displayed by a man already successful with a decade of The Spirit newspaper strip under his belt. “I thought he wasn’t going to be interested in me. He’s only six years older than I am, but he seemed like ages older in the sense of being worldlier. When I first saw Will, I thought he looked so poised and put together. “Most of the boys I had gone out with were just that—boys. Will was a man. To this day, he is comfortable with people—all kinds of people—and talks to them easily. When I get to know people I am ‘easy’ with them, but I don’t have Will’s innate confidence in myself.” Ann may not be imbued with Will’s outgoing nature, but so impressed is she by the man, she organizes a little skullduggery of her own to reestablish a connection. “We had had so many laughs on our trip that Will and Arthur stayed overnight in a cabin on the grounds before going on to their destination. I could tell right away he was a bit absent-minded, always involved in something, so I asked Arthur for Will’s number, to thank him for giving me a lift. “I asked Arthur if they had given anyone a ride back to New York. He told me that they had and told me the girl’s name was Margot. I called Will, therefore, and said, ‘This is Margot. I just wanted to thank you for the lift.’ “Arthur had neglected to tell me Margot had a foreign accent, so Will, of course, knew 56

immediately it was me but played along. Finally, he said, ‘By the way, Ann, are you busy next Saturday?’ Mission accomplished, on my part!” Muriel has a limited history of reading comics—mainly what she terms “the girl comics.” The Journal American is read everyday, along with dollops of Fritzy Ritz, Wonder Woman and Archie, but the summer of 1950 connects Muriel to comics in a way she couldn’t have imagined. “The first thing that struck me, candidly speaking, was how pretty she was,” says future husband Joe. “She was quiet, reserved, a tall lady about five foot ten with dark hair. She wasn’t really outgoing; a private person, not one to be making jokes all the time—a little conservative. She’s very much a person who likes to keep things to herself, and not the kind to spout off, which is one of the reasons I married her.” That summer, Joe’s mother rents a rooming house on the Jersey shore at Bradley Beach. Enter Muriel: “The mother of a sorority sister of mine rented a room from Joe’s mother. I visited for a weekend and Joe was there. Joe was just a nice guy. He was quiet, friendly, warm, sincere, and honest—just as he is today. He took my girlfriend and I out at the same time that night. I then went back to Towaco and he came up to see me.” Preceding Ann and Muriel by two years, Joanie’s “quest” to find Stan Lee puts her on the doorstep of Ann Delafield, who runs a school for aspiring models in Manhattan. “Stan was invited to a Christmas cocktail party at the place where I worked, to be introduced to another girl. I was modeling hats at the time for the Tissue Tex company. Stan was working in the Empire State Building. Top Left: Ann and Will Eisner in Italy, 1998. “Stan knocked on the door and Bottom Left: Joe Kubert in he Army, early 1950s. when I opened it, he told someone, ‘My God! Below: inventive use of The Spirit logo was Will’s trademark, Apr. 1949. I’ve drawn her face a thousand times and seen it in my dreams!’ Stan told me it was love at first sight that day—zip, zang, konk, blonk! He never did meet the other girl! “He looked exactly like a young Leslie Howard. He was totally a writer then. He wore his coat tossed casually over his shoulders and his hat worn at a jaunty, carefree angle. He had marvelous eyes and an incredible sense of humor. I was very flattered because he adored me from that point! You can’t do any better than that!” Stan pursues Joanie at the party, but is given the shocking news she’s already married. “He said, ‘Now that’s a problem, but we can solve it’,” remembers Joanie. “I was divorced by a judge in Reno and minutes later, married to Stan by the same judge in an adjoining room. I literally put my life in his hands and he’s never once disappointed me.” Also common amongst all three women: the success of their husbands allowed them to have their own completely separate lives. The greater the success of the men, the less stress and worry, therefore the less time spent having to micro-manage their husband’s careers, egos and finances. When Will re-enters the creative end in the late 1970s, Ann’s impact on his work rises dramatically, too modest though she is about her influence. When the Kubert School

begins to take shape, Muriel’s career skills prove extremely valuable. They will cement their bond as partners—not simply as husband and wife. Parallel to Virginia Romita, she will face the task of guiding sons into the industry as artists, dealing with the perils of one’s father’s shadow looming large over their chosen profession. Joanie plays the role of mother and hostess to Stan until she yearns for her own career and develops as— surprise, surprise—a writer now working on her third novel. The sophistication Ann sees immediately in Will Eisner no doubt comes from being present at the explosion of an art form. The introduction of the DC Comics stable of characters—Superman, Batman and Wonder Woman, specifically— establishes a pop culture fulcrum from which all else is to be built. Trapped by what he would call a “comic book ghetto,” Will gives birth to Denny Colt, the young criminologist, thought dead and buried, only to return as the crime fighting hero, The Spirit. Beginning in 1940, the earliest tales, narratively, are not unlike most of the product of the time, but Will’s sense of graphic storytelling stands him at the top of his field. What truly separates Will from his peers of the day, and will spare him sixty-odd years of industry turmoil, is his ability to adeptly maneuver himself into the position as sole owner of his creation. Eisner owns a comic-art production shop with Jerry Iger in the late 1930s, and is contacted by the owner of Quality Comics, E.M. Arnold. Eisner receives a proposal to create a 16-page comic supplement for nationally syndicated Sunday newspapers. Arnold and company need product to match the groundswell of comics flooding the market. Will’s in the right place at the right time, with the right amount of moxy to achieve his goals. It doesn’t happen at the onset of the 1960s Marvel Age of Comics. It doesn’t happen in the mid-1980s during the alleged regeneration of the mainstream super-hero comic brought on by Frank Miller and Alan Moore’s darker vision of DC Comics’ super-hero icons. Perhaps only when a few hot artists jump the Marvel ship in the early 1990s to form Image Comics, has a creator stood at such an alteration of an industry’s landscape, able to take advantage of the shifting ground around him. All of this meant nothing to Ann Eisner on that fateful car trip to Maine in 1949. Kitchen Sink publisher Denis Kitchen will play a key role in Will’s return to the creative end. Kitchen is one of the unsung players in the 58

1970s, responsible for shepherding the underground movement out of the “Summer Of Love” and into the 1970s, but he is stunned at what Ann reveals to him concerning her opinion of Will’s work. “My periodic dinner conversations with Will and Ann seldom touch on the art or business of comics. Out of respect for Ann, I tend to avoid ‘shop talk’ during our meals, as does Will. But at one such dinner, probably in the late 1970s at their White Plains home, I impulsively asked Ann something that had never come up before. ‘What do you personally think of The Spirit? Do you have a favorite story?’ “Ann stated matter-of-factly that she had ‘never’ read The Spirit or any of Will’s comics. Will, chuckling, confirmed her statement was true. As a die-hard comics aficionado, I couldn’t believe my ears. He had a fascinating career. And he was not just any cartoonist. He was a living legend! That Ann had failed to open one of the leather-bound volumes of vintage Spirit sections in their library and neglected to peruse various Eisner publications during their then nearly three decades of marriage dumbfounded me. The look of utter disbelief was readily apparent. The genuine shock, if not the theatrics, perhaps struck a small note of guilt in her. Or she chose to humor me. “‘Perhaps I should take a look at some of it,’ she said softly, and we swung quickly back to other topics.” Married in 1950, at the age of twenty-six, Ann is a working woman, unconcerned about her father’s initial resistance to Will’s career choice. Without the benefit of hindsight, Ann treats Will’s work as one would treat any husband who leaves for work at nine in the morning and returns home at five in the afternoon. “What he did wasn’t important to me. I liked him as a person. The Spirit, and his earlier work, were not factors in the early part of our marriage. We moved to Westchester County, White Plains, shortly after we were married and he went to work on a commuter train like everybody else’s husband I knew. I didn’t care what he was involved in, as long as it was legitimate. I didn’t want to go visit someone in jail!” The newspaper industry puts the squeeze on comic strips in the early 1950s, and Will abandons The Spirit in the fall of 1952. Eisner builds his own company, American Visuals Corporation, creating comics and cartoons for educational and comLeft: Joe Dope by Eisner for Army Motors, Mar. 1945. mercial purposes. For the U.S. Army, he produces P*S Magazine. Above: Ann Eisner in Chattanooga, 1999. His list of clientele includes record (R.C.A.), oil, and phone Below: Private Joe Kubert at Fort Dix, 1951. companies and the Baltimore Colts football team. The discontinuing of The Spirit is a relief to Will. He wants to go out on a creative high, but Ann speaks more to the relief from a personal standpoint: “He wanted a stable environment and a steady income. He was still doing creative work, if you see his P*S Magazine. We had never been friendly with other cartoonists. Our social life was with our friends; a very eclectic group of doctors, lawyers, Indian chiefs, peddlers—anybody. It had nothing to do with what they did. There was always someone you’d meet in between who were comic fans, who would then recognize his name, but that was in passing.” “I never went out with anyone else after I met Joe,” says Muriel, of that summer of 1950 onwards. Joe is drafted into the army during the Korean Conflict, but the courtship is spared serious interruption as Joe is stationed in Fort Dix, New Jersey. “I was in Rider College, in Trenton, so he would go AWOL to see me. Sometimes Joe would lend me his car and I would deliver his work to DC Comics.” Engaged around Christmas time, Muriel graduates college early in March, and they are married the next July. Amongst the five thousand or so people in Towaco, Muriel recalls but one cartoonist in town. Being an artist may very well save Joe Kubert’s life. “He’s very lucky,” says Muriel. “That’s why I tell who ever draws to keep on 59

drawing in case there’s another war. After basic training, he was permanent personnel in Fort Dix. We rented an apartment in Princeton, New Jersey, and Joe would commute. “Because of his ability to draw, he was assigned to Special Services. He did a strip in the Fort Dix Post newspaper called The New Recruit. He painted helmets, signs, whatever was needed. “He was due to come out after two years and then, in the last six months, they shipped him over to Germany. Most of his company went to Korea and were killed.” Joe receives letters from his company telling him fifty percent of the men were casualties in the first week alone. Joe’s brother-in-law loses two toes to frost bite in the ‘Forgotten War.’ Mighty Mouse builds Joe and Muriel’s first house. After being released from active duty, Joe returns home, continuing to work for St. John’s Publishing Company, where he creates his Tarzan-in-the-dinosaur-age character, Tor. While in Germany, Joe notices magazines with 3-D effects and brings the innovation to the America comic book, starting with Mighty Mouse. The twenty-five cent book moves over one million copies, but the 3-D fad passes quickly. Even more so than Ann Eisner and Joanie Lee, Muriel is too wrapped up in her own career, family life, and children, to notice. “I’ve read Fax From Sarajevo, a couple of Sgt. Rocks, Above: early Kubert page from Flash Comics #92, July 1948. but really haven’t read a lot of comic books.” Right: Joanie with new-born daughter Joan, early 1950s. “Horrible!” laughs Joanie Lee about her first impressions of what husband-to-be Stan did for a living. “I’d never read a comic in my life! I still haven’t now. I wasn’t at all interested in comics. I remember an English comic named Glooks and one about a bear in England. We would rarely get American comics at the fairs or markets. Comics were simply American Pop Art. “When I was came here and we lived in Hewlett Harbor, on Long Island, we’d be embarrassed to say Stan worked in comics. Most of America was embarrassed by comics then. Stan was never embarrassed. He always thought he was going to write the great American novel. Strangely enough, he’s done almost everything but.” Stan is brought into Marvel Comics in the early 1940s, just as the company’s original employees, Joe Simon and Jack Kirby are headed out in a dispute with owner Martin Goodman over Captain America. After a brief stint in the service, Stan returns to the company he alone would helm for the next thirty years. Being directly connected to the company insures Stan and Joanie a financial security unknown to those working for him. They buy their first house on West Broadway in Woodmere, Long Island, for $13,000, ten thousand of which comes from the G.I. Bill of Rights. “Don’t forget those were the days when for fourteen dollars you could buy a week’s groceries!” says Joanie. Their daughter is born in 1952 and the family moves to Hewlett Harbor where they live for about twentyfive years. They then rent an apartment at 63rd Street and Third Avenue in Manhattan, buy a condo apartment across the street, all before they move to California in the 1970s. Joanie’s aspirations as a model/actress take a backseat to the marriage. “I acted in a lot of plays. I do have my Screen Actors’ Guild card and the last movie I did, Just Tell Me What You Want, was fifteen years ago with Ali MacGraw, Alan King, and Dina Merrill. I was actually in some of the Spider-Man television cartoon shows, doing 60

voice-overs. “I did bits and pieces, but I didn’t stay with it. If I had decided to go on with my career, I couldn’t have had the marriage I had with Stan. I made the right choice. I love my daughter. I was a very involved mother. This was a much more wonderful life, and a very protected life, as much as life can be protected. “Our one big tragedy was when we lost a daughter. She only lived a few days after birth and we couldn’t have any more children. Perhaps that’s why Stan, our daughter and I have always been such a close-knit family. Aside from that one tragic event, I’ve been terribly, terribly blessed. “Stan will always tell you the joke that when we married he said, in his most macho tone, ‘No wife of mine will work!’ Now, he laughs that it was his biggest mistake. If he hadn’t said that I might have supported him all these years!” With Will out of comics, and Joe out of the direct line of fire at DC Comics, Joanie is the one who best remembers the vengeance brought down upon the industry during the 1950s from the Comics Code Authority, spearheaded by Dr. Frederic Wertham’s desire to destroy comic books, as outlined in his book, Seduction of The Innocent. By the late 1950s, the industry is on its last legs, creatively and financially. “That crazy old man, Wertham,” says Joanie. “He seemed like a lunatic! I remember going to a lecture where he was talking. There was a cover on one of the adventure comics that showed a girl tied up in the jungle, and someone was holding a spear and Wertham said the spear was poised to attack her vagina! It was unbelievable! He was a horrible, silly old man—totally zonked out, like all fanatics are. “We lived in Hewlett Harbor and most of our neighbors were businessmen, stockbrokers or doctors or lawyers. They considered Stan as something of a lightweight inasmuch as he was writing these silly, little magazines for little children. It was hard for them to take Stan seriously—not that Stan really cared. Our next-door neighbor, who is a very successful entertainment lawyer here, has one gripe against his mother—she threw out his old comic book collection. That’s what we hear from all the young turks doing the movies now.” Ann’s lack of familiarity with Will’s earlier work also stems from Will, unlike most artists, having little interest for working at home. “To this day, Will cannot, and does not, like to work at home. He likes to go out of the door, close it and go to his studio, which is now about a mile away from our home. He went back and forth to New York City until about 1975, when he went back into the creative end. When he sold his business, we moved to a house, again in White Plains, that had a detached studio. An architect had built it for himself.” Their second house in White Plains sees Ann finally experiencing the artist temperament, and the creative process, of a graphic artist. Will is a morning person, seeing his wife off to work, and can adhere, without the grueling deadlines of freelance work, to an eight-to-five working schedule. The effect of the process on Will reveals itself to Ann, but the work doesn’t. “Will never talks about his work in progress,” says Ann. “He feels if he talks about it, it might dissipate his thoughts that will go on paper, or art. I never get to see anything until it’s completed. He might talk to me about something, but it would be a particular problem, or something he was trying to work out—a human thing, not an art thing.” Stories can turn into mythology after years of tailoring and the advent of Will’s seminal A Contract With God graphic novel, published in 1978, could produce a cottage industry of flowery remembrances about “how it all began.” Ann Eisner, however, can’t even remember the first notions being raised in the household. “Will is one of the types of people that would do his creative work, and then when he’s finished with whatever is in his head, and it’s on paper, then he’ll talk about it or let someone else look at it; not before. This is very individual to Will.” 61

Every artist has their creative superstitions and Will is no exception. “I would never ask Will about his work. Nor would I ask him what’s he going to work on next because I’d put a pressure on him he doesn’t like.” Will’s return to the creative end of the sequential art field brings a new demeanor to Will that Ann is able to coin as “The Four Phases of Will Eisner.” Says Ann, “First, there’s the very eager, ‘Ahh, I’ve got something in my head.’ The second phase is when he’s working on it. The third phase is when he says, ‘It’s terrible! I don’t know why I did this!’ The fourth phase is when it’s complete and he goes into a deep funk saying, ‘I’ll never think of anything else to do!’ I laugh, because in a couple of weeks, he’s started all over again. Everything that he does has the excitement of the first phase, the furor of the implementing of the idea, and the stage where he says, ‘Ahh, it’s terrible!’ “The book that was the most traumatic, or frustrating, for him to do was The Heart of the Storm. It was autobiographical to a large extent. He revealed stories about his family that were not easy for him to tell. Again, men of that generation were private about their innermost thoughts and feelings. The Spirit was fantasy and pure imagination. The graphic novels, some of them anyway, are more personal and much more revealing.” The process of getting A Contract With God published is another story. “That’s something he had a lot of trouble with because it was so unusual. He had to get a smaller publisher and one of the things that pleases him most is it is still in print, and people think it is wonderful.” A Contract With God brings many new surprises to Ann about her husband that hadn’t crystallized in her thinking. You could take the man of out of New York City, but you can’t take the City out of the man. Ann is Right: Muriel and Joe Kubert wedding, July 1951. unaware of the depth of influence of Will’s ethnic backBelow: a page from Eisner’s A Contract With God, 1978. ground and her desire to move to Florida will put her on a collision course with Will’s “New York state of mind.” “I was the one who wanted to move—he did not,” says Ann. “Why? Because New York is the center of the world, and what would he do if he couldn’t get into the city? We go back at least twice a year. He needs his ‘carbon monoxide fix.’” Will is not impressed by the creative prospects Florida has to offer, but Ann is retiring, and has the last vote. “Will had the same reaction most people have: ‘It’s a cultural wasteland down there,’ which is ridiculous because wherever you go, you find what you’re looking for. Now, he just adores it. The cold weather was beginning to bother me a great deal. This wasn’t the climate in which we should spend our declining years.” Life in Florida in the 1990s sees Will return to an out-of-home studio. The studio is for work only. Says Ann, “He brings his fan mail home on the weekends. He doesn’t want to waste time answering them at the studio. He does answer every fan-mail letter. Sometimes people ask him to write forwards. He’ll bring that kind of stuff home.” Joe Kubert does work at home, in his basement studio of their Parsippany, New Jersey home in which they live when Joe is discharged in the early 1950s. “We started having children and he was always able to juggle his time,” says Muriel. “Like Will, he was an early riser. Sometimes he would pull some all-nighters, but if I needed someone to watch the baby for a while, he could stop what he was doing.” Financially, Joe is prolific enough to maintain a house and keep Muriel from having to work once children arrived in 1953. 62

In his studio, Joe uses music as a focus. “He plays classical, Sinatra, some jazz—anything but rock ’n’ roll,” says Muriel. “We’re both talk radio freaks. I love it, and learned about it from Joe, but when he’s concentrating, he can’t have talk radio on—he has to have music. He can’t concentrate on the talk and the work at the same time. When we were first married, they didn’t have much talk radio, but they had soap operas, like Philadalls, and he would listen to them.” An artist’s focus is severely tested with children around, but as Muriel says, “We knew when the door was closed, you don’t go downstairs. The beauty of being a freelance artist, and of working at home, is that you can take your work with you. We would go on vacation and he would take his work with him.” In the mid-Fifties, Joe begins an odyssey as artist, then writer/editor of the DC Comics line of war books. These strips are hyperrealistic (minus the dinosaur-infected issues) compared to the cigarchomping antics of Marvel Comics’ 1960s title Sgt. Fury. Artists like Ric Estrada, who would work under Joe, are prone to dramatic personality shifts when doing the war work, but Muriel remembers Joe always keeping an even-keeled personality, leaving no discernable trace of the kind of material on which he was working. Joe becomes an editor at DC Comics, a position he will hold for almost twenty years from 1967 to 1986. While he has the talent (and ability to produce sufficient product) to keep the family from starvation, adopting the position of company employee is a valued goal for those with family responsibilities. Muriel remembers “it was nice because he got a check in every week, instead of trying to live on a freelance salary, which you can’t judge. He didn’t even have to go into New York on a nine-to-five schedule. He could go in and leave before the traffic only a few days a week.” “Stan would work five days a week at the office,” says Joanie, “then come home and write stories in the night time. I loved it. It didn’t bother me at all, because he still found enough time for the two of us. He would stay up working later than I. He was the first one I knew to buy a wire recorder when they came out, way before the tape recorders. His biggest frustration was trying to untangle the wires that were always getting tangled up, but he’d speak into the recorder at night and then type up his notes the following morning. “Creating seems to come easily to Stan. He never seems to sweat it. He always says to me, ‘I can never understand when people say to me they’re having writer’s block and can’t think of what to write.’ Thinking of what to write was never a problem for him—finding the time to write was the problem. “He did all his writing at home—and his editing and art direction at the office. In the office it was always a fun thing, but at home, at least when he was writing, he was just like any other normal writer—that is, if writers can be called normal!” Judith Krantz’s famous 1978 novel, Scruples—set against the backdrop of Joanie’s own Beverly Hills— inspires her to follow her husband’s footsteps as a writer. She scribes her first novel, The Pleasure Palace, published by Dell in England. “I wrote it in longhand and Stan sent it to an agent he knew, saying, ‘Please be very kind to my wife and let her down gently.’ The agent wrote back saying, ‘Stan, it’s terrific. I’m going to send it to Dell.’ They liked it, bought it and published it. I wrote three more novels, but pulled two back because I wasn’t ‘hungry.’ I’ve just finished a second one, and am working on my third.” “Will Eisner is the absent-minded professor of comic books,” laughs Jackie Estrada, the woman who presides over the Eisner Awards every year at the San Diego comic convention. Affectionately stated, all three men can bury themselves deeply in their work, producing humorous results. “We were close friends with a couple near us in White Plains—a bachelor buddy of Will’s prior to our marriage,” says Ann. “Ted and Will had birthdays two weeks apart and were the same age. Rhoda, Ted’s wife, and I decided it would be fun to give them a surprise party for their 40th birthdays. We decided to have it at our home. This was Will’s ‘in business period’ and our friends were in unrelated fields to the arts—no cartoonists at all. “Ted, being a lawyer—and much more aware of everyday surroundings and goings—found out what we 63

were planning but we decided to keep it a secret from Will. That’s not too difficult since he is usually so buried in his work. “Rhoda and I had hired caterers to manage the party. The day of the party—a Saturday—Ted had convinced Will they should both go to a Turkish Bath in New York City since Will had never been to one. They would arrive home about five and we would go out for dinner together. “When Will arrived home, he noticed there were cars parked all on the street and thought someone on the street was having a party. When he opened our front door, a white-gloved man—one of the caterers—reached for his hat. Will struggled with the man for a full minute for possession of the hat until he saw his mother in the background. Then, he said, he was totally confused. It wasn’t until we yelled ‘Surprise!’ that he began to realize what was going on. “At his 80th birthday surprise party, I kept it a surprise until the day before the party. I got a little nervous then since I didn’t want him fainting or something else inappropriate, so I told him—but not who was coming or any of the details. I gave him just enough information so he wouldn’t argue with me about putting on a collar and tie.” While her husband may appear at times to be the absentminded professor, Ann laughs, “He’s very confident and able to handle himself in most situations, beautifully so whenever he forgets my birthday. There’s always some excuse! He’ll forget Valentine’s Day, or on my birthday, and he’ll come home with a little cartoon. “He’s able to get me laughing within minutes so I can’t stay angry at his forgetting our anniversary or being late when I ask him to come home. He’ll ask me ten times over, ‘Where did you say we were going tonight?’ or forget to tell me things until much later because he didn’t remember to tell me. He diverts by saying, ‘Listen, I remembered to come home, didn’t I?’ or ‘I remember who you are, don’t I?’—things so ridiculous you have to laugh.” As business-capable as is Will, he prefers to leave the mundane details of money management to others. “When we got married,” says Ann, “we both had checking accounts. After a few months, I realized Will’s bank statement would come in and was never opened. When I questioned him on this, he said, ‘Why bother? The bank doesn’t make mistakes, does it?’ “Soon after that, we had one joint checking account and to this day, I don’t think he has ever balanced a checkbook. He really hates it, so I do it. It’s easy for me to do and so difficult for him. His brother works for him in the office and this is his job.” Change is not something easily handled by the man who’s always changing with the industry. “If I would move Will’s socks to a different drawer,” says Ann, “it was a creative trauma. He clings to things. Maybe it’s the Depression, but when I say, ‘Will, we’ve got to go through your closet and give some things away,’ I take two aspirins. It’s that way with any kind of a change.” Working in a home studio, with sons at your drawing table who aspire to follow in your footsteps, can have disastrous effects for a father too wrapped up in his work. Joe Kubert’s son, Andy, develops an early inferiority complex when comparing his work against his father. “John Romita probably had more insight on the situation than I with my sons,” says Joe, “as there’s this incident that bugged the hell out of me. “Andy, at the age of nine or ten, was really laboring on a particular drawing that just didn’t work out. He brought it over to me and asked him if I would help him with it. I was intent and intense in the job on which I was working, and when he showed me the stuff, I said, ‘Sure!’ and made the correction very quickly. “But when I did that, Andy stopped in his tracks, looked at me, looked at his drawing, threw the drawing away and for years after that, didn’t pick up a pencil to draw again. It’s only later I realized what I had done. Here the kid was slaving over the drawing for at least an hour, and couldn’t get it to look right. His thoughts were, ‘Gee, if I wasn’t able to do it, and he did it in a second, I’ll never be able to do it.’ So he decided he didn’t want to pursue 64

it. He kept this to himself until he had gone back into drawing and we talked about it then. I had no idea how my doing the correction so quickly, without talking to him about it, would affect him.” Joanie Lee’s Manhattan social life would leave Stan, the writer, unfazed. “We would have friends over, gathered around our little pool, and Stan would be standing at a table—he loved to stand while he worked so he wouldn’t get lazy and pot-bellied—with a porkpie hat on his head and typing. Our neighbors were our best friends and always enjoy saying their one memory of Stan is of him pecking at his little portable typewriter while everyone else was in a party mood. Strangely, our noise and laughter never disturbed him. He said he could write better when he knew everyone else was having fun, but he enjoyed feeling he was part of the party. “When we first got married, we had a fourth floor walk-up brownstone apartment on 96th street between th 5 and Lexington Avenue. Stan had $5,000 in the bank—a bloody fortune at that time. If he didn’t have an extravagant wife like me, who knows how well off he’d be today! However, he’s a man who can be very happy with his typewriter—now his computer, his television, and the knowledge his wife and daughter are enjoying themselves.” Being consumed in one’s comings and goings isn’t strictly property Top Left: Joanie Lee posing in Hewlett Harbor, early 1970s. of the men in the relationship. “My Below: Kubert cover to Atom & Hawkman #40, Dec.-Jan. 1969. nephew in England had every comic sent to him,” says Joanie. “He saved them all in plastic covers, handling them with white gloves. He’s a professor of English, and just auctioned them off at incredible prices. We had ours down in the basement in Hewlett Harbor in large tins—the kind for which you might bob for apples. Stan would just leave them stacked in there. “We had a big black German Shepherd named Blackie at that time. I had been out in the garden, and left the hose running. I went inside to answer the phone and Blackie must have started to play with the hose. “Later that night I said, ‘I can hear water running.’ We went down and my entire cellar had been flooded through the open window and those comics were just floating in those containers just drenched, and we threw the whole bloody lot out. Even then, hardly anyone suspected how valuable those things would become.” Joanie also misses the value of a personalized sketch from a world famous artist. Ric Estrada remembers the conversation with Stan: “One day I was telling Stan Lee how I met Salvador Dali. Stan told me Joanie had been having lunch in New York City’s posh Club 21, when Dali strolled over from a nearby table. In inimitable Dali style he said, ‘You are a beautiful woman. I should know; I am Salvador Dali!’ Joanie replied, ‘You are?’ “With a flourish he pulled out

his pen and dashed out a drawing on a napkin, which he signed. Once home, Stan said, ‘Where’s the napkin?’ Her reply was, ‘Oh no! I left it at the restaurant!’ Stan was still in shock telling me this years later.” When Will Eisner returns to the creative end of the comic industry in the 1970s, Ann’s influence over his work is more prominent. “I’d talk to him about it, and he’d say, ‘I’m not sure what I’m going to do now.’ I don’t want to take credit for this—because I’m sure it doesn’t come from me—but I said, ‘Why don’t you do what you always said you wanted to do? Go back into the really creative end of it and leave the business end as secondary.’ It’s a suggestion, and maybe you are clicking into something he wanted to do. I don’t really think anything I’ve said or done has changed Will from his purpose.” But Will is not as willing to let his wife discount herself. “Aside from a marriage built on a deep romantic relationship,” says Will, “our regard for each other’s intellectual life was a mainstay. For the most of our earlier years, Ann was involved with family matters, getting a degree and building a career with New York Hospital. As a consequence, she had little involvement in my years with The Spirit and my educational publishing period. My work on graphic novels coincided with her retirement and I was able to count on her judgment. I was writing to adults and was now able to access her mature judgment. “For example: It became my practice to show her the ‘dummy’—the readable roughs—of each new book. In A Life Force, there is a sequence where the protagonist is having an affair with an old lover who returns to his life. As I portray it, his wife—a simple peasant-type—doesn’t know what was going on. When Ann read it she pointed out to me ‘His wife would know!’ “I said, ‘How could she? He is being very discreet and besides she is only a very simple woman.’ Ann replied, ‘She would know!’ I took her advice, changed it, and it made such a great difference in the story.” Denis Kitchen expands on Ann’s contributions. “We had concluded serializing A Life Force in the fifth issue of Will Eisner’s Quarterly and were planning the next issue. I was again having dinner with Ann and Will at their Florida home and earlier in the day, Will had shown me his newest work, a self-contained graphic novel called Sunset in Sunshine City. “During our meal I broke the unwritten rule and suddenly gushed about the new story. Will was very pleased at my response. I was ordinarily his first sounding board. ‘I especially love the opening sequences where Klop is having flashbacks about his life before retirement,’ I said. ‘That really established the character for me.’ “‘Oh, really?’ Ann said. ‘That was my idea.’ “I couldn’t believe it. It wasn’t too long ago that Ann hadn't read a single page of Will’s work. Now she was not only reading it, she was critiquing it and making important contributions. She explained that Will had shown her his first version of the story and told him she had no emotional attachment to the main character, and thus couldn’t Right: Kubert from Our Army At War #205, 1963. Below: Will & Ann cruising the high seas, Apr. 2000. care what happened to him. She demanded more information about this fellow and his earlier life. Will obviously complied. “‘That was a brilliant suggestion, Ann,’ I said. ‘Just brilliant.’ Will smiled with quiet pride over his wife’s growing involvement. “‘We’ll have to change the name of the magazine to Will and Ann Eisner’s Quarterly!’ I announced triumphantly, emphasizing her name. For just a moment Will furrowed his brow and darted a glare at me, then quickly realized I was making a joke. We all laughed, but the point had been made.” “When Will started meeting the underground cartoonists like Denis,” says Ann, “he started getting excited. He felt now the field was something he’d like to do again. He thought they were being creative and had something to say—not always well, and not always on subjects he was interested in, but he felt they were starting a new era. “I remember Denis coming to our home with a beard and all. I would have been in my late forties and fifties and I was sort of bourgeois—middle-class—in the sense of looking at it like, ‘Oh, now I’ve met a hippie!’ I know Denis likes to hear my 66

reactions to Will’s work, because knowing I am not a comic fan, he feels he can get a different perspective from me. “When people talk about Will Eisner, they see him as an unusual talent, a creator. They don’t look beyond this. The questions they ask him are connected with his work. Will calls me ‘his contact with reality.’ “I see the whole person. I am aware of the sensitivity, the innate kindness in the man he sometimes takes great care to hide. Again, these were not traits men of his generation admired. He obviously needs me to run the house, keep our social life running, to be his hostess and friend as well, but I add the dimension of humanity to the creator.” Ann believes Will’s creativity spawns from his youthful approach to modern life. “It’s his attitude towards new things and new people. He might appear to be stuffy, in the sense when he goes places he’ll dress up. He does own jeans and goes to work in them, but when we go out, he’ll dress rather conservatively. Therefore, he may give the impression of being ‘stodgy.’” Being able to share in Will’s career has broadened her horizons on the comic-reading front as well. “I read his work, and he’ll hand me something and say, ‘I think you’ll enjoy this.’ For instance, I enjoyed Art Spiegelman’s Maus. “David Hajdu, who writes for the New York Review of Books and the New Yorker, wrote an article on Will recently. He stayed with us for a weekend, and we were talking, and I said, ‘I guess,’ a lot. Everyone’s always surprised I don’t read comics having lived with someone fifty-one years. Will is visual and I’m auditory. No matter what I read, I read the words, then I look at the pictures. When you read comics, you sort of do both together. I

don’t. I’m a very verbal, auditory person, and I think that’s a problem for me. “It’s like you’re giving me a book of Greek, and asking me what my opinion is. Maus was fascinating. I read something of Ben Katchor’s and I read The Adventures of Kavalier and Clay. Michael [Chabon] spoke to Will at length before he wrote the book for background material.” Like Ann and Joanie, Muriel claims to keep a great distance from her husband’s material. When asked what kind of influence she has over his work, or whether she would ever help Joe interpret his plots or scripts, she responds with incredulous laughter. “Are you kidding? Do I look like Wonder Woman or something?” “That’s not necessarily true,” says husband Joe when queried about Muriel's contributions. “As a matter of fact, I value her opinions greatly. She has an artistic bent, although not in art or drawing the things that I do, but I find it very valuable for me. The majority of the people who see the material I do are not artists in and of themselves. Speaking to someone who is less inclined to give an artistic opinion, or who has art as a background more reflective of the general public, I felt this was of extreme value to me. “She has a very high emotional response. She feels very much for people and things, so when I did the Sarajevo book, she was very much taken by that. She was the person who maintained all the correspondences, all the faxes. She was the one who kept writing to Ervin. I’d read and check everything, but she was doing all the physical work, and it was a hell of a lot of physical work. She was clipping out newspapers and reading every article she could that might be helpful to him. Having all those faxes we had collected, primarily, was her doing.” Muriel reserves her reading for books, and not comics. “I am a voracious reader. I’m reading the history of the Santa Fe Trail from the beginning, when it was first Mexican property, going back to Montezuma. I like John Grisham and Nelson DeMille. I love Stephen Ambrose; he’s the one man I would love to meet. Just to go and sit and listen to him lecture, I would love it. I like biographies like David McCullough’s John Adams. I also just finished Theodore Roosevelt, T.R. Rex.” “She doesn’t have any real deep interest in comic books, per se,” points out Joe, “but then there was the Fax book and Abraham Stone. With these, where I had written the stuff (as opposed to having illustrated someone else’s writing), I made a point of showing it to her. Her reaction and judgment was very valued by me. “I have the same kind of relationship with my sons. They will show me their work and I will show them mine, just for the reaction. That doesn’t mean our reactions or suggestions are things to be taken up. It’s just having an opportunity to see another option or another side to what you are doing that you hadn’t seen before.” Muriel’s memories of their life together centering around Joe’s career are at their sharpest when she is directly involved, like with the Kubert School, and with Fax From Sarajevo. “He really hit on the heart of what our friend Ervin and his family was going through. I’d try to get transcripts of TV shows when I’d see something about what was going on there. Maybe because I was a part of it, I enjoyed it more.” From this perspective, Muriel can offer an opinion on what she likes about Joe’s work. “I love the way he put details in everything. He’ll draw a living room with the statue in it and a picture on the wall. I mean, a picture that looks like a picture. The realistic drawings I think are super.” While not exhibiting a great deal of direct influence over his work, she does try to help Joe keep the amount of time he has in perspective. “There were a couple of things I tried to talk him out of lately. I said, ‘You 68

don’t have time for this.’ He really wanted to do it, so I said okay. When it comes to his career, he’s the boss.” The most difficult period comes when Joe commences work on Tales of The Green Beret syndicated strip. Lasting from 1965 to 1967, Muriel will have no fond memories of that time, thanks to the strain on her husband. “The deadlines on a syndicated strip are tough,” remembers Muriel. “You can’t call them and tell them you’re going be late. I respect the people that do it today. If we were going on vacation, Joe would always have to drop the strip off in New York. After a while I was kind of agreeing with the protesters. I began to see we shouldn’t be in the war and he’s still drawing the Green Beret.” “The only time I talked Stan into something,” says Joanie, “was when he said to me, ‘Comics aren’t going anywhere. I’ve got to get out of this business. I hate the way Martin wants the books written.’ I said to him, ‘Why don’t you do the comics exactly the way you want to.’ That’s when he did Fantastic Four and started the whole Marvel Universe. Lucky I didn’t say, ‘Okay, let’s quit and buy a farm somewhere up in the valley!’ “I simply wasn’t interested in comics. I remember looking through Millie The Model and seeing the fashion styles. I remember a marvelous little strip he had in the newspaper, Mrs. Lyons Cubs, but that’s about all. Stan always knew what he was doing. He didn’t need me—or anyone else—to proofread his writing.” What inspires a consummate storyteller like Will Eisner? “Will reads many things,” says Ann. “The New York Times on a daily basis, Newsweek, The New Yorker, The New York Review of Books—these are musts for him. For pleasure, he reads biographies, and what I call ‘way out books’ such as How The Mind Works, How Do We Know What We Know. He rarely reads fiction unless I tell him about a book I think he would enjoy and then I’m never sure whether he reads it just to please me. “We don’t go to the movies much. He also watches C-Span and public television. The Lehrer Report in the evenings is a daily routine, but we do watch West Wing. He likes country music, old jazz, classical music and we both shudder at modern music played at decibels over and beyond human endurance. “As a young man he took a sketchbook with him everywhere, and used to when we went on vacations. I have rarely seen Will draw with something in front of him that he’s copying. It’s in his head. Only occasionally does Will say, ‘Do we have any pictures of a horse?’ or something like that to see how the legs go.” On vacation, even if Joe Kubert leaves his work at home, a sketchbook is more vital to his trip than clean socks. “One of these days, we’re going to publish his sketchbooks,” says Muriel. “He has a good few of them and they are beautiful—museums in Paris, in London and New York. It relaxes him. It’s better than a camera, as far as remembering a specific spot where you were in a different country. He really gets all the details. A camera just takes a photograph and doesn’t have the heart that Joe’s sketches do. “He would sketch statues. He has a couple of Michelangelo’s David. He’s got some he’s done from the shores of Spain. He’s got three or four sketchbooks filled with what he’s seen.” Where does that leave Muriel, when she is hoping the couple can get away for a week or two? “I have learned over the years when we go some place, I take a book with me. I’ll sit around and read while Left: Tales of the Green Beret sketch by Kubert. he’s drawing, or go to other rooms in a museum.” Below: Caption Man strikes again! Stan & Joanie with Hillary. “It’s not something I like to do,” says Joe forcefully. “It’s something I have to do. I always felt if I couldn’t make a living drawing, there are a hundred other things I could do. Being out of a job doing cartoons never frightened or scared me in the least. If I weren’t getting paid for it, I’d still be drawing. One of the big advantages of drawing is being able to retain the details of the things I’ve seen better than if I’d taken a photograph of them.” “I think that’s innate,” says Muriel about Joe’s beginnings as an artist. “Nobody in his family is an artist. He just used to draw on the sidewalks of Brooklyn with chalk, or he would draw on the paper bags from stores. He just drew constantly from the time he was old enough to 69

hold a pencil. If you knew the spark, you could produce more of them.” “Even during the 1950s,” says Joanie, “Stan would always write. He’s not someone who says, ‘After I finish this story I’ll take a rest and then play a round of golf and a little poker.’ That’s not Stan. He works twenty-nine hours out of a twenty-four-hour day, and seems to enjoy every minute of it! “Stan could write the funniest captions in the world. I remember the magazines he Above: another Eisner devotee: Dave Sim & Will jam for Cerebus Jam #1, 1985. did called Monsters to Laugh Right: life drawing from Kubert’s sketchbook. With and You Don’t Say and many others. We have one photo where we were having dinner with President Reagan and Stan is bending down at one point talking to him— Reagan is looking up at Stan—and Stan has the blurb coming out of Reagan’s mouth saying, ‘Stan, would you pose for a picture with me?’ “Everything he sees he makes humorous. At breakfast, he reads every comic in the newspaper. He laughs to himself, saying, ‘Wow, this guy’s a genius.’ He really loves the work of other artists and writers.” Few have been afforded the label of “genius” in the comic book field, but the late Harvey Kurtzman, former E.C. Comics editor/artist and Mad Magazine creator, often is tagged with the moniker. Kurtzman has been referred to as the “Godfather of the Underground Comix,” so it’s fitting he and Will Eisner should form a friendship. “Will would bring home the work of the underground cartoonists,” says Ann, “and say, ‘This is inspiring to me,’ but I would say, ‘I don’t understand what they’re saying!’” The graphic nature didn’t stop Ann from peering over Will’s shoulder on the odd occasion. “Some of it could be quite graphic, and Will would say, ‘You don’t want to see that! You’ll blush!’ But, of course, I looked. “They would talk about their different styles of working. Harvey took lots of time to complete something and Will worked much faster. I remember Will saying Harvey wrote and rewrote until he felt it was just the way he wanted it. Will said he wouldn’t have the patience for that.” Nothing breeds independence like hardship early in life. The effects of the Depression on Will, according to Ann, were tremendous. “He was the complete supporter of his family at all times. He put his sister through college. His father was a lovely man, but more of a dreamer.” Will Eisner is born of Jewish immigrants in Brooklyn, New York on March 6, 1917. Living in those New York tenements influences his work profoundly from the 1970s onward. His first published work is in the school newspaper, at De Witt Clinton High in Brooklyn, NY. Selling newspapers on city street corners during America’s worst years, it’s not surprising to regard the poverty he faced as the driving force behind his love of business. “It’s very possible,” says Ann. “We often laugh now at the ‘Depression Babies’ who still have the idea of ‘My God, you have to pay so much for this?’ It is a hold over from when every nickel was important.” Will experienced such lows, and is a driven man; not just on the artistic side, but to have control of the business end, so his own family will never have to live those experiences. “Men of Will’s era, who had to take over being ‘head of the family,’ thought of it as that’s the way things were,” says Ann. “He is always surprised that I, and others, think it was an admirable thing for him to do. It never occurred to him to do otherwise. He never resented not being able to just have fun. He had to take on a man’s responsibilities when he was just a boy. I know he was a lonely young man, always working, with no time for friends. Supporting five people doesn’t leave you much time for yourself. 70

“His stint in the Army changed that, widened his world and opened up a lot of things for him. He found out that people really liked him for what he was rather than for what he could do. He made good friends there, all of whom unfortunately have died, but he can recount some good stories to which I love to listen. The first story he ever told me that I laughed my head off was, ‘I learned to fire a gun and when the sergeant yelled, “Ready on the right, ready on the left, fire at will,” I sure took off down the road in a hurry.’” Joe Kubert is only able to meet Muriel on Bradley Beach because of the intestinal fortitude of his immigrant parents. It’s 1926 and in a small town in southern Poland, a pregnant Mrs. Kubert, along with Joe’s father, attempt to leave by boat for America. The young family is turned away, forcing them to go back to their hometown, await the birth, and then make their way to America. Perhaps the focus with which Joe will bring to his school and career can be found in his parent’s ability to gamble on the value of freedom and a better way of life. “My parents were tremendously brave,” he says. “They came to a new country, travelling 5,000 miles from where their parents were doing well, where they could have made a living. My father decided, for the opportunities the new country America presented to his children, he wanted to leave. “He was a kosher butcher most of his life, but during World War II, he decided he wanted to be a welder. Here’s a guy in his fifties having never done this kind of work at all having the guts to learn how, despite the language barriers. He became a terrific welder. My parents had the guts to do anything they wanted to do, or felt they could handle.” Too young to serve in World War II, with ancestors back in Poland, Joe suffers through losing family in The Holocaust. Word runs rampant through Poland at the time, and with family still living there, the news is ominous. His future as an artist and editor of DC Comics’ line of war books will surprise no one given his lineage. Kubert is already working in the comic book industry at the age of fifteen when the Japanese bomb Pearl Harbor in 1941. One of Joe’s earliest jobs is as an assistant on Will Eisner’s The Spirit. It begins with just erasing pages and sweeping out the office until Will is drafted into the army. Due to the proliferation of comics product in the late 1930s, Joe had received work in the industry at tender age of eleven or twelve as an apprentice at the Harry Chesler production shop, which had opened its doors in 1936. When the War came, it only opened more doors for Joe. His first paid job, at a paltry rate of five dollars a page, is the “Voltron” strip in the 1942 comic Cat-Man Comics. Influenced, as was virtually every other artist of the 1940s, by Hal Foster (Prince Valiant), Alex Raymond (Flash Gordon) and Milton Caniff (Terry and the Pirates), Kubert makes the rounds of all the major publishers in the late 1940s, until he opens his own studio by 1949. Eisner, Kubert, and Lee are drawn to the potent cocktail of mixing the business with the creative. As owners, as company men, as men of financial substance, there is little need for Ann to play the role of Roz Kirby to creative genius, Jack. “I think we could split Will in half, and say one side is business and one side is art. Will loves the business end. He loves the excitement of negotiating.” Given that most artists in the comics field tend to ignore this, these three men certainly stand out amongst the crowd. “I think it was partially Will’s family. His mother was more of a businessperson. His father was more of a dreamer, so he got something from both.” He continues to put forth new material of fiction every year, leaving Ann to say, “I don’t think Will could ever stop. I really don’t,” says Ann. “Someone asked him—and we were laughing—when he was going to

retire, and Will said, ‘I guess two weeks after I die.’ “That’s Will.” “I would figure it a matter of luck,” says Joe with a straight face when quizzed about his own business acumen. He does cite the sheer force of his parents’ will to move across the world with two kids as an inspiration, but also says, “I’m not a gambler. I don’t play cards and I’ve never shot craps, but I do gamble in business. I try to make an evaluation of what the worst downside would be, and what the opportunities might be if I pursued it. Beyond that, it is purely a matter of luck. I wouldn’t pretend to make any comparison with Will Eisner. He is absolutely exceptional.” “My husband and Will are the two best cartoonist businessmen I’ve ever met,” says Muriel. “I think it’s innate. He never studied accounting, marketing or advertising like I have, but he’s sharp as a tack about that.” Stan Lee, while spending his life working in comics, is to be inspired by dreams of Hollywood, films and television. His frustrations center around the tightAbove: Bill Clinton, Joanie & Stan shakin’ hands, 1999. vested nature of his boss, Martin Goodman. Stan’s the Right: photo by Jackie Estrada of Will & Ann at the Eisners. visionary, and Goodman—as self-made man—rarely goes out on a limb if it might cost him a portion of his fortune. “I do remember one thing he was frustrated about that had nothing to do with comics,” says Joanie, “and that’s when they brought out the magazine called Celebrity. It was truly spectacular—done on a shoestring budget—everyone loved it, but Martin was unwilling to put enough money into it to give it the right distribution. Stan felt it could have been another People. Stan had always thought Hollywood and films, but Martin Goodman would never put any money into it. It became a dead end for Stan.” In the 1970s, Stan becomes President of Marvel for a year, and has to sit in on financial meetings, and fight through the politics of the likes of Chip Goodman, the owner’s son who wanted to run the show after his father sold the business. “Stan hated it. After a short time he simply resigned. He had no desire to spend the rest of his life in business meetings.” Stan bolts for California, attempting to turn newsprint into Hollywood gold. The first live-action SpiderMan television show is horrifying, but the Hulk actually improves upon the original comic, thanks to the enduring pathos exhibited by the late Bill Bixby. “We were friendly with the Hulk stars,” says Joanie. “Bill Bixby was a gentleman from the word ‘go.’ He was a wonderful, warm man. I remember Stan admiring some jeans of his, and Bill sent some to him. Lou Ferrigno was the sweetest guy who ever walked on this planet, with the most beautiful wife. They were over at our house around Christmas time last year.” The late Phil Seuling starts the comic convention craze in 1968 with the first of his New York Comic Art Cons. One can view him as one of the most important figures of the next fifteen years in the comic book industry. With his distribution network, he helps independent up-and-comers like Dave and Deni Sim, get their book, Cerebus, off the ground. However, his efforts as a convention organizer dominate memories of the man. “I went to the first Seuling convention to which Will was invited,” says Ann, “and was absolutely amazed. I had no idea, and was very surprised when people came up and asked him for his autograph. He was on a panel, and people would come up and speak to him, and he was introducing me to names that meant nothing to me.” Their move to Florida also opens the door to Ann’s socializing with other creators and their wives. “When we moved, I was free to go with him to conventions and other things. Will makes it a habit of giving anyone an autograph and rarely doing a sketch, if ever. He realized early on that if he did a sketch for one person, he’d have to do it for everyone, so he made it a rule—no sketches. “He attended a convention somewhere in the mid-west, and the cutest tow-headed kid—about nine or ten—was waiting patiently in line. He was so adorable and enthusiastic in his praise of Will, and so sincere in wanting a sketch to treasure, Will broke down and did one for him. 72

“About an hour later as Will was leaving the auditorium, he saw a small crowd in the hall outside. There, on a chair, was this same kid, auctioning off the sketch Will had done for him. ‘The little con artist got seven dollars for it,’ Will told me.” The sands of time may have forgotten the original “Oscar,” but few will ever be able to disassociate Will from the Eisner Awards, held at the single largest comic-related event of every year, the San Diego comic convention. Conflicts in the late 1980s over those running the Kirby Awards split the proceedings into two separate shows: the Harveys (held in Pittsburgh, and named after Kurtzman) and the Eisners. Having a name, and a standard for excellence, means Will keeps close tabs on what will be associated with that name. “He was very exact about what he wanted,” says Ann. “He would only give his name to something completely objective, and didn’t owe anything to anybody. “Once, they brought out a throne—stage prop, of course—for Will to sit on while the numerous awards were being presented. I think it was Jeff Smith who decided Will shouldn’t be standing throughout the ceremonies. There was a bit of a struggle going on because Will wouldn’t sit in it! They finally had to remove it. Unbeknownst to many people, Will—advanced age and all—doesn’t mind standing. It was very amusing.” Will’s shadow always looms large over Ann, literally! “I always laugh because unless I’m standing right next to him, I don’t stand out in any particular way since I’m only five foot one!” laughs Ann. “I’m always amused, because if I’m not standing right next to him, they don’t know who I am.” While some spouses bristle at being relegated to that role, the lack of attention paid to her doesn’t bother Ann. “No, not at all. I mean, come on, I’m 78 years old!” she says with a grin. “I always take books and crossword puzzles with me. Will will get busy at a panel that’s too technical for me to be the least bit interested in. Sometimes, I’ve heard it about ten times. “He gets invited all over the world. He turned down Italy in March because he loves working. He says, ‘If I’m going to travel all the time, I can’t work.’ “They have begged us—they know I go with him, so they have to put up with me—to come to Australia next year. That’s a hell of a trip! We did do Australia fifteen years ago, and we were so knocked out for days, weeks, after that. They said, ‘We are going to make you an offer you can’t refuse.’ Could they take the time difference away? Also, I’m involved in certain charitable organizations, but everybody knows I have a lifestyle that isn’t always conducive to being available to them all the time.” Will’s celebrity didn’t extend to functions he attended for Ann’s career. “I worked for a hospital, and I was a department head. We’d have to go to certain meetings once or twice a year, functions or dances, really, and he was my husband. He wasn’t ‘Will Eisner, Cartoonist.’ He didn’t expect any recognition.”

That didn’t stop people on occasion from trying to approach Ann to use Will’s talents and celebrity for free. “There was one thing where I put my foot down. The PTA would have people come and say, ‘Your husband’s an artist, isn’t he? Will you get him to do...’—posters and such—and I would say, ‘No, I will not.’ I felt it was not fair. “People would be appalled when I would say no, but Will didn’t want that kind of recognition. I remember being very defensive and saying, ‘Your husband’s a lawyer. Should I ask him for two hours of his time?’ Then, eventually, it would sink in.” Muriel also becomes acquainted with the high regard for her husband when she starts attending conventions. “When you have five children,” says Muriel, “you don’t have time to go out of your way to meet other cartoonists. Just because you have something in common, as far as a career is concerned, doesn’t Above: Romita & Kubert at the San Diego Con, 1990s. mean you’re going to be friends. We had our own circle of friends Top Right: 1959 photo of artist Steve Ditko, Lee’s and were very close with family.” collaborator on Spider-Man (courtesy Britt Stanton). Her first memory of a convention is of Lucca, Italy, in the Bottom Right: splash page to classic tale by early 1970s. “I‘d stand around watching these kids and when they Lee & Ditko, Tales of Suspense #34, 1962. saw Joe, their faces all turned red. I’d get a big kick out of them.” The male comic book fan, in the eyes of Muriel? “Always blushing—a little bit heavy; very nice, very shy, very quiet—maybe because they were intimidated by Joe.” An artist can perhaps measure the value of his work by the tangible impact it has on the lives of others. “Another man sent an e-mail saying Sgt. Rock saved his life,” notes Muriel. “His mother was a German Nazi. They lived here in this country and she was trying to indoctrinate her son into Nazism. “He said he was going crazy with her to the point where he would run off into the woods, when he was a young kid, trying to get her out of his system. Then he read one of the Sgt. Rock stories. He saw what Sgt. Rock thought, realized it is all psychological and he wasn’t going to let it affect him. He says he just wrote a book on his childhood experiences.” Her first convention also provides the couple with a link that would have a direct impact on Joe’s work. “That also was the first time we met our Yugoslavian friend, Ervin Rustemagic—the subject of Joe’s Fax From Sarajevo book. Another cartoonist that we met for the first time was Hugo Pratt, a top Italian cartoonist. Hugo told us an anecdote about the time he was a prisoner in Ethiopia and what helped to maintain his sanity was his collection of comic books—mainly comic books illustrated by Joe!” “Recently, Stan went to a new doctor for a check-up,” says Joanie, “and when the doctor found out he was Stan Lee, he almost went bonkers saying, ‘Do you know I sold part of my comic book collection to put myself through medical school?!’ The letters we get here from people, you cannot imagine. I should save them and put out a book just about letters of love to a man they say has changed their entire lives. “We went out to dinner last Saturday night with friends, a very expensive restaurant on Sunset Plaza, and as we came out, there were about fifteen young people—aged from about eighteen to their mid-twenties—waiting to get Stan’s autograph. My friends said to me, ‘How on earth did they know he was here?’ I said, ‘God knows! Maybe they checked some papers, or a waiter tipped them off.’ It’s happened so often I’ve grown used to it. “L.A. is a crazy town. Every waiter every five minutes will say to Stan, ‘Can I send you my script to read?’ Nobody is just a waiter here. They’re all aspiring to or working in the industry. My manicurist goes to Elizabeth Taylor’s house—Madonna lived five houses down the road. She used to run by every day, or ride a bicycle with her brother, then she moved to England. You get used to it. Nobody stares—nobody looks, except the tourists. “The demands on his time are where I feel very sorry for him because he is a man who has a hard time turning anything down. If he gets a letter from someone, that letter is answered. He won’t go to sleep till he’s returned all the phone calls he can and answered as many letters as he can. “I try to protect him by not having a filled calendar now, so that he has time to do the things he wants to do—and has to do. If I was the kind of wife who said, ‘I want to go out to dinner more often and I don’t like you bringing your work home,’ then we’d be in trouble. Luckily, I’m not. I have a whole separate thing myself. I have 74

my garden, my house, and my daughter—who also has a marvelous house near us Stan bought her. “I remember a convention in New Orleans where Stan and I were in a parade. The only thing is you cannot walk with Stan because the stopping for him is really incredible. The poor man can never get to look at anything himself. People always crowd around for autographs.” In the early 1980s, when Marvel is fighting with Jack Kirby over this artwork, fandom views Stan as the ‘face of Marvel’ and begrudge him this. “They still do today. You could never convince some people that Stan is not Marvel, that he doesn’t run Marvel; he’s simply their icon. I’m sure it bothered him, mostly because he wanted all the artists to get their artwork back, but he had nothing to do with it at that time and had nothing to say about it. He wasn’t even aware of the problem until he read about it in the trades. “You know, it’s odd—many artists have come and gone, many editors have come and gone. The ownership has come and gone, but Stan is known all over the world. If you could ever see how Stan is with fans, with an audience, when he’s anywhere, like in China a few years ago. I later had a group of the Chinese artists he had addressed in Beijing visit him at our house. They were almost worshipful. “Nobody can relate to an audience the way Stan does. That’s what he does best—relate to people, communicate with people, entertain people. He has never run the business or been in a position to decide who will or won’t get their artwork back.” A common thread amongst all three men is their ability to teach and mentor those who will replace them. When beginning his art career, Will himself had a scholarship to the Arts Students League, a New Yorkbased school started in 1875 with a reputation for progressive teaching practices and radical politics. Considered the most important arts school in the country at the turn of the 20th century, it boasted an enrollment of 1000 students in 1900. Ann notes “Will did take anatomy and other courses, and considered Segar and Caniff as the biggest influences in his life, but he never studied with them.” Starting in 1973—years before his return to the creative side of the business—Will teaches two classes, one day a week, on Thursdays, at New York City’s School of Visual Arts. “He’s an excellent teacher,” says Ann. “The first class knew his work and a student said to him, ‘You are so willing to share secrets’—some of the other teachers evidently weren’t. They were sort of jealously guarding their methods, but that’s not Will. “With the first group of kids, he said, ‘My God! They come in with leather coats and gun belts! It was that generation, but that was always of interest to him.” Even when Ann and Will move to Florida, so valued are his contributions the school flies him up and back every other week. “Will said to the School, ‘I have to stop teaching because I’m going to move to Florida.’ They said, ‘You can’t do that!’ and he said, ‘Oh, I have to go because my wife is going 75

and I don’t want to do my own laundry!’ They flew him up, so then I wasn’t the least bit concerned that I was doing something terrible, because I was retiring. That was the only part I had felt guilty about, because I knew he loved to teach.” Will also plays the role of sage to younger hopefuls. “Cartoonists are constantly asking him to look at his work, which he does most of the time, and give his opinions. I should say ‘suggestions’ because he doesn’t like ‘opinions.’ When someone asks him who’s the best, the most creative, he says that’s so subjective, and never thinks of it that way.” “At the Empire State Building offices,” says Joanie, “I remember Stan standing on a chair, telling the artists how he wanted certain poses drawn and acting out some scenes. He was a natural actor as well as an editor. He would act out many of the parts himself, with his arms and legs flailing and hopping around the room. It was an unforgettable sight.” Joanie claims Stan to be the buffer between Stan’s young artists and the more unforgiving Goodman. “Stan cared greatly about the artists—all the creative people. Nobody knows how many times he would argue with Martin, behind closed doors, Above: Enemy Ace sketch by Kubert, 1996. because he didn’t like the way Martin was treating, or Right: Muriel Kubert profile, 1983. underpaying some people. But Stan didn’t want anyone to know about those arguments because he always wanted the public to think Marvel was a great place where everyone always got along beautifully—and for the most part, they did.” Before Joe Kubert becomes an editor at DC Comics in 1967, his dream of starting his own art school is prevalent in his mind. John Costanza, a letterer in the comic book industry—a man who learned his craft from Joe—also lives in Dover and comes over to the house. “Joe would correct and critique his work,” recalls Muriel. “There are so many people that wanted to learn how.” It becomes a reality when a piece of property falls into their laps, forcing them to make a move. Daughter Lisa, whose friend’s family owns the property, introduces Muriel and Joe to the site. Says Muriel, “Our daughter knew about our dream. My youngest, Andy, was finishing off high school, so I had the time to devote to it. It was right in Dover. We worked out a very good deal for seven acres of property with a beautiful mansion and a pool in the back. Also on the property was a carriage house with a big garage underneath and two apartments over it.” Muriel sends away for every catalog from every school she can contact, picking what will best apply to their school. “One person that helped with ideas was Jack Adler, who was in charge of production at DC Comics. Joe’s hardest part was how do you put into actuality what you’ve been doing artistically all your life? “The next step was finding out how you run a school. We had to be approved by the New Jersey Department of Education and had a wonderful guy down there who helped us with everything. We bought the property in May or June of 1976 and opened the school in September with twenty-two students in that first class. “That’s not only the school itself, but it’s furnishing the carriage house for dormitories. At that time we were going to garage sales or the Salvation Army and bought the dressers, the tables, the pots and pans. The first year, I remember laying out the kits in one of the rooms in that mansion—twenty-two of them—one pencil here, one here, so I don’t skip anybody; until they had a kit put together.” Twenty-two students are accepted the first year and not many more apply. “I don’t think we advertised. It was all press releases we would put together and send out to the Comic Buyer’s Guide or whoever else was interested. We did put one ad—a little ad—in the New York Times. I learned that’s not our audience.” The “buzz” for Muriel comes from seeing former students’ names succeeding in the industry. “There was 76

Rick Veitch, Steve Bissette, John Totleben, Tom Yeates... it’s still exciting. Sometimes I’ll take a look in the Buyer’s Guide and I’ll see the names of our kids. “We have international students too. There’s one boy I used to call my Nigerian son, who’s now the top political cartoonist in England. We now have correspondence school kids from all over the world—Singapore, Malaysia and South Africa. I was just worried about the mail getting through there. With some of these South American countries, we’ve overcome that by sending it with express mail. Just a couple of packages have been lost.” When the school opens, Muriel is there all day. “We opened up a charge account at the diner because I didn’t have time to cook. I often would handout the attendance sheets to the teachers. I was the administrator. I had the art supplies in a cabinet. If a student needed something, I’d have it. Now we have a huge art store, open to the public.” Ric Estrada, Tex Blaisdell, Dick Giordano, Lee Elias, Hy Eisman and Irwin Hasen (the last two still commuting out to the school once or twice a week) all join the Kuberts’ crusade. “None of them are teachers— they’re professionals who teach. They don’t have a background in education, otherwise they would be teaching something else. The kids love them and they did very well. We do offer to our instructors a pension and profit sharing plan. They don’t contribute—we do it. We have health insurance, so we’re real proud of that. We treat the them like we’d like to be treated.” Muriel doesn’t go into the school these days, preferring to work out of the home. Daughter-in-law, Debbie, runs that aspect of the school. “We’re now in a big building. We bought the old Dover high school. The building that originally opened is a full dormitory. When we first opened, I would bring in some homemade brownies or something like that. I guess you could call me a mother hen.” From having nothing to do with your husband’s career to working side-by-side can wreak havoc on any marriage. “The only reason it worked was that he had his ‘bailiwick’ and I had mine. Mine was the business end of it and also, because I respected him as a businessman, we would confer on the business end.” While the school is able to hold its own financially, Joe’s comic book career has kept the family afloat. “I’ve met other school owners,” says Muriel. “Some of them look at every student with a dollar sign over their heads. We could afford to be independent because Joe makes a very good living without the school. If a student doesn’t shape up, cut classes, fail, we still kick them out. The reputation is top drawer because we don’t hesitate to dismiss a student. From twenty-two students to today’s 140, the Kuberts could develop a franchise but chose not to do so. “We don’t want a university. We want quality, instead of quantity. We’ve had offers about franchising in France, a franchise in California. When you lose contact with what’s going on, you’ll have another Enron. You have to be hands-on. It’s our name that’s on the school. It’s our reputation and our children’s reputation.” Learning from work-for-hire mistakes of the past, the school also offers courses in copyrights and legalities and contracts. “Joe tells the students at every graduation, ‘don’t forget about us.’ He means it. He has them coming to make sure their portfolio is suited for the position for which they are applying. “He’s proud of the alumni and it gets aggravating when you see a kid who professes he wants to come to the school, then during the first year he cuts classes and doesn’t do his homework, etc. That bothers you, especially when Daddy is paying the bills. Thank God those are few and far between.” Sons Andy and Adam soon join the school of their own volition. “In fact, we tried making it harder for them,” says Muriel. “We told them, ‘Look, you’re Joe Kubert’s children. You have to be better as far as attendance and getting everything done on time.’ We can’t play favorites, and we didn’t. They work together. They ask each other questions. One will ask the other one to look at his work. There isn’t any rivalry. “They are teaching now this year. They’re becoming more active and they’re learning what goes on at the school. As parents, we’re quite surprised and pleased they enjoyed it so much. They really come forth with suggestions.” 77

The school takes a hit in the 1990s with declining comic book sales, but real change for the school comes with the addition of computers. The school’s web site busies Muriel the most. “That’s my baby. I can hook up to the school computer and do some of the bookkeeping on it. I do the annual report for the New Jersey Department of Education and all of the bookkeeping for Tell-AGraphics—our art agency—and for the correspondence school.” Muriel says, “With Joe, what you see is what you get. He’s the most straightforward, honest, and sincere person. He enjoys people. He’s not a computer guy at all. He understands the basics, but I think he just doesn’t like the technology of it. He’s so used to his own way of doing things that he doesn’t see any need for it in his bailiwick. He knew it was necessary for the students to learn. “I have embraced it. I’m an information junkie and I’m constantly amazed by the amount of information. Whatever you’re looking for, with enough patience, you can find... if it works. “Joe’s at the school at eight every morning until six or so at night, Monday through Friday; sometimes Saturdays and Sundays. He thrives on it. We just came back from a Caribbean vacation for two weeks. He took his work with him and did it every morning. He will never retire and neither will I.” When one is at the birth of an industry, time eventually passes, as do the people from your lives. “We talk about that,” says Ann. “The passing of Jack Kirby and Harvey Kurtzman affected Will the greatest. Jack worked for him, but since Will wasn’t involved in that area of the business for so long, he didn’t see Jack again until we started going to San Diego. “That’s where I met Roz Kirby, but her life is so different, because she was involved in—I don’t want to say ‘baby-sitting’ Jack, because that’s not right—being there for him. She felt she had to be with him. I didn’t feel that way about Will. I didn’t have to be with him at all times. When we’ve had our worst moments, work was his salvation. If he didn’t have his work, that would be a crusher.” Joanie Lee is the social butterfly of the three wives. A laundry list of names pour out of her from today back to the days at Marvel Comics in the late 1940s, symbolizing the great divide between freelancer and the men in the engine of the company. “Dan and I became very, very close friends with Joanie and Stan,” says Josie DeCarlo. “Stan had a great sense of humor and Dan understood it well. “Joanie made her guests very comfortable. She was a very vivacious woman and had loads of pets. Every time we were invited to their home for dinner, one of her poodles took a liking to me. The minute I arrived she was on my lap until I left. Every time we would leave Joanie would say, ‘Next time you have to take one home with you.’ “Finally, one day, she came with the velvet coat, the rhinestone collar and she gave me Josie. She had two—Josephine and Napoleon. Isn’t that a coincidence? Joanie was a marvelous hostess.” “In those days,” says Joanie, “I would drive down to the office—we had an apartment on Madison Avenue and 96th street—and to show you the difference back then, I’d park in front of the Empire State Building with no problem. “I remember that wonderful man who fell off the train—Joe Maneely. One martini too many probably, coming back from New York. That was terrible. Stan was crazy about him. I can just see his thick, black hair right now. He was very warm, very easy going, very dear. We used to have him at our parties in Hewlett Harbor and Joe would always get up to sing. He was not only a great artist but he had a marvelous voice. “The loss of Sol Brodsky affected Stan very greatly. Sol had been with Stan for decades as his closest assistant. He was the gentlest, nicest man in the whole wide world. I remember the sadness of Stan when any of them passed away because they were more than just workers to him—they were friends and great talents whom 78

he would say could never be replaced. “All those wonderful artists were there—Mike Sekowsky, Vince Fago, Ed Winiarsky, George Klein, Chris Rule—so many whose names I’ve forgotten, and we’d go to the restaurant at the bottom of the Empire State Building and have drinks there. Thinking back now, they were all just a bunch of young, enthusiastic kids. “We’d also go up to Jim Mooney’s home in Woodstock. Jim was another of our best friends, a talented artist, sculptor, painter—a real Renaissance man. “There was just no anger in any of these artists. I remember John Buscema being one of the most wonderful men in the world. We went to Italy with him one time. He had such a wit about him. I remember him telling me how I should use dumbbells to build up my arms—he sent me a book about it. Stan threatened to shoot him if I did it—he said he liked my arms just as they were! “Then there was Vinnie Colletta. He was a fabulous individual; he looked like some great Italian film star. We’d always kid him he looked more Mafia than any real Mafioso. He was one of the fastest inkers in the business. Stan would use him whenever there was an emergency rush job.” “Jack Kirby—he was a true talent—a cigar-puffing, brilliant, dedicated, incredibly talented man. He might have been painting a Sistine Chapel somewhere if he had been born in that time. He was an incredible artist and I found him to be a warm, loving, family man. He had a daughter who played guitar. I remember going to his house and seeing a beautiful, bright red carpet. “Roz was the perfect mate for Jack; protective, caring, always at his side. I couldn’t imagine him being married to any other woman. The rift between Stan and Jack was so incredible because they started with such an exciting thing. “They had the first big write-up in the magazine section of the New York Herald Tribune. The reporter wrote something like, ‘Stan came into the room—this slim, Rex Harrison look-alike with blah, blah, blah and Jack Kirby was a roly-poly man who looked like he wore a girdle.’ When Roz and Jack read that the next morning they thought Stan had given him that, but of course it had nothing to do with Stan—nothing at all, but their hurt must have been intense. I Left: Tor sketch by Kubert, 1996. believe that’s when that rift first started. Roz never got over it, until Below: Joanie Lee in California, 1982. the very end when we talked. “It was so horrendous of that man to write such a thing, but none of us had a chance to read it beforehand. I was always amazed the newspaper editor allowed such a cruel and unfair comment to appear. I think that article that put Jack Kirby down bothered Stan more than anything ever written or said about Stan. “When Jack left, the professional loss was incredible because of the thousands of times Stan would say to me, ‘Y’know, if Jack were here, I’ll bet we could do this, or that.’ It was like Martin Goodman saying to Stan, ‘I just realized that Westerns are the new trend.’ ‘Don’t worry, I’ll have four new ones for you by next week,’ Stan would say. He missed Jack because there were so many more things they could have done together. “I read the Spider-Man newspaper strip, once in a while, but I simply wasn’t as involved as much as some other wives were. Roz Kirby was very involved and very protective of her husband. Virginia Romita was, and is, an angel of the first degree. I was bonkers for her, her husband John and their son John Junior. My daughter worked at Marvel doing paste-ups (or something like that) when she was eighteen or nineteen—it was just some little summer job, but Virginia was so sweet and kind to her.” According to Joanie, Stan has always been friends with most of the competition. “He felt they were all in the same business together and were all a great bunch of people. He’d often have drinks after work at a little pub on Third Avenue with his chief competitor, Carmine Infantino, who was then head of DC. When they were 79

together it was all jibes and wisecracks and good-natured kidding, never anger or meanspiritedness. “It was the same thing with Stan and Bob Kane. They were the best of friends. They used to talk about doing a movie together but laughed about the fact they’d never be able to do it because they’d never be able to decide whose name would come first on the credits.” Stories of Stan’s feud with Jim Warren are legendary, and either time soothes the battle scars or whitewashes them in the name of preserving a healthy, clean legacy. “We had a beach house next to his,” says Joanie, “in Westhampton, Long Island. He actually kept a World War I or II airplane at the front of his house. He was a colorful character. Stan liked him a lot. “Stan fell in love with the warm weather of Los Angeles. When we came out for a visit, Stan said to me, ‘Do you think you could live out here?’ The thought of leaving New York was horrendous to me. I felt near to civilization, I was near to my sister in Canada, closer to flying back to England—everything. But I thought if he wanted it so badly, we’d give it a try.” The change of lifestyle is dramatic, but not compared to the change in Beverly Hills since they arrived to today. “The food when we came here,” says Joanie, “was like big platters of cowboy food. Rodeo Drive was a little sleepy village until Judith Krantz put Beverly Hills on the map when she wrote her best-seller, Scruples. Then came all the French coutures, and everything New York has, and it has the incredible weather. “When we would go to Martin’s for dinner, it was always ‘The damn wholesalers owe me money!’ That was the biggest mistake Martin Goodman made, when he shut down his own distribution company in the 1950s because he thought he’d make more money by going with the American News Company. No sooner did he make the switch then the AMC went bankrupt and Marvel was left high and dry with no distribution for a while. “I loved Martin and thought he was a wonderful man—a gentleman of the old school, a self-made man. Not particularly generous, but nobody’s perfect. Martin’s office was divinely furnished. His wife Jean had exquisite taste. They also had an incredible house, decorated by Jean. “Goodman made the decisions, just as Perelman later did. Stan was the talent, the engine they needed to make it all go. Stan never sold one penny of Marvel stock when he had a chance, not even when Ron Perelman had it and it eventually went bankrupt. That’s something he should have done, but that’s not Stan. I said it to him once, but he’d say, ‘Oh no, we don’t really need to, and it’ll be bad for Marvel if people think I’m selling out.’ He’s always been that way, thinking of the company and of other people. It was the same with Stan Lee Media—he never sold his stock. Luckily we didn’t need it.” Good thing, too, because Stan’s Internet venture, Stan Lee Media—his quest to create a Marvel Comics on the ’Net—comes crashing down around him 80

in the late 1990s amongst stock price scandals, a very strange CEO named Peter Paul, and an extremely high burn rate. Stan had had stops and starts in his sixty-year career, but this is the first true failure in which he is involved. The Goodman publishing empire and fortune was rock solid. Stan wouldn’t been prepared for how the liquid nature of Internet capital can bring things to a crashing halt, leaving Joanie to comfort her crestfallen husband. “I certainly didn’t want to upset him,” says Joanie. “I didn’t say, ‘Why didn’t you...? Where were you...? How come?’ I was so proud of the way he reacted. Instead of tossing recriminations around, he said, “Okay, we’ve got a bad situation. How do we make it better?’ It took over a year, but Stan managed to put it behind him. He’s started a new company and is just as busy and as enthusiastic and as creative as ever.” Joe Kubert had met the Three Stooges while attending his friend Norman Maurer’s wedding in 1947. “When Joe returned from overseas,” says Muriel, “we visited with Norman and his wife in California and had dinner at Moe Howard’s house. I was so excited—a movie star! He was very nice, charming, and very warm. He had his hair back instead of bangs. He was a regular guy. “When we lived in Parsippany, Russ Heath would come over with his wife and he had a Top Left: the famous ‘money-shot’: Stan, Joanie & Mr. Royce, 1990. couple of kids at that time. He’s a very talented Bottom Left: recent picture of Stan & Joanie. man; very quiet, laid-back, very thorough and Above: sketch of Eisner’s The Spirit, 1998. interested in what he was doing. When he was th doing something he would research it to the N degree. “We’ve known Carmine Infantino for a long time. He was an usher at our wedding. He was one of the first cartoonists Joe introduced me to before we were even married—very nice and very sweet, same as he is now.” Muriel’s talent with numbers leaves her in charge of the household finances until children make life too busy. “David was born in 1953. Danny was about two years later. Our Daughter, Lisa, was about two years after that. Then came Adam about eighteen months later and Andy was born a couple years after, in 1962.” The last two would turn out to be the budding artists in the family, but Adam or Andy spent no more time by their father’s side when he was working than the other three. Muriel says, “They were all exposed the same. They all took art in high school. It was just in those two. “Adam, at the age of twelve, was lettering for comic books professionally. I think it was just me pushing a little bit. When he would put ketchup on a hamburger, he wouldn’t put it on like you or me—he’d make a face out of it. He’d put the dots for an eye. I could tell that he was artistic. The lettering started first. He had his father right there. He wanted to learn and Joe taught him.” A few gentle nudges by their mother encourages the two soon-to-be-stars of the comic industry into the proper artistic outlets. “I encouraged Adam and Andy to go to Rochester Institute of Technology. Adam graduated from there with a degree in medical illustration. He even had a fellowship, a summer job, at Cornell Medical Center—drawing medical apparatuses. Andy took Package Design and hated it! With Andy, I don’t even know if it lasted a complete year. Andy said he wanted to be a cartoonist. I said, ‘Okay, come home.’”

How does a mother with a husband/ father so highly regarded in the comic book industry deal with having two sons who decide they want to become comic book artists? How does one coach one’s children, with concerns of growing up in their father’s shadow? “I want to hang out a shingle outside the house with an agency, ‘Kubert and Sons’,” says Muriel. “I thought it’d be wonderful. There is no such thing as being in your father’s shadow. That’s a bunch of garbage as far as our kids are concerned.” Reminded of her own words about Andy’s feelings of inferiority in the face of his father’s own work, Muriel relents and says, “Well, that’s when he was young but when they matured and realized they’re their own people, I know that attitude changed.” Father Joe helps mold the picture of Muriel as a force in their sons’ lives. “She’s the one who really extends herself in every way to make sure every opportunity comes their way. She’s very family-oriented and the kids and Above: Joe & Muriel Kubert’s 50th anniversary, picture, 2001. grandchildren are probably some of the most Right: pgs. 8, 11, 14 & 15 from Sgt. Rock story by Robert important facets of her life. She’s very giving, all Kanigher & Joe Kubert abandoned at the pencil stage, 1978. most too much so. Her mentioning ‘Kubert and Sons’ is an indication of where her thinking lies. “Adam, at the age of eleven or twelve, was lettering not only for me, but for other comics as well. Muriel would absolutely encourage them, but with young people they may elicit an interest when they are eleven and twelve, but by the time they are thirteen, the interest has disappeared.” Joanie is very protective of her husband’s legacy, and this manifests itself in a whirlwind spirit akin to an undertow that sucks you under, spins you round, and leaves you not knowing which way is up. Ann is cautious, then warm, but simply prefers to remain out of the spotlight. The struggle to the top of the industry has left all three attentive to the reputation of their respective last names. Few hold their cards as close to the vest as does Muriel, protective of her privacy and the name “Kubert.” “My kids know if they tell me something—‘Mom, please don’t say anything’—I never talk from one kid to another. If you ask me what strip they’re doing, sometimes I don’t even know. They would show me a couple of pages, but I’ve never read them. When they started getting e-mail fan letters—I would get them and forward them onto Andy and Adam—then I knew they were a success.” Stan worships his daughter Joan from birth. “Perhaps it applies to artists more than writers,” says the proud mother, Joanie, “but when my daughter was born, he would always make time to take her to the carnivals and merry-go-rounds. No matter how hard he worked he always had time for her and for me. In fact, the three of us sometimes worry that we are too close. When we go off to the Great Unknown, she’ll really miss us because she’s insane about her father... and her mother. “I’ve been terribly blessed. I’ll tell you, I have to live with this guy, and I wouldn’t have it any other way!” Three successful men, all who either own (or could lay legal claim to having created) their own properties or positioned themselves in business to avoid the pitfalls of a freelancer’s life. As a result, while they valued their wives’ opinions, the need to be mother, negotiator, and secretary—in addition to wife and friend—is virtually absent with all three women. It’s a different bond from that of the Colans, Romitas, Ayers and Estradas of the world; those couples driven together by hardship and a lack of financial security.

CHAPTER FIVE

ADELE & HARVEY KURTZMAN

“As Will Eisner would say, ‘I would give Harvey advice about money matters because he would ask me, but he never took the advice and he never made any money.’” Adele’s quote above aptly describes the dichotomy that is her husband, Harvey Kurtzman: he may have been comics’ greatest innovator, but may have also been too far ahead of his time. The man who probably influenced more people worldwide than anyone else in this book had neither the patience of a Joe Kubert nor the business acumen of a Will Eisner. His quest for innovation, his unerring desire for perfection, and his inability to deal with authority figures who didn’t breathe the same high standards left him in the precarious position of knowing the value of his legacy, but unable to translate it into a monetary value. His early experiments with the comic book page put him on par with Will Eisner; his creation of Mad Magazine splattered his influence across the globe; his Little Annie Fanny character for Playboy became symbolic of a generation, and all of the above created the “Kurtzman Umbrella” under which an entire generation of underground comix cartoonists would fall. Side-by-side with this whirlwind of a man is Adele Kurtzman. Everything must be viewed through the prism of artist William Stout’s astute comment about the woman’s sense of humor: ‘Harvey was not a real funny guy, but his wife Adele has a killer dry wit.’ She, like Harvey, was ahead of her time, describing herself as a holy terror for her mother, growing up in the 1930s in the Bronx. “I was a terrible teenager,” says Adele. “My mother used to call the police. When I tell my children that now, they look at this old mother and say, ‘Our grandmother called the cops on you?’ I regret it because I must have put my mother through living hell. I went to a girls’ school because my mother thought it would be safer. “I had great parents. If my mother would tend to give us a little swat, my father would stand in front of us and say, ‘Don’t hit the children!’ We had a project where he, my sister and I crossed every bridge connecting New York City to other places.” While her father toils as a factory worker, her mother stays home with the kids, tending to all the lost souls 84

in need from the extended family. “These were rough times. We Left: Adele & Harvey (with Rene Goscinny’s head had many people living with us. They helped keep the place cropped off) in their Manhattan Apartment, 1950. going. My mother took in two cousins whose mother had died. Below: Adele at Cloisters Park, NY circa 1947-48. They came for a short period of time and stayed twenty-two years.” Adele’s Bronx neighborhood is an Irish-Italian mix, with a little German. “We had a Nazi spy in our building,” says Adele. “He had one of those dumb shortwave radios. I don’t know what kind of messages he was sending out, but looking back, he was very stereotypical of what a Nazi spy might look like. He was the first person I remember wearing tennis shoes. I don’t remember grown people wearing sneakers then, so we probably should have known he was a spy.” She witnesses the would-be interloper dragged out in chains from their building. “It was kind of exciting. It was kind of pathetic. I don’t think he knew much,” laughs Adele. “The price of lettuce, that would be about it.” Wanderlust describes Adele’s desire to soak up the pop culture influences of her day. “We just kept going as often as we could to movies like Casablanca or Make Way for Tomorrow—tear-jerkers about old age. Growing up as a first generation American, you yearned for better things, and the movies affected you. You wanted to look like they did and you wanted to go places.” Adele doesn’t exhibit the slightest interest in artistic endeavors during her youth, instead presenting herself as a typical teenager with little focus other than to move right into the workforce. “My jobs were short-lived. I was a waitress in Schraffts, worked for Sears-Roebuck and then did some proofreading for Editions for the Armed Services, the little paperbacks that were sent overseas. “I wouldn’t have met Harvey because, even in those days, I thought I was going to be ‘Queen of England.’ I didn’t take typing or any kind of business courses. When I went looking for a job, I had a friend who was very good at that, and she answered the ad in the New York Times’ classified section for a proofreader at Timely Comics. She did a great resumé, typed it herself, and they hired me.” In the mid-to-late 1940s, the Empire State Building houses the only true bullpen Marvel Comics (known then as Timely Comics) will ever have. Myth has it she is Stan Lee’s secretary, but she insists this to be untrue. “I wasn’t hired by Stan and I couldn’t have been a secretary. I didn’t know how to do any of that stuff!” Her direct contact on the job was mostly with Alan Sulman, associate editor to Stan. “I was told it was because I had good legs,” laughs Adele, “which, of course, was very important.” Adele reads every piece of original artwork on its way to the presses, but remembers little investment in the finer points of her job. “I was very young, just out of high school. I read comics all day long, looking for spelling mistakes in the balloons on the original art. I’m embarrassed, but I don’t remember ever seeing anything wrong! There may have been a comma, or a period, but to tell you the truth I don’t ever remember writing anything down. If I did, I faked it. “Stan would look at the stuff I proofread too, and did find mistakes I made, but he was very busy and very glamorous. He was young and cute—good looking. He would blow a whistle and everyone would have to start drawing. Frank Giacoia was busy reading The Daily News when this happened, so Stan sent him home. I guess artists were notorious goof-offs.” In contrast to the freelancing 1950s and 1960s, the Marvel Comics of the 1940s has a coterie of staff artists working in the fourteenth floor offices, with Adele in the middle of all the craziness. “They also had movie star magazines, and those men’s magazines—muscle magazines. I worked in a room with all men. I still know Al Jaffee, but there was one other woman, Violet Barclay, who was an inker. She used to call herself Sheila, then Violet. To me, she seemed very stunning, very exotic looking. I assume a lot of the guys were crazy about her. She and Mike Sekowsky dated a little. “They poked fun at Allen Bellman because he’d bought a TV set. I remember thinking, ‘TV?! What kind of nonsense is that?’” laughs Adele. “It must have been a very crude set in 1948.” 85

Frank Torpey is the sales manager who convinced Martin Goodman to publish comic books, but Adele and the Bullpen crowd have a dim view of the lurker. “They also used to make fun of Frank. He would come to the water cooler and all the guys would say Frank’s job was to sneak around and see that people were working. “I worked right in the Bullpen, and then went into a smaller office with Al, Frank Carino—or Carin—and Bob Sanders. To me, it was another world. They were all very nice to me. I was a kid. “If it weren’t for the atmosphere, it would have been the most boring job I’ve ever had. Super-heroes never got me. Chris Rule did Patsy Walker, and there was Millie the Model—they were kind of fun to look at. Super Rabbit was sarcastic, and I liked that. “Syd Shores, the Captain America artist, was a very quiet guy, who seemed nice to me, but he didn’t seem to be part of the gang. Al Jaffee was the one to which I had the most connection. He was so funny and a great observer of people. “Martin Goodman just floated. He looked like someone whose feet never touched the ground. He was very impressive. He had white hair and an air of confidence about him. I’d never known anybody like that. He was a ‘Mr. Big.’ I remember his office being so impressive, like a paneled office. “I also wrote advice to the lovelorn in the middle of the comics. That was the most depressing thing I’ve ever been through. You’d get letters from young kids that had been treated badly. It seemed like a very cruel world to me. I did that freelance when I went to college. It wasn’t romance books, just ‘Letters from Aunt Bibi’ or whatever title they gave me. I didn’t submit the letters because they were so pathetic.” Adele’s first connection to Harvey is through his work. She hasn’t yet met the man, but is impressed by his craft enough to rig a contest she is overseeing designed to have fans picked their favorite comic. “I kept this big chart, and I lied and gave Harvey the most votes. It didn’t matter what was in the contest—I just put checkmarks beside Harvey’s material. I’m trying to think of a nicer word, but lying is the word. I phonied up the works like Florida between Gore and Bush! “His stuff was unique and very different than the usual. When I first saw it, I said to Al, ‘There’s the type of man I’d like to marry.’ In our family, money was important, but funny was more so.” Al sets Adele up on a blind date with Will Elder for a reunion at the High School of Music and Art, leading to her first encounter with Harvey. “He had seen me when he had come up to the office, and was either too shy or too scared to introduce himself. When I met him, he was doing freelance work like the one-page “Hey Look!” strips. Professional people liked that, but I don’t know if the kids got it. “Harvey was funny and kind of cheap,” laughs Adele. “He didn’t have any money. Doubleday used to have a place where you could play records, a little booth, and listen to them for free. That’s where he took me on our first date. “He was a confident man, but desperate to get away from his family. It was a difficult atmosphere. He saved money in the Army and got his own place. First, he lived with a friend from high school in a very ritzy neighborhood in New York—Sutton Place. He then he got his own place near Columbia University. “My parents liked Harvey because I had been going out with really sleazy people,” says Adele 86

with a droll grin. “Harvey was a welcome change.” Adele is gone from Timely by 1947, off to college, forcing Harvey to travel and visit Adele to continue their year-long courtship. “He would write everyday and those letters were funny and kind of sad because I hadn’t finished my ‘mean period’ yet. “He was determined to get married. I wanted to finish school and getting married didn’t seem all that important. I went away to college because, as much as I cared about my parents, I wanted to get away too. I wasn’t particularly interested in learning anything, but a young woman in those days didn’t just leave to be on her own. College was a great way of getting away.” She returns in the summer of 1948, and Harvey is the one who makes all the Left: ‘Hey Look!’ strip for Timely Comics, late 1940s. arrangements for their marriage in September. Above: Harvey, John Severin, Rene Goscinny, late 1940s. “We went up to Connecticut and were married by a Justice of the Peace in his little garden. We looked around and suddenly saw little gravestones for all his dogs! It was a dog cemetery! There was my sister, Harry Chester and his wife and that was it. “My father said, ‘Shouldn’t he get a trade?’ It was a very blue-collar attitude, but when we got married, Harvey wasn’t working. The apartment we lived in had a pay phone. We didn’t have a phone of our own, and he would call on that damn pay phone. It was like the movies, ‘No job—no job!’ and you’d see that montage of classified ads.” Harvey will have two problems throughout his life: authority and money. Harvey knows the creative value of his work, and will refuse to let others dictate how he will use his talents. His emotional response to such scenarios is what creates problem number two. He should be able to capitalize on what he brings to the table, but his clashes with authority figures will often leave him on the outside looking in, while others reap the rewards. Stan Lee returns each piece of Harvey’s “Hey Look!” original art with a big, grease-marked “X” through it. Harvey’s experiments may well have been ahead of his time during the late 1940s, but there is little evidence the innovations result in a tangible increase to sales. Stan Lee has no reason to feel concern about relieving Harvey of his workload. “Stan was always saying, ‘More whites, Harvey! Too many blacks!’ It would make Harvey cringe. I don’t think there was any one event that ended their relationship. It was a combination of work drying up and Harvey hating what he was doing.” Roy Thomas, editor-in-chief, tells of a time in the 1970s when Stan has Harvey up to the offices at Marvel and proposes a Mad-style magazine, with Harvey thinking, ‘Is this what it’s come to?’ “I can’t imagine Harvey wanting to work for Stan Lee,” says Adele. “Harvey wouldn’t have been able to take the supervision, the ‘second banana’ idea of not being able to have it his way. That was difficult for Harvey.” Rene Goscinny will become famous in France for producing the children’s series, Asterix. Before this, and after the Harvey/Lee split, Harvey and Rene collaborate on a series of children’s books in New York, but again, Harvey is left empty-handed. “Harvey had a lot of pride in what he did. Rene and Harvey knocked themselves out doing something very different. Rene was funny, witty, charming and classy. He was always clowning—a great storyteller with his wonderful French accent. He had a wonderful mother who was an incredible cook, and we’d go there to eat a lot. “For the children’s books, the publisher didn’t pay them, so Rene and Denny Cunningham went to the publisher and threatened to kill him. The publisher paid, but Harvey, of course, didn’t go along and didn’t get paid.” 87

Left & Above: Lucky learns a harsh lesson about gettin’ lucky— a 1949 Columbia University promotional comic about VD. Below: from Varsity magazine v.4 #26, Nov. 1950. A longing in Harvey’s life is the value French culture places on graphic arts and the socialistic, government-sponsored distribution system. “People always attributed that to him,” says Adele, “because his parents were always left-of-center, but he wasn’t. Harvey was a conservative in many ways, but he was a moderate person in that each issue was different. He wasn’t a Reaganite. I never saw Harvey jealous of Rene. Harvey thought Rene was terrific and was glad of his success.” Success is around the corner, and the most colorful part of their lives together is about to commence. “We lived in the apartment in Washington Heights,” says Adele, “of another man who’d gone to Music and Arts and had left for France to teach. I remember Jack Davis coming to that apartment and thinking he was the shyest person I had ever seen; a charming Southerner.” Myth has it Jack lived with the couple, but this is not the case, according to Adele. “Absolutely not. Jack never lived with us. Harvey started working for Bill Gaines when we had this apartment, then bought a ramshackle old house because work was steady. Harvey would always say, ‘Don’t worry—things will be okay,’ and I believed him.” Max Gaines, who many credit with inventing in 1933 what is now known as the comic book, produces a son, Bill, who inherits his father’s company, Entertaining Comics, in the late 1940s. Bill transforms it into a creative, and controversial, powerhouse in the 1950s, with a great deal of help from Harvey Kurtzman. “Bill would have elaborate Christmas parties,” recounts Adele, “but he never came to visit us at the 88

apartment because the fifth floor walk-up was horrible. He came to the house a lot, whenever the mood struck him. There was a lot of social life mixed in working for Bill.” Harvey hates the horror material for which the company becomes infamous, and creates his own niche with the company’s war comics. Either way, Harvey sees the societal repercussions heading the company’s way and finds a back door. He creates a humor book, lampooning every pop culture trend in America, and calls it Mad Magazine. It will become the most influential publication the comics industry will ever witness. “Jack Davis was very embarrassed when Kefauver singled out some of his horror stories. I think Harvey was embarrassed too, but I don’t think they connected him with it. It seems funny now, but it was very big then. “I remember sitting in our little apartment near Columbia and the comics were going down. Harvey said, ‘If it’s ‘comics,’ why can’t we do something funny?’ Al and Bill had come to dinner in this tiny little apartment and they talked about doing something different. “That, to me, is how Mad started. Everyone else thinks they started it. It’s like the invention of the wheel. I’m sure they sat around and said, ‘You said it was going to be square’ and, ‘You said it was going to be round,’ but I remember what we served, everything. We have Harvey’s first doodling of the word Mad and the little frilly borders. Denis Kitchen found that up in the attic.” Mad Magazine is an instant hit. So sharp is its satire it produces its own backlash. “Meredith—my oldest daughter—took a copy of Mad to school. Terry Gilliam had done a piece on the back featuring Sonny Liston saying something like, ‘I’m gonna whip your ass.’ The teacher saw it and was furious with Meredith, Below: cover to Mad Magazine #10, Apr. 1954. saying, ‘Why are you bringing that stuff here?’ “We got tons of mail on the cross-eyed Mona Lisa cover. People thought it was a religious picture! That’s how stupid they were, thinking it was a stab at religion. If you could see the letters that people took offense. There was the grammar book cover—the black-and-white stencil composition book on which they printed a Mad cover, and people said, ‘What are you doing to the morals of our children?’ “When Harvey did the Archie parodies in the early 1960s, like Goodman Beaver and Starchie, Archie Comics said, ‘cease and desist.’ It was just silly. Harvey’s reaction to John Goldwater was, ‘Another whiner.’ We thought it was funny— and good publicity.” From Melinda Gebbie to Jackie Estrada, an entire generation of children growing up in the sterilized 1950s lifestyle in America gravitate to Harvey’s creation. “I now work in a school for emotionally disturbed children. One of the therapists found out Harvey had started Mad and said it was one of the best things that had ever happen to her, even though I don’t think she read Harvey’s Mad. She was too young for that, but she also would tell me of remembering hilarious stories from Playboy.” Kurtzman’s Mad saves Gaines’ company, ravaged by the industry’s self-imposed censor organism, the Comics Code Authority, but Harvey’s reluctance to compromise when it came to control of his work rears its head again. Harvey

Above: Harvey in the Army, North Carolina, 1945. Top Right: splash to story in Two-Fisted Tales #24, Nov.-Dec. 1951. Bottom Right: roadside Harvey, circa 1951-52. can’t sit still, even with the success of Mad. “Harvey began to make demands. He wanted a larger, slicker magazine, and said to me, ‘How would you feel if I left Mad?’ I said, ‘Okay by me—do what you have to do.’ “Bill changed the comic to magazine size to keep Harvey. Harvey felt it had more prestige as a magazine. Separating himself from Federic Wertham’s attacks and the Comics Code may have had something to do with it, but nobody thought much of comic books. It was the heyday of the magazine. Gaines always seemed nice enough to me and the breakup really had more to do with Harvey wanting to be in control.” Every time Harvey faces resistance from authority, the rush of a new challenge provides too great a narcotic. “That was part of it too, because Harvey had gotten an offer from another magazine. When he left Mad, he was exhilarated. He felt it was time for a change. That’s why Will Eisner made that comment about Harvey never making any money and why, at this late age, I’m still working away.” E.C. and Mad bring out the best in Harvey the creator, and the worst in Harvey the obsessive compulsive artist. “Harvey worked best at night. During the day, the kids were around and that made it more difficult. In the old house, he had a studio up in the attic. “From working at home with the kids, he got all their childhood diseases, like mumps and chicken pox. He came back from Chicago once with the worst case of the mumps. He looked like a cartoon! You can get really sick from that as an adult. He worked on Playboy while he was in the hospital. “With the chicken pox he was covered from head to foot and had an appointment with Stan Freiberg, the great advertising writer, that couldn’t have happened at a worst time. Harvey even had chicken pox in his nose! “He once had a very bad case of hepatitis from having absolutely run himself into the ground. He was in the hospital quite a while and when he came home, he had to stay in bed a long time. It knocked the stuffing out of him but he worked while he was in bed. I felt responsible for looking after him, but it was just something he fell into naturally.” 90

What makes Harvey a gifted illustrator is his obsession with detail, but he works in an industry unrewarding to time spent on perfection. “I had a cousin who had been on Iwo Jima and Harvey had spent hours talking to him about the Marines there. For Harvey, it couldn’t be any other way. He went into that water deprivation tank to see what that was like. “He took us with him to the Pentagon. We went with our first child in this horrible, old car that was such an embarrassment. We pulled up to this very nice hotel and the doorman turned his back on us. We had packed in a hurry— no suitcases, just shopping bags! “We still have a huge collection of Civil War books. He dove into that. From the time I knew him, he had that obsession with detail. His biological father died when Harvey was only three. His step-father was very meticulous and so was his mother.” Harvey’s artistic obsession with war has no practical basis. “He hated the Army,” says Adele. “He had nightmares from being in the Army, about having to go back. He really detested it. He was set to go overseas but never did because the war ended.” Art Spiegelman once wrote in the New Yorker that “Harvey’s Mad was more important than pot and LSD in shaping the generation that protested the Vietnam War,” but Harvey is blinded to the future by his need for more control, and leaves Mad before its mass acceptance might have made him a very wealthy man. Work hits a dry spell before a young entrepreneur recognizes Harvey’s conceptual genius and is willing to take a flyer on a new magazine. The man is Hugh Hefner, and once again, Harvey will quarrel with his employer. The next few years become a mass of critical successes, but commercial failures. With his magazines, Harvey is trying to combine the best of the comics and ‘legitimate press’ worlds. Hefner hires Harvey to produce the magazine, Trump—a higher end Mad—but it lasts only last two issues, due in part to financial problems at Playboy. “Hef was very nice, but—and this should have been a sign—the day our third child was born, he came to the hospital to tell Harvey Trump was finished. He couldn’t afford it anymore. Hugh liked it, I liked it, everybody still thinks it’s one of the best things they ever did. It was all very strange because Nancy Gaines was in the hospital at the same time

having an ulcer operation.” The aborted Christmas Carol project, The Jungle Book and the Grasshopper and the Ant show Harvey almost twenty years ahead of Will Eisner in attempts to produce the first graphic novel. “The Christmas Carol book was something Harvey wanted to do so badly. It was one of his favorite stories. Nobody was really going to publish it and he didn’t know how to do it. Denis Kitchen has always believed in Harvey’s work and made the Grasshopper book a labor of love. I don’t think anyone will buy it, but it was something Harvey loved too.” Jim Warren hires him to produce another satire magazine, Help!, and it has a nice run of twenty-six issues from 1960 to 1965, but the project dearest to his heart is a small, black-and-white magazine called Humbug. Harvey borrows tens of thousands to bring his art magazine to fruition, and will spend the next eight years paying it back. “They worked so hard on that one,” remembers Adele, “and at the end, he sat on the stairs in our old house and cried. It was so terrible because I’d never seen him like that. He was always so optimistic and this was so devastating for him. “I said, ‘Forget it—there will always be another magazine,’ because with Harvey, there always was. “Distribution was the key. They were trying to distribute Humbug working with these mafia guys out of Connecticut, Charlton Comics. They had Italian laborers building, building, and building! It was like a movie. Harvey would come back and say, ‘Forget about it! They’re gangsters!’” Harvey’s unbending will comes from his desire to have a stake in his creations, although this would prove elusive throughout his career. In a tribute issue of The Comics Journal published after his death, famed cartoonist Burne Hogarth said, “Had he come along earlier (or even later) and gone into syndication with pre-eminent newspapers and well-received journals, he would have become wealthy, world-famous, and a prime celebrity in his field, equal to the best. As it was, Harvey was victimized, his creations wrenched from him, deposed and deflected into superficial, tawdry work patterns; he became embittered and alien, much like Siegel and Shuster in this same period.” Adele concurs, saying, “This was very important to him. He had had it with comics anyway. He couldn’t get his own way. No one wanted to pay him as it took him forever to finish something because he believed in accuracy. That takes money. He went to a chiropractor to do a funny story on chiropractors. He said he couldn’t do it unless he experienced it. That was very important to him. “Harvey was younger than Will Eisner, and Al Jaffee used to say, ‘How lucky we are doing the work we enjoy. How many people get to do that?’ Still, why should somebody else profit off that work? It doesn’t happen anymore.” Harvey’s desire to expand beyond comics sees him working for Esquire magazine in the late 1950s. “These were the payola days when movie studios would pay artists to do ‘picture story’ pieces about the movie. He worked on Shake Hands With The Devil. Jimmy Cagney was one of my favorites. “Those were the days when Harold Hayes—the editor for Esquire—would call up and say, ‘Tell Harvey to polish up the passport!’ He worked on the 1960 Marlon Brando movie, The Fugitive Kind. It was the Tennessee Williams’ play, Orpheus Descending, and he met Tennessee and Sidney Lumet. 92

Above: “Shake Hands With The Devil” for Esquire, Apr. 1959. Top Left: Frankenstein TV Show from Humbug #7, Feb. 1958. Bottom Left: cover to Help! #1 featuring Sid Caesar, Aug. 1960. “Harvey was terrified of Brando and never spoke to him. Harvey said, ‘When you looked at Marlon Brando, you knew you didn’t go up and ask questions.’ Harvey did a nice story for Requiem for a Heavyweight with Anthony Quinn in 1962.” It takes another project from Hefner in 1962—the “Little Annie Fanny” cartoons in Playboy—to even allow Harvey to pay off the Humbug debt, but the family will soon know the true meaning of the word ‘struggle.’ “When our second child, Pete, was born,” says Adele, “our lives changed a great deal because he was autistic, and still is, and given to horrendous temper tantrums. It wasn’t easy. We couldn’t do very much and then we had a third child when Pete was quite young. “There was a lot of pressure on Harvey. He was working for Playboy in the Chicago Mansion. Autistic 93

children can be horrible and Peter just wouldn’t stop. I lost it and Harvey had to come back. Even then, Harvey was very reassuring. He said, ‘We’ll find a way to deal with it,’ although it didn’t happen overnight. Pete lived with us until he was twenty-eight years old, but that still didn’t seem to take Harvey away from his work. “Harvey did handle all the household finances—thank God! They would have reinvented the Charles Dickens’ workhouse if I were in charge! He couldn’t have been a better father. He did work too hard and loved it. There may have been times later on that I might have resented it, but it never took away from the kids. “In the E.C. days, the kids would come into the studio and he welcomed it. It was a great distraction but he could absolutely focus when the time came. He would work through the night because the phone wouldn’t ring, and the kids were asleep. The neighbors used to say if they woke up in the middle of the night and saw that light shining, they knew he was working. “There were tough times. When our third child graduated from high school, we went out to celebrate and he Above: Perry Como rehearsal for TV Guide, Apr. 1959. said, ‘You can order a Top Right: Videoland for Madison Avenue magazine, Sept. 1959. hamburger, but no french Bottom Right: Adele, Harvey & Dena Davis in France, 1966. fries,’” laughs Adele. “When one refers to him as ‘methodical,’ he was that. He figured out the fries were frilly and a hamburger was enough, but the kids didn’t seem to mind. They thought he was the greatest thing since sliced bread. I don’t know about me, however. They always felt confident about him.” Nellie, now trying to finance a documentary on her father, is born to the family in April of 1970—thirteen years after their previous child—and builds a special bond. “Nellie was the baby of the family and that played into how much attention she got since the oldest girl was out of the house at that point. Nellie would lead a string of children up into attic. Harvey would paint these wonderful tattoos on their arms so that when the kids would move their arms, the dancers in the tattoos would dance. “Nellie’s voice is on one of the Sesame Street cartoons—Numbers—something about rocket ships and 94

men counting, or rocks counting. Phil Kimmelman came to him and wanted him to do that. Harvey loved it.” Harvey achieves a reputation at E.C. as a stern taskmaster and applies the same principles—with a whole lot more tenderness—at home. “It showed in the way he disciplined his children. When I think of him as a father— because I was not consistent—he would say, ‘When you make a threat, you carry it out.’ He would say, ‘When I say “go up to your room,” I don’t mean maybe.’ With his artists, Al Jaffee said they called him, ‘The King of the Erasers. He erased everything we did.’” What makes Harvey a good satirist, someone able to recognize what pop culture buttons to push in the consciousness of the masses? What makes successful men like Hefner, Gaines and Warren go out on a limb for this man? “He wasn’t obnoxious,” says Adele, “but enthusiastic, worked hard and had a contagious personality that could make you believe in any project he came up with. Look at all the people who got involved; Jack, Al, Harry, and Will; all people who quit Mad. With Hefner, “Annie Fanny” was very controversial at the time, but great satire, making fun of Playboy, in a sense. “When our family sat around the dinner table—we always ate together and that was important—puns were a big part of our dinner conversation. There was a lot of ribbing going around and he received his share too. “He just saw the silly side of peoples’ behavior. Sometimes he felt trapped by expectations of having to barbecue the latest trend. There were times when he would finish a story and say, ‘This is the last idea I’m ever going to have. This is the end.’” The Kurtzman household is a haven for all the creators Harvey employed and inspired. Unfortunately, Harvey’s giving nature when letting fans visit results in the disappearance of more than one family treasure. “A lot of people came to the house. Gene Colan, Robert Crumb—I’d have to see a list of names. They never played cards, because Harvey didn’t play cards, but there was a lot of sitting around talking and brainstorming in the backyard. “We’d have great Halloween parties. We had a wonderful film of one but it disappeared. A lot of fans would come by and I always felt somebody took all that stuff. It all just disappeared, which was kind of sad. “Harvey used my father in Trump as a banker. I came home one day and there was John Cleese in the living room. What a shock! “I met Hef two or three times at the mansion in California. It’s a silly place, but maybe I’m jealous,” laughs Adele. “It’s very impressive—the size, the servants, and the young girls doing calisthenics! The last time we were there—Harvey was ill then—he was the guest of honor. He had to sit in a certain place, and there were a lot of actors there who, in my day, would have been in B-movies. Hefner would then come down the big staircase in his pajamas. What is it about those pajamas? “Terry Gilliam lived with us for a couple of months. He was fun to have around and we’d watch Soupy Sales

together. Then there was a period when French cartoonists came over in droves and stayed with us. Robert Crumb stayed with us for a while with his first wife. “He was weird—a weird man!” chuckles Adele. “He was totally strange, but always very nice to me. He could be very silent. I love his work. His technique is incredible. I remember Harvey sent Robert to Bulgaria to do a story. Aline, his wife, is a great talker. We tooled around Paris together. My older girl stayed in their apartment for a while. “Robert’s been very generous. Our school, The Clear View School, does a cartoon auction every year. Harvey started it in 1968 because when Pete was young, there was nothing. I work for it, raising money, and Robert does a drawing every year. It usually makes a minimum of $2000. For sixteen years, he’s been sending me stuff and writes me very funny notes. We get along well. I don’t know why, but we do. “Eventually all the underground cartoonists came through the house—Gilbert Shelton, Art Spiegelman—and we used to have big parties. When I look back, I don’t know how I did it with our son Pete there. “Jim Warren and Harvey had a love-hate relationship. Harvey’s assistant, Chuck Alverson, detested Jim and wrote a letter to Time Magazine saying what a horrible person Jim was and, of course, Chuck was immediately fired. “I can’t think of the word for Jim—and I better not try! He was difficult, but could be very generous too. He would bring presents for the kids. I didn’t see the side of him Harvey did, but I didn’t have to work for him. “Gloria Steinem was wonderful. She would read the kids bedtime stories. She was a class act—still is. Art Spiegelman put together an incredible memorial service for Harvey and Gloria came—we were surprised. I didn’t think she would. Terry Gilliam came from England, so if you’ve got to go, that’s a great way to have people remember you. “Gloria has a presence. When she was young, I would watch men’s faces when Gloria came into a room— instant reaction. She had that great voice and looks. Her beliefs weren’t as obvious back in the early 1960s, but she was no one to be pushed around. For me, she made me feel I was just as tall and as good-looking as she was. She knew how to make people feel good.” The high society circles with which Harvey would mingle leaves Adele being discounted for “just being his wife.” “I’d be invited, for a short time after Harvey died, to the Playboy party and I felt like crap, like nothing, like ‘Who’s she?’ “I went with Harvey to a party at that comic illustrators’ club and felt like, ‘What was my talent?’ My sister would say, ‘Adele, it’s you. You’re allowing yourself to feel that way,’ but I just felt like nobody. “But the worst experience—now that I’m dredging up these horrible memories, I’m going to have to go into analysis—was when Nora Ephron gave a birthday party for Lee Eisenberg, the editor of Esquire.” Laughs Adele, “I wore a dress that can only be described as ‘cheap renaissance.’ It was so bad and all these smart, young things were there. “Remember, I was not working. Ephron was still married to Carl Bernstein—the Watergate guy—and I come in ill-dressed and not working. These women turned to me and said, ‘What do you do?’ So I said, ‘Well, I stay home.’ “Big mistake—I should have lied. That was one of the worst evenings of my life. Harvey, of course, didn’t have that problem. He knew people there and they knew him. He didn’t know what was going on. “I don’t think Ann Eisner ever feels that way, but I just sit there like a lump. I minded it at the moment, but I had another life that was okay. When Harvey worked at home doing Playboy, Sarah Downs—his assistant— came everyday. I always say she’s the daughter who never criticized me. We still keep in touch. Fortunately, I had something else. “I remember going to a party—the author Tom Wolfe was there—and people were passing around marijuana. I don’t smoke—I used to try because it looked good, but inhaling drove me crazy—and I thought these were mushroom stems. To show you how sophisticated I was, I put a burning marijuana cigarette in my mouth.” Called everything from piercing social commentary to a twenty-five year dumb-blonde joke, “Little Annie Fanny”’s explicit sexual content is in sharp contrast to Adele’s vision of her husband. “Harvey was a prude. He didn’t allow his children to say ‘hell’ or ‘damn.’ He wouldn’t let them read it. Harvey took it up in the attic. “I still have correspondence from Hefner, where he and his assistants say to Harvey, ‘You have to put more sex in,’ and he wouldn’t do it. They wanted more and he wanted less. My favorite was the Atlantic City, Miss America Left: Kurtzman “Little Annie Fanny” pencil rough.

Above: Plea to Father O’ Brien—Will Elder & Harvey, 1970s. Top Right: Harvey and Elder back at Mad—issue #265, Sept. 1986. contest, when the winner brings out a folding bed, because that’s what it is really about. “I’m pretty sure Harvey came up with the name Little Annie Fanny. Hefner saw “Goodman Beaver” and he and Harvey thought it would be a good reversal, making Goodman Beaver into a sexy woman, always getting into trouble trying to do good deeds.” Tantamount to waving a red cape in front of Harvey’s eyes, constant interference from Playboy’s hierarchy, and Hefner himself, leaves Harvey resenting his time on the strip. It will fade in relevance, and in frequency, petering out in the mid-1980s. “It was those letters from Michelle Urry—the cartoon editor—and the business about more sex. Russ Heath said Hefner would put all his things in the margins and it would drive Harvey crazy. Hefner’s changes were for the sake of changes. They didn’t add or subtract from the story. “It always reminded me of Jack Davis, when he used to do Time Magazine covers. They would say, ‘Move everything a half-inch to the right.’ I’m not an artist, but I can appreciate how frustrating that must be. Russ Heath said it drove them all crazy. They thought they’d finished something good and then forget about it. “Money kept him at Playboy. He began to hate it when Hefner kept all that control. Control really is the thing. Harvey had other directions he wanted to go in, but he couldn’t. The sex was what was selling. The first couple of years were okay, but then he had Hefner rejecting things, or saying make the bosoms bigger or smaller.” Ann Eisner credits Harvey with having Will see the light about the narrative possibilities in the graphic album format. Adele is Ann’s first connection to another cartoonist’s spouse. “In the 1970s,” says Ann, “Harvey and Adele lived in Mount Vernon—not too far from us—and Harvey and Will would have lunch together. They used to have a yearly party. Adele is a warm person and very knowledgeable about lots of things, including Harvey’s work. It was much different from my situation. It is easy to be with her and we still get together when we go to New York.” “You never run out of conversation with Will,” says Adele. “He’s got it all together. I knew Wally Wood and he would get on the phone and say, ‘Hello?’ and I would say ‘Hello?’ and there would be dead silence. He was a very strange, very sad young man. I can only think of him as a young man because he didn’t live long. He felt unappreciated, but he was not well, mentally or probably physically. “Frank Frazetta used to come to the house, but then he and his wife isolated themselves. We used to socialize a lot with John Severin. He was a very funny character, but he also isolated himself. He did say nice things 98

about Harvey in The Comics Journal, and was up in that old studio with Harvey, Charlie and Willy Elder. “Dena Davis and I would see a lot of each other. I wouldn’t hear the same stories coming back at me because Jack was able to work very fast, had two kids, and everything seemed to work fairly well for them—the same for Will and Jean Elder. Maybe it’s self-pity, but I just thought having someone like Pete around hampered us a great deal. It was rough and I don’t know how we could be funny sometimes. “Harvey loved the French cartoonists. He didn’t think America inspired that type of work. When we would go to France, they were the only people we knew. We’d get these albums in the mail, hard covers. I don’t speak French, but you could see the talent for drawing was there. We met them in Renoble. That’s also where I met Alan Moore. He was very awed about meeting Harvey and very charming.” Art Spiegelman draws him into teaching at the School of Visual Arts in New York, but Harvey isn’t prepared for the generation he so influenced. “Art— chain smoking, as always—said he couldn’t do it and would Harvey like to. His first day, the students were very rude, so he walked out. They went to find him, and asked him to come back, and he never had any trouble after that. When he died, I received a bunch of great letters from people who had been in his classes. “We’d go to conventions and people would say, ‘What’s he really like?’ Harvey was astounded. It reminded me of Laurel and Hardy, when they went to England and there were thousands of people at the dock. They had no clue they were that famous or important. “It was very positive affirmation for him. People would come to him about all kinds of his work, not just comic books. His seminars were always filled up. Jules Feiffer gave a lecture at the Metropolitan Museum of Art, and I thought it was going to be about comics in general, but it was all about Harvey. It surprises me all the time because Harvey was just a husband and father—very low-key. “It felt good,” says Adele, “because the last years of his life were pretty sad. The Parkinson’s disease was horrible and then cancer—two strikes. When we went to Naples, Italy, a poet in a long trench coat followed him everywhere.” Being drawn back into the comic book industry has its ups and downs in the 1980s. Projects are proposed bent on recapturing past glories—few meet with success. The decline in his health plays a large role. “With returning to Mad in 1985 with Will, he thought he’d give it a try, but it was a disaster. Harvey was ill. I don’t think he was well enough to do anything good, and his heart wasn’t in it at all. With “Annie Fanny,” at the end, Willy didn’t want to do it either. His eyes were bothering him, and you can’t do it without Will. They were a team. “The visual history of comics book—the From Aargh! to Zap! was okay, but it could have been better. Harvey liked it, but I think he wouldn’t say out loud that it could have been better. I just wanted something more. It felt incomplete. I was a little disappointed, but I would never say it to him. “All the New Two-Fisted Tales and such, I didn’t like it, and it was very difficult for him. I think the people who did it tried their best, but it’s like when they redo a movie—you should just leave well enough alone. On those later projects, the heart of it is lacking.” When the Jack Kirby Awards expire, Gary Groth pitches the Harvey Awards to the family, but even they have some bumps in the road. ‘We’d go to Dallas, and it was fun for him. Everyone wanted his autograph. I don’t ever remember him smoking a pipe. I don’t know whose idea that was for the Awards’ logo, but maybe it was to create

the ‘intellectual’ look. “The one in Oakland in 1999 just didn’t work. I thought it would be better not to have it at all. Denis Kitchen really pulled it together. I always said Will Eisner is so good at investigating and finding out about people, and if Denis is good enough for Will, then that’s good enough for me.” The remaining years are difficult for the family. Harvey passes away in 1993, and Adele is left to cope with the void, emotionally and financially. Hugh Hefner has a lock on “Little Annie Fanny” original artwork and isn’t giving it up, even though it would provide a great financial boon to a woman who continues to work just to receive benefits. “We didn’t end up with a solid financial foundation—no money at all. The only thing I must say, and I don’t know if it stemmed from Hefner or Dave Stevens in Chicago, but they took care of all his medical bills. I would fill out those damn forms and they would say just send it to them and they would fill it out. “As far as medical insurance, they were very generous, but I think when Harvey died, there was $35,000 in the bank and that was it—a paltry sum.” Harvey was ahead of his time in life and in death. With the recent resurgence of the graphic novel format, with Will Eisner inking deals to have his old and new material published, Harvey may have just missed the boat again. Whether it’s because he passed away a few years before this resurgence, or because he worked in the grey region between comics and magazines, the mainstream public remains remarkably unaware of the man’s work and its tremendous influence. “I don’t do anything with the Estate,” says Adele. “Denis handles it all. There’s not much to do. He sells stuff occasionally, which is a tremendous help, but I work at the school writing proposals for grants. Denis has always been a fan and a very good agent. He worked very hard one year in the attic cataloguing things. Nobody else came, so I’m a fan of Denis. He believed in Harvey and was the only one willing to publish his work.” “Adele was a gourmet cook and Harvey was one of the creative geniuses of his time. I could never get enough of her food or his stories,” says Denis. “I find many cartoonists’ wives to be somewhat aloof, as if the gulf between them and their husband’s business associates is too much to attempt traversing. Some wives feel it is their role to be protective of their creation-focused spouse while others view their husband’s publisher as automatically adversarial, but Adele and I quickly took a liking to each other and it wasn’t long before I looked forward to visiting Adele just as much as I looked forward to seeing one of my revered cultural heroes. One evening at their house sometime in the 1980s I had an epiphany but didn’t know it at the time. “Adele made numerous acerbic comments over dinner which broke up the table. Her observations were generally dark, sometimes wickedly dark, but hilarious. Harvey was always a sharp-witted, wry and entertaining host, but the man who created America’s premiere humor magazine and provided comic relief in Playboy seldom got the same guffaw reaction from me as Adele’s off-the-cuff remarks. Harvey’s jokes that evening seemed labored to me; his gears were turning too hard. I wanted him to loosen up, be himself and not feel like he was on stage under hot lights. But maybe it was me, I thought: I wasn’t catching all the right inflections and subtleties. “A few days later, back at the office, I took a call from Fershid Bharucha, a French comics editor and publisher who’d often been a visitor in the Kurtzman home. I offhandedly mentioned my curious experience. His response crystallized what was unimaginable for me to articulate in the context of my awe for Harvey’s accomplishments. “‘Adele’s the funny one,’ he said simply.” “Harvey may have not made a fortune,” says Adele, “but he was able to live and work in an artistic field, and that meant everything to him,” says Adele. “It was a lot better than working in a factory, or doing whatever my friends’ husbands did. Harvey would always tell stories about how he started drawing when he was very young. He used to do pictures on the sidewalk and would tell the kids they would have to come back the next day for the next 100

chapter. To be able to earn a living doing what you love is terrific.” This love of art keeps up his spirits right to the end. “We were all sitting around—Sarah, Nellie, Harvey and I—and somebody was talking about going to The Shaker—the religious cult—Museum. Harvey said, ‘Well, that’s where I am going to wind up,’ because at that point, he had Parkinson’s disease. “He had a sense of humor about his illness. When he was going through chemotherapy, he had the people in that room in hysterics. Everyone was sitting there with drips going into them and the nurse said, ‘This was the best time we had.’ There were sad times, but he maintained it. I wouldn’t change a minute of it.” Contentious may have been his relationship with his employers, and his inability to maneuver the political waters of big business may have cost him greater wealth, but the last word on the value of his partnership with Adele is left to a prose-expert: Alan Moore. “I recall Adele sitting patiently by Harvey’s side, making sure he was okay, being there for him when the Parkinson’s was getting towards its later and more difficult stages. She was still uncomplainingly playing straightwoman to one of the Twentieth Century’s most innovative humorists after all those years of marriage: ‘Harvey, would you like another cocoa?’ ‘Nah, I better not. I might start something.’ “I shared a crowded car with Will and Ann when they were visiting London. Driving through the city with Ann perched on his lap on the back seat, Will would say, ‘If only I were forty years younger and you weren’t my wife.’ They were laughing and you could hear long years of companionship in it. “The very greatest creators in our medium, if they are great for any particular defining reason beyond their drawing or writing abilities, are great because of their humanity. Harvey Kurtzman and Will Eisner are in that category, as are Jack Kirby and a very few others. In all those cases, the women in their lives were obviously a vital part of what shaped their world view, what gave their words its emotional resonance, what made them the creators that they were. “In the case of the artists mentioned above, I do not doubt for a moment that a certain measure of the emotional maturity they brought to their work derived from the exemplary women with which they shared their lives.”

Left: Congrats to Roy & Dann Thomas from Harvey, 1981. Below: Harvey, Meredith, Adele & Elizabeth, late 1980s.

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CHAPTER SIX

JOSIE & DAN DeCARLO

The alleged ‘hi-jacking’ of Little Annie Fanny artwork by Hugh Hefner is very tangible for Adele, but it can’t compare to the legal struggles of one of the most beloved couples the industry has ever known. Would one be surprised to discover—in one’s heliocentric, super-hero mindset—that the creator in this book whose work has been seen by the most people is none other than longtime Archie artist, Dan DeCarlo? He will be the Jack Kirby of that company, responsible for pop icons like Sabrina, The Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats. He will also suffer the same financial and creative fate as Jack Kirby at Marvel Comics. The fight for even a minor piece of the merchandizing pie from his employer, Archie Comics, will have fatal results, leaving his beloved wife Josie (on whom the character in the Pussycats is based) alone, fighting the U.S. Government for his Estate, and trying to raise a teenage granddaughter on her own. What little humor can be found in their struggles is diametrically opposed to the soft, sweet nature of the man and woman. Humor is the basis of Dan’s career and their lives together, making the struggles to the end even 102

more heartbreaking. Still, much of the focus on their lives should be of celebration and laughter, since this is what predominates their time together from the very beginning. Josette Dumont’s beginnings are far from amusing. Shuffled from France to Belgium, her teenage years coincide with Nazi occupation, and she spends her youth on the run from bombings and swarms of enemy invaders. “At the time my parents were married in the mid1920s,” says Josie, “my father went to do his military service in Germany. Since my mother was an only child, my grandparents decided we’d stay with them. When my father came back, my grandparents wanted to keep me with them because they didn’t want to be left with no one, what with my mother leaving them to go live with her husband too. “I grew up with them to the age of twelve until, one Christmas Eve, my grandfather was killed by a train. My grandmother and I went back to Belgium to live with my parents, but it wasn’t an easy adjustment. I was not accustomed to a disciplinarian father. It was a simple life until I was sixteen and World War II started.

Left: The cruise where the costume of Josie is born, Jan. 1966. Above: Dan & Josie in Charleroi, Belgium, 1945. Below: Gettin’ out a Dodge!, 1945.

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“I was cheated out of my teenage years. Those four years of war, I haven’t forgotten one incident because the bombs were dropped in my own town. The panic was contagious. When we were invaded, we all had the same idea, running to get to the south of France for fear of living under German occupation. “Those who had a car were fortunate. We only had bicycles and it was difficult because we were constantly meeting with columns of soldiers and there were detours all the time. It took about ten days to arrive at the point where we were bombarded again so badly that we were buried in a house. “The English forces came to dig us out and then, from that point on, my father realized there was no point in going any further. Every time we went a few kilometers, the Germans were doing the same thing. We were in the north of France and we came too close to death to go on any further. “When the Germans came in, my father said, ‘You have to hide because I’m going to see what they do, how they behave and then maybe you’ll come out from the hiding.’ All the terrible stories we’d heard in school from our studies of the First World War were implanted in our minds, all the atrocities of that time. “These were the columns of the Elite soldiers. They looked strong, but they didn’t seem

Above & Bottom Right: more Dan & Josie cartoons, 1945. Below: postcard drawing sent back to brother Vince, 1945. Top Right: First day in America, May 19th, 1946.

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to bother anyone. Sure enough, after all the Elite went by, they left behind all the elderly soldiers to just occupy the town. They were nicer. They didn’t want the war any more than we did. Finally we waited there for about a week until we were told we could go back home. “Back home, the last two years of the War were horrible. We couldn’t do anything anymore. We were always threatened with reprisals if we didn’t obey their rules. They would come to a movie and if somebody did something to aggravate them they would say, ‘you, you, you’ and take you away. Nobody ever saw those people again. It was frightening. “It was also difficult to put food on the table. You had to try to go to the farms and buy the food on the black market, trying to mix that and the things we would get with the stamps, just trying to survive.” Life in a constant state of alarm for the Dumonts keeps them ignorant to the outside world— unaware of the French Resistance and the atrocities committed against Jews. “We weren’t even aware there were so many people who were in contact with the BBC,” says Josie, “and tied to the underground. The French had their Imaginary Line and thought it would never be crossed, but the Germans went around it!” Liberation is swift and exciting for the Josie. The Allied Forces are coming, but such news can never be treated as accurate. “Everyone was on the street, singing, drinking and getting the Americans a good bottle of wine that had been hidden from before the War. We felt so sure we were safe, but it was not exactly so because there was the ‘Battle of the Bulge.’ It was in December and it made us realize we’re still not as safe as we thought.” The end of the ‘Battle of the Bulge’ brings Nazi surrender and a return to normalcy for young Josie, the difference now being their town is occupied by Americans. One in particular catches Josie’s eye. “These soldiers were trying to find a place, French dictionaries in hand, and my cousin Georgette passed by and invited them for coffee. My father said, ‘Well, my daughter didn’t go out with Germans and she will not go out with Americans,’ but my cousin insisted, so he let me go.” The two women meet their dates and Josie, more outgoing than her soon-to-be husband, says, “I’m going with the small one.” The small one is Dan DeCarlo. Dan had arrived with the Air Force in Charleroi, Belgium at the end of January 1945 after being stationed in London the three previous years.

He’s mostly a draftsman, drawing pin-ups for the nose of the planes. “I remember Dan saying,” says Josie, “‘the little one is mine,’ and I was his for fifty-six years.” After surviving occupation, the couple’s constant communication problems seem a minor obstacle. “From the beginning, he was drawing cartoons to make me understand what he was trying to say, which was fun. He was at our home all the time. My father had accepted him, so there was no problem anymore. We would go to the movies, the opera, to pubs and the Officers’ Club for learning the Jitterbug. “He’d do cartoons, trying to write the captions in French! At least he was trying! I gave him a picture of me at sixteen. He wrote on the back, ‘Jo Jo Dumont, age sixteen-and-a-half; still no sign of brains, Dr. Dan.’ “When we met, he would ring my doorbell and I would open it, but there was no one there. I always had to look out because he would always step aside to hide. His shyness was superficial and he quickly outgrew it.” Dan has enough points to be discharged, but Josie refuses his initial requests to leave for the United States. He re-enlists, staying behind six months to marry her in February of 1946, before returning to the United States, his new bride to follow on her own. Josie fears leaving home, but is anxious to reconnect with Dan. “When I left my family there was no

airplanes. They thought, ‘When will we see her again?” A boat of 500 war brides arrives in New York Harbor with Dan waiting at the port. “It was a shock because every time we showed the Americans something that was quite beautiful, in architecture or something, they would say, ‘We have that much bigger in the United States.’ We sometimes thought they were exaggerating. When we came here, we said, ‘Oh my God, it’s true!’ “Fortunately, I met a friend from home at the train station and discovered we’d be living in the same town. It was a mixture of excitement and happiness. I’d married the man of my dreams and his family was happy about Dan bringing home a war bride. However, it was a little frightening at the beginning. It took me three years to feel comfortable. I start to learn English from going to the movies. When I made friends, life began to change for me.” The first years of their marriage are difficult thanks to a foreign environment, Dan’s struggles to establish his career as an illustrator, a tiny house with ten people in six rooms, and giving birth to twin boys. She makes a decision—a sacrifice—only heard of in the days of (what news anchor Tom Brokaw would 105

dub) ‘The Greatest Generation.’ “After the twins were a year old, I decided to go back home and let him work on his portfolio. It seems cruel I was leaving him so soon, but I think it was the best thing I ever did for Dan. It gave him a chance to concentrate on his work because he had a dream. Also, I was so thrilled and thankful he understood the need I had to go back home and tell all this to my family. I would correspond with them but I just wanted them to see my babies. “Dan’s father was artistic, having made many statues—such as bird baths—because he was landscaping. Dan so admired Norman Rockwell and even did a painting of Rockwell. Dan wanted to be an illustrator at the beginning of his art school, but then went into comics. It also stems from the cartoons he drew when was stationed in England. All these situations he was experiencing, it started right there. When Dan was going to art school, he said the guys would yell, ‘You are wasting your time, DeCarlo!’ “Well, he didn’t waste his time and I could tell there would be no way he could try to be concerned about his family and also work every night, all night, to build up a portfolio. I stayed with my family about six months and then one day I received a letter saying, ‘Please come back! I have a job!’” The job is working for Stan Lee at Marvel Comics. Dan has already done one-page gag strips for Humorama, but his sister sees an ad in the New York papers and he is hired as a staff artist (not a freelancer). Stan gives him all the humor work he can handle on books like Millie the Model and My Friend Irma. “Mel Lazarus and Al Jaffee always had a great sense of humor. We became very good friends with Joanie and Stan Lee. It was when Stan and Dan had the Willy Lumpkin strip that we joined the National Cartoonists’ Society. That opened the door for me a little wider 106

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because it was fun to be amongst all those big name cartoonists. I was having fun going around with my book, asking for their autographs.” Dan draws very voluptuous, very sexy women for Humorama, but the Comics Code Authority forces Dan to tone down his style. “At the time it was scary. People would ask questions and would want to know if comics were really that bad, but when Dan went to Archie and started to draw the teenage girls, it didn’t affect him as much.” When he first works for Archie, Dan has a studio above an art supply store fifteen minutes from home, so he only goes into the New York office once a week to deliver work. “Rudy Lapick was inking for Dan,” says Josie, “and he wanted Rudy right there. The inkers could sometimes be very good at keeping the line like the pencils, and others would not follow. I’m so happy about that because so many people have said to me about Dan’s clean line.” Dan also teaches his brother Vincent how to be an artist, and Vincent assists with Dan during the 1960s. Loss touches the DeCarlo family when Vincent passes away from lung cancer at the age of thirty-eight. “It affected my husband a great deal—the baby brother, you know? Vince worked with his father in landscaping. From there, Dan would give him samples and ask him to ink them and sort of guide him. Dan really felt he was so good and decided they would work together for a while. Vincent could have really become a good artist if he hadn’t died so young. “Dan was a workaholic. He was always an early riser and never left the studio until he thought everything for the day was finished and he was satisfied with what he’d drawn. He would get up sometimes in the middle of the night just to take a look at what he’d drawn to see if it was exactly what it had to be. “But when he put the pencil down, he was all ours. I never had problems putting my children to bed because they knew Dad was going to come and tell them a story. Dan had no problem having someone stand over his shoulder when drawing. The kids would join him in his home studio and say, ‘Poppie, why don’t you do this?’. Dan said, ‘They think they’re better artists than me!’ Dan liked all their criticism because they wanted to feel part of it. When the kids grow into teenagers, Dan is Top Left: Jo Jo Dumont strip, 1945. fully ensconced at Archie Comics and at a home Bottom Left: Dan & Josie with the twins, 1947. studio, allowing Josie much more exposure to the Top Right: Menu illo from the DeCarlo Wedding, 1946. man and his craft. “It was a joy, but to a point. When Below: Dan cartoon, 1945. we had plans to go out with friends, it was difficult to pull him out of that room! I was always going back there, reminding him, ‘It’s six thirty, it’s a quarter to seven, it’s seven o’clock. We’re meeting them at seven thirty, Dan!’ “He always had a flare for fashion and he liked my opinion, not as far as the drawing but with the fashion. I would do some research for him, in terms of the clothing styles. Sometimes he would take a sketchbook, go to the high school and wait for the kids to come out to see what they were wearing. He was always really up-to-date with the fashion.” Most artists have to be drawing, and Dan is

no exception. “Whenever we went out for dinner with the children, he was constantly sketching on paper napkins—maybe a building he saw—or drawing on all the tablecloths and we’d come home with this material! “Once in a while, I would have feelings of neglect, but when he would start to sketch, the kids would join in and sketch too, and I would be picking up all the pieces of the ‘masterpiece’ the children were doing. He would always ask the waiter, ‘Can I borrow your pencil?’ and they would say, ‘If you will sketch me!’” The twins, Dan Jr. and Jimmy, also do some penciling and inking, but have little desire to follow in their father’s overworked, underpaid shoes. “Dan Jr. has his Masters in Fine Art and loves to paint,” says Josie. “He had one of his paintings in the Museum of Modern Art in New York. James went to the Institute of Technology and he loves to do sculpture. Once in a while, they would help their father because they were looking for a little extra money. “When they did draw some comics, they also had a flare for fashion. Dan Jr. was very worldly, having traveled all over the world, studying at the University of Rome. They did have a great influence, yes. It was wonderful, again at the dinner table, to have those three men discuss and share their ideas. Of my marriage, it’s something that touched me very much to think of the closeness of the three of them.” When Dan’s door to his studio was closed, it meant ‘do not disturb.’ Says Josie, “If the pencil sharpener was going non-stop, then he was really busy. Even with the door closed, I could hear the music he would play while drawing. He loved Frank Sinatra, Linda Ronstadt, Dean Martin, and jazz—mostly popular songs easy to listen to when working. He listened to music not loud, but always in the background. It was nothing like Gene Colan’s sound effects! Dan was drawing girls and Gene was drawing super-heroes and making them fly! “Dan just came out to have his lunch. He waited to show me the finished process before he would ask me if I see something needing a little change. He was confident in his work. This is why Dan talked so much to This Page: The Pussycats & Veronica and Archie. young people, to young up-and-coming artists. ‘Please stay Top Right: At the NCS on Josie’s birthday, late 1960s. with it. If you have a dream, believe in your dream.’ Bottom Right: Wedding cartoon, 1946. “I was always amazed he never ran out of ideas. How can you always draw something different every day? How did he do it, coming down in the morning and having to look at a blank sheet of paper? “He would think of ideas when he was eating his breakfast. He didn’t wait to be face-to-face with the paper. Sometimes he would voice what he was going to do. He also loved to work with a good writer when they understood each other. He loved to work with George Gladir, with whom he cocreated Sabrina—same thing with Stan Lee. When they worked together, they understood each other. “When he was working at Archie, he would get full scripts. He did write sometimes, but felt that was keeping him up during the night! He was not meant to be a writer, as he preferred to draw. When frustration would set in, he loved to play golf and that was his relaxation. In between working at home, he would practice his putting. He would sometimes work all night because he had played a game of golf. “Artists used to get together in Pennsylvania at Fred Waring’s—‘The Man Who Taught America How To Sing!’— Estate. He would invite all the artists once a year and Dan 108

won third prize in the golf tournament. I got to meet Jackie Gleason. He was exactly the same in person as you saw on the screen. He was a very funny guy. He liked to drink, too!” Much like Lindy Ayers, Josie is Dan’s “delivery man,” taking his work into the post office for mailing when required. “We also do all the driving!” says Josie with a laugh. “We never lost anything in the mail, but one time I left his portfolio in a taxi we were taking to a convention in New York—a value of $4000 of work! He always said it was his best work. It was never found. I felt terrible and went to every police station in New York that day. “One fan of Dan’s went with me because I was so sure somebody was going to return it. All the work was signed, but Dan had just bought a new portfolio so he didn’t have his name on it. We learned through experience if you take a taxi you must ask for a receipt because that has the name and number of the cab. I didn’t know that, I paid him, and Dan was already out of the car before I realized the taxi was already gone. I kept calling for weeks just to see if it was at the police station in the lost and found. Dan did the same thing one time. He lost his portfolio but it was sent back to him. “I thought he was going to be so furious, but no, he said, ‘It’s done—it’s done. If it’s gone, it’s gone.’ He understood I always had so much on my mind. I always tried to make life much easier for him and took on more than I should. “When we belonged to the NCS, all the cartoonists would have seminars and could be gone sometimes the whole day, leaving all the women there alone. We had a meeting and the wife of the new president said to us, ‘What you ladies would like to do while our husbands are busy at their seminar?’ I raised my hand and said, ‘I have an idea—let’s have group therapy,’ and everybody laughed. We complain about the same things, so I said, ‘Let’s wash our dirty laundry together!’ “At conventions, it was most unbelievable for me. He was a good artist and I know he had received praise but just to witness it was a different story. I really became friendly with Lindy Ayers. The conventions were all new to me. I didn’t know what would happen, or what I would have to do. She took time to help me and show me the easy way to set up the tables. We did a lot of traveling together.

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“We were stuck two days in an airport trying to go to Detroit during a big storm. The two artists would discuss business and start sketching. Every two hours, we would go to see if it was going to be the next plane, and by 11 p.m., they told us there wouldn’t be any next plane and to come back at 5 a.m.! We lost one day of the convention doing sketches, and when we arrived we were very tired having to set up. “Even now I still give her a call when I have questions to say, ‘What should I do about this?’ She taught me to pack a little snack when going to conventions. It’s funny that the husbands want us to go to the conventions, but then we don’t see them because the artists stay glued together!” On more than one occasion, Dan uses Josie as a model, but not in the typical fashion. “It’s very difficult to work with hands. Once in a while, he would call me in and I would have to hold a vase or a book, or bend in a certain way for what he was doing. If someone in the story was carrying something, he wanted to capture what it looked like to wrap your fingers around something. Everybody has a different way of holding things. ‘How would you hold that?’ he would ask me.” But Dan will immortalize his wife in a way that will leave her name more popular than his own. Amongst Above: a four-head slapper cartoon, 1945. his numerous creations for Archie Comics was the Right: Dan receiving his Inkpot award, 1991. musical character Melody. With Josie’s french accent, and lyrical high voice, the notes dancing around the character’s head on the page when she spoke can be directly attributed to the personality of Dan’s wife. “It could be,” says Josie, “because I am a musician. I studied violin for many years before the War. The War ended my study. My sister’s a musician. My father had his own band. He was so excited and fascinated about the American Jazz.” The character of Melody pales in comparison to what is borne on a Caribbean cruise. “Many times they had their little carnival night. My French girlfriend, Ette, the wife of a man that Dan had grown up together with, made me a costume and that was the pussycat costume with the spots. “When I came in with the costume, Dan actually decided it should be made a little bit sexier. I had a hat with a point on the forehead cut around the eyes. It covered my whole head and he decided we would just use the ears. When we had the whole costume together, that’s when Josie was created. I went to the hairdresser and came in with the bouffant. “Dan said, ‘Wow, that’s the picture I have in my head for a character’ and ran right away to draw it. Usually, it’s all his imagination. He loved to draw girls. It was that which first got him excited about drawing, so he never needed a model, except sometimes in his earlier years. The character of Ginger was a friend of one of my son’s college friends. “For the rest of his life, he used to love to tease the ladies. When he passed the ladies he’d poke them in the back with his finger, but do it so fast they would turn around and not see anybody! On the cruise, when we had the costume party, he had dressed like a safari hunter with the shorts, the white hat, and kaki pants. He had a gun with a cork on it, and would shoot the cork into all the ladies’ derrieres! He never got slapped in the face once!” But Dan gets slapped in the face more than once while working for Archie Comics. When they move to Mamroneck, Dan goes into the Archie offices at least every other day. He never works there—he always works at home, but attends the office to acquire even more work. The page rates are low and the record covers for the Archies band aren’t much better. “After we’d moved into an apartment,” says Josie, “we had the intention to buy a house so he drew, drew, and drew. It was very insecure. From time to time a bonus, but Dan was very productive so he managed to get the two boys an education. He didn’t get benefits until the 1980s.” 110

Dan is being paid for the artwork, but Archie steps up into merchandizing with Dan’s ideas and makes a fortune. They sell Archie for T.V. to Hanna Barbera. “I thought it was very unfair,” says Josie, “but Dan continued because he loved to draw.” With their sons leaving for college—to supplement their income—Josie takes a job as a consultant in cosmetics for Lauren Taylor, working there for twenty-six years. “There was no pension from Archie at all. I got a pension from my work. At the beginning when he went to work for the company, I didn’t think they treated him that badly. At the end of your career, when you know you maybe can’t draw forever, you would like a company to give you a reward for all the years you gave them. He gave forty-three years! The best years of his life were given to that company.” Archie starts to return Dan’s original artwork, but even that is temporary. “At one point, it just stopped,” says Josie. “It was always like begging to get it back. “He never really got much recognition. He was getting paid, but he was creating not just Josie, but plenty of new characters. He was their man, their most important artist. Some of the artists would come and bring their work and ask Dan for advice. “We had this wonderful trip in Canada with Ida and Joe Edwards, one of the three important artists at Archie, along with Stan Goldberg. They should have sent those three men places to promote. Joe said to me, ‘I don’t think Archie understood the importance of the three of us.’ “Somebody from Edmonton had got in touch with Joe in the mid-nineties and he wanted to buy as much artwork as we would sell. We met him in New York, and he invited us in his home, and we had a great time. We went to Toronto, the CN Tower, and it was so nice to almost treat the artists like celebrities when they had so little respect in the office. “You get them together and they glue to each other. There was no jealousy amongst the artists. They admired each other’s work. We’d see them at the Christmas parties, and then Archie stopped those as well. First, the wives were invited to the party and then we weren’t invited at all.” Morale is low, but amongst the three main men, camaraderie is high. Unfortunately, when Archie does move the offices to Mamroneck, Dan has to go in more often because the company knows he is closest. “If they had a rush on something, they would call Dan, and he would go. Sometimes, I was a little annoyed with that. I said, ‘You’re in the middle of doing something, and they’re interrupting you.’ The others got away without putting in as many appearances.” In the 1990s, Sabrina has a live-action television show and Josie is headed for the silver screen. Dan survives a colon cancer scare, but his frustration with Archie is peaking. He continues to make waves for better creators’ rights, and upper management is taking notice... and preparing. On the fateful day in May of 2000, Dan approaches Josie about his desire to finally take a stand. “He said, ‘I think today is going to be the day. What do you think?’ “I said, ‘Dan, I’ve always let you make all the decisions about your career. I can give you my opinion, but I can’t tell you what to do. It’s not going to change anything between you and I. If you have something to say, say it!’ I was very supportive because I knew what my husband did for that company. He wasn’t going there to say, ‘I’m not going to work here anymore’—just that he was expecting something more.” Dan goes to the offices, but it’s an ambush and the company gives him a letter stating his services are no longer required. “They knew he was coming,” says Josie. “He did think something might happen, that there might be 111

Above: Dan, Jeff Smith, unknown, Josie, Sergio Aragones & Will Eisner, San Diego, 2001. Right: known the world over for his rendering of the female form, 1954.

fireworks, but who would have an idea after so many years, to do it so cruelly? When Dan came home, he had to be sad, but he didn’t want to show it. I was sad for him. He was worried about all responsibilities because we were raising a teenager. Dan always felt very responsible for all of us. “It was so cruel because Dan was already getting on in years. It was the same at the funeral—they didn’t send any condolences. I don’t care what occurs between people—sometimes you must do what you are supposed to do. Not a word of condolence, and from Victor [Gorelick], just one card—a store-bought card, signed. We received hundreds of cards and letters and people who took the time, but not Archie Comics. Victor was the middleman. It was really [Richard] Goldwater and Michael Silberkleit.” Dan comes home and decides to play David to Archie’s Goliath. They will sue Archie Comics. “We didn’t really think of suing right away, but we said we have to find a lawyer, to see what our rights are. We were hoping for a percentage on the merchandise, maybe a little bonus for creating the characters. We received no severance pay— nothing. “I supported him completely because my husband needed to do this. In the back of my mind, I was worried. It’s the wear and tear on people, but it’s probably the same for them, since it’s not over for either party. “The fans and all the articles were a big help. That’s when we started to go to conventions. That was very good for Dan because fans would come and say, ‘It’s very unfair what they are doing to you.’ It was very good for Dan to think so many people were behind him. People would come to Dan for a sketch and stand there and watch him draw. “We also felt that if Archie had wanted to cooperate a little bit better, a little bit more, this could have been settled a long time ago because we weren’t looking for millions. The lawyers’ fees are pretty high, so it was a question of stubbornness on their part because they could have settled with Dan. Our lawyer is very optimistic and he’s still doing it for the grandchildren’s sake and doesn’t want to abandon the litigation—he wants to keep fighting. “Quite a few companies came forward to say to Dan, ‘We’re not going to leave you without work. We’re going to give you some work.’ He worked for Bongo, Elvira and quite a bit of other things when he stopped work 112

for Archie.” To add salt to the wound, Dan and Josie have to watch the silver screen version of Dan’s creation arrive... and bomb. “The biggest thrill really, it was Josie, because he created her with me in mind, but we didn’t like the movie. We went to see it because we wanted to be able to give our opinion to people who asked us. It was nothing like the cartoon. When they had the cartoons on TV, that was fun. Dan felt like they used every space in the movie for special effects, showing Coca-Cola. It was almost like advertising, a commercial. They were not always in their costumes. They were in street clothes also.” A lawsuit can have a debilitating effect on one’s mental and physical health and it is painful to view the last years of Dan’s life struggling to win what Archie Comics would view as mere pennies. The couple also spends their last years together taking guardianship of their granddaughter Jessica. “The lawsuit was beginning to have an effect on his life, yes. With Jessica, that was difficult because it was like starting life all over again with a teenager. She’s seventeen now. The last three years were an adjustment to make on both parts because I was raised very strict so I expect certain things and, for her, she went through terrible times so she’s had to deal with all that. She was too young to remember when her father died. When James passed away, she was only six years old. After that, she had a terrible time with her mother who had a problem.” In November of 2001, at the age of 82, Dan suffers a fall, enters the hospital and in almost the time it takes to type this sentence, pneumonia strikes and he is gone from Josie’s life forever. It certainly feels that sudden for her and but a month after his passing, the U.S. Supreme Court rejects a motion to hear the DeCarlo’s case. Dan claimed to have shopped around the character of Josie back in the 1950s, and was turned down by a syndicate, so he gave the character to Archie. His regret is palatable, since he had discarded the letters he sent out while shopping the character, hence weakening his attempts to say to the Court he had brought this creation to the company, and it had not been done under work-for-hire conditions. The pain of the loss is very fresh for Josie and is made worse by the hoops the American government forces her to jump through. “I never applied for my citizenship papers because I never understood the need. I was married to an American, living in the country I felt was mine now. I was an American but it wasn’t down on paper. “It’s only last year that I said I have no more excuses. I wanted to be an American citizen and I applied but times have changed. You don’t become an American citizen as easily as it was fifty-six years ago when I could have got my papers right away. “It was the beginning of March, a year ago, that I applied for my citizenship. They told me it would probably take a year-and-a-half to two years before I became a citizen. That is very difficult right now, for me,

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because the money we have from Dan’s Estate has to be put in a government trust fund, otherwise I’m going to be taxed fifty percent. “With American citizens, every time somebody passes away, the tax is twenty-five percent. It’s double for me because I’m not a citizen. That is a really big worry for me. If it goes well, they’ll tell me I’ll be sworn in soon. “The house is paid off, yes, but the taxes have gone up since we live here. The bank has opened one account for me so we have some money to survive. We lived by the law, paid our taxes, did everything we were supposed to do, but there is no exception for anyone—you just have to go through the red tape.” Government bureaucracy aside, it’s the day-to-day living that is the most difficult. When your husband is an artist with a home studio, the void left—when you walk past his studio door and expect to hear music flooding out from inside—is immense. “Dan took care of all the bills,” says Josie, “and it is difficult for me now because I have to do it.” Years of being married to an artist forced her to become quite the handyman around the house. “If something was broken, I had to try to figure out who to call for repairs. Dan was not a handy man. I would say to Dan, ‘If we turn this faucet off...’ and he would say, ‘No, that won’t do it,’ but I would say, ‘Yes, I’ll show you!’ “In the meantime, he was very smart since he was getting me to do it!” laughs Josie. “‘Let’s put a chair against that until the repairman comes,’ and he would say, ‘Okay!’ and fly out of the room, so as not to get involved. Fortunately, he had a lot of good childhood friends who he would get to help out.” Those childhood friends can’t help with raising Jessica alone, but if a young Josie Dumont can outrun Nazis, Josie DeCarlo can cope with a teenager. “It’s difficult for that child. I want to be here for her. I just feel she’s too young to really be on her own. I’m going to do everything in my power to get her to understand she has a roof over her head, and that I love her and am concerned about her future.” A lingering sadness stems from Dan having been on the verge of realizing his dream of having his own creations in his own book. With granddaughter Christie writing the stories, Dan had put together the character designs for a new strip called Jessie, named after their youngest granddaughter. “They were three girls who were living in the Lower East Side, Manhattan,” says Josie. “The story was revolving about their lives sharing an apartment, their different views on life and also their way of living. One of them that will stay with me always loved beautiful clothes and was always in trouble with her credit cards. It was going to be very exciting. “To this point, we haven’t really abandoned the idea. If I could find someone, and they could be approved by Dan Fogel—the backer of the project—we would gladly make it come true.” Archie Comics may not have bothered much with Dan’s passing, but fans the world over continue to inundate Josie with well-wishes, proving just how many people Dan DeCarlo reached with the light-hearted touch that came directly from the man himself. “A couple of fan letters Dan saved in his album,” says Josie. “He used to get so much fan mail, and couldn’t have possibly kept them. “There was a woman who made a stained-glass window of Betty and Veronica. It took her a year and she gave it to Dan about five years ago. It’s on the door of his studio. It’s takes up about a third of the door. It’s quite big and she has Betty and Veronica down to their waists. She even put real earrings in their ears. She was inspired so much by Dan’s work that she couldn’t keep it for herself. “An art teacher in Seattle would teach his group of students—around nine to fourteen years old— cartoons. When we met him in Seattle, he took the children on Sunday as a field trip to meet Dan. When Dan went to the hospital for the first time, in the winter of 2000, for his pneumonia, they all drew him something, all the drawings in a big envelope, and sent him a get well card. I still have all those cards. He would just be happy to read a letter, and sometimes I would have to grab them out of his hand before he would discard it. You can’t keep everything. “I’ve decided to go to all the conventions this year and will take the grandchildren along with me because I have that need to see everyone again and to talk about Dan. I was in Orlando a few weeks ago and it was very comforting to me when the fans came up and talked about Dan. For me, it is important and I want to keep his memory alive. I don’t want to let go just like that. I want to keep his name alive.” There is the love of laughter, the love of a good woman, and then there is the love of the work. What possessed these men to continue in an industry that would never truly appreciate their value? “Possessed” may be the word, and their wives knew it, and supported them until death parted them. The lyrical quality of Josie’s voice still persists. She will never reveal the true depths of her sadness, seeking only to carry on the happiness she and her husband brought to the world. 114

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CHAPTER SEVEN

ANNE T. MURPHY & ARCHIE GOODWIN

Mirrored in the society surrounding it, the attitudes expressed by the women and men of the previous thirty years in the field would stand in sharp contrast to the generation of creators swarming the New York scene from the “Summer of Love” onwards. The illusion that creators seemingly lived within blocks of each other, and attended the same social functions, would become reality. The Eisners, Kuberts, and Romitas might as well have lived oceans apart. The 1970s breed of creators, however, would resemble a theatre subculture in proximity and structure. The chauvinistic walls of the comic book industry would come down piece by piece. Creators who would pose as spiritually enlightened beings run smack into women whom will no longer consider their place at their husbands’ side; quiet and subservient to the needs of their careers. At the center of this seismic shift would be Anne T. Murphy. Few would place a higher value on equality in the home and workplace but more importantly in the social, and mental, struggle of stagnation vs. change. Archie Goodwin would pass away in 1998—the effects of cancer winning the battle with his immune system— leaving Anne to deal with this loss, this industry’s ethical disregard in terms of honoring one in death who was so cherished in life, and her desire to not be confined to a past thought only in terms of repetitious retellings of Archie’s comic book career. Born in 1937, Archie Goodwin comes out of the service and returns to the age-old women’s magazine Redbook in the very early 1960s. He’s working in the art department, but already has a history with comic books. To please his father, Archie briefly attends the University of Oklahoma in 1955, but deliberately abandons his studies to realize his true desire. He attends New York’s School of Visual Arts, establishing friendships with men who would become peers—artists Al Williamson and Angelo Torres, as well as John Benson and Larry Ivie. His resume is dotted with minor appearances in fanzines and smaller publications, but during his return to Redbook he meets his most important ‘collaborator.’ “When I first met Archie,” says Anne T. Murphy—in her early twenties at the time, “I was in the Redbook fiction department. He talked about going into comics, but it wasn’t a reality. I never had any idea that people did comics. It never crossed my mind that there was somebody behind them, but I think what we had in common was an interest in art and books. We had a similar sense of humor; we were friends. “After one particular party, I said to Archie, ‘Are Herb Trimpe and Linda Fite a couple?’ He said, ‘Not as far as I know.’ I had picked up this vibe, though, and Linda recently said, ‘We liked each other for a long time before we liked each other’ and I knew exactly what she meant. She meant that personal ‘touching off’ recognition before it enters into a romance.” Anne and Archie certainly share a quest to shed themselves of the stifling social mores and expectations of their parent’s generation. “We both had parents who thought the ideas of going into art and writing were 116

ridiculous,” says Anne. “They wanted us to do something more solid. They were very unsupportive. Later on, when I got a degree in art at the Pratt Institute, Archie was very supportive—a contrast to our parents. “Archie had a fight with his father to get here to go to art school. Archie’s father, even years later, believed the business was going to fall apart. There were a lot of people who thought comics and art was something you do when you’re a kid and should put behind you to become a banker, a lawyer or something serious.” The two date each other for about year in absolute secrecy from their co-workers and relatives. “I had moved out into my own apartment, which had caused a lot of trouble with my mother. We were engaged for ten weeks. I called my mother up one night and said ‘Oh, by the way, I’m getting married.’ I had never even told her I was dating anybody because I had a bad experience with her before. She always found something wrong with everyone I dated, unless I didn’t like them and then she said ‘What did you do to chase him away?’ Neither of us had a smooth relationship with parents, although his mother was nice. Left: Anne & Archie wedding photo. “I came from an Irish-Catholic family. He was from Above: Redbook fashion shoot, early 1960s. Oklahoma—a southern Baptist. Gray Morrow always thought Below: Anne & brother, early 1950s. that was hysterical. Irish Catholics didn’t go that far afield. My mother’s first question was ‘Oh, is he Catholic?’ and I said, ‘No, he isn’t.’ She said, ‘Ohh... what does he do for a living?’ and I said, “He’s a commercial artist.’ The final straw was when she heard his parents still lived in their hometown. There was this very, very long pause, and she said, ‘You don’t know anything about him. He could have a wife and children back in Oklahoma.’ But he did charm her and I think she eventually forgot he was a southern Baptist.” Anne’s struggles with her mother mirror Archie’s battles with his father. “He had stress with his father until the day his father died. Archie never had to complain about my mother, because I did it for him, but I also complained about his father.” Archie would become famous for his masterful handling of artists and their egos, inspiring the best work out of them without beating them up, and one can trace this back to a reaction against his father’s behavior. “Archie found a way, even as a kid, to have people like him without having to beat someone up, and he made it work for him. He wasn’t like his father and probably chose not to be. I don’t know why anybody would want to be like his father, but I wouldn’t want to be like his mother, either. Flora was sweet, but accepting Marvin’s bullying wouldn’t have been my way. It was something Archie sensed about me 117

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with which he connected. Marvin, who skipped our wedding entirely, visited once before his death. When he started bullying, I told him, ‘I’m not Flora,’ and he backed off. “We were both stepping out of what our parents thought we should do—what ‘grown-ups’ did, what was the ‘right thing to do’ and what was the ‘smart thing to do.’ I was perfectly okay with the idea of alternative careers, that someone wasn’t going to be a stockbroker or a doctor. That’s the direction our kids have taken. “Archie came from a very white Protestant place. He never dated anything but Catholic ethnics and one Japanese girl. I would have been stifled to marry some Irish Catholic from Fordham University. Archie escaped by coming to New York. “I saw parents pressure their kids. Society has a lot of standards about success. You get a good job and make good money. The fact is you only have one life, and if you are not happy with what you are doing... “When you’re in your early twenties, what’s the worst that can happen if it doesn’t work out? You’ll say, ‘Gee, it didn’t work out. I’ll go on to something else.’ You don’t have to live with the regrets. If you get yourself pushed into someone else’s idea of a good career and give up what you love, just so you’ll be respectable and be ‘a success,’ you’ll waste your ‘once around’ in life. “Our daughter Jennifer loved working with animals and we had friends who worried, ‘Well, what’s the next step for her? Will she be a veterinarian?’ She didn’t want to be a vet. They would look at my son, Seth, on the schooner and condescendingly say, ‘It’s Both Pages: Archie’s lunch bag drawings for a job for a boy.’ There’s this notion that you’ve got to get ahead and you’re son Seth & daughter Jennifer, late 1970s . not really a success unless you climb to the top and you’re in charge of everybody. Now, think of that as a social value. That means one person out of every five hundred is going to feel, ‘Gee, I’m a success.’ “Comics were in a real slump in the early 1960s. There was no business. It’s a world you can’t visualize—there weren’t conventions and the people who were interested in comics had probably been involved with fanzines for a long time. There wasn’t this big thing, this ‘you’re the fan and I’m the big star’ division. There was no money in it, either. I knew about Archie’s interest in comic books and I had met Al Williamson by that time and some other people. When Russ Jones started gathering the Warren creators, Archie got the job of writing the scripts.” Anne is getting her Masters from New York University at night, and Archie begins pumping out sometimes two stories a night for Jim Warren’s horror magazine Creepy. “People were beginning to see problems with Russ Jones. When he was ousted, Archie was perfectly poised, considering he was writing all the stories and had professional magazine experience— more professional than the Warren books—to take over and was offered the editor’s job. “Warren had an apartment in the city—the place on 47th Street— right near Andy Warhol’s first Factory; you could see the silver doors. Jim was taking a summer weekend at one of the hotels by the airport and Archie said, ‘We’ve been invited out there to swim in the pool and to talk business,’ and I said, ‘Airport hotel?’” Jim Warren tells of drawing up a single-page contract, which

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Archie signs before Warren tears it up in a flourish, tossing it in the pool in a grandiose gesture that doesn’t impress Anne. He quickly writes another and hands it to her. From her earliest days at Archie’s side, Anne is put off by silly displays meant solely to impress. “Jim once insisted on taxiing us two blocks for a business dinner,” laughs Anne. “It’s acceptable if people are on crutches, but this is New York! “Let’s face it, Jim Warren thought he was Hugh Hefner and he really wasn’t. It was a big deal when they sent out for grilled cheese sandwiches on the expense account. He didn’t have to aspire to be Hefner. Most of what he did was worthwhile. “Russ Jones—one of these people who I considered very untrustworthy—claims undeserved credit in the Warren Companion book for Blazing Combat. Unfortunately, Russ Jones is still alive and Archie is not, so Russ probably figures he can claim anything he wants. Archie was responsible for most of the book’s four-issue run. “When Archie was working at Warren, I occasionally used my editing experience. I remember looking at the ‘Thermopylae’ story, ready for printers, and I said ‘Gee, where’s the ‘Y’?’ Archie freaked! Also, I reviewed Otto Binder scripts. He was just hacking them out for little money. He had left a huge hole in the plot that had to be fixed. They thought it was such a big deal, but his work needed a great deal of editing. “Even if without a contract, we would have felt secure. Archie was very valuable to Warren because he had all that professional magazine experience. He would have been perfectly able to go back to Redbook. I was working. What was the worst that could happen? I never thought, ‘Oh my God, we’re going to lose the house! I’ll never be able to support the kids!’ There was big money later on in comics, so creators had the last laugh. I wish Archie had been more part of that era.” With Archie’s career in comics well established by the mid-to-late 1960s, Anne runs headlong into the chauvinistic attitudes displayed by the newest strain of artists who no doubt think of themselves as ‘enlightened.’ “We would meet a lot of people socially and when I talk about the attitude towards women in comics, remember I was on the cusp of a certain generation—Rock ’n’ Roll, the Vietnam War protests, women’s rights, civil rights, and gay rights. We wanted to cast off the stuffiness of suburbia and corporate life. “I think that contributed a lot to this boys’ club, this ‘Let’s let the girls talk in the kitchen, while we guys go to the studio.’ There was a lot of idealizing of ‘Frazetta’s women’ at this time. They’re not really women, just adolescent wet-dream fantasies. I don’t see any growth in his art—it was a formula.” Social inequality in Archie’s personal sphere pales in comparison to the battles Anne fights in her own workplace during the mid-to-late 1960s. “I had a suit against an employer before N.O.W. was formed. I noticed gender inequality before it became a popular cause. “Redbook was a women’s magazine. Most of the employees were women, but the editor had always been a man. When I got married, I found they would not give Archie health coverage because husbands covered women, not visa versa. He was an uninsured freelancer and they would only cover him if totally and permanently disabled. They would make exceptions, but it didn’t change the basic rules, and I was really out to change the basic rules. “Congress had just passed Title VII (equal employment laws), so I filed suit and I won in both state and federal courts. I went to the first hearing, a nervous wreck, because all of these ‘suits’ were sitting there and here was just me. Five minutes into the meeting, I realized they sent all these suits—guys from the

insurance company, the personnel office, etc.—because they didn’t know where this new law was taking them. “The woman judge, at one point, said, ‘If you had to give women equal insurance rights, you might not hire women for a job?’ By saying ‘yes,’ the suits admitted their willingness to illegally penalize women seeking their rights. I won, but it took two years. “Some Redbook women said, ‘I’ve been campaigning for this for ages,’ but it was the lawsuit that forced the change. There were women in personnel who looked at me like I was some kind of freak, saying, ‘She’s the one,’ but I never regretted doing it. “The company sent out a memo saying they were going to insure the major wage earner, counting on them all being men. I sent a memo back to them citing Archie’s freelance status. Should I figure it on a weekly Above: Anne with the late Gray Morrow, early 1970s. basis or monthly basis, because it’s going to vary a lot. Right: Drawing from Anne’s own sketchbook. Should I figure in his royalty payments or my second job? “I never heard a word from them until three or four months later. There was a memo saying they were just going to cover everybody.” The comic book industry of this period is a boys’ club, and Anne is aware of men who perceive women only as “the little woman” or “the better half.” “We were having a business dinner in Manhattan with someone from the Silver Snail, a Canadian comic store. The conversation turned to Jim Shooter and, silly me, thinking I was an equal conversationalist, offered an observation. His reply was, ‘Oh, is that what the wives are saying?’ “It was Archie’s business dinner and I couldn’t offend a client. I restrained myself from saying, ‘You stupid prick!’ Archie knew very well what annoyed me.” Symbolic of the major cultural divide between the artists of the 1940s and 1950s and the new generation from the late 1960s is the ‘First Fridays’ gatherings in Manhattan. John Benson had put it together for the E.C. Comics artists like Harvey Kurtzman, but his space is limited so Roy Thomas becomes host. “Professionals are a little too trusting,” says Anne. “Fans were not turned away, but someone stole from Roy’s collection.” The gatherings cease until the ‘new wave’ of artistes—Bernie Wrightson, Mike Kaluta, Neal Adams and their ilk, as well as the underground artists—take the idea for their own, hosted by Jeff and Louise (later Simonson) Jones. Symbolic of the passing of the torch, the new gatherings are fertile ground for what are essentially kids struggling with their emotional growth, playing out their private emotions in a very public manner. “You’d find sometimes some of these guys who would treat you like the ‘little woman.’ When I would go to parties in the 1970s and 1980s, I’d rarely talk comics. There would be people who would treat you as a person and you would connect with; someone liked Ann Nocenti. She told me about her acting lessons with William Hickey, who played Jack Nicholson’s father in ‘Prizzi’s Honor.’ “I would go home and tell Archie and he would say, ‘How did you find that out? I’ve been working with her for years.’ I said, ‘You probably just talked about comics.’ She’s a fascinating person. Weezie—Louise Simonson—and I were very friendly, as were our kids when they were little. Her daughter was my daughter’s best friend for many years. Anne and Archie are perhaps the only ones included in both incarnations. “Underground artists—still on the Lower East Side before their migration to California—often would come during the transitional time. Once, when we hosted, Trina Robbins brought marijuana brownies from the Alice B. Toklas Cookbook. “Most of the women I met through comics, whether wives or creators, were interesting people. To ignore a whole segment because they were wives was ridiculous. The shocking part about it is that later on, when women got into comics, even some of the women did: some of the Friends of Lulu crowd. “I think of it as the ‘Joyce Brabner Syndrome.’ She practically looked through me at a party. When I said to Martha Thomases I’d be interested in attending a Lulu meeting, she said, ‘We didn’t want to include any of the 120

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wives because we were afraid they’d just try to advance their husbands’ careers.’ “That makes us sound like ‘I.B.M. wives!’ Perhaps some of them are very afraid that if anyone sees them hanging around with ‘the wives,’ it will diminish their status. I’m pleased comics opened to these women, but it’s a shame they don’t always see us as sisters too. “But there are a lot of very nice people like Mike Carlin and Alan Moore, who would never condescend. Many of the creators’ wives are interesting too, like Kate Gibbons, Ann Eisner, Isobel Kennedy, and Cori Williamson. “I object to people who are condescending and patronizing. I was up at Warren once, looking through job ads, and Frank Frazetta said, ‘Looking for a job?’ I said, ’Yes, but they’re only paying such-andsuch,’ and he said, ‘Oh, but that’s good pay for a girl.’ “In the era of my Redbook, the Help Wanted ads I was looking at had ‘help wanted—female’ and ‘help wanted—male.’ Nobody thought that was weird. If you did that now, it would be like printing ‘help wanted—black’ and ‘help wanted—white.’ Nobody thought it was strange to advertise like that. In that respect, I guess I was strange. I didn’t really fit into my culture.” Anne is part of a burgeoning culture of women in comic books, or connected to the industry, who are finding their backbone when it came to dealing with the self-absorbed male artist. “Betty Morrow definitely had feminist leanings. Tatjana Wood, I think, takes no crap and what else do you need but someone who doesn’t let society’s definition of male and female define them? You had to fight against it at that time.” Right from the start, Anne jettisons custom by declining to have the name Goodwin usurp her own. It may be just a name to some, but clearly her abstinence from this is important to her sense of self. “After I got married, I had people who were doing nothing more than selling charge cards at Bloomingdale’s who would tell me I couldn’t use this because it wasn’t my legal name. The library would say ‘if married, woman use husband’s name.’ My own mother thought I was nuts.” “I never changed my driver’s license or my passport. I didn’t make a scene every time someone called me ‘Mrs. Goodwin,’ but eventually I wanted no part of dual identities. “Archie was actually very reasonable. He asked, ‘How will people know you’re married?’ I pointed out, ‘Why do they have to know? They don’t know from your name that you’re married.’ He might have been more comfortable with me not rocking the boat. “At the funeral and memorial services, I talked about our Italian bread and postage stamp fights. What you’re really fighting over is that you want the person to behave a certain way. You marry someone who’s different from you and your family. You’re attracted by the differences. Once you have the claim, you think you can make demands and begin to want little changes here and there. It begins to chip away at who you are.” “Archie and I went out to dinner one night and I was in the middle of talking, breaking the Italian bread. I was tearing off the whole back-connected piece and he leans across the table at me and says, ‘Can’t you tear that the right way?’ I said, ‘Why? Do you want it in good condition in case they want to put it out for the next customer?’ “I was very calm this time. The bread wasn’t the issue. I said, ‘I’m talking about your father and you want me off the subject. It’s making you uncomfortable.’ He saw I had nailed it, and that was the end. “Take the postage stamp fight. My daughter needed a stamp, and he had bought the old postage rate. I said ‘You bought those? You’re going to have to go back to the post office and buy the new two-cent stamp.’ “I had handled it wrong this time and he angrily said, ‘I’m not going to have to do anything!’ It was the way I said it, almost as if he was stupid, the way his father would spoken to him. That’s what fights are. I think people who don’t have fights are probably suppressing a lot. “I don’t think Archie was shy and quiet. I know people who think he was shy and quiet. He wasn’t one of those loud, boisterous, ‘life of the party’ types. He had a very sly wit, and he would really get people. There were people who—because he was thought of as very nice—underestimated what he would put up with. There were times when he lost his temper and jumped over the desk and nobody could believe it because they hadn’t seen

that side of Archie. He did have that side. That’s why he walked from both Epic and Warren. He could walk, because he was in a position where other people wanted him.” Archie Goodwin could get Steve Ditko and Dave Sim in a room for needlepoint and long discussions on the value of socialism and religion. Did he hypnotize Sim into working for Marvel on Epic Illustrated? Sim has never produced a piece of work for such corporate giants before or since. He brought Steve Ditko to Warren in the mid-1960s, right after leaving Spider-Man, and engineered what many consider Ditko’s best work, and then brought Ditko back to Epic in the mid-1980s. Archie Goodwin had that power. “He was in a very uncomfortable position with Warren, because the artists were complaining about not being paid. Archie had a deal with them, and Warren was giving him the runaround. Archie actually talked to me about the company being in trouble and maybe we could loan Warren some money from our savings. I said, ‘No way! That’s our money. It’s not like you own part of the company.’ “Archie wasn’t the kind of guy to make the offer to Warren before telling me either, and there are guys who would have. Archie spoke to me first, and I said, ‘Absolutely not.’ If Warren couldn’t keep the company going, I didn’t want to throw our savings after it. If Warren had told Archie ‘Here’s the situation’ and Archie had been able to tell the artists that, but he didn’t feel comfortable being the go-between and stringing them along. I think that’s one of his strengths that Above: Archie scripting Steve Ditko, Creepy #13, 1967. Right: Carlos Garzon, Archie, Al Williamson, late 1970s. people understood about Archie, that he was that kind of manager.” Archie is a success because of his ability to micromanage the boys’ club of artists without micro-managing their artwork. “Artists were child-like, and they loved what they were doing,” says Anne, “but that’s different from being childish or immature; people who have no sense of responsibility. “Terrific artists aren’t necessarily going to be great guys or have terrific personalities. It’s not that the guys who have terrific personalities and great character are lesser creatively. Being high maintenance is not part of the creative personality. They would be high maintenance if they were plumbers. Some are more like a spoiled fouryear-old, and that’s hard to live with. “John Romita was not that kind of person because Virginia, his wife, is not the kind of person to put up with that crap. I think people can do good work whether they’re bad people, pains in the ass, or good people. Archie felt you could get more out of people if you didn’t piss them off. Archie and his mother survived with his father by not rocking the boat. It was a shame that happened, because he loved him, but there’s no percentage in pissing people off. “I think there would be a certain number of things Archie would put up with, and it would finally be too much. He wouldn’t care if his anger caught people off-guard, but he wasn’t a grudge-holder. He wasn’t meanspirited, and there are people in comics who are. “Even one of the younger guys now, in talking about one of the women in comics had said ‘Ahh, she draws like a girl.’ That bothered me. I took issue with it and he said, ‘Oh, I didn’t mean it was bad. I just said she draws like a girl,’ but the fact is we live in a culture where ‘you run like a girl’ or ‘throw a ball like a girl’ is not a compliment. They should just throw out those standards entirely. “I wonder how hard it is now finding a girlfriend or wife, if you want someone submissive. I’m sure they are still around, but it must be considerably harder, although you can tell from looking at Virginia she was never the ‘little woman.’ She’s not abrasive or unfeminine. Virginia was going to be who she was, and John had to accept 122

that and I’m sure that’s what John liked.” While recognizing their talent, and respecting the ‘new wave’ artistes’ need to achieve excellence, how that manifests itself sometimes runs afoul of Anne’s views on the need for the artist to ‘suffer’ for his artwork. Was it simply an excuse for their childish, petulant behavior, and their lack of desire to officially grow up? “Some of these guys have gotten too plugged into the idea that the artist suffers, the romantic image of the artist, the artist who drinks too much, so they can sulk. Look at all the guys who came up in the 1970s. “Frank Frazetta was perfectly willing to have those guys as acolytes. He became kind of angry when they began getting clients of their own. He was perfectly happy with adoring fans, but when Archie took over at Epic, Ellie Frazetta said, ‘We didn’t want you to have to get one of those other guys,’ and they meant Jeff Jones or Bernie Wrightson. At that time, Frank had fallen out with them and was very jealous. For my money, I have never felt Frazetta developed as much as those guys did. “Archie would rant to me, and I remember him coming home very angry one day. He didn’t really like the business side of it, and he would say, ‘I didn’t go into comics for this.’ During the time he was Editor-in-Chief for a year-and-a-half, Marvel had this meeting and all the business guys sat around saying ‘We have to come up with ways to stop DC from stealing our brilliant artists.’ “Archie threw out all these ideas like giving them back their artwork, giving them royalties, and the like. He comes back from the meeting and says to me they spent three hours on this meeting, and then one of these suits says, ‘Why are we talking about giving benefits and royalties to these people? These aren’t employees on the ‘books.’ They’re people we hire for piecework. They have no loyalty to us.’ The whole idea of the meeting was how to try to hang onto them. He came home really mad. “He couldn’t show his full anger in front of them, but he was not the kind of ‘mad’ where he’d come home, kick the door or get mad at me. We had some misdirected arguments, but he wouldn’t go for that kind of thing. “In accepting that job, Archie thought ‘If I don’t take it, they won’t offer me anything more.’ The things he liked, Epic and Warren, were like the comic books he made growing up as a kid, where he got to do it all. It was like being a director of a movie. You get to decide everything. That would have been his ideal, but then you have these business people come in and say ‘Well, is this a character we’re going to be able to license?’ “The suits at Marvel and DC would bring in business people like Terry Stewart, who could have done the same with any business. Oh sure, they’re into comics and have a collection, but they often have no affinity for the product and the creators’ worth. Yes, it has to be run as a business, and there were creators who chronically missed 123

deadlines, or prima donnas who should have realized when they were being unprofessional. “People hated Jim Shooter, but in some ways he combined running it as a business with a real caring about comics. His problem was he was a control freak. I think of Shooter as Richard Nixon. He could have left well enough alone, but couldn’t resist tinkering and wreaking vengeance just for the sake of control. Archie didn’t micro-manage artists, and that’s what they loved about him. He could write to an artist’s strengths, but didn’t hover over them. “I would sometimes make points he hadn’t considered. British artists would come with personality complaints about their American collaborators. I would say, ‘Don’t get into it. It’s the M.O. of my Irish family. They can say, ‘Oh, I never said that,’ and you’re left holding the bag. I said to Archie, ‘They don’t need an intermediary. Let them speak to the person themselves.’ “Comics in this country are being pre-judged in the same way women were labeled. I considered it a perfectly respectable thing to do, and we had neighbors who would chuckle and make references as if it wasn’t a real job. I would think ‘This jerk sells ad space on the radio, and this guy runs a clothing store. How is that Above: Archie at a San Diego con. more respectable, more worthwhile?’” One of the fundamental changes in the comic book industry in the 1970s is the diversity of its people and the communal nature of this hub of creators who come together in a way that directly contrasts the generation before them. “Our kids grew up in a particular world,” says Anne. “We went to parties with people who were in comics. Our kids grew up with people drawing all the time. We never thought anything of it. Fans think, ‘Oh my God!’ And that isn’t what it is. You do see all their flaws.” Participating in this book even had given Anne a cause for concern. “I was concerned about this seeming like 1950s sitcom couples rather than real people because of the word ‘Guy’ in the title and the focus on wives. I agreed to participate because of the inclusion of couples who never got married, gay couples or women who worked in the industry. I had mentioned this and was happy to see your concept expanded. “There are so many linkages. Dick Giordano married Sal Trapani’s sister. It’s like people who grow up in theatre families. It’s around you and it’s not glamourous. You know them as people, before you know them as, ‘Oh my God.’ The work is part of them. It’s very normal. “Howard Chaykin’s first wife, Daina Graziunas, did science-fiction illustrations with Epic for Archie and also co-authored novels with her second husband, Jim Starlin. Leslie Zahn, Chaykin’s second wife, did some lettering and had been a fabric designer. Linda Fite was working at Marvel when Herb Trimpe was coming in to deliver freelance assignments. “The issue arises with people like these; are they ‘the little woman’ and if they become a professional, are they thought of as less? Would they have gone into it anyway? Would they want to give you interviews if it makes them appear like a ‘mom’ in a ‘Mom’n’Pop’ store? Virginia Romita could have run General Motors better than Lee Iacocca. I don’t think I would ever regard her as just being John’s ‘helper.’” Women who “married into comics” would feel a greater sting. “Nick Meglin, from Mad Magazine, once called me ‘Mrs. Archie,’ and I found it deeply offensive,” laughs Anne. “I personally found it to be a comment against them, more than against me. I’ve gotten some of it and so did Cori Williamson. Pat Blevins has experienced it, and she had worked in comics, too. “Did I expect Archie to go to battle for me? Wouldn’t that defeat the very thing I believed and would I then become his ‘I.B.M. wife’ if I expected him to speak for me? I didn’t, but he had to be prepared for the fact that I was going to say something. If I wanted to divorce him, I would have; if he wanted to divorce me, he would have. “How important was it if Nick Meglin thought I was a bitch?” laughs Anne. “To me, not at all because he behaved like a jerk in this instance. How much was I going to accommodate myself to what somebody else thought I should be? 124

“I never subscribed to the feminist view—the supposed view—if you stayed home with the kids, you were not a worthwhile person. What does it matter if I am a working person or not? Does serving brownies automatically make you less interesting? You’re not really looking at who they are—you’re looking at who you think they are. I think the same is true when you are dealing with race or sexual orientation.” Much like Adele Kurtzman, Anne would watch cancer slowly claim the man said had been partnered with for over thirty years. While a sudden passing may be shocking at the time to a Josie DeCarlo, Anne agrees there is no value in watching a loved one’s flame slowly extinguish. “The first time Archie was diagnosed with cancer, he was doing those little in-house cartoons for Patricia Bastienne’s in-house DC Talk. He was really upset and I said, ‘Do one of your cartoons about it,’ and he did.” Very few people can leave every job they have and not burn bridges, but this was Archie. Unfortunately, those who claimed to have such respect for the man wouldn’t carry that respect to his Estate. While it is commonplace to provide reprint royalties to an artist in life, in death Anne has found this respect to be lacking. Marvel Comics, the very company Archie ran during the 1970s, continues to be less than diligent, if not downright disrespectful. “I had to write and say ‘Archie’s Estate still has an interest.’ Bob Harras never answered my letter and after years of not receiving royalties, the succeeding management at Marvel accidentally sent a check, then cancelled it. They said, ‘It’s our policy to discontinue paying royalties after he had died.’ Whether or not they signed contracts in those days, royalties are still routinely paid on work when it is reprinted. It‘s not ‘authorless’ because he’s dead. “Roz Kirby had Mark Evanier taking care of her. Elaine Kane has Gary Groth. People who want to use their husbands’ work, they wouldn’t think of doing it without arranging the royalties, discussing it with someone, or sending copies. “A lot of the people I contacted, when they wrote tributes to him, were wonderful about sending me copies, and some weren’t. On some level, they feel you’re not interested or don’t count. I don’t expect to be treated like a comic book professional, because I’m not, but I think it’s annoying if people think they can just print it because he’s dead. I think they have to be made aware of it. “I’m sure there have been printings I don’t even know about. DC is very ethical and, in fact, they just sent a check. Dark Horse did pay royalties after his death. If the work is worthy of reprinting, it’s worthy of royalties. Marvel’s cynical decision to claim his royalties for themselves is tantamount to saying, “Great! He’s dead—we can use him for free!” The revival of comic book fandom leaves Anne personally in a curious situation. People ask her to revisit the same memories repeatedly, without even a different angle on his career or their partnership. She is left to wonder how locked into the past she will be; is she disrespecting Archie’s memory by not acceding to such demands, and how best to move forward? “Some fans tune out if what I’m saying doesn’t match their illusions of these creators. “Elaine Kane said, ‘I’m not running a museum.’ She put his drawing table up for sale. Do you keep everything of somebody’s, just because you cared about them? Do I need every script he ever wrote, or these awards, or every comic he ever collected or kept for research? I didn’t think so. “People ask for photos. I say, ‘You can use it in the book under these terms, but if you scan it in, that doesn’t mean it’s approved for use for the next project, just because you’ve seen it.’ Fanzines don’t have a budget and they are not professional and they depend on things being given to them, but there are all sorts of issues like copyright, and if someone is marketing it commercially, do you then just give it for free? I’m not saying I wouldn’t, and I’m not saying I’m not glad to still have him before the public eye, but these things really have to be dealt with. It’s a different world now.” Anne is right about this. The industry undergoes a metamorphosis during her marriage to Archie. Roles and issues that appeared black-and-white to Dick and Lindy Ayers, or Will and Ann Eisner, become as cloudy and turbulent in the comic book industry as they are in society as a whole. Women take on roles that have them as equals in the professional sense. The prevailing male attitudes towards women as species, spouse and co-worker are being challenged. Some men meet women halfway, and some push back, unable to unburden themselves of past prejudices. Ladies and gentlemen, Dave Sim and Deni Loubert...

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CHAPTER 666

DENI LOUBERT & DAVE SIM

While Anne T. Murphy deals with defining herself as a woman in a man’s world, Deni Loubert fights to define herself in one man’s world. She too will stand on the cusp of a generation. It’s 1977 and the comic book industry is dying a slow death at the newsstands of North America. There are few outlets for independently-minded individuals to birth a creation they could call their own. Deni Loubert will prove to be as destined to create something tangible in the publishing world as Dave will in the arts. The two will build a castle before Deni will have to rescue herself from its tall towers. She won’t come out unscathed, but will blaze a trail for women and men taking up the mantle of self-publishing for the next twenty-five years. Dave Sim will have you believe women represent an emotional void into which the rational man is drawn, but had Dave Sim not been drawn to Deni Loubert, the history of comic book self-publishing would’ve had a dramatic void. Exploring her role as publisher in their company, Aardvark-Vanaheim, puts to death any of Sim’s complaints that the female in a relationship restricts the male’s creative spirit. In fact, without the foundation his partner gives him, his three-hundred issue run of Cerebus may not have been finished until the year 3004, if it had gotten off the ground at all. Contrary to Sim’s expressed opinions, there is little evidence to suggest he would have been emotionally and physically able to produce a comic, and a company, from scratch. Deni put the train on the tracks and Dave has been able to ride it smoothly ever since. Deni is born almost eight years ahead of Dave in Timmins, Ontario—a small town about an eight-hour drive northwest of Toronto. Her father works in the McIntyre Mines before moving the family to Arizona when Deni is five; the family living in a trailer while he works on the railroads. They cross the U.S. to northern California, return to the nickel mines of Sudbury, and eventually stop in the San Francisco Bay area during Deni’s high school years in the mid-to-late 1960s. The family moves into what would become Silicon Valley. Wall-to-wall glass by the 1980s, the Valley is rural and agricultural and the burgeoning underground comix scene is where Deni gets her first real taste of comics. “Everybody read the Fabulous Freak Brothers in high school,” she says. “We were all experimenting with grass and, after school, you’d sit around, pass a joint, read the Freak Brothers and listen to Pink Floyd—typical 1960s. “Like a lot of little girls, I had a crush on Robin. The first super-hero comic book I read was Batman and Robin. The Polka-Dot Man would pull polka dots off his costume, throw them at the wall and jump through. I loved Millie the Model, but wasn’t allowed to bring comics into the house, so I read them in grocery stores. My parents didn’t consider them good reading material.” Deni’s desire to write and publish can be traced back to the voluminous amounts of books in the household. “My mother would sit down with me when I was not in school yet and go through these big books we had with a lot of the French Impressionist from the 1920s, a lot of street scenes by Monet and Renoir. I would do book reports in grade school that were ten-page documents bound with covers. Today, my brother Michael owns a 126

bookstore in Kitchener.” Do you marry your father? In Deni’s case, there are many parallels. “We always used to laugh how he was not in favor of women in the workforce, but all his daughters eventually owned their own business. My dad had a grade six education and ending up running an accounting department for a huge company that made malls in California. Both of my parents definitely raised me to think there was nothing you couldn’t do.” She studies for a year to be a nursery school teacher, but her father uproots them again in 1970, returning to Canada; this time to Kitchener, Ontario. For one so creatively inclined, Deni’s first job is in a plastic extrusion factory making faucet handles. “You spend three months there and you date a guy, his dad works in the factory, he works in the factory, his brother works in the factory and you look around and go, ‘Oh my God, I don’t want to be this!’” Since returning to Canada, Deni’s interests have shifted from comics to science-fiction. “I had gone to my first good-sized convention in Toronto with some friends and was blown away by this whole other world I had no idea existed. It just inspired us all and we formed a writing group.” Looking to expand her knowledge of production, Deni canvasses Kitchener for like-minded individuals. “I specifically wanted to take charge. This was before photocopying was so easily available. Gene Day’s Dark Fantasy was one of the better ’zines out there. I was looking at it and saying to the writing group, ‘We’d be much more motivated to write on a regular basis and do good work, if we published something.’ In the summer of 1976, Harry Kremer’s Now and Then Books is to comics what Malcolm McLaren’s Sex Shop in London, England is to music. It is a gathering place with an owner more than willing to assist prospective writers and artists in producing a couple of issues of whatever pie-in-the-sky project walks in the door. “Harry’s was the place to go if you were into science-fiction,” says Deni. “I went to talk to Harry about sight unseen buying twenty-five or fifty copies, but he wasn’t there. “Dave was there, working in the record division. I read Gene’s Dark Fantasy on regular basis and Dave was one of the regular contributors. Cerebus came together from my desire to put together a little kind of sciencefiction/fantasy magazine.” The upstairs of the store houses the comics and magazines, the back gathers all the gamers, and downstairs are the records and collectibles. “I’d find Rosemary Clooney 78s of old jazz recordings. If you wanted it, Harry could find it for you. A lot of the people I met who became illustrators, or were going to be illustrators for our personal magazine, I met through Harry. ”He was a big, funny, warm-hearted bear of a guy who would do anything for the people that were part of his universe. He was generous to a fault; quiet and yet when he said something, you paid attention. He hired Dave to give him a job because Dave was trying to sell cartoons. Dave was working behind the counter in the record division a couple days a week.” For one whose life will become consumed by them, Deni is unaware of the process of making comic books. “When I met Dave, I was surprised to find there were guys who penciled and guys who inked. I started talking about my project and he had all these questions. Before you know it, we’re talking about Gene’s publication, fanzines, comics, science-fiction and we talked for two hours. We totally clicked the first time we met. ”He was bright, cute and into all of this weird kind of stuff I was. Dave’s very charming. Even back then he was very charming. I was a little bit more pop; he a little bit more on the edge. I asked him out—invited him over to my place for dinner—but hadn’t even gotten his name yet. He tells me and I’m, ‘Are you the Dave Sim that does the illustrations in Gene’s magazine? I really like your stuff. Can I get you draw some illustrations for our book? Why don’t you come to my place next week, I’ll make dinner and pick your brain about how you put these things together.’” Dave is eighteen, Deni twenty-five. Dave would have been a senior in high school, but dropped out to do cartoons. He told his parents school had nothing left to teach him as a cartoonist and they sent him out to earn a living. He had moved out a month or two before meeting Deni, living in a little studio, supporting himself working at Harry’s and with a little strip in the local paper. “He had an aunt who was an artist and a very big influence on him,” says Deni, “He definitely came from a very creative family and, because of the background I came from, his family always seemed sophisticated to me. They were college educated. Dave’s mother was a very strong person. His father was very creative and wasn’t into the traditional macho role. If anything, I had the father like that—the guy that worked underground in the mines 127

and had the big muscles. Dave’s dad was a labor negotiator, a man who depended on his brains for a living. He grew up with much more liberal concepts in many ways of male and female roles.” The main connection between the two is their collective desire to produce something tangible, not just talk about their dreams. They have much to learn from each other, but clearly, Deni is the worldlier of the two. “It was a bone of contention all along in our relationship. He was very young. I was the first person he had ever dated. I think it intimidated him a bit. I had been engaged not that long before I met Dave, then had broken it off, and he knew that. Just the fact that I was more experienced than him—I’d been doing drugs for a couple years, traveling around—was very intimidating to a young man who wanted to see his role in your life as being, at the very least, equal to you. “When I met Dave, I had my own apartment and was working full time in a shirt factory in the mailroom. I worked all kinds of weird little jobs. I was a go-go dancer, worked an offtrack betting office, and in a factory making rubber stamps—the only woman in the entire place. I worked with saws and drills and learned how to set cold type. They didn’t want to hire me, but I pushed them. Years later I ran into the guy that owned the little business. He thanked me for pushing him because he had five or six women in the back now. You just had to push people a little about their perception of what a woman could do.” “Totally kismet,” says Deni about her courtship with Dave. “He was like a lot of people you meet in comics. He’d loved comics forever. Before I met him, he had interviewed a lot of professionals for Gene’s publication. When we became professionals, it meant we had a footing with these people.”

Both Pages: illustrations from Dave’s early fanzine work, 1975-76.

The attraction for Deni is Dave’s fierce ambition to make a living in a creative field and his unabashed confidence in his skills. “I thought you had to live in an ivory tower in New York City to be a writer. He was the person that opened my eyes up and made me realize that, ‘No, you just do it. It doesn’t matter where you are.’ In terms of strictly life experience, there was a lot I taught him, but it was an eye opener to meet somebody with the ambition he had. It was not even a question of when or how. I remember Dave telling me, ‘I’m going to be a millionaire before I’m thirty.’ This was on our third date.” The fanzine they put together offers their first hard knock in the arena of self-publishing. 128

“There were five of us doing stories and illustration and he did the cover. Gene told us the name of printer he had just started using out in California. We were just blown away; it was half the price of anybody we talked to in Kitchener, so we sent the first issue. “We needed to call it something and decided to have a name for our publishing company. I decided the company needed to have a mascot. My younger sister was in high school and aardvarks were the rage. My brother was into Norse mythology and thought Vanaheim—heaven— had a good ring to it. We couldn’t decide between ‘Aardvark’ and ‘Vanaheim,’ so we hyphenated it and it became ‘Aardvark-Vanaheim.’ “We had no clue what an aardvark looked like. We looked it up in a dictionary and there was a really bad, teeny thumbnail drawing. Dave made it up from there. “Barry Smith’s Conan was all the rage. He had all the medallions and the helmet with the horns, so we put these accouterments on a really crude drawing of an aardvark and went ‘Ta da.’ “We needed a title. We were talking about it—the whole writing group with Dave taking notes—and we go, ‘How about Cerberus, that three-headed dog at the front of Hades?’ I can’t spell so it became Cerebus. “We decided Cerebus was the name of the little guy in the logo, then we sent it off to the printers in California with a check. We never saw either again. The very first drawing ever done of Cerebus went into a black hole. We waited and waited and were heart-broken.” They confer with Gene, who had been using the printer for two or three months, but his work has disappeared as well. “So here we were,” says Deni, “with this great little mascot, this funny little name, and Dave was trying to break into comics.” Deni takes a job at a printing place working the camera, doing strip up to prepare for self-publishing. Less than a year from meeting, they are living together in a tiny apartment Dave uses as his studio. The couple would not be stopped. “The first issue of Cerebus was around the time we moved in together. Dave was doing short stories, soft-core porn illustrations, his Beavers strip; anything.” Mike Friedrich earns the distinction of turning down both Cerebus and their counterparts Wendy and Richard Pini’s strip, Elfquest. “Dave did an eight-page Cerebus story and sent it to Mike—the same legendary Star*Reach issue for which we both sent in stuff—but he was a sweetheart. He came back to us and said, ‘I don’t think I should be doing this, but why don’t you do it yourself?’ That was how we started Cerebus.” The Dave Sim of 2002 scholars in revisionism, but his attacks on the Maria Laphams and Vijaya Smiths of the world (for sucking the ‘male light’ out of their 129

partners) run contrary to just how much he relies on Deni. Unfortunately for her, the seeds of her demise, and theirs as a couple, are planted very early in their publishing partnership, starting in that summer of 1977. “Even with the first issue, I didn’t think of myself as a publisher. I thought, ‘This is something Dave wants to do and I help him make it happen.’ Early on, I had an ideal about artists. I thought they shouldn’t have to deal with all that boring, everyday, ‘Where’s the distributor? How much did he order? Let’s send twenty more books to Jim Friel’ stuff. Literally, we are sitting in our living room counting out books, putting them in boxes and mailing them to people. “The first two years, I was completely supporting him. We weren’t making a profit. I was working full time and running the company. When we were bimonthly, he was doing little things like design work for the local record store or a soccer association for which he did cartoons, but the reality was I was paying the bills. Dave was paying for his costs to make sure he had art supplies and postage. “This was a huge, huge risk for both of us to take. There were no independent comics at that time. There was Mike Friedrich doing Star*Reach and Dean Mullaney just starting Eclipse magazines. Originally, we were thinking put it out and get Harry to distribute it, but then we met Jim Friel and it was, ‘Oh my God, American distribution!’ “We went to a Toronto convention and I can remember that table to this day—I have pictures of it— with stacks of Cerebus #1, the little poster and the mailing list we had done and literally grabbing people to make them come to our table. “We weren’t living fancy—a two-bedroom apartment above an insurance business in an old house. It was downtown Kitchener in a building that no longer exists. It bums me out you can’t go back and say, ‘This is where Cerebus was created.’ It was a wonderful old house where we had way too many parties, people getting drunk and falling asleep on the roof of our house, always worrying people were going to roll off into the parking lot! “The first place where we drew Cerebus had a second bedroom but it was really a large closet. It was four-and-a-half feet wide, twelve feet long, just barely wide enough for Dave to fit his drawing board. I have really strong memories of falling asleep with Dave having the radio on and you could hear him mumbling to This Page: Dave’s ‘The Company’ strip, and more Conaninspired imagery, circa 1976-77. Top Right: more of Dave’s early fanzine work, 1976. Bottom Right: Cerebus pin-up, 1979. 130

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himself about the script, laying stuff out or his inking.” By October 1978, the first six issues are out, and the couple is married, living in a slightly bigger place with Dave’s studio again in the second bedroom. “Dave and I looked at our numbers when were bi-monthly—we might have been at four or five thousand copies—and said, ‘If we went monthly, and I did this full time, we could support ourselves. Not well, but we could do it.’ “We’d always gauge how big our readership was by the audience at the local auditorium where we went to see hockey games. We’d say, ‘We have a third of this audience, or half of this audience.’ “My editorial piece on the inside front cover was the last thing being written the night before I would physically take the book down to the printers, especially when we were working with Prenney down in Windsor. They were like family, the Prenney boys. I would oversee everything and stay overnight at their house.” While desperate for acknowledgment, the couple is too busy with subsequent issues to pay attention to the lack of letters accompanying the first few issues. “The first time we really got a feel that people were reading was Neal Adams walking up, shaking my hand and making a joke with me because he knew what we did. Dave was much more aware of fandom and how that all worked. If letters came in, I gave them to Dave. ‘They’re not mine. I’m the one sitting here with the spreadsheet.’” The pressures of a regular book, his dread of public speaking, and more acid than a truckload of car batteries contributes to a temporary halt to the dream of going monthly. Phil Seuling wants to fly down Deni and Dave to New York, putting them up in his home. He wants to make them—along with the Pinis—guests of honor at one of his Seuling Cons. Dave does not survive the thought of the trip. He suffers a nervous breakdown and is admitted to the local hospital’s psychiatric ward. Deni makes the trip to New York alone, believing Dave had worked so hard for this type of moment that she must go. Her feelings of abandonment are omnipresent, but are coupled with the excitement a first visit to New York City can generate. “Trying to make my way around the subway to get to the show was very exciting. We didn’t want people to know what was going on with Dave. We just said he had work to do, would be with us in Philly and left it at that.” Marshall Rogers, super-hot on Batman at the time, helps Deni through the maze of New York City. “He just took me under his wing. We had met him before at an Ottawa Con and he was a fan of the work, which was amazing to us because Dave was a huge fan of his. They became friends right away. It was one of those weird times when Phil got us into distribution with Bud Plant, who was distributing to Europe and Japan. We then started to get letters from there and that’s weird thinking someone in a foreign country is reading your book.” In New York, Deni meets Richard and Wendy Pini, whose sales of their fantasy epic, Elfquest, have

exceeded Cerebus by a country mile. “They were our counterparts, flipped, because Richard ran the business and Wendy was the artist. Here were people who understood the dynamics of trying to balance a relationship as a business and as a marriage. Dave and I, from the beginning, were putting the book out, but Richard and Wendy were married a couple years before Elfquest. Richard, I think, was teaching at a university.” Tensions run high in Philadelphia, but the couple returns home and the book shifts to a monthly schedule, allowing Deni to become a publisher full time. “Neither of us are morning people. He’s a total night owl. I’m up and making breakfast, and he’s still asleep. I’m sitting in the kitchen, going over paperwork, paying the bills and planning ads. I was a big one even then for writing up press releases. We used to joke the phone had to be surgically removed from my ear because ninety percent of my day was spent on it with distributors and the printers. “A lot of people don’t know this, but I did all the cross-hatching, filled in all the blacks, laid down all the tones and set all the type. I was the Gerhard before there was a Gerhard, although I didn’t do backgrounds. I could tell you exactly which books I did. I remember very distinctly Dave sitting and teaching me to do cross-hatching—when you open up and when you get closed in—or how to switch the size of dot on the Letratone you use for Cerebus depending upon where he was in the foreground or the background. When we were bi-monthly, and I was working full time, he did all that himself. Whatever intimidation factor there may have been from a personal perspective didn’t extend to Dave’s process. “Dave was always very sure of himself,” says Deni. “He was more likely to come to me in the writing stage—the story and where it was going—than he was to ask my opinion of the art. He was the teacher there, showing me how you look at art, how the sequences worked, teaching me how panels worked with storytelling. “While he recognized in me an editor and a writer—and would talk to me about all of it—understand that Cerebus was Dave’s work. It might have been the Dave and Deni show, which we jokingly call it, but the bottom line was ‘This is Dave’s work.’ I didn’t edit his work. He would bounce stuff off me and even if I didn’t like it, he’d still do it. He may not have had confidence in other parts of his life, but he knew he was a good storyteller and saw himself as a storyteller before he met me.” The early 1980s witness Dave’s refinement as an artist, but also Deni’s growth into her role as publisher. With the direct market in place, independent comic companies pop up across the country. “In the really early days, before we branched out and published other people, it was a very small world where you knew everybody. “Bob Burden used to say I’m too trusting, but so much of the business you did was on a handshake. It was meet somebody, sit in the bar, talk about what you’re doing, have a handshake deal where you send them the books and they send you the money. With most of these people, when you’d go out for promotion, you would stay in their homes with their kids. There was only a handful of distributors. It was Phil Seuling, Bud Plant, Jim Friel, and Chuck Rozanski out in Colorado. Everybody working in independent comics knew each other. It was a very tight-knit group. “The Comics Buyer’s Guide’s Don and Maggie Thompson were like our patron angels. They would write about us, print every letter we wrote. I used them a lot as a way to get the word out. We did ad campaigns with them and Maggie taught me how to do them. We all traded ads with each other. 132

“I would go down to New York for a convention and sit down with Dean Mullaney. We would look at each other’s publishing schedules and figure out where our audiences met. That’s how I acquired Ms. Tree. It was Dean phoning and saying, ‘Max is thinking of leaving and I love this book. You know how excited I was when I took it on. Do you want to talk to him?’” Conventions are one way of promoting the book, but in late 1982, Deni and Dave continue the pioneering spirit by taking the show on the road. “Oh God... the Tour!” says Deni. “Dave and I had gone to see the Rolling Stones and had come back with a tour poster. We were looking at the cities—probably smoking dope because that was how we always came up with these harebrained ideas—and at a map and said, ‘We could do this just like rock bands do. What’s the difference?’ We took the cities on the Rolling Stones tour and that became the first U.S. tour. “We did posters and sent them free to all the shops. That gave us something to sign while we were there. I don’t think anybody was doing that at that time. A lot of that was Dave because Dave always had a very rock ’n’ roll viewpoint of his life.” The logistics of a self-publishing company picking up shop and traveling the continent are a nightmare. So much is done of faith because one has no idea if it will work, where one will end up, or if it will even have a hope of driving up the numbers. Dave may be the artist, but it is left again to Deni to lay the foundation. “I did all the work. The nice thing was we had done some cons and knew a lot of the major shop owners. You’d say, ‘If we start on this date, go down the Eastern Seaboard, across the South and up the West Coast, who are the shops we can hit and how do we fit Chicago and Colorado into those?’ “I then phoned the distributors and said, ‘In these cities, who are the main guys with the big numbers?’ This was a big call of faith for your distributors because they sent us their drop ship list. These days, I don’t think they’d do that for a publisher. They’d be scared you’d drop ship direct to the stores. “We sent out queries saying, ‘We’re thinking about doing a tour. We think we’d like to come to your shop.’ We mapped out what it would cost us to fly to all these places and split it between all the shops. The cost of being on the tour is your part of the fee, and you get X number of posters and you get us. “We just wanted to pay the costs. The odd times a shop would ask us to do a signing, the numbers would go up in that area. If the shop owner was smart and publicized it—not all of them did—people would meet you out of curiosity and buy the book out of a sense of ‘I know who this guy is.’ It became real to them. “With some of the hole-in-the-wall shops in New York, people were lined up on the street and we were amazed because this was New York. In Virginia, we had to take this tiny little plane that had ten seats to get to the shop. It was a small Left: Cerebus with Prince Valiant, 1979. town and was the only comic shop for miles. They bought maybe Below: P. Craig Russell, Arn Saba, Dave, Deni & ten copies of Cerebus and they had like fifty people there. I don’t Michael T. Gilbert at Now & Then Books, 1979. know what the story was but we were mobbed and they took us to their home and made us a home-cooked meal. “This was about ten stops into the tour, so we were like dying for real food after living in hotels. They put us up in their homes because that’s all they could afford to do, and it was wonderful. Chuck Rozanski did the same thing. He had a farm out in Colorado, we hung out with his kids and fed his ducks. “Some of them you’d show up, the store was empty and you’d sit and talk to the owner. There was one we went to where they didn’t publicize it at all. The guy owned two shops in the area and it was this private party for his employees—not a single customer in sight. He closed the store and brought out the beer. I was pissed. I was, ‘Why’d we come here? We did this to push numbers up.’” The physical stress on one’s body, on a couple’s relationship (being boxed in together for so long) and on the practical elements of putting together a monthly book could have wreaked havoc, but the spirit pervades throughout. “It was grueling,” says Deni. “We hit our second wind in Dallas. We were huge Kennedy buffs. We were walking around the square, trying to figure out where the building was, the grassy knoll, and we went to the signing that 133

night and were revitalized by it. The seasons changed while we were on the tour. “Karen McKiel was my right hand person in the office. At a certain hour every day, she knew I would phone her. She would have all her questions lined up and it would be a forty-five minute phone call every day. I think Texas was when we had a book ship. We did double books before we left and then played catch up when we got back. Dave could draw anywhere, script anywhere.” Sales gradually increase to fifteen thousand copies, but they always feel the struggle to push upwards. “There was always the Pinis. They always sold way more than we did. They bought the house across the street when we were trying to figure out how to pay the rent. We’re celebrating selling 8,000 and they’re doing 100,000. We’d get interviewed by The Comics Journal and think, ‘Why aren’t our numbers bigger?’” The Comics Journal interview is big exposure, the content revealing a great deal about the couple’s views on the industry and Deni’s idealism towards artists in general. If the famous quote is true—15,000 copies as an independent artist could earn one as much as an artist selling 250,000 at Marvel—the Pinis must have been financially over the moon. “It was really good money because Elfquest was a phenomenon. We wanted 20,000. With that, on a black-and-white monthly book, you could live nice.” The financial freedom allows for Dave to indulge passions like the ‘Dave Sim Fund to Accumulate DC Superhero Comics.’ Deni’s idealism about artists and her husband is part of her driving force. “Dave always made things sound bugger than what they were. He wasn’t buying Golden Age. He was buying Silver Age and it wasn’t like he had hundreds of them. He had a drawer in the bedroom we would look at every once and a while. “From my point of view, I was doing this thing with him that made it possible, and he was so happy when he would get one of these. He’d tell me all about the artist, when he first saw it, and give me the entire history of the comic. “I was a person that really believed artists were the good guys. To be able to work in an environment where I could do that—the deal we made with our artists is they got seventy-five percent—meant I wasn’t working in a factory. “I was working in a creative field, loved all the people I met, making it all happen with the man I loved. I couldn’t have asked for a better life. It was scary because you never knew from one month to the next if you were Above: slightly drug-influenced art, Cerebus #8, 1979. going to get all the bills paid. That was my end and I never Right: family Christmas at the Louberts, 1982. stopped feeling that.” You’ve hit the big time when people start counterfeiting your work. An industrious couple of lads decide it would be a pot of gold to ‘reprint’ the first issue of a black-and-white book and sell it to comic stores across the United States. “That was so bizarre and all happened over a weekend. I’m in the office working and the first phone call was from a guy in Maryland asking about the book. We then got the call from the FBI and then the phone started ringing all day Saturday. You could literally watch it move across the country. “The FBI got involved because it was commerce crossing state lines. They came to the office and talked to us. The guys who did the counterfeit didn’t realize what a small industry this is. By the time they had gone to three shops, owners were talking to each other. “By the time the guy showed up at Comic Kingdom in San Diego, they knew what was going down and talked the guy into coming back later. They phoned us and set up a sting, but the guy figured out something was 134

going on and he split. It took us a long time to figure out who actually did it, but they never made an arrest. I really felt like Dragnet, waiting for Joe Friday to walk through the door. “At conventions, I’ll still run into a Cerebus fan who’ll say, ‘Can you authenticate a number one?’ We had used the wrong staples so I could authenticate a number one just looking at it.” Will Eisner may believe in owning his own creations, but Dave breathes self-publishing. He knows mainstream, work-for-hire companies are sausage factories and this is reinforced in the summer of 1982 when tragedy befalls Gene Day. “He was Dave’s closest friend. Gene was a wonderful, wonderful man who never took care of himself. He just sat in a dark room all day long drawing. He was a total workhorse. “He was overweight and had all the problems a lot of comic book people do. I don’t know if a lot of the stuff would have happened—Dave with drugs and all that happened—if Gene had been around. When Dave would stray too far, Gene was always the one who would say, ‘You got to remember what’s important.’” The bitterness is palpable when Dave speaks of how Marvel helped drive Gene to an early grave. “That’s how it felt,” says Deni, “because when they had a deadline, and they couldn’t meet it, they knew Gene would do it. But you know what? Gene only did it to himself. He lived on coffee. He hardly ever slept. He didn’t take care of himself. I worked with his brother Dan for a few years and Dan kept his life a lot more balanced because of it.” By the time Cerebus #50 is on the shelves, Deni is locked into building a kingdom for Dave. “We were doing the portfolio, doing the card game, running the fan club, and I begin to think, ‘Do I have a definition outside of Dave’s life? Can I publish if I’m not publishing Dave?’ There was nothing in my life that wasn’t about Dave. He was God.” Deni sees a great deal of herself in the Maria Laphams of today’s self-publishing world, and appreciates Maria’s drive to separate herself as the publisher from the artist. “She probably the closest to what I did. That is the attitude she really needs to have. You have to protect yourself.” All the more troubling is Deni’s extra work on the ancillary material—like the fan club and merchandizing—sees little financial rewards. “A lot of the other stuff was done, in all honesty, to feed Dave’s ego. I’m not saying it didn’t make some money, but a lot of the extra things we did was how you promote the book. We had huge mail order. We had a guy who came in a couple days a week to just take care of all the mail order and the fan club. You have to pay people to do that and pay for postage. Really and truly, it was done for the fans.” Deni lays claim to the creation of the Cerebus ‘phonebooks,’ which involved packaging twenty-five issues of the book into a product that could sit on the shelves for longer than seven days on a comic store rack. “It was my idea. We started with Swords of Cerebus. Those were the precursors to the phone books. I remember trying to figure out how you’d bind it and how does it get going with the printers? The first phone books Dave did fell apart. “It is a business and you still need to make money, but the whole point of Aardvark-Vanaheim was Dave and I creating a life. It wasn’t about Dave and I creating an empire. We weren’t Walt Disney and weren’t looking to be. Every time I tried to push him that way, he didn’t want to do it. We had people very early on approaching us about film. He wouldn’t do it unless he had total control, which he knew how likely that was.” Deni wants to offer Cerebus to other mediums, but Dave is recalcitrant. “I kept thinking we could find the right independent producer who really got it, who understood the character and could work in partnership with Dave. We had fans in Hollywood, but the bottom line was it was his character and I could not tread into those 135

territories. That was the reason he owned fifty-one percent of the company. There was always an underlying fear for Dave of losing control of the character.” In truth, Deni is losing control of her character and reacts by developing a desire to publish other creators. Cerebus is doing well enough to allow her to publish other artists’ stories in the back of the book, under the ‘imprint’ of Unique Stories. “We knew people, or met people at conventions, and would talk about ideas and stories. We knew we weren’t going to publish them, but we could see doing six or eight pages. That’s when we started selling the ads at the back to pay for the printing costs. “The mail was the event of the day. You’d get stories and all kinds of things from the fans. We wrote letters to them and developed this kind of Mom and Dad relationship with a lot of young artists because we were established. At conventions, I’d look at portfolios, sitting with young artists talking to them about what they needed to do to get better. That’s when I began to realize I was a publisher but still, even Unique Stories started as Dave’s idea.” Her need to separate herself from her husband’s boundaries leads headlong into publishing full books under the Aardvark-Vanaheim label. “That became a really burning question for me that summer. I sat up late at night with Dean and Cat, looking at artwork, saying, ‘I don’t know how I’m to tell Dave this, but I really want to do this and it has to be something other than Dave. I want to know if this is what I have in me.’ I was psyching myself up for telling Dave because I didn’t know how he would Above: Dave’s use of the page shines through in #9, 1979. take me being very excited about the idea of doing it. Right: convention sketch of Jaka, 1987. “The deal I had to make was, whatever I was doing, Dave came first. The joy of my life was publishing Neil the Horse. It was a book I published for me. Arn Saba was a wonderful person to work with. We talk all the time on the phone. He’s living in San Francisco these days. “Dave discovered him while I was at a convention. I spent six months negotiating with Arn about how we were going to do this. He was a much better businessman than both of us rolled together. We argued about sixtyfour pages, square bound, once a year versus monthly versus bi-monthly versus how fast can you draw? “It was the experience of working with a very different storyteller. Arn is diametrically opposite of Dave. Arn would redraw a line six times until it was perfect. Dave is the ultimate storyteller—everything flows from the writing. With Arn Saba, it’s, ‘Let’s do a Broadway play in a comic book.’ “Bob Burden would send his Flaming Carrot book in baggies: ‘Here are the six panels and you get to put them together.’ You never knew what you were going to get, or if you were going to get it on time! It’s not a role with Bob. He was like that long before he did comics. “He started Flaming Carrot as a bet. Bob was a dealer of comics’ paraphernalia and we always saw him at AtlantaCon. He was always bringing us to weird, exotic shows in the depths of Atlanta—transvestite strip shows. You never knew with Bob where you were going to end up. “We were sitting around some club talking and Bob just made an offhand comment: ‘Oh, I could probably do a comic book’ and he’d never drawn. He doodled and sketched but not seriously. Sure enough, this weird story showed up a couple months later on our doorsteps. You’d look at it and go, ‘Oh my God, what have we gotten ourselves into?’ A lot of Flaming Carrot was concept and sight gags and he’d tie them together and make a story. “Sometimes what we solicited for wasn’t what we actually put out. We’d phone him and say, ‘What are you 136

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doing in three months?’ He’d say, ‘I don’t know, just make something up.’ This was never great with the distributors, but you know what? Flaming Carrot really sold well. If we had put it out monthly, it would have outsold Cerebus. “He would send me ad campaigns I would look at and say, ‘Bob, we can’t do this!’ For a year, he got this bee in his bonnet about the Letterman Show. This was when Harvey Pekar was on all the time. We were writing letters, calling anybody I knew in the entertainment industry. On the other hand, I was dreading it. Bob is such a loose cannon, but it would have been great PR.” There were plenty of late night calls from Bob about the catastrophe of the week. “’I’m going to have my electricity shut off! You have to send me a check!’” laughs Deni. “Of course, there were the endless stories of why the issue was late. Those stories were almost better than the books. Arn was late for different reasons—something had to be re-worked. I would literally go, ‘Arn, I’m going to come up to Toronto and take the damn pages out of your hands.’ Max and Terry were consummate professionals.” Deni’s greatest struggles come from trying to convince artists that the “Dave Formula” of putting out a book every month is the only true route to success. Had the independent artists of the past twenty years been able to follow this model, Gary Groth’s death dream for mainstream comics may have been realized. “I’d say to them, ‘With a quarterly book, the audience have forgotten you. Monthly is a habit. You want them to think of you as being a part of their life. Bi-monthly, you better be something they are willing to remember what month you are coming out. And you’ve got to be on time. If you come out the third Tuesday of every month, you’ve got to come out the third Tuesday of every month.’” By the summer of 1983, Deni is at her peak. She is on the Kitchener Business Chamber of Commerce, as one of the only two businesspeople making money and not looking for grants. “We were celebs in Kitchener. My brother-in-law, Bob—on whom the Boobah character is based—was a journalist. He’s now a senior news editor at the Kitchener Waterloo Record. Because of that connection, we were interviewed once a year as the couple that did this zany kind of business.” She’s also comparing notes with peers like Jim Shooter at Marvel Comics. “Dave and I always had different takes on people because I was the businessperson. I got along with Shooter and understood a lot of his concerns. I think he was very good for comics. He was a very innovative man who tried to do a lot of different stuff. “He loved comics and worked at the major corporate machine. The difference was he knew he worked in a very corporate world. I think he appreciated the fact I understood what he was up against. At an Ottawa Con in 1983, he and I got drunk afterwards and talked late into the night about how Jim envied me and, if he had his druthers, would love to have a little independent comic book company. But he lived in the reality of his world. “Unlike Dave, I recognized the difference between the person and the professional. I would meet people all the time that I really liked as people. I liked Jim Shooter as a person and found him funny and entertaining. I didn’t agree with a lot of his philosophy and policies. I didn’t have to—I didn’t work for him. “I’m sorry, but I don’t consider him a Canadian,” laughs Deni when speaking of John Byrne, the then famous X-Men artist. “He just strayed for a while across the border. I always thought he was a bit of a pompous person, but there are so many nice people in comics, so why waste your energy on people you don’t get along with? “That’s the difference between Dave and I. Dave loves the drama of what I used to call, ‘Let’s you and him fight.’ Dave’s great at that. We might have had our differences of opinion but when Marvel came after Dave and I for the doing the parody, Jim Shooter phoned and warned us.” Dave becomes famous for his dead-on parodies of other pop culture icons, and his Wolveroach character brings the wrath of corporate Marvel down on their heads. “Dave started doing the parodies because we would go to conventions and they’d throw you together with somebody in comics who was hot at the time. You’d find out they were huge fans of what Dave did. “We’d all party together and you can’t put artists in a room together without somebody drawing something. Before you knew it, there was a bunch of reality-altered human beings—doing whatever they used to alter their reality—throwing stories and ideas

around. You get back from a con and be prancing around the living room doing the ‘Moon Roach,’ or whatever it was we’d happen to see, and the parodies would just happen.” From her perspective as a woman in a man’s industry, Deni witnesses the reverse of the marginalization the previous generation experienced. “Me and Jenette Kahn for years,” laughs Deni. “It actually gave you a little bit of prestige. I’m very used to being the only woman in the room. I had more in common with Richard Pini then I had with Jenette Kahn because I was dealing with the same problems he was. “All the women in comics share with each other the story about the guy at the Con that’s following the girls around. For years in the 1980s, there was a guy at the San Diego Con that took cheesecake photographs of all the women in the business. Very innocent ones, but he would come by and ask you, oh so very nicely and oh so very politely, if you would pose for him and would you to like move your skirt up just a little bit. He would always send me copies. He probably has an immense collection. Cat, Trina and Diana Schutz—we all knew each other and we all dealt with this guy. “In a lot of circumstances—not all of them—you’re dealing with guys who stopped growing up at some point. They don’t have the social graces to deal with people of the opposite sex. You’re the closest thing they can deal with because they can talk to you about comics. “I was always the one sitting behind Dave at all the conventions watching for the shy ones in the back to bring Above: cover to Cerebus #13, 1980. them forward. You never quite got used to the fact the guys Right: The Moon Roach character, Cerebus #32, 1981. would come up to you with this absolute adoration in their eyes. It’s not you they are feeling this way about—it’s that you’re a female they can walk up and talk to because they know kind of who you are because they read your books. I’m enough of a geek to understand that.” The late 1970s and early 1980s sees a regeneration of talent in the industry. Dave is among many that value comics as more than a job, and Deni’s favorite memories are of meeting such an eclectic bunch. “I was very lucky that, through Dave, I met a lot of people like Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz who were just coming up the ranks. I was in a safe position to meet them because I was an equal. I’m not a fan, even though I liked their work. A lot of times I met them socially first and later found out what they did. “That’s a very different way to meet somebody. You’re all at dinner, you really like this person, you exchange phone numbers, say you’re going put each other on your freebie list, go home and open up the pages and it’s Dark Knight or Elektra. ‘This is what Frank does? Wow, he’s not only a great guy but he can tell a story.’ You’d get to phone him up and say, ‘Hey, I just read the issue and I really liked it’ and you became friends. I met Neil Gaiman because I was putting together a literacy project and he agreed to do some writing for me. What a great way to meet somebody.” It is Dave and Deni against the world with Deni as his protector, especially with fans writing letters begging for the return of Cerebus the Barbarian from the book’s earliest issues. “‘I’ll throw her off a cliff if you guys don’t go away. It’s my book and I’ll do what I want,’” says Deni about Dave’s reaction to fans’ demands on his characters. “It was always what Dave wants to do that was the point of the company. “I used to read the fan mail first because we were getting complaints about characters and Dave would get upset. I’d go, ‘I just don’t want to put him through this,’ and would confiscate letters I didn’t want him to see. I was always very protective of him. I didn’t want him to deal with distributors who would have Dave deal with the realities of whatever it was that they needed at the time.” She will soon need to protect herself. Their marriage comes to a grinding halt in that summer of 1983, 138

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concurrent with Cerebus #55. “The last two years of our marriage, I had no idea why we were still together outside of the business. I knew it wasn’t working. We were stoned for a year straight without ever being straight. That’s me trying to keep up with him, like ‘Okay, I’m going to be Yoko. I’m not going to be Cynthia.’ I came home from the office, sat over dinner, told him what went on with the business, he’d go back into the studio to draw and I went to bed. That was our life and it sucked. I wanted to get into counseling or therapy. I could not bear the thought of being without him. I couldn’t even picture life without him.” To clear her head, she hitches a ride on the back of Paul Smith’s (artist for the X-Men at the time) motorcycle and crosses the U.S. all the way from the San Diego comic convention. “It’s one of my best memories. Paul and I are still really good friends. Talking to Paul on that trip made me realize I had to do something, that this couldn’t go on. “I confronted Dave when I came back. I kept saying, ‘Can we go into therapy?’ and it was total denial on Dave’s part. I finally realized that if I stayed, I would be dead. It became self-protection. I’d say, ‘You know, maybe you can do drugs for a year straight but my health and self-esteem is going and I can’t do this anymore.’ That’s not a life. This is no longer ‘us against the world.’ This is us in a business partnership where we each think we’re getting what we want, but there is no sense of us being together.” Initially, Deni imagines the split as temporary, and they decide to continue as business partners. This turns out to be a horribly misguided decision, leaving Deni still wondering if a different path chosen could have preserved the core of their relationship. “I think about it everyday,” she says. “Fifteen years later, I think about it everyday. “Dave is my soul mate. He is the person I am meant to be with, but he has stuff he has to work out. I’m a big grownup now and I can say, ‘I can’t make him work that stuff out.’ I spent probably the last two years of the marriage trying to make him see that. I finally had to just go on without him. That’s a hard decision to make about somebody on whom your whole life is centered.” Running a company as husband and wife can be traumatic in happy times, but the following year of Deni and Dave’s life together melts into disaster after disaster. “God, you don’t even want to know how bad it was. It was Hell on Wheels. I knew it wasn’t working, but I couldn’t face the idea of life without Dave. “He was devastated. He threatened to close the company down if I didn’t just walk away. I owned fortynine percent of this company. I supported this man for five years while he got it off the ground. I broke my life up into issues of Cerebus and I still think of it in those terms. “We’d have screaming matches to the point where our staff would ask us not to come into work together.

Above: Dave and Harry Kremer in Kitchener, 1990s. Right: from love to hate, Cerebus & Jaka, 2000. If we were both in the same room, we’d just end up screaming, crying, and throwing things. My God, it was unbearable and we were both determined not to be the one to give in. “Dave and I were trying to figure out if we could run the business together, but we both really knew this wasn’t going to work. I wasn’t living with him anymore and was seeing Paul Smith at the time.” From amidst the turmoil comes Dave’s second “marriage.” Gerhard, the one-named wonder who remains with Dave to this day as his background artist, suddenly appears on the back cover of Cerebus #62. “Gerhard was an old friend of mine,” says Deni. “He went to high school with my brother. He was the artist in the group and worked at the local art supply store. “The high school group: Bob (my brother-in-law), my brother Michael and Gerhard were called the ‘Out to Lunch Bunch’ because of the ‘extracurricular activities’ they did during lunchtime—the altered substances. A couple of those guys—before I knew Dave—were the core people the magazine Cerebus grew out of. These were all friends of mine and Gerhard was in that group. “I was picking up art supplies, like I usually did for Dave, and Gerhard worked part time there. You know when you walk into like an insurance building, and you see the drawing of the headquarters, or the building? That’s what Gerhard did and they were all over town. “I thought to myself, ‘Dave is always complaining we have all these artist friends and they all live somewhere else. Gerhard doesn’t really have too many friends that are artists.’ I brought him over and they just hit it off. “Gerhard’s very easygoing and doesn’t have a lot ambition—talented but not a lot of push; the very opposite of Dave. He’d seen Gerhard around because I’d a huge circle of friends in Kitchener and Dave was pretty much a loner until he met me. “Shortly afterwards, we said, ‘Well, he does all these great backgrounds and great buildings.’ It was all the things Dave just hated drawing. It started as an experiment and turned out to be a really healthy partnership. “In the early days, Gerhard took over my job. He did crosshatching, the tones and filled in blacks. 140

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Gradually, he would draw the buildings because Dave hates drawing anything that requires a ruler. Dave would sketchily indicate where things needed to go and Gerhard would pencil in everything. Dave would make changes and Gerhard would ink everything but Cerebus and the characters. Everything else, Gerhard could do well and do faster than Dave. “Dave is primarily a storyteller who taught himself to draw to have more control of the story. He was able to bring in somebody to expand the palette without him actually doing it. Gerhard was so easygoing it doesn’t bother him to have Dave say, ‘Do that, do this, do that.’ Gerhard’s happier than schlepping artwork.” Dave takes control of the company for good with a masthead change in Cerebus #65, referring to himself as President Dave Sim. “That’s kind of where things were going. It was Dave wanting to make sure he had total control over everything. I found out I was a publisher. Much of this came out of my friendship with Dean Mullaney. He was phoning up and saying, ‘Oh wow, I’m going to publish Max Collins. That’s so cool!’ I wanted to do that. “Bernie Wrightson’s wife Michelle and I would talk about being the artist’s wife—because she was publishing Bernie’s portfolios—and how you felt people didn’t really believe you did anything. They had no clue what you went through. I had learned far beyond anything Dave taught me. I began to think, ‘Am I a publisher or am I merely a wife who wants to help her husband?’” A publisher indeed as Deni decides to split for good and form her own company, Renegade, but not before another lesson about tending to the personal over the professional. “The deal when we split was I had to take all the books with me. Dave wanted his company back to what it was before—the company that published Dave. “In the middle of all of this, Journey—a wonderful book by Bill Loebs, who is just a wonderful guy to work with—hits a crisis. We’re trying to the figure how to split the company and if we’re getting divorced. Journey was a successful book, but Bill and his wife feel we’re not paying enough attention to the books and they audited us. I get it announced to me they’re coming up from Buffalo because they don’t think they’re getting paid right. Now, Nadine is protecting her husband, I understand that, but her and I never got along. We lost the book. That was me being too trusting with Gary Groth. I told him the problems we were going through, thinking I was talking to a friend, and he offered them a contract. “I never trusted Gary again. Bill and I made up. He was worried he was going to get left by the wayside. We weren’t doing enough publicity, weren’t pushing the book at a crucial time for Journey. Gary went to them and said, ‘There’s chaos over there. Why don’t you come and work with us?’ He’d always wanted the book, their contract was up for renewal and they said good-bye. That was a hard thing to go through as a publisher, in the midst of everything.” At 10 a.m. on April 1, 1985, at the law offices of Wilf Jenkin—seventy-odd issues in the run of the book she helped put on the map—an official transfer of Deni’s stock is completed. She is free. Deni follows her heart out to Los Angeles to start up Renegade, but she is left with little from the stock transfer. “I had no money. We had to figure out with our lawyers, who are friends of mine, how to value my fortynine shares and we didn’t come up with much—$5,000 or $10,000. How do you value a company that if Dave isn’t a part of it, it doesn’t really exist? “That money staked me in Renegade. I came to California with about three months of living expenses. I

hawked my diamond wedding ring to get a plane ticket out here.” Deni survives in L.A. on $700 a month, living in her office with a couch that opens into a bed with a little kitchen in the back. “You lived and breathed comic books 24/7. You did book signings. We did promotions on a very strict budget, but it was a struggle.” The greatest void comes from not having a sounding board one can bounce ideas off. “I stumbled with a few books where I liked the person, like the charming concept, but didn’t realize they weren’t capable of pulling it through. Dave was much better at being able to see those than me. I struggled with just being the only one responsible for it. “Harlan Ellison was a member of the Feed a Starving Publisher Club. If you were a straight shooter with him, he’d take the shirt off his back. He’s fed and put me up when I had no place to live. When I had to close Renegade and went to work at a studio putting some books together, he offered a title. “On the other hand, I don’t take much crap from him, which is the way you have to be with him. Paul Smith also really came through for me. He helped me out and kept me in touch with people.” Managing her own line of books means managing multiple egos and self-publishing can attract all kinds. Publishing Dave Sim is one thing, but coping with Steve Ditko is the major leagues of ego management. Ditko’s editor, and confidant, Robin Snyder approaches Deni about bringing to Renegade the Ditko’s World title—an appropriate title in Deni’s experience. “I met Robin at a con, I think, through Bob Burden. Robin was a character in and of himself. He was one of the few people Ditko trusted to work with, and had a backlog of old Ditko work he was looking to get published. “He was looking for somebody that would be very hands-off with Ditko. He knew I wasn’t an old time comic book fan and wouldn’t be hanging out wanting to meet Steve. Working with a lot of really oddball artists gave me a good rep in dealing with difficult people. “I prided myself on the fact I could work with anybody and, believe me, after working with Ditko, you can say you can work with anybody. He’s just a very strange guy and that’s kind of an understatement. This is the man that—when they gave him an honorary Inkpot—really gave me hell for accepting an award on his behalf. “At the con I accepted on his behalf thinking he’d be happy. I sent it to him and got a phone call saying, ‘Awards bleed the artist and make us compete against each other. They are the most horrible things in the world. How dare you accept this on my behalf!’ “He sent it back to me, saying, ‘You’re going to send it back and going to tell them why.’ I’m phoning Jackie Estrada and saying, ‘I’m sorry, Jackie, it’s not my idea.’ Thankfully all the people dealing with this knew me, knew Ditko’s reputation and took it really well.”

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As with all things Ditko, the set-up is unique in that she is publishing an artist’s book through an emissary. “That was crazy enough in itself. Robin is a work of art—an oddball character. He’d disappear from an address and show up at another. He’d call me from Ditko’s apartment and there’d be yelling and screaming in the background. You never knew what was going on with Robin. Ditko didn’t want to talk to me because I was a businessperson. You’d get stuff in and there’d be little notes attached to the pages. “Robin wasn’t really editing. Ditko knew he could trust Robin not to change anything. Robin would tell me stories about literally going into that trash bin in the back of Marvel and pulling out pages Marvel had rejected and thrown out. “Ditko’s World wasn’t selling anymore and we were having problems getting it together. I don’t know if Ditko got any money because all the money went to Robin and, with the last two of the books, the Above: Deni & Wendy Lee, San Diego, 1987. IRS took the money. You don’t get a say in that. They Left: Deni & co. at the Renegade both in S.D., late 1980s. showed up and said, ‘We’re garnishing every check he gets.’ It was a divorce and he owed his wife money. She had gone to the IRS about it, so they were taking it from his paycheck. Robin is very devoted to Steve, I will say that much. He seems to have a personality that can deal with Ditko and that says a lot.” Renegade’s ‘anything but super-heroes’ model might have worked in the 1950s, but in the direct market of the 1980s, men in tights hold all the cards and the slightest fluctuation can create havoc. The first shock wave to hit is the explosion, then rapid implosion, of independent black-and-white books in the summer of 1986. Variations of the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles theme leaves respectable publishers stigmatized once consumers are burned by speculation. One distributor going out of business can also wipe out publishers living by the skins of their teeth. Deni’s Renegade is vulnerable, due to the number of books put out because she wants to put them out, rather than an objective business decision being made. In May 1989, the last books go out, as does Deni’s dream of selfpublishing. “We never really recovered from Glenwood going out of business. Glenwood was the regional distributor and owed me a lot of money. I owed my printers a lot of money and I brought them a lot of business. At one point pretty much every black-and-white book was coming out of Prenney Print all through my recommendation. “They met with me about eight months to a year before we closed and said, ‘You’ve got a huge debt we don’t think you’ll ever be able to pay. We’re going to forgive you the entire debt and write it off the books. We’re going to say you brought us all this business, count that as payback and put you on pay in advance.’ I felt that was fair. If they hadn’t done it, I would have been out of business then. “We took another look at the budget. I started charging more for PR and tried a lot of different things to figure out what it was the market wanted. We had core books like Ms. Tree, Neil the Horse, and Flaming Carrot that sold well. We had books that were almost vanity press. They would sell two or three thousand, like Maxwell Mouse, that I thought should have succeeded. I wanted to do books for girls, but when I did them, they didn’t sell. “You are looking around and who’s succeeding are the people doing platinum covers; doing marketing techniques. We can do that, but that’s not what I got into this for. This was before Image Comics, too. I felt like there was no place left for the small independent publisher who just wanted to do good stories. “In terms of how you market books, I was probably ahead of the curve. I had an instinct for it, but I just didn’t have a lot of practical knowledge. Face it, I was girl working in a factory that started putting out her husband’s book. “I’ve learned a lot about running a business since I closed Renegade. I would have cut it to the books that actually sold. I would have done more licensing. That was really the way to keep us afloat and I didn’t recognize it 143

at the time. We were doing the Files of Ms. Tree. I had Terry Nantier of NBM Books doing the hardbound reprint volumes of things like The Silent Invasion. We were doing foreign reprint volumes. We needed to do more of that. “I had the perfect material to go into bookstores and I knew it, but for the life of me couldn’t figure out how to get it in there. In the end, I was going to the American Booksellers Association and starting to make a little inroad with that. That would have been a good way for me to go. “I should have brought in a financial partner because I had properties. The contracts gave the artists the complete right to walk away with the characters at any point. As a businessperson, I needed to tie them in for a set period of time to guarantee to a financier we had the characters long enough to be able to do something. Ms. Tree was under development for film the whole time she was with us. All it would’ve taken was one title to have made that break. “I was too much of an idealist.” Deni’s biggest mistake is turning down an offer from a group of young, upstart artists looking to break away from ‘The Man.’ “Jim Valentino came to me and said, ‘I’m talking to Liefeld and these guys to do basically what you did with Renegade. We want to form a consortium,’ which was what Renegade was. It was a co-op. He said, ‘These guys sell big numbers. You want to come run it?’ “I went, ‘I don’t want to run another comic book company for as long as I live!’ “It was the wrong answer,” laughs Deni. “I turned down running Image Comics because I had just closed Renegade and emotionally was not in a place to do it.” In the early 1990s, Deni goes to work for Richard and Wendy Pini as they seek to expand their Elfquest franchise, but this too is short-lived. “Richard was excited about stretching beyond just publishing Wendy. I was hearing a familiar story of me and Renegade. I’d say to Richard, ‘Do you know what you are walking into? This is not like publishing Wendy. This is a whole new set of egos, contracts, having to be a businessperson.’ “He said, ‘Would you consider coming in and being the line editor?’ I did that for about a year, but there were personality clashes and I’m out in New York, not getting along with people who were some of my best friends at one point. The creative vision I want for the line isn’t happening. I’m caught in a struggle between the artists they’re bringing to the books and Richard and Wendy’s need to keep control of their characters. I then had an interesting offer from a movie studio called Full Moon to put 144

together a comic book division for them. “It was the launch of the company that never happened and was a wonderful ride while I did it. You threw money at every problem. That’s when Harlan brought me a book. Marv Wolfman and Peter David brought me a book. I was planning a company from the bottom up and had a budget that was reasonable. “I was doing what I always wanted to do when I was with Dave. It was to create a synergy between a comic book company and a movie company. Peter David wrote him some movies. It was real exciting until the money went away, but it was definitely something that opened my eyes up to what I could do. I understood I really liked the idea of trying to find out where comics fit into that whole world.” Deni watches from afar in the 1990s as the industry implodes, and companies like Marvel make one disastrous move after another, like opening their own distribution company, and penalizing stores who ‘gang order’ to avoid Marvel’s ordering quotas. “The moment they announced that we were, ‘Yeah, Right,’” laughs Deni. “It was shades of the Mafia. They totally alienated their selling market and biting the hand that feeds you. “If you were running a business during the heyday of the alternatives when all the shops were coming up, it felt like a Golden Age for creativity. In every facet of the industry people were taking risks to do things they loved. “You would go to the shops and they were little holes in the walls. Carol Kalish created this program to help retailers buy cash registers because most shop owners didn’t have registers. This was her desire to help shop owners run a better business. Most of them ran it out of a cigar box under the counter—really and truly. They were fans who were living in the middle of the world they loved, but had no business sense. “There were ten boxes of chrome covers sitting in the back of a shop. Cerebus #1 was 1000 copies across two countries. The title started at 1000 and went to 20,000. If you start with one-hundred thousand chrome covers, they’re never going to be collectibles.” The first sign of a unified movement of women in the industry designed to encourage young girls to read

Top Left: Lois, Ken Steacy, Trina Robbins, Steve Leialoha & Deni, 1990. Bottom Left: Heidi MacDonald & Deni at San Diego, late 1990s. Below: Dave still delivers a powerful optic punch, Cerebus #237, 1998.

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comics comes in the formation of Friends of Lulu. Heidi MacDonald, a professional in the industry is running around the 1993 San Diego Comic-Con passing out flyers for a meeting. “Trina Robbins was also a big instigator because it’s hard to say no to Trina. Traditionally, there was always one night when all the guys seemed to go to Mexico or the strip clubs and all the women would get together and talk. “Enough women had gotten into positions other than ‘girlfriend of the artist’ or editor. All the women for many years in comics were just editors. Not to denigrate editors, but it was, ‘If you’re a chick, you can edit. You can’t write and certainly can’t draw.’ Mary Wilshire was totally ignored in the industry and is an incredible artist. “Jackie Estrada was really the organizer and is an incredible organizer. You start looking at a thing like Women in Animation and think, ‘There’s a great organization after which we should be patterning ourselves.’ We really were accomplishing stuff by working with the distributors to do lists of recommended books or working with libraries to get books on the shelves.” Deni’s key contribution is editing a book for comic retailers called How To Get Girls Into Your Store with a foreword by Neil Gaiman. “It sold out instantly. Every year I get a call from Lulu, ‘Do you know where the negatives are?’ I lost them and they’d still be putting it out if I could just get my hands on the disks. I had a lot of retailers come up and say, ‘We needed this. I’m implementing the stuff you’re saying and it really Above: Deni’s FOL retailers’ handbook, 1997. helped.’” Her present is comics-free. Deni’s turned her attention to Right: Deni’s last straw—the Astoria rape working as a financial advisor for women specifically. “It’s my big goal in scene, Cerebus #94, 1987. life now. Women in comics, in industry, women who are successful don’t have the knowledge men have about finances and money. Women are never taught it. It’s like this secret that guys keep between themselves. I meet successful women that don’t have bank accounts in their names or don’t have retirement accounts. “I’m getting my securities’ license. I worked running the training division of a marketing company for a couple of years. My goal is to put together programs teaching women how to take care of themselves financially.” Hearing the stories of Lindy Ayers and Josie DeCarlo illustrates the one consistent thread running throughout the industry. “We are the caretakers,” says Deni, “taught from day one, but we don’t know how to take care of ourselves. We don’t think to take care of ourselves. “If I had taken what was really worth 49% of Aardvark-Vanaheim, if I had put my foot down a few more times about how this needed to be done, maybe I’d still be running Aardvark-Vanaheim. Maybe that partnership would have survived if I had known a little bit more about what I was doing. “I fully admit Dave will always be the largest influence I ever had in my life. He shaped who I was. For all the problems we had, he really always believed I could do it and always told me so. “He is an addictive personality and has a hard time turning away from things that attract him and all of that led to our downfall. Nevertheless, there is a person inside of there I met that first night and I know that.” Dave’s latest addiction is the ‘exposure’ of the ‘feminist/homosexualist axis.’ Dave continues the Dave and Deni show into the late 1980s, becoming the main point man of the movement to have self-publishing take its place beside the corporate giants. As the 1990s dawn, so too does Dave’s outwardly aggressive stance towards feminists whom he alleges are setting the political, economic, and moral agenda for the world at large, much to society’s detriment. To this day, it remains unclear whether or not he is playing the role of Andy Kaufman or Steve Ditko. Does he really believe in his manifesto of ‘men as the light, women as the void’ or is it an exaggerated marketing ploy? “I haven’t spoken to Dave since we got divorced,” says Deni, “but he likes being at the center of the storm. There were seeds of his problem with women when we were together. “It’s horrifying to read because it means he resolved nothing and there is karma to be paid for that kind 146

of pain. That’s the saddest thing about it. I read this ‘Women are the void,’ and I’m sorry but I know this man really, really well. I knew this man when he was a virginal little teenager, trying to figure out how to deal with women. I know all of his history, all of his family. “I think that’s why he doesn’t want to talk to me. It’s because I’m one of the few people who really know him and there’s a really confused person there, who has no clue how to get himself out of this.” According to Deni, Dave has lived this out on the pages of Cerebus ever since they split. “The issue of the rape was when I stopped reading. Astoria is me. When Cerebus raped Astoria, I stopped reading the book because that was Dave attacking me on the page. “If you don’t resolve it in your life and don’t resolve it on the page, all you do is you bring it back up over and over and over again. There are plenty of people in comics that resolve all their stuff on the page and you can look at the evolution of their art. “Bill Sienkiewicz is a perfect example. If you follow his career, you followed all his neurosis and all his resolutions. He came out of it a much healthier person, both in terms of being a better artist, storyteller and a better person. He was dealing with it. “Dave doesn’t deal with any of it. All of his rage and his need for control comes out on the page. As a consequence, none of it ever gets resolved and then he writes these frothing-at-the-mouth... they’re sad.” Deni can see the comparison of Dave’s current situation to that of the reclusive Ditko. “Yes! There’s no one there to tell him he’s full of it.” It steps over the edge of satire when Dave destroys his closest relationship of the past few years. Diana Schutz, long-time editor at Dark Horse Comics, is Dave’s proofreader until the barrage of anti-women statements becomes too much. She sends a private note saying she can no longer continue in good conscience, and Dave prints it on the inside cover of the book. So much for respecting a friend’s privacy and for Dave’s ardent belief a creator owns his own material and should have full control over its dispersal. “She came and cried on my shoulder,” says Deni mournfully. “All his life, he’s always working everything out on the page. I worry about him when Cerebus is done.” Nowadays, Deni makes a yearly vigil to the Golden Apple store nearest to pick up the latest material seemingly inspired by her self-publishing legacy. “I still read Bone, although I’m probably about two years behind. Dave Lapham’s stuff was something that pulled me back in for a while. I’ll walk out with $200 worth of graphic novels, which isn’t hard to do. I read them and go, ‘Wow, I need to start reading again,’ but I don’t make it out again. There are no comic book shops in Long Beach—I have to go to Los Angeles.” Almost fifteen years from running her own company, Deni still attends the San Diego comic convention every year possible. She can’t get the comic book narcotic out of her bloodstream. If someone came up to her today and said, ‘We’re starting the next Image Comics and we want your help,’ would she jump back in? “I think about it all the time.”

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CHAPTER NINE

MELINDA GEBBIE & ALAN MOORE

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Writers—can’t live with ’em, can’t shoot ’em. Hey, Image Comics tried, but even they eventually turned to the man handed the crown of most influential writer in comics of the past twenty years. And female artists? ‘Hey Babe, you can always edit or color.’ If you were a woman in the 1970s and wanted to draw comics, you could have cracked the Berlin Wall with greater ease. What chance would you have in Underground Comix drawing (gasp!) pornographic images of subservient males stomped on by dominating women? Hey, it was cute for Robert Crumb to whip it out and drill the female species a new hole, but it was declassé for a woman to unnerve proper society in such a fashion. Somehow a writer from Northhampton, England and an artist from Sausalito, California found each other, and found work in an industry no longer gathering creators within a fifty-mile radius of Manhattan. It’s November 18th, 1953 and if you take a train ride one hour north from London, you can witness the birth of Alan Moore. Charles Dickens still has a hold on the industrial town and Alan grows up in Council Flats—houses rented out by the town for pennies a serving— more appropriate to the 1800s. With a brewery worker for a father and Above: He’s an artist, too. Moore’s fanzine art, Dark Fantasy v.4 #1, Mar. 1979. printer for a mother, the poverty Left: photo by artist Jose Villarrubia, (c) 2002, of Alan & Melinda. endured makes the Romitas’ Ellery Street tenements look like Bel Air. One grandmother has no indoor toilet; the other lacks electric light. British comics are as dreary as the town “decor” until the late 1950s when DC’s stable of revived heroes and the Fantastic Four arrive on foreign shores. Alan deals acid, gets thrown out of school at seventeen and works an assortment of mind-numbing jobs at exotic locales, such as a sheep-skinning plant at the edge of town, or at the Grand Hotel, cleaning toilets. He marries in 1974 and—staring at life on the doll or in an office job—first sets out to make his living in comics by the late 1970s. He is hired as the weekly cartoonist, doing a half-page strip for the British music newspaper, Sounds. Breaking into U.S. comics is viewed by creators overseas as total lockdown, so Alan begins a stint at Marvel U.K., before finding his stride at Warrior magazine in late 1981, scribing two of his seminal works; “Marvelman” (to be published as Miracleman in the U.S.) and “V for Vendetta.” 149

In 1984, Moore makes that cross-ocean breakthrough when DC Comics hands him their borderlinecanceled title, Swamp Thing, and Moore takes flight. Soon, Watchmen follows and on the above four titles alone, he could retire with legend intact. Few people in the medium are tagged with the ability to raise the bar of expectations, and Moore sets it high. After vowing not to work for corporate giant DC ever again—thanks to his disagreement with DC concerning licensing revenues of Watchmen-themed products, Moore lives the life of an independent creator, highlighted by the From Hell opus with artist Eddie Campbell made into a successful motion picture in 2001 starring Johnny Depp. In 1998, Moore envisions running his own imprint of titles and produces the America’s Best Comics’ line of books, seeing Moore turn into a 1990s version of Stan Lee, with writings in all five titles. But this is only half the story. Moore’s Jack Kirby will be his partner in life and comics, Melinda Gebbie. “I grew up in a beautiful little village called Sausalito, in the San Francisco Bay area,” says Melinda, “the only child, if not the favorite. Most of the memories are filled with the natural loveliness of that little town. We lived just down from Hurricane Gulch, where the Golden Gate Bridge crosses a rainbow painted tunnel and breaks through into golden sunlight from pearly fog on the other side of the bay. The child-sized roads were winding, the secret footpaths dappled in shadow. Even as a five year old, I could wander barefoot everywhere. There was a stone elephant fountain in the postage-stamp sized park and, at five, I was the perfect height for the little brass water fountain. “We lived in a tiny house at the top of a hill with a bejeweled view of the whole Bay—including Angel Island and Farallones. In my dreams, I sit sometimes with my feet in a shallow turquoise pool, looking out at that view. 150

“My father worked in a men’s clothing store; my mom, a legal secretary. Daddy had a little corner of the garage where he worked on his miniature models. Cable cars, clipper ships and tiny metal trains were kitted up with miniscule lanterns, or machinery—or even velvet seats for the tiny pullman cars. He could make anything from a bit of balsa wood or fabric. “He also had a collection of George Petty-type watercolor drawings he’d kept in a cardboard portfolio. The colors were bright purples and greens. The skin tones were like cream. Looking at those rich 1930s and 1940s style portraits was like running my hands through jewels. “By the time I was eight, I had been hooked on drawing for a good two years and had filled a cardboard box half my height with little stapled picture-books. Even at that age, I remember walking up the gravel drive to our gate making the vow that I would be an artist. It was the only thing I Top Left: Alan’s fanzine art from Dark Fantasy v.4 #2, May 1979. wanted to be. Bottom Left: photo of Melinda in the late 1970s. “My parents were fairly Below: more of Alan’s art from Back Street Bugle #25, Mar. 1979. indifferent to my interest. They were thankful I could play happily with my crayons and not bother them, except to show them my little creations when they were complete, ready to be stapled together. “My parents died long before I had a chance to divorce myself from them. It could be read as a kind of cowardice on their part, not wanting to venture forth into the world of my violent pubertal drives, only to be cast off as discounted antiquities. But when you leave the game before the ending, you never find out whether there’s an upside to the proceedings. I think my mother died hoping I’d marry an architect and learn to love beige. Birth control did play a huge role in my intellectual development. Without it, I would have been a single mother of five. “Archie Comics were the first comics I ever copied. I loved the sexy, kinetic quality they had. I must have been eleven at the time. At twelve, I got into Mad Magazine and became obsessed with copying Wally Wood’s Oina Lollabridgidas. Later, at about age seventeen, I fell in love with “Little Annie Fanny,” and drew versions of Annie that look quite similar to the ones I’ve done more recently. “National Lampoon, in the mid-and-late 1970s, had a vicious bite. Their issues on starvation, boredom, and their high school yearbook tore the warm fuzzy ©2002 Alan Moore

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curtain from the self-seeking, shallow and casually cruel behind-the-scenesmentally operating in the average mid1920s American. “It said ‘C’mon—fess up. All you want is cheap laffs and as long as it’s at someone else’s expense—screw ’em! You’re detestable! Bring on the coke!’ The comic strips, like Politenessman, with his hankie of steel and most importantly, the Aesop Brothers by Rodrigues were grotesque to different degrees, but still almost British in their darkness. “It’s rather freaky seeing how you simply become a more advanced version of the seed-self you were as a child. Since first getting involved in the industry, I’ve come to know what a hard thing it is to create this stationary, yet kinetic, art. Portrait painters have it bloody easy—one-shots are cream compared to doing what feels like millions of little squares filled with just the right amount of life. Next to handmade animation, comics are the most difficult of all the visual disciplines. “I used to think being selftaught was something to hide. I hoped nobody would notice I didn’t have ‘proper’ training. To tell the truth, though, I learned via an unsolicited summer scholarship course a very important lesson. I took six art classes a day for three months and received every conceivable grade possible, from A+ to F-. “Although I tried hard in all my classes, the grades were always based on the teachers’ taste—not on individual performance. There was no rhyme or reason in the grading, and I don’t believe art is something that can be ‘taught.’ Some people can mimic, others are eager simply to please a teacher and can therefore be crushed by a bad grade. This is hugely unfair if some geezer in power wants to judge the creative voice of a budding talent, according to his or her own preferences, and not according to the students own search for their particular voice. “A very good painting teacher, Leonard Bregger, befriended me when I was twenty-three, taking me under his wing. He did two things: he showed me all the art books he had and when he looked at my work, he picked out all the positive, engaging elements—the personal language he saw forming—and concentrated on helping me bring those out. Anyone can criticize. What could be worse than paying out good money to be told by some failed artist that your work is crap?!” Hey, who’s the writer in this chapter, anyhow—me, Alan or Melinda? Sexual ‘disorientation’ is a theme in Melinda’s life and her need to express this as an artist sees her stumble upon a publishers’ fair in the early 1970s at the Hall of Flowers in San Francisco’s Golden Gate Park for a meeting that would alter the course of her life. Trina Robbins, a member of the fledgling Wimmen’s Comix Collective, recounts her first experience with Melinda. “We women cartoonists were there, taking turns behind a table selling Wimmen’s Comix which, at that time, had a great, big, two issues out. We sold out all our copies and I left, but Lee Marrs stayed behind with a few sample readers’ copies. She was at the table when Melinda Gebbie walked up, curious to see 152

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what this Wimmen’s Comix thing was. “The end result: Melinda came to our next meeting, and contributed to issue three—her first comic ever. Considering Melinda had never drawn a comic before, it was amazing! Of course, it was pretty darn incomprehensible, but the art was exquisite!” “Lee Marrs was always friendly,” says Melinda. “On two occasions she even went out of her way to help me get work in the field. Once, I was her assistant storyboard artist on a film about a Russian parachutist who was imprisoned in a Siberian Gulag. Later, she suggested I join her in taking a course that would get in on the ground floor on what was becoming a burgeoning field in computer art technology. I’ll always remember Pudge Girl Blimp with great fondness. Lee was the funniest of all our gang.” “Of course,” says Trina, “Melinda herself was often incomprehensible but exquisite. She had style; I recall particularly a pair of leopard spotted shoes she wore made out of real fur—not real leopard, though! “There were times I coulda killed her—like when she took the comic she had done for my book, Wet Satin, and put it into her own book instead— but I always forgave her because she was such a damned great artist.” ‘Exquisite’ is one word, but she may be the most sexually powerful cartoonist on the scene. Crumb’s content seems downright Bay City Rollers to Melinda’s Sex Pistols. Midwestern Publishers Above: unpublished art of Great Grandparents. refuse to print Wet Satin thanks to the inclusion of Left: Melinda’s favorite jacket, 1978, & head shot of Lee Marrs. Gebbie’s material. Everybody likes to watch an artist slice themselves open and bleed on the page, and Melinda doesn’t disappoint. “I’ve always felt the work was in control,” says Melinda. “Creative people are only ever grounded by their creative acts. If I don’t have a project I’m involved with, I can feel very ungrounded. Creating has been the only real ‘quiet time’ in my life. The noise, confusion, unresolved anger, loneliness, etc. that is the detritus of being alive, would simply evaporate and I would be left in the thrall of a blue, reasoning world when I was at the drawing board. Comics have helped me to resolve life’s questions in a picture and word format.” Long before he will meet her, long before his own success, Alan Moore takes note of the artist’s work. “The earliest work of Melinda’s I ever saw was probably the work that had the greatest effect. I’d have to strongly qualify that by saying the work she’s doing on these closing chapters of Lost Girls is almost certainly her most stunning material to date. It’s simply that having played some part in conceiving that material myself, the results are probably not as fresh and startling to me as that first work that I happened upon, which was entirely the product of Melinda herself and her own imagination. “I remember “The Cockpit” in Wet Satin as being an eye-opener, both in terms of the extremity of its subject matter (which easily matched the most depraved visions of that era’s male Underground Comix maestros) and the artistry of its execution. Melinda’s use of texture and lighting, her fine-art-background grasp of anatomy and the intensely personal nature of the imagery immediately marked her as not only the most accomplished female artist of that period, but as one of its most accomplished artists, full stop. “I recall pouring over her solo outing, Fresca Zizis, with mutual pal, Savage Pencil, long before I’d ever met Melinda, with both of us admiring the starkness and raw power of her “Portrait of a Rapist,” along with the

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clearly deranged don’t-give-a-crap sensibilities behind “In De Basement.” She made an eloquent and goodhumored response to the actually rather jokey and harmless ‘misogyny’ found in the work of male contemporaries like Crumb and Wilson. She presented an equally jokey and harmless reversal that had chained male bikers kept in a cellar at the sexual and/or sadistic whim of women. “This struck me as a much more healthy, witty and creative response than the high-horse attacks or calls for censorship that were coming from some quarters of the feminist lobby back then. If the men who had enjoyed (as I had) Crumb’s Jumping Jack Flash or Wilson’s Lester Gas, Midnight Misogynist found Melinda’s turnaboutis-fair-play approach unnerving or threatening, that only made her joke so much the funnier. “Of course, the real punch line came when the cheerfully medieval British justice system had Fresca Zizis seized and burned, but obviously that only increased Melinda’s womanly allure as far as I was concerned. She could only have been more enticing had she actually been wanted and on the run.” Rarely does in an industry get to watch an artist birth their style immediately onto the page. Years of refinement are the usual recourse before an artist will seek publication. Melinda’s raw expressiveness has plenty of merits and some downfalls. “I’m afraid, for years, I treated panels as miniature paintings,” she says. “For a while, I was so enamored of Japanese art that I had no interest in backgrounds either. I’ve only recently begun to deal with perspective. I used the pen name ‘Clothilde’ (Helmeted Warrior!) when I was first published in Wimmen’s Comix—more because I couldn’t believe anyone with a name like Gebbie could get anywhere.” Of great concern, and inspiration for her work, is the lack of female cartoonists and the industry’s treatment of them. “I don’t really know why there aren’t more women cartoonists,” says Melinda. “Girls develop word skills earlier than boys, but they also respond less to comix as a medium, generally, usually preferring books and magazines to words and pictures. “Comics are a weird medium. You have to spend untold hours all by yourself with no one else to blame

Above: from Roger May’s mini comic, 1976. Left: page from Melinda’s “In De Basement,” 1977, and “Bloody Leather Rope” strip, 1975. if the work fails except you. Most women find themselves stooged over to someone else’s needs—if not kids, then a partner, or a dream of material comfort that demands circumvention of personhood. “It is not pleasant to climb uphill against publishers who can do a great job of telling you your work ‘doesn’t have enough bite’, or as Michelle Urry, cartoon editor for Playboy once said to me, ‘No one will like your work—your women are too scary looking.’ You have to ignore irrelevant criticism in the field.” The double-edged sword: even women pin a bullseye on her back. “I’ve also been warned against trying to contribute to a lesbian publication in case I was discovered to be a member of the enemy camp—a breeder. I was told, by one of the San Francisco lot, that ‘men make art and women make babies.’ I’ve had my comix written up by a journalist for being too aggressive, masculine and contributing to the generally anti-feminist atmosphere of publishing. “My work was turned down by the only erotic magazine for women in the Bay Area for being too sexually explicit. From my point of view, I would say both men and women, collectively, expect and approve of art by women which is somehow, inept, inexpert, and naïve. Or, if the artist does have an adequate grasp of anatomy, they’d better not have a black sense of humor. “Women in the comics industry and animation, both, get sidelined in terms of creator status. They usually work as colorists, but almost never as character designers. I think commercial art is less concerned as to who’s done the work, although I think if a woman is a good portrait artist, she’d do well to try and break into doing covers for bodice-rippers and sex and shopping heavily featuring women writers—I considered it. “Fine art—that takes a lot of bravado. Frankly speaking, if you can’t arouse some kind of sexual response at a gallery show, your chances of being taken up by the scene are somewhat lessened. Of course, if you are undeniably good, even the clueless, soulless business zombies who run the gallery scene might take a chance on the unheard-of element of pure talent. Stranger things have happened.” “Melinda’s art is decorative, reminiscent of art nouveau in many ways,” says Trina, “and also disturbingly claustrophobic. In fact, those claustrophobic panels are practically her trademark. Of course, she can draw anything and, of course, all her female protagonists look like Melinda Gebbie. “She went off to England and I didn’t see her for ages. In the late 1980s, I was at a Glasgow comic con, just hanging out with a small group of cartoonists. I noticed this beatnik cat woman type chick, wearing black tights and with long black hair way down her back and bangs almost down to her nose, Cher-style. I was sure I’d never 155

seen her before, but she kept smiling at me, so I smiled back. Then she took off her wig! Yes, it was Melinda. “The last time I saw her, she’d come back to the States to finally do something about all her stuff that had been in storage since she’d left for England. Once again, she sported a look only Melinda could’ve gotten away with—and even that is questionable: a long dress with matching long pants peeping out from beneath the hem, pantaloon-style (Melinda said it was a Muslim dress), made of some pink material with big white polka dots, and matching pink hair. She looked like a charming clown.” The artist, Melinda, and writer, Alan, meet at Café Munchen for the comic launch of Strip AIDS in 1988. Any conversation about the differences between the two brings out the silver-tongued wit common to both. “At the Café Munchen,” says Melinda, “we were all at a long table. It was a Saturday—everyone was laughing and carrying on and there weren’t enough fans for anyone to be bothered about. After the ether wore off, all I could remember were his yellow eyes peering into mine in the dark and his furry voice saying, ‘It will rub the cream into its skin.’” “She is, predictably, lying through her irritatingly well-maintained Californian teeth when she describes our first meeting,” says Alan. “As I recall the event, the encounter started with her first words to me, which were, ‘Hey big boy, you number one. Me love you long time,’ and ended with her Samoan business manager Maurice breaking two of my ribs and taking my wallet. Of course, we can look back now and laugh. “Melinda is almost entirely different from me, save in two most important respects. First, we both have large breasts. Secondly, Melinda is the only woman I’ve ever met whose fierce, obsessive, just-plain-mad dedication to her work is in the same rubber-walled ballpark as my own. As for the many ways in which she differs from me, I’d have to say I find all of them attractive. Except that thing with the Barbies, which is actually sort of frightening. Other than that, I love her like I love life—top bird!” “Alan,” says Melinda, “is a person who enjoys bringing the past and the future into others’ lives in a new mix—with painstaking references, worked into genius juxtapositions. Our first shared heroes were Harvey

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Kurtzman and Will Elder. I always loved Mad Magazine. I saw my first Brian Bolland cover on a Justice League cover— the one with the starfishes that eat faces. I loved Dave Gibbons art as well, before I met Alan. “I love the Belle Epoch, the French revolution writers of conscience from the early industrial age—Balzac, Zola, Violette Le Duc—and biographies of great achievers working against great odds. Alan was a fan of cyberpunk and nanotechnology. He’s in pursuit of the ever-new and is a tireless caver, turning over moldy flotsam to rediscover remarkable treasures lost to time. We’re rarely bored with each other.” For a man obsessed with the ‘evernew’ and futurist theories and technologies, Alan—as well as Melinda—doesn’t litter his home with the latest digital trappings. “We both have library skills and are lucky enough to have experts in several fields for friends,” says Melinda. “We don’t need the Internet—we’re not interested in chat rooms and we’re both very protective of our privacy. Something people don’t know about Alan? He wears a toupee.” In person, Alan’s demeanor is unassuming and disarmingly placid. One is taken aback because his physical form towers over most individuals and his press photos hint at a medieval visage that could scare the Lexan coating off a C.G.C.-slabbed Above: photo of Melinda by artist Jose Villarrubia, (c) 2002. book. There’s more hair than head, so is Left: unpublished “Fun Operations” strip by Melinda, 1980. Melinda’s comment indicative of her sense of humor? “No,” says Alan. “She doesn’t actually have a sense of humor. This is indicative of the fact that I wear a toupee. Now, let us pass quickly on and agree never to discuss this again.” Mothers tell their children, “If you keep your tongue in your cheek long enough, it will stay that way,” but Alan and Melinda’s oratory skills are still very much in use. Deni Loubert symbolically owned forty-nine percent of Aardvark-Vanaheim because Dave Sim was the creator, but Alan and Melinda cross over the 49th parallel into an artistic partnership. There are very few examples in the industry of couples who collaborate this extensively together on project after project. “Alan shares all his plot progressions with me as he writes them,” says Melinda. “Mostly audience role, mine, though I have been known to contribute. I came up with the name for Angel Booboo in Promethea. It’s my cat’s nickname. I also suggested Pi as the number of the Abyss, featured in issue #20 of Promethea.” Alan is a little more complimentary to Melinda’s contributions. “Melinda has to sit through my tortured bleatings when I can’t see my way out of whatever weed-choked literary cul-de-sac I’ve enthusiastically charged up and, on more than one occasion, she’s provided me with a way out. Probably she did this because it’s a depressing spectacle to watch, like a budgerigar flying repeatedly into a pane of glass. Sooner or later, even the hardest heart will be moved to get up and open the window. 157

“Specific examples, I try to blot out of my mind because they contradict my carefullytended self-image of absolute omnipotence. On the other hand, I do recall when I was working on issue twenty of Promethea I was complaining to Melinda about the intellectual isolation of my lonely path and how it clearly wasn’t fair that I should be expected to work out things like the magical number of the abysmal sephira Daath when even Aleister Crowley hadn’t managed it. “She immediately brightly suggested a couple of mathematical abstracts like Pi and the golden section, but I just said, ‘Get back in the wagon, woman! I know what I’m doin’!’ and went back to frowning dejectedly at the wall for another couple of days. “Finally, it suddenly struck me that Pi, being an ultimately indefinable and thus ‘false’ number or sephira situated between the numbers three and four, had to be the number I was looking for. Then I remembered Melinda had suggested the solution a few days beforehand, and I must admit to feeling humbled. Luckily, however, I was able to pass her remark off as a fluke and still manage to somehow imply it was me who’d done all the real brainwork. I hope she isn’t reading this, or my fragile facade of English intellectual superiority will surely be shattered forever.” A typical workday for Melinda sees her up around ten thirty, drawing by twelve thirty Both Pages: Scenes from Melinda’s Lost Girls saga, 1990s. until five before she takes a break. “I go to the gym or to town, come back by seven, and work till nine. I work about seven hours a day, or in the winter, I work at night and sleep during the day. “I always have to have music playing when I work. I love novelty discs like the Lounge collection and jazz (but not bop or fusion), Latin, Mexican, World, Bollywood, anything really except industrial or cock rock. “Alan gets up at eight and works till eight. He has no answering machine, so he can work as few as four hours a day, according to how many phone calls he has to answer. “Alan works in silence. He really doesn’t watch TV or listen to music much. He doesn’t write in other peoples’ presence and I don’t really draw Lost Girls while in his presence, either. “He’s very good at helping me with ideas—very generous with praise, and helpful analysis, whether it’s my own project, or something we’re sharing. I’m really not aware of Alan using my traits in his characters, but in Lost Girls, Wendy’s physiognomy is loosely based on my features, and Dorothy’s dad looks like Alan. “Pictures are what I do best. Although Alan has been quite encouraging about my writing, and I would enjoy trying out my skills in the near future, the visual arts are still my initial choice of weapon. “We’re equally supportive of each other. He reads his work to me in utero, and tells me how the territory lies— what difficulties he feels he’s experiencing. Only rarely has he actually said, ‘I don’t know if I’m going to be able pull this off.’ He’s had some serious and sobering meditations to get through with Promethea, and it continues! Alan has approached Promethea with almost blind faith—and he still refuses to wear glasses! Changing her name into twentythree different, sensible sounding word combos had him dressing in brown for a couple of weeks. “Lost Girls has been the major focus of my life for the last twelve years. I did take a bit of a trek in another 158

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direction, toward filmmaking, after our third publisher went tits-up. For a year I worked on an hour-long film based on Alan’s spoken piece, The Birth Caul, including family footage, scenes from Northhampton and his stage performance in Nottingham County Courthouse. “A plucky young man with excellent taste declared his interest in Lost Girls and encouraged me to finish it. Two years later, I’m sixteen pages away from blast off. I got so wound up thinking about how close we are to the end that I had to take a short vacation to calm myself down.” Lost Girls contains many themes explored in earlier work by Gebbie, leading one to wonder if she finds her past constraining. “I don’t actually avoid drawing to expectations—I just can’t stand doing the same thing for very long. I couldn’t possibly have stuck with Lost Girls for twelve years if it wasn’t for the constant change in the art styles. “All projects, like all relationships, have their personalities. Nothing is ever smooth as glass—there’s the approach, the first conversation, flirtation, honeymoon, quarrel—all of these stages are apparent with any creative act. In our case, there is the excruciatingly overlong pregnancy combined with the rush of delivery. “Having said that, all of these responses are an interaction with a higher self or, at least, a truer self than the easily misunderstood world of person to person interaction. “The hazards of a working and personal relationship combined dictate certain rules of conduct. You don’t mindlessly mistreat a respected colleague. You can’t let petty, meaningless resentments build up and cloud the shared creative space you’ve created together. It can be difficult because we both have quite a temper, but that’s offset by the genuine respect we have for each other. “We don’t have professional disagreements, per se. Sometimes I’ll want to draw something one way and he thinks he’ll prefer it another, so we both try it both ways and see what we think. For the 9/11 book, we did a six-pager that included a tarot card he wanted to be an exact duplicate of two figures leaping from a previously drawn picture. It was to represent the Tower card and I drew a special picture for the card. He had asked the picture to be changed on publication, but the color artist and myself both preferred to keep the card image separate. Once he saw the color proofs, Alan agreed to the change with enthusiasm.” Alan also shares the idea they have achieved a working symbiosis at this point in their relationship. “There have maybe been a couple of scenes I’ve suggested for Lost Girls that Melinda has initially had misgivings about, at least if I’m reading her vomiting and screaming, ‘No No No No No No’ over and over again correctly. “On the other hand, when she’s actually seen the scene in question sketched out and has had a chance to work out how she’ll handle the mood and colors and emotional atmosphere of the situation, she’s usually provided a much more extreme and more beautifully realized vision of the scene in question than I could have ever imagined. “On the rare occasions when she hasn’t been able to relate to some sequence or other, she’s been able to articulate what it was she had problems with, enabling me to go

away and come up with something else. Invariably, in these instances, what I come up with after Melinda’s input is always better and more thought-through than what I’d initially presented to her, so it all works to the eventual good of Lost Girls, which is what we’re both most concerned about.” When one dissects their process, one sees the synergy at work, and how necessary the mutual support has become. “Alan works with me on a storyboard basis,” says Melinda. “He used to write a full script for me complete with descriptions and stage direction, but I kept Both Pages: Scenes from Melinda’s “Cobweb” strip, missing out details. So he began to lay out the visuals for me so I could see what he wanted. I drew everything without word balloons only using Tomorrow Stories #1-4, 1999-2000. space carefully so the letterer can place balloons where they don’t cover faces, hands or important bits of visual storytelling. “Alan likes to tailor his writing as smoothly as possible to each of his artists interests and styles. The storyline, characters and background detail are all geared to keeping his collaborators—or ‘Bitches’ as he calls us—begging for more copy. “Lost Girls is a good case in point. The first comic with a plot I ever attempted was called My Three Swans—a collegiate tale of three hot sisters floating in a sea of sexual confusion. I told Alan I liked stories about three women of different ages and hair color and voila! Another sexual saga was born.” Their second most significant collaboration has been the “Cobweb” strip in the ABC anthology title Tomorrow Stories. The lead female detective character is a sexually charged version of Eisner’s The Spirit and allows both creators to riff on various artistic motifs drawn from their personal lives and interests. “I collect Barbie dolls,” says Melinda. “Alan integrated my obsession into a mad scientist theme where Cobweb and Clarice are reduced to dolls and have to fight for their tiny, vinyl lives. In issue #2 of “Cobby,” I said I thought it would be fun to do a Virgil Finlay, girl-on-the-moon story, so Alan whipped up a lovely space cadet three-pager for me, complete with ghostly dancers. “In issue #3, we used a movie poster format harkening back to 1950s noir films, especially Vertigo with the slightly necrophiliae lighting of gas greens and dreamy violets. “Lil’ Cobweb” was a marriage of our mutual interest in Archie and Lil’ Archie comics as kids with the juxtaposition of gritty 1950s realism found in Crime SuspenStories. “The collage idea came from our shared fascination with Max Ernst’s Hundred Headed Woman. For days, I cut images at random from old steel engravings and strewed them round the floor. I picked up a moth here, cactus there, castle or omnibus, mountain or frozen lake and after gluing them into tableaux, Alan wrote dreamy descriptive passages, based on Cobweb’s odd appearances in the panels, among twirling cacti, spaniels, drowning waifs and mournful albattores.” Her obsession with Barbie dolls adds an extra dimension to the avowed, but never militant, feminist and leaves Alan baffled. Says Melinda: “Alan’s daughter, Leah, and I got out her old Sindy dolls when she was thirteen, and were dressing them and combing their hair. As we played with the dolls, our minds drifted to some shared ‘little girl’ space. We had a wonderful evening talking and the next day I went out and bought a Barbie doll. That was ten years ago. I’ve got two of my friends in Northhampton collecting them and four in San Francisco, who are waiting for another girls (and boys) doll party. I guess I’m also a frustrated clothing designer. I love the old Givenchy, Dior and Forties’ clothes.” “Oh, Jesus, don’t get me started,” says Alan. “I have no idea. She’s apparently got some Hungarian blood in her somewhere, so I can only assume it’s some ancient mad Magyar gypsy voodoo or something. “At the Millennium Eve celebrations we had at our farm in Wales, I remember Melinda being closeted in one of the caravans giving those rub-on temporary tattoos of flaming Tibetan demons and things to all the little kids that were up at the party. One of the mothers there told her daughter not to go back to the caravan ‘or she’ll be selling you clothes-pegs.’ “Other than suggesting she suffers from some strange ancestral urge that 160

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can only be satisfied by eight hundred Barbie dolls, I really don’t have a clue. I used to think it was some kind of displaced maternal instinct, but there’s so many of them she’d have to be a salmon or a bee.” “Alan is the last judge on all of his works,” says Melinda. “My business is only with whether I’m turning out adequate work for my part—is the story easy to follow, understandable and uncluttered? I don’t really editorialize on his work with other people except for feedback on his performance CDs. If there’s too much background noise—or ‘music,’ as his collaborators insist on calling it—it drowns Alan’s voice and the treble, woof and accentuation are dulled. “How he handles professional criticism? By pouting mostly. I, of course, am quite reasonable about making changes to completely finished work on the whims of a partner! We’re pretty equal in the protection of our various productions—I fuss over little mistakes in my work in pre-production—he counts every ‘R’ in ‘Aaargh,’ and ‘H’ in ‘Aaahh.’ “It was Watchmen that I read first, before I met Alan. I’ve never had any use for caped crusaders, but I was deeply struck by the apocalyptic undertones of this epic tale. I was touched by the loneliness of Dr. Manhattan and the Owl, Dave Gibbons’ heroically proportioned super-characters and the very subtle coloring work. “Promethea is a tremendous feat. No one’s attempted an instructional comic based on the Qaballah before, in my opinion. It is the ultimate proof that the comics medium is capable of information transfer unachievable by the means of art or the written word alone. “The Bojeffries Saga was tremendous fun. Funnier and more socially relevant than the Addams Family, it provoked contemplation of the monsters in society as well as contemplating of the discomfort of monsters trying to get along in this incomprehensible society. For sheer heady adventure, I must say I adore The League of Extraordinary Gentlemen. Kevin O’Neill’s art is wicked, humorous, and sweeping as Alan’s script—a perfect blend of talents.” The male engine drives this industry’s machine, and Melinda is cognizant of the view she has tied herself to Alan’s apple cart in a way that leaves some questioning her ability to stand her art on its own. For those paying attention, it is clear Melinda’s own risque sensibilities dominate her stories with Alan. “I’ve re-entered the comix arena in the mainstream—in the door with a hall pass, really,” she says. “The fun thing is I was drawing porn in the undergrounds, and I’m still doing it here. No one has treated me badly since I’ve partnered my skills with Alan’s, but that’s hardly surprising, is it? If anything, some people are all too eager to kiss my shiny metal butt at the moment, but that’s just the effect of working with Mr. ‘A’, I’m sure. “I don’t worry at all about being ‘only’ seen as Alan’s partner. It’s a situation I share with every other creator he works with, and Alan only works with the best. What do we gain from working together? A heterogeneous whole from two individual consciousness.” That ‘whole’ creates a whole heap of trouble when DC Comics buys out the Wildstorm imprint publishing Alan’s ABC books. Having sworn never to work with DC again, he is now forced into an uneasy alliance that explodes when DC publisher Paul Levitz refuses to publish a Cobweb story in Tomorrow Stories #8. Although another telling of the exact same story appeared in DC’s Big Book of Conspiracies, references to science-fiction author L. Ron Hubbard and scientist/occultist John Whiteside Parsons make DC turn yellow, and has Alan and Melinda seeing red. When asked if she was worrying about Alan ‘being in bed’ once the imprint was bought out, Melinda’s disdain is obvious. “Alan didn’t ‘get into bed’ with DC, any more than an innocent sleeper succumbs to the dream state and awakens with a succubous glued to his lap. He had committed to a contract with Wildstorm. He did think seriously about abandoning the series but that would’ve put a lot of good people out of work and killed off his new projects. “As to the troubles caused by a certain person in power at DC, all we can do is laugh at his preposterous and petty trouble-making. Alan had had

enough. He refused to go along with plans to re-launch Watchmen. All I can say is it was a shame Alan was pushed on this issue.” If Melinda is being disrespected due to their partnership, Alan can’t see it, other than what a female creator normally suffers in this industry. “Hopefully we’re moving towards a future,” says Alan, “where the gender of a creator makes no difference to how an audience regards them or their work. In Melinda’s case, I can’t imagine once the full finished glory of Lost Girls is revealed to the world, being overlooked is going to be one of her major problems.” The full finished glory of Lost Girls will be revealed in a collection of three eighty-page editions, only fiftysix pages of which have seen print. Curious to listen to is the male reaction to this decidedly female work. Referred to as ‘literary smut (but in a good way)’ or ‘doesn’t work as erotica or porn because it keeps reminding you it’s a story,’ it will be fascinating to view reaction to what is essentially a project more at home in the more diverse world of the 1950s. “Why should storyline be a detriment to sexual stimulation?” says Melinda. “Surely peeks of roseate lubricated dermis can be enhanced by the use of motivation for the characters whose skin is directly involved? Let those whose juices dry at the thought of characterization in pornography stay where they are—comfortable—in front of a good old cinematic poem to a sticky sofa replete with shivering strangers who wallow in rented underwear and gasp with boredom before a galvanized corpse showing obscene commands.” The innocence and dilettantish nature of the characters in Lost Girls is juxtaposed against the matter-offact explicitness of the sex. The majority of Melinda’s work—even the mainstream features—deals with lesbianism, which leaves her open to another potential bout with resentful female reaction. “The first great reaction from a woman came from Suzie Bright, lecturer on sexual politics at the University of Santa Cruz. ‘People should worship at your feet for this book. It’s obviously so beautiful, it’s a world of its own.’ “Friends have commented on the colors, the women themselves, the backgrounds, fashions, dialogue and the men depicted. None of these women have found anything objectionable in the way our characters are represented. I suspect Lost Girls will inevitably fail to repulse even the most delicate of feminine libidos.” Her work has also graced the pages of Moore’s projects for the Avatar line, whose focus on rubberbreasted females (if one can call them ‘females’) would appear to run counter to her feminist leanings. “These poor kids have never been in a ladies’ changing room,” says Melinda, and Alan concedes this, and offers that she is not attached to his hip in any way. “She finds the standard modern comic book babe stereotype pretty laughable,” says Alan, “and I’d have to say I, and a good number of the male artists I know, would agree with her completely. “You only have to look at how someone who genuinely likes women draws a woman, be it Melinda, or one of the Hernandez brothers or whomever, to see the inadequacies of an artist who spends more time fantasizing about women than actually meeting them. “As for considering whether she would mind appearing in a comic book alongside some particular art style or other, I must admit I don’t give it much thought since that is ultimately up to her and, as a professional, she’ll ultimately make her own decisions. We’re partners and we enjoy working together as much as possible, but Melinda is a creator in her own right, and her career isn’t just an appendage of my own. “Nor does she need me to manage her working life by steering her only towards projects that won’t offend her sensibilities. Melinda is a very strong and resilient person who has been around the block so many times she thought her indicator was busted. She’s survived stuff that at least makes this strong man quake. The delicacy of her art doesn’t mean she’s personally made out of porcelain. Lovely though she is, she isn’t fragile or easily offended.” She can, however, notice the intensity of fan reaction to Alan and his work. “Alan has dreams about being mauled by fans,” says Melinda. “He was almost pushed through a banister by a mob of them. After a performance of his in London, his daughter and I were knocked out of the way by a large, panting enthusiast who pursued our group into a pub and proceeded to shout questions at Alan for almost an hour. “I went to London a few years ago to support a Women’s Publishing Panel at the London Comics Convention. I sat in the audience watching, listening, and someone called out to the panel, ‘What do you think is the reason women cartoonists have been so marginalized?’ A women, either on the panel or in the audience, said, ‘Well, I personally think it’s about time Alan Moore stopped hogging all the attention and let some women into the comix realm.’ 162

“I had only been with Alan for about a year, but he had recounted to me how badly his family had fared financially after backing Big Numbers. Despite dedicated hard work on the part of his then partner, and her friend, unforeseen problems had tunneled the project into a fiscal black hole. However, ARRGGHH, their previous comic project had been a success, was well-produced and well thought of. I knew Alan was extremely proud of what the three of them had produced together. He was, and is, an ardent supporter of women’s rights. “I raised my hand and said I thought, quite reasonably, ‘Alan Moore would love to see more women make a success of their artistic lives. He has no vested interest in keeping women from their creativity, but it is up to each individual to progress for themselves. Blame gets you nowhere.’ “After the panel discussion, a woman I had just been involved in a project with came up to me and said, ‘Honestly Melinda, you don’t have to stand up for Alan, just because he’s your boyfriend.’ When I moved toward the group with whom I had only weeks before produced a comic, they filtered away, talking of plans for a picnic among themselves. That was my last visit to the London Comics Convention. “The first comic convention I attended was San Diego, 1978. That’s where I met Harvey Kurtzman, Virgil Partch and Dan O’Neill. It was hosted at the El Cortez, which featured a circular blue pool, surrounded by rows of graduated verandas spiraling up ten floors. The first evening’s impromptu feature was a nude swim, which was avidly noted by the likes of Bob Clampett and a few other luminated animaries. The rest of the weekend progressed like an episode from Little Annie Fanny. I still like the idea of a comic con in an exotic setting. “I don’t really see other creators socially much. We all live quite a distance from each other and everyone is very busy with work and families. I had a birthday party at my flat one year and invited every cartoonist I knew and they all came, all forty-two of them! “Every single one of them put pen to butcher paper up and down the walls of my hallway. Spain drew a giant rosy naked woman sticking her ass out and wearing big black shoes. Larry Rippee drew a tiny man walking a pair of tiny genitals on a dog lead. Trina drew a lady super-heroine in a big red cape. “Alan has encouraged me to see the expertise in a lot of mainstream artists I previously paid little attention to. People whose kinetic individualism made their rather raw-looking art spring to life. Also, Alan’s enthusiasm has, in some cases, encouraged me to reassess even the art of some of my own friends’ work in the Undergrounds.” The 1970s brought with it a cohesive movement of female artists into the comics field. Partnerships evolved amongst creators, to the benefit of both parties. “If you love another human being,” says Alan, “it’s as good as having a whole different set of perceptions, senses and emotional or intellectual responses to augment your own. Your view of people and the world, if abetted by the viewpoint of a partner, will achieve full stereoscopic depth. Your vision will be truer, more resonant, more profound, less inclined to the solipsism and obsessive tendencies that come from a single, isolated perspective.” Below: Strangehaven creator Gary Millidge, Alan & Melinda, May 2001.

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C H A P T E R

ED SEDARBAUM & HOWARD CRUSE

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A superficial snapshot of the comic book industry illustrates a very masculine, middle-class, white palette. The 1970s brought Virginia Romita into the workplace with husband John, Deni as co-publisher with Dave and Gebbie as a talent unto herself in the underground comix world. These are stories of feminine liberation, but another color on the palette is of a subculture standing completely at odds with the overwhelming majority of product being sold and published in the business. What chance of success has a gay cartoonist in the Wonder Bread world of comic books? He starts by heading underground. Howard Cruse battled with himself, his peers and industry standards to carve a niche in a medium that can’t relate to the irony of the word ‘homo’ in ‘homo-superior.’ But strip away the ‘sexual’ in ‘homosexual’ and Eddie Sedarbaum and Howard Cruse exhibit many of the same traits as all couples in the business. Born worlds apart, the two converge on New York City—‘pushy’ Brooklyn Jew falls for ‘polite’ Baptist southerner and spends the next twenty years in unwedded bliss. Before moving to Queens at the age of ten, Eddie’s predominately Jewish neighborhood in Brooklyn is scarred by the aftermath of the Holocaust and World War II. “If you were Jewish, you couldn’t escape it,” says Eddie. “The losses were staggering. We watched all the films as they started showing up on television. We heard all the stories, some of which turned out to not be true. The claim that people were turned into soap and lampshades was, apparently, not true. 164

“Between the misinformation, and the curious logic only a kid can apply, I remember going to the house of relatives, much more Orthodox than my parents, and seeing kosher soap. It was a bar of soap supervised to make sure nothing unkosher, like lard, went into it. It was decorated with a Jewish star in the middle of the bar and I didn’t understand why my relatives would have soap made from their own relatives. World War II may have been over by the time I was a conscious kid, Above: New Yorker Ed on left, Alabamian Howard on right, early 1950s. but you could still see military Left: 1987 photo of the couple against a New York backdrop. dirigibles coming in to dock over Brooklyn. It was still a naughty hoot to put your pocket comb under your nose and pretend to be Adolph Hitler.” Prominent in his early memories of life in post-War Queens are the beatings he takes from his older sister. “Because she had a chest, I didn’t know what would happen to her if I punched her. I was terrified I might punch it by mistake, and it would explode!” In the 1950s Ozzie and Harriet coating of America, there are no positive messages, no reference points for a young man trying to crystallize his feelings of queerness. Eddie reacts by indulging in intense self-hatred and pop culture iconography celebrating the questioning of authority. “Growing up gay, society achieved its goal of making me be intensely self-hating. Even the positive messages were really frightening. I might not have known I was homosexual—I would have never conceived of the word or the concept—but whenever pop culture said, ‘Well, of course you will get married and live in a house,’ to me that was alienating because I somehow knew I could never achieve that. It was going to be a big test, I was going to fail and the whole world will know and hate me. “As I got a little bit older, I focused on parts of the culture that celebrated wackiness and little bits of cynicism; Mad Magazine, for example, or Tom Lehrer songs. As soon as the beatniks came along both I, and my whole crowd, immediately thought, ‘Oh, yes, that’s for us.’ I didn’t really call myself a beatnik in high school but I sure tried. “More than anything, it was about being with other misfits. It didn’t hurt that the misfits seemed to have a more sane view about things like warfare and poverty. The beat generation wasn’t particularly political, but it certainly didn’t trust authority. “Even before there were beatniks, by sixth grade, my group of boys that hung out together had a name for our class of people. We called ourselves the ‘Duhs.’ It meant we were the awkward ones that didn’t fit in, but didn’t really care because we knew we were better than everybody because we were against war and injustice. “I’ve always enjoyed George Carlin, but had problems with him because he is kind of intolerant and, for the sake of humor, expresses things kind of simplistically. There is still something of the butch bully in him, but he was very meaningful to my generation—he was the only one talking about drugs, resisting authority and being a hippie.” Eddie first starts to have a picture of his queerness when puberty dawns, but the roots, and the repression, extend back into his childhood. “I was terrified of my own homosexuality. I can remember at age six enticing my friend into a game that involved touching and knowing this was something I shouldn’t let anybody know about—knowing that he might have rejected me for asking. I couldn’t tell you why I knew it was a dangerous secret. “It was all a question of learning to recognize the feelings within me, just like some people don’t get high 165

the first time they smoke pot because they don’t know what to look for. At least now there are some positive messages out in the world you might have heard before you start wrestling with it. When I was growing up there was nothing—zero.” While a fan of non-super-hero comics like The Three Stooges, Martin and Lewis or 3-D comic books, one of the first manifestations of his ability to identify his homosexuality is his Superboy rescue fantasy. “He would come to my mental rescue if I was being punished for something I felt was unfair. Superboy would pick me up in his strong arms and carry me home. I once did a really bad thing at day camp and my punishment was to stand on a table in front of everybody with my arms outstretched holding out these really heavy sneakers. It was actually a little like torture and humiliation and that was when I first thought Superboy should take me away.” They are his first memories of the desire to be affectionate with someone of his own sex. “It is questionable,” says Eddie, “to say homosexuals are those who want to have sex from the same gender. That leaves out the more important preference to have affection from the same gender. That’s certainly true of what Howard and I have together. I don’t care how sexual a relationship is with a spouse, you spend far more time worrying about one another, or picking each other up because it’s raining, or whatever. The question is really whom you want to make a family with—whom do you want to be protected by?” In Howard’s 1995 award-winning graphic novel, Stuck Rubber Baby, he portrays the story of Toland Polk, a young man struggling with his own acceptance of his queerness, and part of that is a not-so-uncommon theme amongst gay men in the 1960s and 1970s. Both Howard and Eddie try to eradicate their impulses by either fathering children with women or marrying them. “A surprising number of gay and lesbian teenagers end up pregnant because they are trying to prove something to somebody,” says Eddie. “I felt very threatened by the whole notion of being an adult with the consequences from being evil, sick and illegal! I had a really bad case of low self-esteem. I had trapped myself into a relationship with a woman whom I married and didn’t know other homosexuals. “There were a few people with which I would have sexual experiences but none of us were in the head space to say ‘I am homosexual’ or ‘You are homosexual and this is what we are doing.’ If I ever met somebody I could have anonymous sex with, I would almost always claim it was the first time. Unconsciously, I thought if I didn’t link all the experiences together, then it wouldn’t say anything about who I was. “It was really screwed up!” laughs Eddie. “When I finally did come out and started doing peer counseling, I quickly realized the main job of a person who’s just coming out: to re-socialize in such a way that you really believe the entire world was wrong and you were right. Most community leaders would frown on such a philosophy, but a homophobic society makes us internalize, so that’s really the case.” Eddie remains married for ten years, participating in the hippie and anti-war movement, but completely missing out on the 1970s homosexual liberation. “My wife knew I had a history when she met me. I think we both, without saying the words, conspired to believe that now that I found a woman—and had all the rewards of being a married man—those feelings were going to go away. It’s similar to the way some Marxists think that once there’s a classless society, homosexuality will go vanish. 166

“While I always worked—I was not a lay-about hippie nor did I move to a commune, but a lot of friends did—my wife and I would vacation in San Francisco all the time. There were so many different kinds of people with very different uniforms on, but you could flash a ‘V’ sign with your fingers and the other person would flash one back. And yet, if you actually were to start talking, he might end up wanting to hit you because all you wanted to talk about was music or art and all he wanted to talk about was blowing up university buildings.” Eddie comes out a year before his marriage will end, but continues to live with his wife, experimenting to see if he could ‘just be gay on Monday nights’; both terrified of severing all ties. “That was the system we tried and I know I was unsatisfied and unhappy. We were going to couples counseling and I kept suggesting this bizarre thing about a trial separation. She kept saying, ‘If you want to leave me, leave me. I don’t want to try anything.’ At the Above: Howard & Ed at Cartoon Art Museum, early 1980s. time, it drove me crazy but she was totally right. I was being Left: unpublished portraits of Ed, early 1980s. an infant, afraid to take responsibility and do what I wanted to do. The more I experienced the gay world, the more I realized what I needed to be was to be gay—to live my life as a gay man. “When I ran for State Senate in 1998, I called my ex-wife just to know if she still had such animosity that I needed to worry about her taking it out on me and spilling secrets. She told me she was living in Florida, a widow and, while still Jewish, she has taken to studying and practicing the teachings of Jesus. Principally what she’s working on is forgiveness and then she spends an hour telling me all the things for which she had to forgive me. In other words, she was just beating the crap out of me!” While working for the New York Department of Social Services, Eddie begins to attend Identity House on Sundays—essentially a peer counseling community center—as a process of his coming out. It’s the late 1970s and he has left his wife but three weeks ago. “Every time I went I had on tight jeans and my hair was blow-dried because you looked to score,” says Eddie, “even though the discussions were about more serious matters of how to live. “When you’re married you have an automatic playmate on the weekends, so I said, ‘I’m going to ask people at the rap group how they deal with feeling lonely.’ I was late, didn’t shave, didn’t do my hair and, of course, that was the day Howard was there. “He was another participant in the rap group, in a different room, and I didn’t meet him until both groups got together in this restaurant. When I saw him, I made sure I was across from him. We peeled off from the group, walked around, went up to my apartment, talked all night and didn’t get around to screwing until three in the morning.” The initial attraction comes from being the only two people at the dinner interested in talking seriously about what they had in common. “That, for me,” says Eddie, “was much of the attraction—‘somebody real and normal,’ but when I asked what he did for a living and he said cartoonist—but didn’t say, ‘I draw this comic strip in this newspaper’—I thought, ‘Uh oh, maybe he is crazy.’ “I associated people in New York who say they are an artist with occasionally being crazy because they haven’t done any or they do some art but it doesn’t have any value. Howard was doing things in Playboy and showed some of his work in underground comix. I totally related to it. “He was working on a piece entitled Hell Isn’t All That Bad. Back in 1966, Howard made his first trip to the gay mecca of San Francisco, where he stayed up all night in a bar flirting and drinking. He was waiting for a bus back to Oakland in the wee hours of the morning and, standing in the street, realized this was the time when all the good people were in bed and the streets were left for the bad people. He had been raised to think of this late night demimonde as hellish. That’s when he recognized Hell ain’t all that bad. “I’m a pushy Jew from New York and he’s a southerner. He’s polite and also careful with his selection of 167

words, so he stops to think a bit. He’s the son of a Baptist preacher. We were both refugees from the now disappeared hippie world and were on the same wavelength—except he liked Jimmy Carter. “There was a lot of talk that first night about my situation because I was recently out of the marriage. I was living in a rent-controlled apartment vacated since the death of a great aunt of mine. Of course I was going to be evicted when they realized I wasn’t a 93-year-old lady named Sadie. “I said to Howie, ‘I have a telephone over there that almost never rings, and when it does, it’s for her.’ I was expressing how new dealing with being alone was for me. I didn’t realize how manipulative I was being. Of course, the next day he calls. ‘I just wanted you to hear the phone ring.’” While more aggressive a personality, Eddie sees Howard as his ‘expert’ on homosexuality; Howard having had a child with someone and having been in a long-term gay relationship. “He knew more about loving men than I did,” says Eddie. “He was more familiar with the gay world, with what he wanted and didn’t want, and had gotten past the self-hatred. My self-esteem then rose remarkably for reasons neither my therapist, nor I could figure out. It may just have been an impatience to come out and start having real sex. She said shrinks call this ‘the flight into health.’ “We liked each other so much that first night we worried we’d never do any work again if we kept seeing each other, so why don’t we not see each other the next night? He did call and the next thing you know I was showing him how to buy a pot roast, which totally freaked him out! When he saw we were moving towards the meat section—he’s not a shopper—a look of panic crossed his face that was really precious.” Within three weeks, they decide to live together. Both harbor trepidations: Howard worries Eddie will slip back in the closet; Eddie fearing another commitment that will prevent him from exploring his new-found gay world. The couple constructs their lives completely around the possibility of the end of their relationship. “We actually got together,” says Eddie, “with the understanding we could each continue to see other people with all the risks that that entailed. We labeled all our record albums—which were mine and which were his. When we bought major stuff for the apartment like a TV or an air conditioner, we had a list with his name on one side and mine on the other. “We also maintained separate finances because from a practical point of view, it made sense. He’s in business and so much of his financial decisions had nothing to do with me. I made a lot more than he did at that point and we wanted to make our own decisions without having to worry if it was unfair to the other guy. “These were ground rules for an experiment. They may have also been needless steps about giving us permission to do what we wanted to do. Our definition of fidelity was, and still is, remembering your partner is your top concern when you make a decision, whether its about changing jobs or buying something or having sex with somebody. “Keeping your partner uppermost in your concerns isn’t enough by itself. If you aren’t open with your partner about what you’re doing, you might fall into the habit of concealing all your adventures and what you’re feeling about them. It means telling him if you’re developing a crush on someone else and talking through the possible emotional consequences. Outside recreational sex should never be allowed to hold power over your rela168

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tionship. That way of having fun might be right for you, or it might make you feel awful. We feel if it’s to work for you, you have to stay as open with each other as possible. “We did bring people home. I had a little boyfriend for a while—a kid who was just coming out and just joined the family. He was mainly mine but not always, until I alienated him by telling him he had a really big mouth and should learn to shut up! Somehow he took offense to that!” What impresses Eddie the most when they meet is that Howard’s doing gag cartoons for a national magazine. “My favorite,” says Eddie, “was the family of bears living in a cave and the female has just pulled this garment out of a big box and is modeling it. It’s a coat made of a million penises, and her husband says, ‘Do you know how many humans had to die to make that coat?’ I was impressed with him as a doer—published in national magazines—but spiritually much more impressed with the underground stuff he showed me.” Howard conceives of the cartoon character Barefootz in the early 1970s and hits the underground comix scene when Denis Kitchen begins publishing a spate of them for his company, Kitchen Sink Comix. “He had done all but the last one when we met,” says Eddie, “and there was a string of months where he’d pick up a sketchbook and put it down, but what he was really doing was looking for some way to kill it.” On Howard’s web site today resides a quote by Bill Sherman (from an article in 1980, entitled ‘In Praise of Barefootz’) symbolizing the reaction amongst his peers to the style and content of the strip. ‘Among [underground] comix readers, admitting that you like ‘Barefootz’ is about as cool as admitting that you like nose-hair.’ “It always gnawed at Howie, and still does,” says Eddie, “that the spiritual aspect of Barefootz—the real observations in there, some of which are just about a feeling—didn’t get picked up by a certain set of people because it was ‘cute.’ The whole point was that tension between the cuteness and the subject matter. “He was being rejected by his professional peers and I’m sure it resonated with the parts of him that grew up gay and hating, and being afraid of, bullies. I’m not saying that was the main origin, but I’m sure it must’ve resonated.” The support from partner to artist is not always a one-way street. While Eddie will pull up Howard’s bootstraps during his worst days with Stuck Rubber Baby, Howard’s example gives Eddie the strength to break away from his occupational misery. “One of the major impacts of Howard being an artist: it caused me to kick off Left: Eddie makes the material, Heavy Metal, 1983. fourteen years in social services, even though I was one Below: unpublished drawing of the couple, mid-1980s. year short of being vested in my pension. I was having weeping attacks on Sunday nights. There was an ethic throughout the place: ‘nobody shine because then they will look at me and notice I’m incompetent.’ That had everybody thinking they were incompetent whether they were or not. “I ended up being promoted and given the Child Protective Unit of five people who had never worked before—college graduates. On top of that, I had no experience in child protective services and it just got worse and worse. “Meanwhile, I was looking at Howard, who was not earning very much money—a lot less than I was— but was being Howard one-hundred percent, doing what he cared about and feeling good about himself. Someone mentioned proofreading was really easy to learn and I started doing Silhouette romances and realized I could do at least as good an editing job as their editors. For thirteen years I did book editing at home—moving on from Silhouettes to some pretty interesting literature and non-fiction. This was an example of Howard having a major impact on how I chose to look at myself and my possibilities in the world.” Howard, having kept a professional veneer of

Above: Wendel & Ollie from ‘Wendel All Together’ collection, 1988. Right: Howard’s ‘Sometimes I Get So Mad’ strip for The Village Voice, 1981. silence over his queerness, is forced to confront this when Denis Kitchen calls him with a new job—editor of Gay Comix. “My job was to make it clear to him I would support him in the consequences if he were to do it. Who else is going to do this, especially with Denis being the person who had supported his work all this time and Denis being a major publisher of the same kind of comic books those butch assholes in San Francisco were doing? “It was very frustrating because he would write to people who were not officially out and he’s so polite. He would never write a letter saying, ‘I know you’re gay.’ Instead he was sending this letter saying, ‘Not that I’m saying any one in particular is gay, but if you know anybody who would like to be in this comic...’” While it is a natural worry to believe coming out in such a fashion in the less tolerant early 1980s would limit his career opportunities, the courage of doing so actually attracts more work for Howard. “The effect on his art of finally telling the truth, was incredibly liberating,” says Eddie. “His art just got a lot better, too. That was when The Village Voice commissioned him to do a full-page piece called Sometimes I Get So Mad. “Gay Comix was this little community of people who had the same goal of wanting to put it on paper in a queer way since there hadn’t been a place to do it and no one knew other people who wanted to do it. Howard wasn’t in town for the huge anti-nuclear march happening in New York in 1982. I spent the day with Jennifer Camper—a terrific lesbian cartoonist—and developed this great friendship lasting to this day with her and her lover, Emma Lee. “It was a struggle to find all the people for Gay Comix at first. As time went on, the issue became quality. Howard was hoping only for pieces with something to say and some folks don’t have anything to say! He worked in a dialogue with his creators far more than just rejecting. He felt the impulse to tell true stories was more important than your skills as a cartoonist. “I don’t remember any backlash. There may have been commentary by the West Coast crowd but Rand Holmes did the first cover—who’s not necessarily gay but a sexual rebel—and was very well respected by the other crowd, so that probably helped. “I was starting the gay organizing here and Newsday did an article on being gay and living in Queens. The cover to their magazine section was a full-page photograph of Howard and me walking hand-in-hand in front of our building. I was already out but this one was making me nervous. That morning I opened the door to our apartment and something fell in. I screamed, but it was twenty-five photocopies of the front page with a little note from our upstairs neighbor saying, ‘Congratulations.’” Gay Comix leads to a gig illustrating his Wendel strip for the national gay magazine The Advocate; often 170

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a lifeline to gay kids across America without gay bookstores or a subculture like in New York. “It carried some of the news—although there wasn’t as much gay news then—and it projected a positive attitude towards sex even if it was fairly sexist and totally upper-middle class oriented. It also had the pink pages with all the personal ads and that’s where Wendel started out. “Howard went to them, but not with Wendel. He’d done a story in Gay Comix called Dirty Old Lovers about an older-gay couple patterned after our behavior, uninhibited, being gay and on the prowl. They read it as being insulting to older people. They wanted a sexier strip, so it started out being about a single person, Wendel, having sex, but Howard was living as a couple. The things he had to say were about that and the political realities around us, the movement, who’s a lunatic and who’s not a lunatic. “Sterno was sort of based on me, but I’m not like that any more,” laughs Eddie. “It started having references to safe sex, but was not preaching it. Luckily, The Advocate let him do what he wanted. They set some rules very early on about what kind of dirty stuff could be pictured. The Canadian border was famous for stopping anything going to a gay bookstore. “When I do pop up by name in autobiographical strips, he’s usually putting words into my mouth I would never say and giving me an attitude I would never have. He’s using me as a foil. Sometimes I Get So Mad was a one pager showing all the ways a gay person sometimes recognizes all the homophobes around you and it just drives you to anger. He has the two of us in bed and I’m basically counseling him not to be worried that we might have to go to Switzerland in order to be in a gay-friendly place. He’s saying, ‘I want to eat McDonalds and be American’ and I’m saying ‘they have McDonalds in Switzerland.’ That would not be me.” Wendel’s backdrop is the Reagan years of the 1980s and a particular episode in the strip features a gay man, Duncan, having given himself over to steroids and Reagan’s theories of economics. “That guy was based on an experience Howard had. It was partially inspired by Scott O’Hara, the porn star. There is ‘post-gay’—just like there is ‘post-feminism’—meaning, ‘We don’t need that because integration has occurred so we can be other things.’ I feel its like denial because you’re still growing up stigmatized. Even if it’s not as bad as it was, you still are and you learn bad crap. “I went to an Act Up demonstration in Washington by hired bus. This guy behind me is complaining the neighborhood to which he’s just moved is getting full of homeless people. He says, ‘They should send them back to the Bronx where they belong.’ I was flabbergasted an Act Upper could have that attitude, but I’m no longer flabbergasted. “A lot of straight people hear the word ‘homosexual’ and all they hear is ‘sexual.’ This is true for any group—you picture the one thing you know about them as being that which they are all the time. If you’re not part of the scene, then every man you see in leather and chains is either a master or a slave living twenty-four hours a day in a master/slave relationship. The fact is you could go to one of those leather bars, go home with one of those people, and he could be masochist or a sadist and all, but the next day he’s probably going to teach nursery school or work at the bank. It’s all erotic playacting. “Partly it’s misunderstood because most straight people may not be aware of all the homosexuals who are in their lives. They don’t realize they’ve seen homosexuals being a whole lot of different ways and probably haven’t had conversations about their lives and what they really did Saturday night. I’m not ready to say straight people have a narrower sexuality but they definitely have a tradition of not talking about it if they have a wider sexuality.” Is Howard Cruse a ‘gay icon?’ “He gets lots of letters from Europe,” says Eddie, “from fans and homosexuals—very often personal letters. I have long argued with him that ‘write me a postcard and I’ll send you a twopage answer’ is not a formula for earning a living, but he’s a natural mentor so when they do write, it comes out.”

Deni Loubert’s experience about watching boys circle around her before approaching is similar to what Eddie witnesses with Howard. “The most fun I had at those cons was noticing someone circling Howard’s table, but there’s a ‘force field’— they can’t get closer than twenty feet. It’s somebody that closeted and wants to make contact but can’t and they disappear. “It’s sad—sort of dramatic in many ways. I’ve seen teenagers with their fathers who just don’t know how to deal with the situation. Everybody goes from table to table and then they get to this table. The kid’s probably worried about his father’s reaction: ‘Are you going to embarrass me, Dad? Is this going to out me?’ I may be projecting but you get this with kids you can really clock as being gay. You feel this whole drama is playing out before your eyes.” The drama of Howard’s artistic process has him never revealing his work to Eddie until the entire piece is completed. A large part of Howard’s creative impulse is driven by his desire to tell a story, and if some one has already heard or read it, he can lose the impulse to tell it. “With me specifically,” says Eddie, “he will watch my face as I read something new of his and he will read things into every grimace or twitch on my face, and then he’ll be depressed and not want to work on it anymore. With Stuck Rubber Baby, we agreed I would do some editing for him, but it was all after a chapter was done. “His version of a really great vacation is I go away and he just stays and works. We’ve learned to transport his iMac so he can work on vacation. He’s not a maniac, but he usually lays himself out things to do that are enjoyable and are good for doing when you are sitting on the porch in the country. “Work is play for him. During the Wendel period, he had the anxiety of the deadlines, but also these cycles of extreme mental activity as he came closer to deciding what the next episode was going to be. He’d get totally lost in thought—a space cadet. There’s a section where Wendel is writing his science-fiction novel and Ollie’s at the table trying to get him off and Wendel doesn’t even know. Just like Howard seems to come back to open caskets. He didn’t even realize it—a fan pointed it out. ‘Did you know I counted four open caskets in your body of work?’ “He is an early riser now, but when I first met him, he would sleep until about eleven o’clock in the morning and work all afternoon and evening. Somewhere around midnight, when everybody is thinking it’s time to pick somebody to go home with, he’d show up at the bar all fresh.” During Eddie’s thirteen years editing books at home, the two share the space in their apartment, but Howard is easily capable of spilling out all over the living and dining room. “I don’t want to say that we both have perfect personalities. I tend more towards the dramatic behavior than he does. Internally, neither of us is actually placid, but both of us hate screaming and yelling. We think in such a way that we were able to spend twenty-four hours a day together without any tension between us. “We tried to collaborate on a screenplay and that didn’t work too well. Even though he says he really loves theatre work because it is such a wonderful collaborative process, I wonder if he’ll be able to collaborate easily after having total control over his artwork for so long a time. Nothing really horrible happened in our collaboration, but we didn’t finish the screenplay. “Once he knows what he’s drawing, he has the TV burning almost all the time. He saw almost every single minute of O.J. Simpson. The only time he gets totally lost in space is when he’s writing, not when he’s drawing a scene, and wondering about the one to follow, trying to see where the characters go. “What I can see from the outside is whether his emotions are close to the surface today or not. If there’s a sex scene, he’ll get a hard-on and if it’s something violent he’s looking over his shoulder for a couple of days. Sometimes, during the writing of Stuck Rubber Baby, I couldn’t tell the difference between the material bringing up emotions in him and the persistent anxiety of Stuck Rubber Baby being a project with a two-year advance going on year five and the bills haven’t been paid. It was also a bizarre period around the apartment because he took to laying out the entire chapter with Bristol boards on the floor and I was supposed to not step on or look at them! “No matter what the project, though, he tends to spill out all over the place, so I get annoyed about that. Usually when you fight with loved ones, the real emotions come from something else you’re feeling. I don’t know 172

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what I would do if he didn’t clutter up that dining room table. “There was a long period where I had to deal with him being famous and I wasn’t. There was a way people talked to him, and about him, and I was just ancillary. But then I had my turn being more famous locally than he was. “We are both people who take on jobs that are very stress producing because they aren’t known quantities. I got offered a job as a lobbyist for a state hate crimes law. The grant supporting that position ran out and I convinced an elected official here in Queens to give me money to start a gay and lesbian senior center and ran it for two years. “I then decided to run for office and had to quit the senior center. I was running against an incumbent and the official supporting the center would have defunded it if I hadn’t left. I campaigned full time for almost two years. “Over the years, I’ve talk Howie into doing plenty of volunteer jobs,” laughs Eddie. “I was doing a Christmas time fundraiser for the Gay and Lesbian Switchboard. He did this great little cartoon of Santa sitting on the edge of the bed with a pin-up picture of a man behind him and he’s on the phone saying, ‘Is this the Switchboard? I can’t say my name because I’m a prominent person, but I need to talk to you.’ “I went to the local bookstore and they offered to stuff them into every bag. Great offer, but the place was a cooperative and all the employees had to sign off on every decision. When I came back with a supply of flyers, they said, ‘Listen, the staff has decided that, because there’s only a man pictured and no woman, we can’t stuff them.’ I’m someone who thinks political correctness is nothing more than being considerate of one another, but I must admit, this was just political correctness gone crazy. “It upset me, but I don’t think it upset Howie. He’d done the first ‘safe sex’ poster, I think anywhere, but it was pretty innocuous. It was done during a time when they didn’t know what advice to give specifically, so it said Left: two panels from Artforum International, 1990. vague things like ‘Affection is your best protection.’ Below: Ed drafted to pose for preparatory sketches during “The main illustration was a cartoon of two guys four years of Stuck Rubber Baby’s creation. in a locker room, presumably at the baths. They are cruising each other; one is white, the other black. Someone sent Howard some left wing cultural criticism that analyzed this poster as being racist, arguing it was clear the white man is looking at the black man as the locus of all infection in the world. The critic had to be projecting, if not making up the interpretation out of whole cloth. It was clear that both men were looking at the other with the same expression of pure interest. “I talked him into one thing that took ten years: ‘door key’ is two words. He had it as one and just would not change it. When Dancin’ Nekkid was published, he finally did. “He’s let me talk him into providing a solution to ‘I’m telling you Howard, people are going to go from this panel to this panel and they’re going to take this meaning from it, which is not what you mean.’ He was very good at trusting me when I said there was something wrong with the continuity.” Like most artists in this book, Howard won’t let his partner get away with discounting their contributions to the process. “The help,” says Howard, “tended to turn on small matters, given he’s a professional copyeditor with a keen eye for narrative missteps. For example, he once pointed out if I swapped the positions of two panels in my 1982 story Jerry Mack, the exposition would flow better. It was a good suggestion. I followed it.

“Frequently, and patiently, Eddie stepped up to the plate to model a body position or gesture when I was drawing Stuck Rubber Baby. If Melanie is holding her coffee cup in a convincing way or if something rings true about the particular way Les and Toland protect themselves from a rainstorm by holding their jackets over their heads, it’s because Eddie was in the next room in the early 1990s. He was willing to interrupt his own work to play any role in the book Above: photo by Evelyn Sedarbaum of Howard drawing SRB, 1993. that I asked of him.” Right: ‘Are you free now?’—the question of the Stuck Rubber Baby novel, 1995. Stuck Rubber Baby comes into being thanks to their mutual friend at DC Comics, Martha Thomases. She advises Howard their new imprint, Piranha Press, might be willing to do a graphic novel. “I’d be terrified to try to take control of his career,” says Eddie. “I hesitate to even give him prep talks about, ‘Howard, you’ve got to push yourself on people. You go out there and place some flyers.’ If he had sent copies of Stuck Rubber Baby to black preachers who are still homophobic—the famous ones who get all the airtime—it would have been great publicity, but ‘No, I wouldn’t do a thing like that.’” The soothing, omniscient voice of the narrator is identifiable to Eddie from the early days of their relationship, but both insist it is not an autobiographical work. “There’s a lot of Howard in the narrator, yes,” says Eddie, “but working as a gas jockey at a gas station in the South? Please! Give me a break! “In the beginning of our relationship, when I was still basically coming out of the closet, we would talk on the phone about what I was scared of and he had this very reassuring deep voice. I don’t know where it went, but it was real Southern and real soothing. He didn’t have all the answers but it felt really secure to me. “As for the book being autobiographical, parts of the characters are based on parts of real people, but most of the situations didn’t happen. He did, because he was closeted, get somebody pregnant. The picture he drew of the baby is from a real photograph of his newborn daughter. He only saw her once when she was eight days old and took the photograph. They were reunited when Kim was old enough to search for him, and they’ve a nice relationship. Howard’s mother died recently in Alabama and Kim came to her ‘undocumented’ grandmother’s funeral. “There were times in the creation of that book when he was re-experiencing his own emotions from his past—moments taken from life—and also the different emotions of the characters, where it just totally wrecked him. That certainly happened with some of the violent scenes. Howard was fag-bashed once in Atlanta. These bully teenager types worked him over. You can bet that memory came back to haunt him.” The book takes five years for many reasons, but the most visually evident is the incredible amount of detail given to every panel; far more so than anything Howard has done before. “There have been times with other projects,” says Eddie, “when I begged him, ‘Couldn’t you do this the easy way,’ and he wouldn’t, but I never suggested that about this book. This was a major culmination for him.” Howard drives himself into enormous debt over the project. Eddie suggests fundraising ideas to alleviate the pressure, including selling title to the original artwork before the project has even been completed. “We had some famous gay people sign a letter saying, ‘Think of this as an independent movie and invest in it. You’ll get a two-page spread for $1000 that you will get to select later.’ People bought but not enough. He didn’t always tell me when he was hitting the cash advances, but in the end they were his cash advances.” Howard remembers these days as a crucial time and his appreciation for Eddie’s support is tangible. 174

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Above: on a New York street—Jennifer Camper (Subgirlz); Diane DiMassa (Hothead Paisan); Alison Bechdel (Dykes To Watch Out For); Robert Kirby (Curbside); Joan Hilty (Bitter Girl) and Howard, photo by Ed, 1980s. “When it became clear the financial impracticalities of completing Stuck Rubber Baby were rising to the level of catastrophe,” says Howard, “Eddie interrupted my descent into despair by suggesting we turn for help to friends whose professional histories qualified them to advise us about fundraising. Several thousand much-needed dollars ultimately flowed into my coffers to keep my graphic novel afloat. “That conversation took place in our kitchen during the wee hours of the morning. There was no John Williams music in the background to mark it as a momentous one, but that’s how important things tend to happen in the homes of cartoonists and their partners. On paper we get crazy; in our lives, we’re most often low-key.” “We were certainly not beating each other up,” says Eddie, “but Howard was beating himself up and getting depressed. I would sometimes be impatient if he didn’t talk with me enough about it. There were also periods where I had more money than he did, and I would say, ‘Don’t take a cash advance—take it from me.’ His money is his money, but I know I’m responsible for him and he’s responsible for me. Life is long and there are ways to deal with these things further down the line.” For the time being, the couple has no savings, huge debt and no pension. “Oh, we’re just totally screwed!” laughs Eddie. “My job has health care for both of us, but we’re just poor. For the last twenty years, I’ve switched careers every two or three, except for thirteen years of editing, but I would just never permit anybody in my family to be uncovered.” Financially, Howard is limited in his ability to work in his preferred medium, due to a lack of respect on these shores for sequential art. “What I think is upsetting to Howard is being ignored. With Stuck Rubber Baby, he received very little negative criticism, but what bothers him is the gay community not putting his book up for an award, sales not doing what they ought to, or the whole failure of America to support and collect graphic novels. “He just won the Critic’s Choice Award at Angouleme. I’m sure he would like to live in a country that respects comic art, but I can’t imagine him living in a foreign country. He’s very American. He’s no xenophobe, but he wants to live where he doesn’t have to think about the language he’s talking. A life-long issue for him is what he chose to do is one of the least honored forms of art in the United States. “All this praise he’s received was certainly validating but it’s not complete because ‘If I’m so smart, why aren’t I rich? Why isn’t anybody buying this book? Why isn’t it made into a movie?’ Movie producers didn’t get to discover it through reviews in the New York or LA Times because it never got reviewed there. It was the lack of 176

Above: unpublished ‘Cliff ’ drawing, 1999.

reviewing by the straight mainstream press that was hard to take. Gay bookstores are diminishing these days because, in a big city, you can go to Barnes and Noble and they have a whole big gay section. “Sometimes he gets sick of doing gay stuff. Certainly for commercial, economic reasons, the fact that every time The Village Voice would call him for a comic strip or an illustration, it would be because it’s something gay. That was a frustration, but I don’t know whether he looks on Stuck Rubber Baby as being gay. Obviously a lot of it is gay, but it may be a race work as much or more.” The sad refrain is little different than that of many cartoonists in North America—too little money, not enough of a market to continue. How many great cartoonists have we lost, and how many will we never know? “He seems to enjoy commercial illustration lately because of the computer. It’s an opportunity to learn something new about how to use the computer to make things even better. He was really getting off on CD-ROM animation as part of a commercial job. Since 9/11, there haven’t been many commercial jobs around. “I know there are a couple of subjects coming from his life, like his relationship with the college teacher who was his mentor, that probably need to be made into art in something that isn’t drawn. If I had to predict what totally new thing he’d be doing, I’d bet it’s going to involve the theatre. After having taken five years to draw Stuck Rubber Baby, and going totally broke doing it, I wouldn’t be surprised if he never does another graphic novel.” Partnership crosses generations, race, and sexuality. You will find experiences unique to each, but ask yourself how different is the union between Eddie and Howard and every other couple in this book? Their world is hyper-political by nature, therefore amplifying the differences, but does not the song remain the same?

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C H A P T E R

JACKIE ESTRADA & BATTON L ASH

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Just who is Jackie Estrada? Surely “Batton Lash” is a nom de plume, stolen from a U.S. College football team? The fact you can’t answer either question illustrates the plight of the 1990s independent publisher/artist stuck between mainstream monotony and the obscure, self-indulgent, indie comic book world. She’s slept on Michael Kaluta’s floor, done Dave Stevens’ laundry, and in between has been one of the most influential figures in West Coast fandom, the face behind the Eisner Awards, run a organization dedicated to the inclusion of woman in the comics medium, and helped her husband navigate the perils of self-publishing, Hollywood, and the decline of mainstream comics. Her tale exposes the good ol’ boys network of comics’ ivory business towers and how narrowly focused this industry has become, where anything other than men in tights and men in diapers is left gasping for air. With a father in the Navy, Jackie Estrada is lifted from city to city in the first eight years of her life. Hawaii, Washington DC, and North Dakota are all called home until 1954 when, during the Korean War, the family is transferred to the San Diego area. “We lived in a little suburban community in a town called Chula Vista. All of the things people love about the 1950s is what I grew up with—all the great TV shows, the 1950s music from pop music to rock and roll, seeing the monster movies and cartoons at the Saturday matinee. “Once I got old enough to start having real preferences, I gravitated toward reading science-fiction and 178

gothic mysteries; classic works like Edgar Allan Poe and the complete Sherlock Holmes. My mother would get mad at me for reading all the time. ‘Every time we go to somebody’s house for a birthday for your little friends, you have to go where the books are.’” Perhaps as a reaction to being constantly uprooted, or force fed the 1950s American ideals, Jackie develops a morbid phase in 1960 and turns to writing to express this. “My one friend’s pseudonym was C. Sick. I was Rapid D. Mise,” laughs Jackie. “I prided myself that I could take any topic and write a morbid story about it. For instance, we had to write a story from the viewpoint of an inanimate object. I told the story from the viewpoint of a butcher knife used to kill somebody.” Her first interest in comics comes not from super-heroes, but from a magazine poking fun at tight-assed America. “I was a Mad Magazine fanatic,” says Jackie. “During the 1950s, Mad was the comic magazine you had to have—25¢ cheap. I went nuts over the Ballantine paperbacks that reprinted the early Kurtzman issues, like The Bedside Mad and Son of Mad. I would write Mad-type material for the high school paper.” Jackie rarely buys comics, reading them only when friends or cousins would have them lying around. “I read Mary Jane and Sniffles stories, but I did buy my favorite, Katy Keene. My only attempts to draw things were trying to do paper dolls and pinups for Katy Keene. It was a thrill decades later to meet Bill Woggon, who created Katy Keene.” In her senior year, 1964, she becomes editor on the school newspaper, and the path of her life is set. “If you saw American Graffiti—set in 1962 in California—that’s pretty much what life was like in Chula Vista. We even had Wolfman Jack on the radio.” With high aptitude tests, she majors in Journalism at San Diego State University. “I didn’t want to have anything to do with newspapers, especially after studying them for four years,” laughs Jackie. “I realized the kinds of students who were taking journalism were the kinds who were out there writing for newspapers—which accounted for the fact that most reporting was superficial and facts were rarely accurate. “I wanted to be a magazine editor. We had a great teacher who had worked at the New York Times. To pass the class, students had to market eight articles and sell at least one. We learned you don’t start off sending everything to Esquire and The New Yorker. I sold all eight to places like Left: Batton does his best Bryan Ferry impersonation at this 1996 signing. College Store News, and Grit. I Above: teenage Jackie at her typewriter in 1960. really got into photography and did Below: Jackie with Bill Woggon, Katy Keene creator, 1981. the photos for my articles.” In her last year of high school, she meets her future husband, Davey Estrada. “One of the first questions he asked me was, ‘So, what do you think the meaning of life is?’” laughs Jackie at her response. “I was like, ‘Umm, my favorite color is blue!’ He’d play me jazz records and gave me lots of interesting books. I started to think, ‘You know, I’ve reached that point in my life where I better start using my brain.’” Philosophically, the two would mesh under the guidance of Objectivist writer and creator Ayn Rand. “I majored in journalism and 179

minored in philosophy and English. That’s when I read all of Ayn Rand’s works. I read The Fountainhead, Atlas Shrugged—all her non-fiction work. We enrolled in the Nathaniel Branden Institute and went to all the sessions offered in San Diego. The courses were on topics like economics, the history of philosophy, aesthetics, and taught by people associated with Rand. We belonged to the Students of Objectivism at San Diego State, and we subscribed to the newsletters Rand and Branden published.” Jackie is a major proponent of the Individual. Rand helps her to develop a coherent philosophy, from a personal, economical and political vantage point. “The level of discourse about politics in high school was pretty pathetic. My parents were Democrats. My dad was a huge FDR fan. My mom really didn’t pay that much attention to politics. “I was a senior in high school when Kennedy was assassinated. For some reason, I wasn’t too surprised. I sort of said, ‘What’s the big deal?’ At that point, I had already decided it didn’t matter who was President because of the way the government was structured. The individual person in that role didn’t have much influence. I also wasn’t one of those people who thought the Kennedys had ushered in Camelot. I didn’t care about what Jackie Kennedy wore.” Rand’s followers take her teachings to extremes during the 1960s, but Jackie is unfazed by the exclusiveness of what she views as a bastardization of the novels’ original intent. “There were several hardcore Objectivists who thought everyone should adhere strictly to Rand’s writings and ideals. If you dared say anything not in the canon and that wasn’t part of 100% Objectivism, they didn’t want to interact Below: Batton’s homage to Will Eisner’s The Spirit, 1990. with you. “When I tried to talk to other people, I realized they had one viewpoint about politics and a different viewpoint when it came to, say, economics. They were contradicting themselves all the time. I think that’s because too many people swallow information wholesale without examining it. They get some beliefs from what their parents or religion tell them, and other beliefs or attitudes from what their teachers or their friends tell them. I tried to get them to see the contradictions and they would just get mad. “Of course, this was the 1960s, when you started having the whole antiestablishment, counterculture, hippie outlook that got all the attention and was supposed to represent what all of us of that generation thought. At San Diego State, that was maybe 4% of the population. The rest of the students just wanted to learn enough to go out in the world, earn a living, have a family. They had no interest in love-ins or protests. “I actually put together a book called The University Under Siege. The student protesters felt they shouldn’t be responsible for their actions because, ‘It’s okay for us to destroy property because we have a cause. It’s okay for us to prevent other students from getting 180

their education because we have a cause.’ They wanted to replace the current system with another version of totalitarianism. I was certainly against the Vietnam War, but I wasn’t one of them; I wasn’t going to align myself with that kind of fuzzy thinking.” Both Davey and Jackie are pop culture collectors. In the mid-1960s, they hit the Marvel Age of Comics head on. “One day we were in a drugstore—a Thrifty’s—that had a rack of comics and I picked up an issue of XMen; #8 or something like that. I think the reason I was interested was it reminded me of the Metal Men. Before long Davey and I became totally immersed in the comics world. We started subscribing to all the fanzines, getting back issues of things. We would go to the newsstand twice a week to buy every comic that came out. We were getting the Charltons, the Dells, didn’t buy much in the way of Archie, but bought all the DCs and the Marvels.” Stan Lee’s formula is a success. The couple relates to the humanistic portrayal found in X-Men and the Marvel Comics of the time. “It was fun to read because it wasn’t a kid’s comic. It was like a teen thing, where all the characters were interacting; each one had a different personality; they were having personal conflicts and not just fighting bad guys. Every six months we’d drive up to Los Angeles to hit all the bookstores along and near Hollywood Boulevard, places like Larry Edmund’s and Collectors’ Bookshop.” The newsstand world of comics in the 1930s to 1970s is lost to this generation of comic collectors, as is the diversity found there. “Cherokee Bookstore on Hollywood Boulevard was the place in L.A. to get old comics. Burt Blum’s inner sanctum had comic boxes along the walls surrounding his desk with comics for 10¢ each, three for 25¢. “We got all wrapped up in the Carl Barks duck comics, John Stanley’s Little Lulu, anything by Walt Kelly, whether it was Our Gang or Pogo or Animal Comics. I’d always been a fan of Kelly but I never really understood the Pogo strips until I was old enough to really appreciate the humor in them. When Davey and I were married in 1968, it was the merging of two great collections. We ended up with a room in our apartment that was just comics!” One would think the late 1960s underground comix would have a direct effect on the college couple, living in California, but they don’t mesh with Jackie’s philosophical leanings. “Davey was interested in them. I’d look at most of them and go ‘ewww! S. Clay Wilson—no! Sorry, not interested.’ It was sex, drugs, and violence because we can. “But as undergrounds progressed, they branched out into other topics and more interesting creators. So I got Pudge, Girl Blimp by Lee Marrs. I read Zap and Arcade. I still have Spiegelman’s Breakdowns book. I liked the Freak Brothers, I thought Fat Freddy’s Cat was really funny. Some of our friends started doing things in undergrounds—not the most famous ones, but it was a way to break into cartooning at the time. Scott Shaw!, for instance, started out doing stuff in undergrounds and ended up being a professional.” Jackie and Davey decide to do a fanzine, allowing her a connection to one of her heroes. “We were subscribing to everything—Newfangles, Graphic Story Magazine, Witzend, Rocket’s Blast Comic Collector, you name it. Davey wrote a fan letter to Steve Ditko and asked if he might let us print some of his work, and that started a correspondence. One of the letters from him—all are handwritten—is ten pages long and answers all sorts of questions we had asked. He was obviously pleased we were Objectivists and fans of his personal work like The Question and Mr. A. “I wrote a letter to Steranko and he sent me a Nick Fury drawing I still have up on my wall. It says, ‘To Jackie from Nick Fury’s alter ego.’ After I’d met him, he said, ‘You better not let anybody see that—it’s a really bad drawing!’” Nothing comes of the fanzine, but Jackie does attend the very first San Diego Comic Convention in 1970— an event that would change her life in so many ways. “About 300 people came. It was a two-day event but I only went for about four hours. It was in the basement of the U.S. Grant Hotel. They had Jack Kirby, Ray Bradbury, a display of editorial cartoons from the San Diego Union, and a little tiny dealer’s room, like fifteen tables. I think I went and heard Kirby’s talk. He had just moved to California. “I kept getting all these looks from all these guys,” laughs Jackie. “One teenager actually came up to me and said, ‘So, what are you doing here?’ There were a lot of really heavy-set guys, a lot of disabled guys in wheelchairs. “It was an event where comics people could all be in the same place. The most famous comic artist was there, plus Ray Bradbury, who was a hero of everybody. From the beginning, the San Diego Comic-Con was a multimedia, pop culture thing. It had a science-fiction author and an editorial cartoonist, so it wasn’t just comic

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books.” Her career as an editor begins with textbooks before running the copyright-editing department of CRM Books, when Random House acquires it in 1975. She’s been a freelance editor ever since. “It’s the feast or famine thing, because especially textbook publishing, everything goes in cycles. Half of the year, you’re trying to work twenty-four hours a day just to keep on schedule, and the other half you’re saying, ‘Please, give me work.’” Jackie attends all the cons from 1971-75, and thanks to her experience of writing magazine articles, is invited to a committee meeting to view firsthand how everything is run. “I had actually gotten a go-ahead from an editor at Rolling Stone to write something. I went to the committee meeting, talked to some people on the phone, and ended up helping out with the program book for the next year. “A lot of the same roles are still around thirty years later. Dave Stevens was one of the art show coordinators then. A lot of people who ended up as professionals passed through working on the Comic-Con. Jim Valentino, who’s now publisher at Image Comics, worked on the Comic-Con in the late 1970s. So did David Scroggy, who’s now an executive at Dark Horse. Greg Bear, who’s a best-selling science-fiction author, was on the first committee. “I think it was at the 1975 con, Shel Dorf came up to Davey Above: Jackie as Con photographer, 1979. and me and asked if we could just watch the art show for a minute Right: Jackie & Carl Barks at his home, 1980. and make sure no one stole anything. Earlier that day, Davey had asked Theodore Sturgeon for his autograph, and the only paper he had was his convention badge. He then put it back in the badge holder, but now it had Sturgeon’s name on it. The art show coordinator came back (he was a kid named Clayton Moore), looked at Davey’s badge and went, ‘Oh, Theodore Sturgeon! I love your work! You’re just my favorite author!’ Davey’s in his early twenties, short, looks nothing like Theodore Sturgeon and Clayton was gushing over him—it was really embarrassing.” Jackie’s career at the San Diego Con can be broken down into four categories: 1) putting together the program book; 2) chief photographer for the Con; 3) creator of Artists’ Alley; 4) Eisner Awards administrator. In 1976, she’s writing biographies of guests, tracking down photos of them and running the information department, also doing publicity. A year later, she is solely responsible for getting out the Program Book; all on a volunteer basis. “The books were much smaller in those days,” says Jackie. “They consisted primarily of the biographies of the guests and maybe two or three articles, plus some ads. Everything else was pin-ups and artwork. Shel contacted a lot of strip artists to contribute cartoons. That was the fun part—I even got Ditko to contribute. We had stuff from lots of big names—Charles Schulz, Carl Barks, Harvey Kurtzman, Milton Caniff, C. C. Beck, Joe Kubert, Will Eisner, and of course Jack Kirby every year. I got to know lots of artists in the field through doing the book.” 1977 sparkles in Jackie’s memory, what with a guest list of Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster, Bob Kane, Carl Barks, B. Kliban, Harvey Kurtzman, Steranko, Bob Clampett, Rick Griffin, Michael Kaluta, Stan Lee, Ted Sturgeon, Walter Gibson (who created The Shadow for the pulps), Bill Scott from Rocky & Bullwinkle, and Robert Heinlein. “Heinlein is the famous science-fiction author who wrote Stranger in a Strange Land and Starship Troopers—a Randian author—very libertarian. He rarely did public appearances. Around 1975 he had a lifethreatening illness and had a massive blood transfusion that saved his life. As a result, he became a big supporter of blood donation. In 1976, the World Science-Fiction Convention was held in Heinlein’s hometown of Kansas City. He said, ‘I’ll will appear at this convention and be your guest of honor on one condition: you have a blood drive there. The only way people will get my autograph is if they donate blood.’ World Con was so eager to get him as a guest they said, ‘Sure.’” Jackie and Davey attend the Con and convince Heinlein to attend the San Diego show. “In 1977 we had the first Robert A. Heinlein Blood Drive. He died several years ago, so now it’s the Robert A. Heinlein Memorial Blood Drive. Robert was a guy who had been in the military. When you saw him at events, he was always wearing 182

beautiful suits; a very uptight looking guy. When he was at the World Con, he had guards assigned to him. When he came to San Diego, he put on a Hawaiian shirt and just had a ball hanging out with everybody. He even did a drawing on stage during our annual Comic-Con Sunday brunch.” While one can claim her services over the years having been abused as a volunteer, the fringe benefits for Jackie come from developing relationships with the industry’s biggest names. “Back then, because the Con had no office, no employees and the officers all had full-time jobs, I was the one person who could be reached during the day. Since I was a freelancer, I was always home, and often ended up being the one who dealt with all the guests just because they could get ahold of me. I got a call one morning at 6 a.m. from Buster Crabbe (star of the Flash Gordon and Tarzan movie serials in the 1930s), who had already been out exercising and was surprised I wasn’t up yet,” laughs Jackie. “Another time Clarence Nash called me—in his Donald Duck voice! I never knew who I’d get calls from. ”There are many people who are sort of ‘annual friends.’ We may not talk much all year, but we are old pals whenever we see each other at San Diego. For instance, Lee Marrs has been a friend of mine since 1977. I took Jim Steranko to see the house in which Raymond Chandler lived here in La Jolla. I visited the ‘grassy knoll’ in Dallas with Eddie Campbell and Bryan Talbot. We’ve had margaritas with Mary Fleener at an old-style cocktail lounge in San Jose. “I adore Al Williamson, who is kind of an eccentric guy. I can’t see a Marx Brothers’ movie without thinking of Al because his voice is like Groucho’s. He’s always amusing and likes to talk about old movies and jazz.” Jackie and Dave split in 1978. Jackie retires from the Con the same year, but accepts a paying job as the Con’s photographer. The 1982 program book is such a disaster she feels compelled to return. “It was just very sloppily thrown together, and I thought the Con deserved better. In 1979, all the proceeds from the Con were stolen, so David Scroggy and I were put in charge of a charity auction—pieces auctioned off through the Comics Buyer’s Guide. “One of the joys of doing that was visiting Carl Barks at his place just outside of San Diego County in Temecula. He showed me his prized signed baseballs. He was a doll, very robust, big, jolly, nice man—just a sweetheart. He did a watercolor painting for the auction. I did the program book again in 1983 and 1984 and said, ‘I’m quitting again!’” The Con ends fifteen years of volunteer-only status, hiring Fae Desmond as general manager— part time. In the early 1980s, the Con moves from the El Cortez to the downtown Convention and Performing Arts Center. The space has some temporary side rooms for dealers like Chuck Rozanski of Mile High and Bud Plant to set up a mini-store in these areas. “One year,” says Jackie, “three rooms had been set up and the third didn’t get sold, or whoever had bought it backed out at the last minute. Suddenly there was an artist drawing at every table. The room was chaos. If one guy went to the bathroom, somebody else took his spot. I said, ‘Why don’t we formalize this next year?’ “In 1986 we had our first Artists’ Alley, and I was in charge. I ran it from 1986 to 1989. Artists had to pay for their spot, but then it was theirs. There were about 19 eight-foot tables, three chairs to a table, and I would assign five people to that table. I’d say, ‘You all have this table; work out amongst yourselves who’s going to be here at what time.’ “I was involved in the Inkpot awards, which are the Con’s own awards that started in 1975. I’ve also been involved in the con’s other awards like the Bob Clampett Humanitarian Award and the Russ Manning Most 183

Promising Newcomer Award. When each died, we created awards in their names. In 1986, I also created the position of ‘pro liaison’ so there would be a separate registration area for professionals and they wouldn’t have to stand in line with everybody else.” The image of Jim Steranko being forced to stand in line with the ‘masses’ is too much to bear. Being at the forefront of fandom, Jackie can claim a certain amount of credibility when labeling the male comic fan. “My characterization of the ‘mainstream’ fan is the guy wearing a slogan T-shirt and talking about how great X-Men is. The guy at the other end of the spectrum—the ‘artsy fartsy’ fan—is the guy with the slogan T-shirt talking about how great Eightball is. There’s not much difference between them. They have just picked their thing they’re devoted to.” While the industry concerns itself with shrinkage, Jackie is convinced fandom is more diverse now, and she sees this from her perspective at the Con. “It reached a point where you got to see more and more normal people there,” laughs Jackie. “In the earliest days, everybody looked Above: Jackie & Batton in 1991. like a fan. They had super-hero t-shirts, hats with buttons all over them, or Right: Wedding invitation by Batton, 1993. they wore costumes. They were walking billboards. Now, that’s the small minority. What you see now is more pop culture-oriented people rather than just comic fans. They’re just as likely to start talking about Buffy or about Hong Kong movies instead of, ‘Okay, let’s stop talking about the Hulk and start talking about the Thing.’ If Hollywood can have multiple award shows, why not comics? In the early 1980s Dave Olbrich is administering the Jack Kirby Awards, based at Fantagraphics. Jack Kirby’s influence over the industry is so large it takes two award shows to replace his. Olbrich leaves Fantagraphics, and the fallout gives birth to the Eisner Awards, while rebel rousers Kim Thompson and Gary Groth at Fantagraphics approach Harvey Kurtzman to set up the Kurtzman Awards. The first Eisners are held in 1988. “Olbrich ran them in 1988 and 1989,” says Jackie, “but 1990 was the problem year.” After complaints about the blank ballot, Olbrich sends out an incomplete nominating list full of errors, and the Eisners are canceled. “At the 1990 Con, I had a breakfast with Will, Denis Kitchen, and Fae from Comic-Con in which they proposed the Con take over the Eisner Awards and have them under its nonprofit wing and that I be the administrator for the awards. That’s something where I get paid a flat fee for doing it. It’s not a very big flat fee, but at least it’s something. I also started getting paid to do the program book.” In 1990, the Eisners had but one hundred and fifty people in the audience. Jackie alters the ceremony and voting procedures. Rather than a blank ballet, she picks five judges, all from different areas of the industry (retail, distribution, fandom, journalist, creator), crams them into a hotel, and force feeds them a billion comics in one weekend. Publishers have sent their books and a cover letter saying what they’re submitting and the categories. Jackie and the judges still make a point of including anything worthy. Each judge assigns a 1-5 numeric value to each entry, after having dismissed much of what is unworthy. All of this is done to create the most objective ballot for voting possible, rather than the Harvey Awards which takes much criticism for having a process which allows publishers to stuff the ballot box. As one would expect, Jackie is the brunt of some interesting criticism in her role as administrator. “I’ve had phone calls from people. Gareb Shamus’s father called me and was just livid that Wizard wasn’t on the ballot, because not only was it the best-selling magazine, but it was color,” laughs Jackie. “I said, ‘The judges’ main criterion was not sales. It was the quality of the publication, the quality of the coverage, the writing, and whether ten years from now, you can look at those issues and feel like they made a contribution to the medium.’ “I became persona non grata with Wizard from that point on. He was going to call the judges up and yell at them. Then he started naming names of people he was going to call, like Beau Smith. ‘Those aren’t the judges,’ I said. ‘You’re thinking of the Eisner Retailer Awards, which is a totally separate program.’ That stopped him in his tracks, since he’s apparently already put a call in to Beau.” Only once has Jackie regretted her decision regarding a judge. “The person wasn’t taking the commitment seriously. Therefore he didn’t read everything he should have. He’d pick the most expensive thing on the lunch 184

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menu just because somebody else was paying for it. When the judges voted, he gave a three to everything he hadn’t read! He was getting cell phone calls from his business in the middle of the meeting, even though it was the weekend.” Unsurprisingly, only Steve Ditko and Dave Sim have pulled Marlon Brandos. “Sim said he didn’t want to be on the ballot. The judges overruled him and said, ‘We don’t care if that’s what he says. We think he should be on the ballot, so we’re putting him on it,’” laughs Jackie. 1990 marks her beginning at the Eisners, and a return to the Program Book—a decision that alters her life forever. The book is filled with artwork from artists in the industry and Jackie receives a drawing from Mr. Batton Lash. “As I did with everybody who sent in a drawing, I sent a postcard saying, ‘Got your drawing. Thanks for sending it in.’” Later that summer, Jackie attends the Chicago Con with Desmond. Batton meets his future wife, thanking her for the postcard, as if it was done just for him. Says Jackie about Bat’s submission, “I thought he was like one of the older Silver Age guys. With a name like Batton Lash, he probably had to be in his sixties. “One of the first things we talked about was Ditko. The fact I even knew who Ditko was practically had him in shock,” laughs Jackie. “When I said I’d corresponded with Ditko and had some original art, he was really impressed. The conversation naturally led to Rand, and it turned out he was also a Randian, although he’d never formally studied Objectivism. “I started finding excuses to call him because the San Diego Con was six weeks later and he was coming out for it. I would say things like, ‘Since you’re in New York, there’s this place called Teuscher Chocolatier in Manhattan. So if by any chance, before you come to San Diego, you could pick up a small box of chocolates for me that would be great, because I really love those and I don’t know when I’m gonna be in New York again.’ We really agreed on everything and had tons of things to talk about. “He was just funny, clever and very nice— very deferential. He wasn’t a boisterous, obnoxious type of person. He’s from Brooklyn, so he talks with his hands. When he came out to San Diego, he came with his friend Mitch Berger. He had told Mitch, ‘Yeah, Jackie Estrada called me last Saturday.’ And Mitch said, ‘Oh, really?!’ ‘Yes, but she’s really a nice person. She must just call a lot of people and just chat with them.’ Mitch was going, ‘I bet she’s not calling a lot of people.’ And Bat said, ‘Like what do you mean?’ He was very naïve,” says Jackie drolly. “Fae and I had arranged to stop by their hotel to get my box of chocolates, which Bat had indeed picked up for me. A group of seven or eight of us went to dinner, and Mitch saw I was arranging to sit next to Bat. Mitch made sure that he sat on the other side of him. Mitch was totally aware that I was interested in Bat, and Bat was totally clueless! “Two days later, I had a barbeque at my house. This was my ace in the hole, because I showed Bat my five-page Ditko story! It was the original art, a story from Journey Into Mystery I bought from Russ Cochran at the Con back in the 1970s. I have a Frazetta Johnny Comet daily, a Pogo daily and a few other things hanging on my office wall. I made sure he saw all this cool stuff and, after everybody else left, I got to chauffeur him to the big party that night at the new Convention Center. Finally, with a little prompting, it dawned on him that he was interested in me!”

For three-and-a-half years, Jackie and Bat carry on a long-distance relationship. “We flew black and forth, met each other in the middle of the country for things like Chicago Con, spent a lot of time on the phone, and went hugely into debt,” laughs Jackie. Bat has never lived anywhere but Brooklyn and, as a freelance artist, didn’t have the financial means to move to the West Coast. “At that point, he had a book out of his Wolff & Byrd comic strips from the National Law Journal. Besides writing and drawing the weekly strip, he was working for the weekly newspaper there in Brooklyn, where he was doing editorial cartoons, advertising art and illustrations.” Bat takes the big leap, proposing to Jackie in the fall of 1993 and moves out west. “I have a house in San Diego. He had a fifth-floor walk-up apartment in Brooklyn smaller than my kitchen. He’s a committed New Yorker. He had a studio in Manhattan for many years. San Diego’s too bright, too sunny for him. He never had to learn how to drive in New York because you can just take public transportation or walk. Any services you need, they’re open all night. My house is in a suburban area. He likes tall buildings and people in the streets— the hustle and bustle. It’s so quiet here, he’s sure an axe murderer is going to come running out of one of the houses screaming!” Married in January of 1994, they begin a professional partnership, deciding to brave the waters of the independent market to produce the comic book version of Wolff & Byrd. “We launched our marriage and the comic at the same time. On our honeymoon, he was drawing the first issue.” What possesses the newlyweds to begin their own venture? “Naiveté?” laughs Jackie. “I had publishing experience and was an editor. He wanted to tell longer

1. Frank Miller & Dave Gibbons, 1993. 2. Mike Kaluta & Bernie Wrightson,1987. 3) Neil Gaiman, Charles Vess & Steve Leialoha, 1989. 186

1) Bill Sienkiewicz, 1999. 2) Jeff Smith, 1999. 3) Sergio Aragones, 2000.

stories not possible in a weekly strip, which had to have a gag and a synopsis every four panels. It seemed there was a receptivity in the marketplace for the self-published book.” The influence of Dave Sim and Deni Loubert is never far from their minds, as well as the success of Jeff Smith’s Bone. “Cerebus and Elfquest both had a long track record by then,” says Jackie. “Don Simpson was doing his comic, Bizarre Heroes—a lot of people were starting comics at the time. There was like seven distributors and several thousand comic shops. It seemed if you sold a minimum number of comics you could finance it.” As with Deni’s outside work supporting Dave’s drawing ‘habit,’ Jackie continues editing textbooks. A typical issue sees Bat taking six weeks to write, pencil and ink. In the final two weeks, they do the lettering and production. “In those days,” says Jackie, “he was a late riser. He worked in the middle of the night. I’d have to wake him up at eleven or twelve. Our way to get him to be able to live here was for him to have a studio in downtown San Diego. That way, he could go to an urban environment and have a place that was his. He could walk around, go to the library, go to the bookstore, get copies made—have access to services where he didn’t feel like he’d have to say, ‘Jackie, can you drive me?’ A lot of other artists had studios in that building, so it was a nice environment.” Unlike some freelance artists, Bat is highly disciplined in his daily routine, but isn’t immune to self-criticism. “He’d come home around seven at night. Usually I went to pick him up. We’d have our time in the car to talk about what was going on, plus we’d talk on the phone several times a day. He wouldn’t go in everyday. He has two processes. One is the writing process and one is the drawing and inking. In the writing process, he needs to just walk around and think and make notes. He often does that here at home. When he’s doing the penciling and inking, where he needs to be

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at the drawing board, then he goes to his studio. If he spends a couple of weeks writing, he might not even be at his studio for those weeks. “Sometimes he gets frustrated with his drawing abilities, if he can’t get something in his head onto the page. When he’s writing, he’s often researching all kinds of things, reading books to stimulate his thought process, and walking around the neighborhood just to let the creative juices flow. He usually comes up with lots of interesting plot twists in his stories. He likes to work in lots of references to other things that might be related to the topic in the story. These little touches are rewarding to the more astute readers.” As much as Bat worships Steve Ditko, or enjoys Dave Sim, his true kinship is with Dan DeCarlo. “He was definitely an influence,” notes Jackie. “Bat’s character Mavis, the secretary to Wolff and Byrd, is drawn in a little more cartoony style and definitely in a Dan DeCarlo-influenced style. In fact, Bat had Dan do the cover for the third issue of Mavis because he was the guy who inspired her style. Dan drew the third issue of Radioactive Man, which was a takeoff on Archie’s super-hero line of comics in the mid-1960s.” Validation from Jackie is an important part of the process, but only until he has completed drawing the entire issue. “He goes through it and tells me what’s happening on each page. I might say, ‘Hey that’s great, that’s cool,’ or I’ll go, ‘I don’t get it.’ “Sometimes he’ll say, ‘I’m trying to decide which way to go in this issue. Which do you like better—if I do this or if I do that?’ I’ll tell him what I like or don’t like each way. Then he’ll say, ‘That gives me an idea for a third thing.’ Sometimes he’ll just discuss things in a general way about a character or a plot element. And just talking about it will help him decide what he wants to do. Or he’ll say something real specific like, ‘Come up with what could be the names for slot machines in a Egyptian-themed casino in a small Nevada town!’ I’ll brainstorm some names. “Once the issue is penciled and inked, he makes xeroxes of the pages. Then he takes Post-it notes and puts them as if they were balloons on the layouts, so they’ll show what each person is saying or what the caption is saying. Then I use the Post-its to do the lettering for the issue. “But first, I will read through the whole issue, because he wants my reaction: ‘Was it funny? Did you laugh?’ He hovers around and sometimes I’ll say, ‘Did this happen before that other thing happened or after? Can we add an explanation here so it will be less confusing?’ As an editor, I get wrapped up in those kinds of details. But he’s like, ‘But was it funny?!’ He’s certainly more comfortable if he thinks he’s getting a good reaction from me. “As I do the lettering, every once in a while I’ll change things because maybe the wording sounds awkward, like it wouldn’t be the way somebody would say something. I’ll smooth out the language. He had this Alan Mooretype character who was supposed to speak with a certain British accent. I massaged his dialogue so it sounded more like Alan talks. I know he doesn’t say, ‘I’d,’ he says, ‘Oid.’ I’ll do things like that where I try to help make the character sound more distinctive. “I don’t really comment on the artwork, more on things like plot elements or time sequences. As an

Above: Page to Mavis #2 without and with zip-a-tone, 1999. Left: 1989 program by Sienkiewicz, 1990 by Morrison, 1993 by Miller. editor, the one thing I think about is, ‘What’s going to make the reader stop, or stop the flow of reading? Will it be because they don’t understand what’s going on, or because someone seems to be acting out of character?’ “Everything I’ve read about even really famous artists is they just look at their stuff and go, ‘Why isn’t this better?’ The important thing of the artwork to me is it goes with the kind of story he’s telling. It doesn’t have to be the best drawing ever of a gavel, as long as people know it’s a gavel. He just wants to draw well and improve his drawing. He does look back at the earliest issues and cringe. ‘If we’re going to reprint these, I want to be able to go in and change this. I can’t believe I let that face be in there like that.’” Jackie’s experience as an editor stands her in good stead to keep Bat, the artist, grounded in the financial realities of independent publishing. “I usually say, ‘If you have time to do that, fine.’ Lots of times I come up with ideas I think are going to be time savers, and he finds ways to take twice as long to do them. When we put together our collection, The Vampire Brat, all we needed to do was put the issues in sequence and add page numbers and part titles. But the lead story, from Mavis #2, had been published with no zip-a-tone on it, unlike our regular issues. “For the purposes of the book, Bat decided that story, which was twenty-seven pages long, needed zip-atone on it, the laborious process of which he is a master. In his mind, Bat thinks he can do the zip-a-tones for a twenty-one page issue in one day. I’ll say, ‘But it usually takes you at least two hours a page; if you don’t want to sleep, that’s forty-two hours.’ And he’ll say, ‘Well, I’m going to use a streamlined process where I only put it in just the right spots.’ Then, of course, I’ll go to bed at midnight and get up the next morning, and he’s still up and he’s only done three pages. “I just know him so well now that, no matter how much time he thinks something is going to take, it’s going to take longer. The frustrating part for me is I can’t help. We’ve already made arrangements with the printer that we’re going to have something to them on such and such a day, and he thinks we are, and I know we’re not. “It’s a big relief to him when I tell him, ‘I’m gonna call the printer and say they’re getting it Monday and not Friday.’ He’ll say, ‘Do you think that’s okay?’ ‘Well, it’s going to have to be, because that’s the reality.’ One thing 189

he used to keep bringing up is the idea of producing slipcovers to put the trade paperbacks in. I think we’d sell five of them. “There’s a certain mode I call the ‘Absent Minded Professor’ where he gets so preoccupied with thinking about what he’s writing that he doesn’t pay attention to mundane things. Only in the days before we go to press does he end up doing all-nighters. Our routine these days is he gets up at six in the morning. I don’t get up till eight. He does a couple of hours working in what he calls ‘The Pit.’ Previously, it was a breakfast nook. “After I get up, he does his new thing, which is his exercise routine. That’s good, because it helps him channel any anxieties and stuff into Above: Jackie and Will at the Eisner Awards, 1993. the physical world. Several days a week, he takes Below: she’s eye-poppin’ beautiful—married Jan. 1994. the bus and goes to a fitness center and does a Right: cover to Supernatural Law #27, with workout there. He’d been saying for a long time story inked by Steve Ditko, Apr. 1993. that he wanted to go to a gym and start working out because it’s such a sedentary life to sit at a drawing board all day. I went through my era of health club workouts. That’s now in my past.” Bat has taken on a ‘Gerhard,’ if you will, to help him with backgrounds and draw things like courtrooms and buildings. “It’s called ‘slave wages,’” laughs Jackie. “Trevor wants to break into comics, so he’s willing to do this work for next to nothing, although he gets use of the studio space for his own work.” With Diamond being the only major distributor in North America, the only other way for an independent book to reach an extended audience is through the Internet. Assessing the impact of their web site is difficult, but without the Internet, achieving any kind of direct access to old and new fans would be difficult in a market that rarely allows retailers to take a chance on a new, non-mainstream book. Jackie is the company’s Internet voice. “We’re trying to use the site to get people involved with us on a more personal level. Every time we go somewhere, we put a bunch of photos up. We’ll run a picture of a signing with Batton and a guy like Terry Moore or Jeff Smith, and we’ll run a link to the artist’s web site. They tend to do things vice versa. “The other thing I do is post news about what we’re doing on various comics-related web sites and message boards, then add links to our site. People can order through the site, and we get orders, but they’re not like daily or anything. There are now so few print publications that review comics, and the ones out there are either like Wizard, which concentrates on one end of the spectrum, or The Comics Journal, which concentrates on the other end of the spectrum. There’s nothing in that middle ground for publicizing our books.” Conventions provide the only other outlet to grab new readers, but as a small, independent publisher, this can be an emotional rollercoaster for the artist. “At first, when we were at shows, somebody would come by and look at our stuff and walk off, and Bat would take it personally. But at a panel on self-publishing, Dave Sim made the point that ‘you have to realize your readers are a very small percentage of the 190

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entire audience out there. The rest of those people are not your audience. They could care less, so you can’t take it personally when somebody looks at your work, decides it’s not for them and walks off.’ This is what I point out to Bat whenever something like that starts to bother him. “Sometimes Bat will say, ‘Just try it, look at it.’ He’s the kind of person that when you meet him, he’s fun to talk to, and he’s an animated, interesting guy. Sometimes, he’ll get a feeling from somebody that maybe they’re not going to buy it, but if he gives an issue to them, maybe they’ll become a reader. He’s said, ‘Look, just take this copy. Try it out.’ We will get people coming back to us, either the next day or the next year at the con who’ll say, ‘I read that comic you gave me and I really liked it. Now I’m really a fan.’ Sampling is a tried and true form of advertising.” The Catch 22 of the current trend of releasing and making more money off of trade paperbacks is not lost on Jackie, the publisher. “I think he’s more concerned about the fact that the book has been coming out for eight years now and it’s being taken for granted. It has the loyal readership who always buy it, but there’s not much opportunity for new people to see it because most stores don’t order extra copies to put on the shelves. No one else who frequents that store even knows the comic exists. Only the really good retailers have copies available for potential new readers. It’s been frustrating trying to get the comic in the hands of people who would enjoy it, but don’t have access to it. “Usually the pamphlet version that comes out on a regular basis has some kind of revenue stream to it. You do it and get paid for it. You can then turn around and use that money to pay for the next issue. As a self-publisher, if you do one book a year, there’s no advance, there’s nothing to live on during that year you’re doing it. Plus, with our type of book, each issue pretty much stands alone. It’s not like putting them all together will give you a single story that’s told like a novel. “Unfortunately, the mentality among many readers today is ‘I’ll wait for the trade,’ and they aren’t buying the single issues. The sales go down on those, and suddenly we can’t afford to do a trade paperback unless we have some infusion of cash from somewhere. It’s frustrating when I ask someone how they liked the latest issue and they say, ‘Oh, I didn’t get it. I’m just going to wait until your next trade comes out.’ That sort of guarantees there won’t be one. “We decided that to get into the bookstore marketplace, we needed to do something that was really a handsome book. We did a new format that’s 196 pages on really nice paper stock, with a heavy cover. This allows us to package seven or eight issues for an attractive price. We found getting into the bookstore market is very, very difficult. That whole book industry is in a big mess right now. Distribution is a mess. Chain store buying is a mess. The distributor we signed with has now filed for bankruptcy, and we don’t expect to see any of the money our Vampire Brat trade made through them. That distributor specialized in graphic novels, but most other distributors aren’t too hospitable to comics. Fortunately, we have a new distributor where the sales manager has actually read Bat’s work and is a fan.” For better or worse, Bat and Jackie dip their feet in the piranha-invested waters of Hollywood. “Bat wouldn’t be able to do the comic if it weren’t for the movie option money. He’d probably be doing storyboards for movies or doing ad agency work instead. There have been various options on Wolff & Byrd over the years, and it’s always been with producers who sought Bat out. The biggest deal came five years ago, when a new producer, Nancy Roberts, had several studios interested. Bat finally signed with Universal. “The upside is when Hollywood wants your work, they’ll pay option money to be able to do it. On the downside, you have to have an entertainment attorney to look after your interests. If your work is made into a

movie or TV show, someone else might do comics books based on it, and it’s nothing resembling the original—they’re competing with your book. If the movie or TV show is a big flop, your comic can be affected by it. Ghost World was brilliant because it took the source material and made it into a movie that’s a movie. It’s not like names were arbitrarily changed or the main characters suddenly became two black girls. The film preserves the feel and the outlook of the comic. “Bat really never had any interest in writing the screenplay—he wants to do comics. Dealing with Hollywood is to get money to do our comic and use the publicity to increase interest in the comic. It’s not like, ‘Boy, we’re doing this comic so it can be made into a movie and we can get rich and become moguls.’ Our main concern is for the movie to reflect well on the comic. To generate interest in the comic, it’s has to reasonably resemble the comic. If it suddenly becomes two teenage librarians instead of two adult lawyers... they can’t make changes that are going to be opposite to Bat’s philosophy. “There have been lots and lots of versions of the script. I’ve got a file drawer full of them. Each time, he does notes saying what things he likes, doesn’t like and things he’s particularly concerned about. He does not have any official ability to say, ‘You can’t do that,’ but if he makes suggestions, they have to at least pay attention to them. That’s about the best you’re going to get out of Hollywood these days.” The amount of time spent on the movie, as opposed to the comic, is very minimal, but the Hollywood process can still have an unsettling effect on the artist. “Bat will get a call from our producer who says there’s some actor they’re thinking of, or they’re bringing in a different writer, whatever. If it’s something that makes him nervous, it throws him off doing any other work. He’ll worry about the phone call and come up with a worst case scenario that makes him even more upset. I always say to him, ‘Look, three months ago, they called and said X and Y was in the works, and those never happened. “The arrangement he has with Universal is when it’s Right: Jackie edited Comics: Between The Panels, 1998. in production, he is a consultant. That can be whatever he wants it to be. He could be there every day, or go visit the set Below: Renegade Romance with Jackie’s script, 1986. twice. Our focus will be, ‘How can we use the movie to make people interested in the comic?’ It all goes back to that.” Deni Loubert constantly struggled with the fear of losing herself in Dave’s shadow. Adrienne Colan felt a divide between her interests and Gene’s need to be working. Jackie’s professional standing, and having previously been married, leaves her with a sharp perspective on part of her role in their relationship. “Creators, the good ones, are compelled to do what they’re doing. It’s like they don’t even have a choice. They could be making a lot more money, but this is just what they have to do. They love comics, they love the medium; it becomes their life. Anybody who’s involved with a comic creator has to fit into that compulsive lifestyle where there’s not much of a social life. Any minute they can be at the drawing board, that’s where they’re gonna be.” Exhibit A Press is not Jackie’s sole contact with the medium. She wrote two romance stories for Deni Loubert’s Renegade Romance. “I had met Al Williamson at the 1984 Comic Con and asked him, ‘If I wrote a story, would you draw it?’ He said, ‘Sure, send it to me.’ I wrote a story that was nine or ten pages long. He said, ‘That’s too many pages. I hardly draw anything anymore.’ I got it down to about five pages and he kept putting off drawing it and then finally he gave it to this guy named Jim Sullivan, who draws in a Frazetta style. Jim drew the story and I think Al redid some of the faces and put in some details. That was for the first Renegade Romance. “I did a second story, about unrequited love, that Barb Rausch drew. Each page represented a decade in a 192

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woman’s life. It starts in the 1940s with her in love with this guy, doesn’t get him in high school and in the ensuing years, she fantasizes constantly about him. Each decade she’s, ‘He’s going to leave his wife and be with me.’ Of course, at the end, she reads in the paper he’s died. In the last scene, she’s at his grave and never did wind up with him. Throughout, Barb drew in the style of the decade. Barb died of cancer a couple of years ago; I really miss her.” A large bee in her bonnet stems from the lack of professionalism she sees exhibited within the industry, and how that has affected her ability to partake in the Old Boys’ network. “I think I have always been perceived as somebody who’s a volunteer type. Many people think I’m an employee of the convention, which I’ve never been. Most company folks or pros who call or e-mail me want to know how to sign up for pro registration, how to get in touch with the program coordinator, or they want me to do something for free. I produced something like a dozen of the Comic-Con’s program books between 1977 and 2000, for which I got plenty of praise. At no time did anyone ask if I was available for other editing work. Even after I did the Dark Horse book, nobody inquired if I was available to do things.” The Dark Horse book is the mammoth hardcover reference/anecdote tome: Comics: Between The Panels. Editing the project envelops four years of her life. Mike Richardson, owner of Dark Horse, wants a book consisting of lots of anecdotes from comic history. Writer Steve Dunn has written a third of the entries, but the project is stagnant. Steve has been working on it for six or seven years. Jackie is brought in and beats the 500-page tome in existence. “The hard part was trying to smooth out the writing, because Steve tends to have an acid-tipped pen. We had two reviewers for the book who were experts on the Golden and Silver Age material. The one reviewer pointed out, ‘If you say negative things about a creator, just remember his kids are probably going to read this book.’ It’s one thing to have anecdotes about Bob Wood, a comics editor who went to jail for killing his girlfriend—that’s on the public record—but it’s another to say Artist A was a pathetic drunk or Artist B’s bad drawing was the brunt of everybody’s jokes.” Coming full circle, ex-husband Davey Estrada works at Dark Horse, and does the indexes for the book. “On the other hand,” notes Jackie, “I’ve seen 20-year-old fanboys with no experience whatsoever offered editing jobs at the major companies—fanboys whose only experience has been working for comic conventions. This has been a sore point for me because people like myself, with proven editing skills and an extensive background in publishing, aren’t the ones offered positions. It’s someone they hang out with at conventions, or one of their friends: ‘Oh, I went to school with him, so I’m going to ask him to be editor-in-chief of our new publishing company.’ “There were two things that had a bad effect. One was the whole fans-becoming-pros phenomenon, where these guys just wanted to keep doing the same kinds of books they liked as kids and teenagers, and they had no experience anywhere outside of comics. That’s the core of the good old boy network. “The other was the development of the direct market, where comics companies came to see their target audience as 16- to 30-year old males who like super-heroes—the kind of customers who would frequent comic book stores. As smart marketers, the companies said, ‘This is our built-in, for-sure audience. We’re going to do stuff for them and we’re not going to do anything else.’ The owners of the stores were 90% from that fanboy background, so that’s the only kind of comics they would put in their stores. That became the only kind the companies would produce. “If you look back to the early 1980s, you had all these companies like First, Pacific, Renegade, and Comico doing titles like The Rocketeer, Johnny Quest, Neil the Horse, Grendel, American Flagg—wide varieties of books that were fun to read for all ages. People couldn’t wait for the next Nexus to come out. But now, if anybody tries to put out anything new or different, they have a tough time getting retailers to carry it.

Deni Loubert was the guinea pig—Jackie and others have striven to perfect the model. “I have the most in common with those in the same position of publishing their husband’s work. That would be Vijaya Iyer (Jeff Smith’s wife), Maria Lapham (David’s wife), Robyn Moore (Terry’s wife), and other women who encounter the same things I am as far as trying to deal with printers, sell books to bookstores, and set up booths at cons. We all just kind of commiserate,” says Jackie, in a voice familiar to the Colans and DeCarlos of the previous generation. “We all nod our heads knowingly,” smiles Jackie. “Ann Eisner was never involved in her husband’s work and not really familiar with it. In that older generation, the wives had a different function. Today, we’re career people. Each one of us has had some kind of separate career about which we know and are confident. Vijaya was very successful in the computer business in California before she and Jeff moved back to Ohio.” Women in comics is a subject dear to Jackie’s heart, and she has been at the core of a movement to make the comic book industry more inclusive to women. In 1993, a young Heidi MacDonald, soon-to-be editor at DC Comics, hands Jackie a flyer saying ‘Preliminary meeting for new organization—Friends of Lulu.’ At a coffeehouse across from the convention center, the most influential women creators discuss plans to bring more women to comics. Present are Loubert, Pini, Yale, Robbins, Gregory, Marrs, Thompson, Thomases, Yronwode, Bennett, Dyer, Rausch, Kaalberg, and others. Drop an A-Bomb on the coffeehouse, and you’ve wiped out multiple generations of female creators. “Some of the women wanted to get complaints off their chests of how they were treated in the industry,” remembers Jackie. “One woman who worked at DC said, ‘I’m the only editor there who doesn’t have a computer. All the guys have a computer.’” Jackie is chosen to be president of the non-profit organization in 1995. Five years later, she would retire, frustrated by being one of the few women ready to deliver on their promises of action. Amongst the accomplishments, Jackie lists “the Lulu Cons, particularly the second held in New Jersey. We’d various experts talk about how comics were being used in school curricula, and how Scholastic Books was publishing some graphic novels. We had editors from Nickelodeon magazine talking about how comics came to be included in that publication. Another big accomplishment was the ‘Friends of Lulu Recommends’ catalog put out by Diamond. We distributed lots of those. “We got some good media coverage. We had some write-ups nationally syndicated in newspapers. I wrote an article for the Overstreet Price Guide. Friends of Lulu produced a handbook called How to Get Girls (into Your Store). We had Quebecor donate the printing and I lined up advertisers to cover all the other costs involved. Diamond sent a copy to each of its 4000 or so retail accounts. Unfortunately, the retailers most open to reading the handbook were the ones already doing everything we suggested. When I was on the board, we had a booth or table at all the major conventions, and put together panels and programs for all the Cons on various issues. “The Eisner Awards became more and more time consuming, and I was not paying as much attention to Exhibit A as I should. I was chairing the Lulu Cons, running the board meetings (which we held online), producing the newsletter, running the recommended reading committee, updating information for the web site, and getting the Lulu Awards made. Several of the volunteers weren’t doing what they had said they’d do. I wait a certain amount of time, and when the delegate doesn’t come through, I do the job so it gets done. That’s a bad trait.” In a male-dominated industry, reaction to the all-girls club was mixed. Referred to once at a convention as a group of ‘witless whores,’ the group also has to dodge the slings and arrows of the ‘town misogynist.’ 194

“Dave Sim tried to pick a fight with us,” says Jackie. “In an issue of Cerebus, Dave completely mischaracterized the organization as being only for women, as only for professionals, as militant feminists, and as antifree speech. He wanted to get a real feud going. We drafted a response he ran in his next issue, saying basically, ‘Gee, Dave, thanks for giving us the opportunity to clear up misconceptions about Friends of Lulu. It’s for men and women, for professionals and nonprofessionals. It’s an inclusive rather than exclusive organization. “Dave got very upset because he thought it was just too bland a response. He wanted us to be all lathered up and show our emotional side. But in this case, we women were being the rational, logical ones and he was being illogical and emotional. He challenged us to respond again—we didn’t. He got really upset about that because we wouldn’t play his game,” laughs Jackie. “He wanted to set up Friends of Lulu as the enemy and as representing the feminist ‘sucking-the-brains-out-of-the-guys’ organization, and we weren’t like that. “It’s true some of the Friends of Lulu members were extreme feminists. In any organization like that, you’re going to have some members who have views at each end of the spectrum. That was the main problem I had to fight—the misconceptions that Dave held, and that people didn’t like some of the statements or actions of a few women identified with Friends of Lulu.” Without Jackie’s leadership, the Friends of Lulu organization has imploded, shrinking in step with the industry itself. “The organization has been kind of moribund,” relates Jackie. “I think people didn’t realize how much work was really involved in being on the board. When the board I was on was replaced, even though we had offered transition information and our availability as a resource, none of the new people contacted any of us previous board members. Of the two people who were carryovers, one of them ended up doing all the work that year. The next year, new people came in and the organization became a bit more active. “But I look on the Friends of Lulu experience as part of what has become one of my overall missions in life, which is to promote the comics medium and the best it has to offer. I tried to do that with Friends of Lulu, with Comics: Between the Panels, with the Eisner Awards and with our own Exhibit A publications.” As a woman in this industry, one can have professional experience out the wazoo, but you’ll still face the rod, day in and out. Odd, since examples like both Estradas, Loubert, and Colan leave one wondering if the artists in question would be able to perform in the realities of the marketplace without the support of their partners. The uphill battle also continues for independent artists like Batton—people who have such a deep love of the medium that they will fight until the option money runs out, in hopes of bridging the gap between the superhero mainstream and esoteric. One wonders how long the talent in this industry will hold out before they turn their eyes to Hollywood, or commercial illustration, for good—talent like Dave Cooper.

Left: Bat & Dan DeCarlo do Radioactive Man, 2001. Below: Jackie, Al Williamson & Batton, 1997.

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C H A P T E R

JULIE & DAVE C OOPER

T W E L V E

By the turn of the century, people such as Julie and Dave Cooper have fully embraced the Anne T. Murphy ideal of defying parental and societal expectations to find their artistic niche in a world of growing high commerce. Dave Cooper the person defies all expectations. A product of a generation defined by the crowd who followed in Dave Sim’s indie footsteps—Joe Matt, Seth and Chester Brown—their work expresses concerns never dreamt by the likes of Will Eisner. Bordering on the hardcore, there exists a startling dichotomy between the gentle nature of Cooper the man and the hyper-sexual nature of his work. His obsession with the grotesque begs the obvious question—what kind of woman would marry Dave Cooper? And if the mainstream, super-hero world of comics collapses, will artists like Dave Cooper be the dominate force, or will a life unappreciated in the medium push them out to more commercial work unrelated to the fourcolor world? They put something in the water up in Canada. In 1914, a man named of Shuster is born in Toronto, and co-creates a little strip about an alien who leaps tall buildings in a single bound. The impact of mainstream artists like John Byrne and the independent messiahs Sim, Seth, and Brown suggests the landscape of this American-born industry would be gravely different without contributions from their ‘frozen neighbors to the north.’ It’s 1967 and Dave Cooper is born to the town doctor in Nova Scotia but moves to Ottawa—the capital of 196

Previous Page: Julie & Dave in his studio, 2002. Left: mini-Julie at a year-old in Ottawa, 1970. Below: unpublished sketch of Julie in Honduras, 2001.

Canada—when he is nine. Julie is born a year later to serious French-Catholic parents, but like many of her generation, the practice of religion is a mere inconvenience. “We were forced to go to church every Sunday morning,” says Julie. “My early memories were, ‘Oh my gosh, I’m missing Star Trek!’” Born the youngest of five—a twin in a family that has two sets of twins (they really put something in the Ottawa water)—her parents divorce when she is ten, helping to form her value system of questioning society’s reasoning behind such traditions. Dave and she will meet in 1986, but not marry until 1995. “My father is from a generation with old fashioned values. He instilled that kind of moral in us—‘She’s a girl, she can’t do that’—very stubborn rules. But my father showed me how to take care of the household, which comes in handy because Dave buries his head in his work so dutifully that I take care of everything else, which works very well for me. I probably see myself as more like my father. He’s more of a take control kind of guy.” The influence of her mother— a proofreader for the government— serves her well with Dave, as she proofreads all his work before ink hits the pencils. Unlike Anne T. Murphy, Julie’s rebellious nature is more tangible in its manifestation. “I outgrew the Catholic guilt thing when I turned sixteen or seventeen,” says Julie. “I was at war with my parents. It took me ages to see them as adults without them being huge parental monsters. “I was pretty counter-culture, although earlier influences were Star Trek—the science-fiction angle always attracted me, even at that young age— and the Spider-Man cartoon at noon was the highlight of my very young life. My twin brother and I didn’t really play together. He was so different from me. Today, he’s more of a Mr. Business Man. He’s a chartered accountant. That is so alien to me. I’m more of an artist, kind of a granola girl.” 197

Julie grabs hold of whatever comics her brothers bring into the house, and they too are ones that exist on the fringe. “Swamp Thing was my favorite,” says Julie. “It was so romantic—big bulgy guy and there’s always this woman in trouble. I liked Jonah Hex. When it started to peter out, Jonah Hex was shot finally and then was stuffed. The books I remember are the ones with him being stuffed and these really odd things happening around his stuffed body.” The admitted focus of Julie’s high school life is slacking and socializing, the product of a generation divided between the omnipresence of big business and a creative child’s need to express oneself in a society having few financially feasible avenues for that. “I skipped class a lot—which is terrible. I hope my kids never read this! I listened to Pink Floyd, the Beatles, and David Bowie. When I listen to it now, it just slings me back twenty years ago. I can’t believe I sat for hours listening to that stuff. We would just sit in the grass making those whistles out of grass blades,” laughs Julie. “I still enjoy doing that! “I’ve always wanted a family and I knew there was something in the arts world I wanted. I didn’t really have a focus, unfortunately; just a vague ‘arts related’ interest. It always amazes me when I see these young kids who think and tell me, ‘I’m going to be a doctor.’ I really envy them. “They didn’t know what to do with artistic kids back then. I still wonder if they know now. You just hope the parents are aware the child needs some kind of extra input artistically, outside of school.” After graduating high school, Julie does attend a two-year art course at another high school in Ottawa, focusing on fine arts and illustration. “I was drawn to the life drawing and photography. That’s where I met Dave. I was in the illustration class looking through old drawings and I saw this piece by him. It was this very nice, vegetable illustration. It was really cartoony, just black lines, with minimal hatching. “I got all excited and asked the teacher for it and she said, ‘No way! How did that get into there? I’m keeping this!’ I couldn’t believe this teacher. A student told me that Dave was famous, but a teacher acting that excited about a piece of Dave Cooper art?!” Dave’s reputation at the school precedes him. He is the famous school artist. At this time, Julie defines Right: two pages from Weasel strip, late 1990s. Below: teen Dave & Julie, 1987.

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Dave as a ‘really big slacker,’ always one to skip classes. He is actually working in the comic book field and quits school because of his success. “When I met him, he was just cleaning up his act. Everybody attributes it to me, and I’ll take the credit within his family, but it’s not me. He did it on his own. I agreed with him then and never saw the point of school unless you’re aiming for something specific. ”I saw him across a crowded corridor and our eyes locked,” laughs Julie. “I’m not even making this up. We were young—very, very dramatic. We did that little routine for about a week until I pointed him out to a friend and she introduced me to him. We were all shy and I asked him out, but he swears he was going to ask me out seconds later. ”We went to a screening of the Rocky Horror Picture Show at another high school auditorium. By then, that movie was super old and was hardly shown in the theaters. The kids in the back row were throwing bottles and spraying whatever booze they had. He was getting more and more angry. I had no idea. He just doesn’t show his emotions. “Every Friday and Saturday night we were

out on the town. We must have seen two movies a week. I don’t remember what they were. All that was important to me was that I was sitting next to Dave. It was so romantic back then. It still is today but it’s just so much more passionate for kids.” Julie moves onto a jewelry course in Barrie, Ontario for three years. She works at a soul-crushing job doing repairs, ordering of gems, and tracking the orders. “I was keeping a diary at that time and two months into that job I wrote, ‘If I don’t find another job, it’s going to drive me insane!’ It’s very cutthroat, very commercial, so far from the arts it’s not even laughable. “For an artistic person to stay in a non-artistic job, it sucks them dry and they become bitter old people. You work at a job for more than half your day—more than half your life—so you’ve gotta like it. Otherwise, what are you doing to yourself? I tell that to anyone who will listen. They tell themselves that they’re happy but they’re really fooling themselves. It eats away at their soul.” The couple is living together by this point, engaged in 1988, but stay unmarried 199

until 1995. “A week after our first date, I just knew we were going to be together for the rest of our lives. We didn’t feel the need to get married. Whom would we be proving it to? I wasn’t too keen since my parents had divorced. In their marriage, they just never got along. “Years later, I was in this shop and found this beautiful dress. I loved it so much that when I was paying for it, I told the girls, ‘This is my wedding dress.’ I rushed home and told Dave, ‘We’ve got to get married. I found my wedding dress!’ It’s not a traditional wedding dress at all. It’s batiked, red and black with a bit of embroidery on the yoke, on the front around the neck. My mother was horrified this was to be my dress. “Dave just said, ‘Oh, okay, that sounds great.’ He was quite keen for it. It made me think, had I said that five years before,” laughs Julie, “would he have gone along?” When one examines Dave’s current work, one pictures a depraved, sex-crazed maniac, but the biggest surprise is his soft-spoken, shy personality. “Reading his books,” says Julie, “you’d think, ‘This guy is off the wall.’ You meet him and expect a typical eccentric, his hair all disarrayed, his shirt halfway out of his pants, but he’s not like that. What would surprise people about him is how sentimental he is. He’s a big sap. “Dave likes to take bike rides—long, hard ones—in the summer. He’ll stop if he sees some ducks and try to have them feed out of his hand, usually packing some bread for this purpose. He likes that every bike ride has some kind of surprise. Just a few days ago, he excitedly told me about this Blue Heron he saw right in the middle of Ottawa. Ottawa is great for its green spaces.” In the mid-1980s, Dave is drawing comics for Aircel, one of the companies that came and went in the black-and-white explosion/implosion of that era. Elflord and Jake Thrash are a far cry from what would develop in the 1990s. “He’s so far away from that. I think he’s quite embarrassed about it. Jake Thrash is the last one he did before he said, ‘Get out of my life. I’m going to move into something a bit more interesting,’ which was underground comix. Before then he didn’t know it existed. “He knew about Robert Crumb’s stuff, but what really awakened him was all the auto-bio stuff going around back then by Joe Matt, Chester Brown and Seth. Eventually I’d ask him to bring me home whatever he thought I might like from the comic store. I really like Eisner’s work—all the Tenement Stories. That whole era appeals to me. Chester Brown’s stuff like Ed The Happy Clown from 1989—that was such an amazing book. This was a book that really got Dave’s cogs turning.” The couple absorb Eightball and Love and Rockets. “They were so exciting and so full of energy. Those were the kinds of storylines you hadn’t seen in comics before then. We needed that kind of stuff in comics.” The most difficult times come for the couple in the early 1990s when Dave is finding his feet as an independent creator. Dave is lettering for Fantagraphics and Dark Horse Comics, but Julie is the main breadwinner. Pressed Tongue, the threeissue mini-series for Fantagraphics, brings Dave his first recognition. “This reverts to what I was saying earlier about loving your job. I’ve always encouraged Dave. We had a really tough time for a whole bunch of years. He would do a comic and it wouldn’t be popular. Pressed Tongue—he started on it in 1991— brought him his first fan mail and you should have seen him. He was like a kid in a candy store. It was so thrilling to watch.” But Julie is not so comfortable allowing others 200

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to see his graphic work. “My parents haven’t seen it. I wouldn’t want them to see it. My dad’s really Catholic and my mother? I don’t know what she’d think of it. I don’t think she would know what he was thinking. “But everybody loves Dave. I can’t believe my luck. I think my family loves Dave more than they love me!” laughs Julie. “He’s not a very outgoing guy but there’s something about him that’s just so charming. Kids love him—mothers love him. When my sister finally met the man of her dreams she said, ‘Oh Julie, I’ve met my Dave.’” Dave’s latest work centers on three pieces—Suckle, Crumple and Weasel—all showing an intense fascination with the grotesque. “It’s probably a reaction against what society deems beautiful. He does truly find what people think are ugly girls really pretty. He really, really thinks crooked teeth are the sexiest thing in the world. “Having said that, my teeth are really straight. I can’t even take credit for that, but I’m round and he likes rounder women. I feel so much more comfortable as a woman of size because of his passion. He thinks they’re prettier than skinny bones that, when you hug them, you’re afraid you’ll crush them. “We haven’t really consciously talked about it, because he doesn’t really explain his stuff that much. He might do a painting and I’ll say, ‘What does this mean here? What is this triad of people involved in?’ He says, ‘I don’t know, I just painted it.’ He’s not a control freak. When he does a painting, he doesn’t want you to feel or see what he sees. He wants you to have a completely different experience. “When he first went to these comic conventions, he said people would talk to him and get around to saying, ‘Oh my God, you’re so nice.’ You really can’t judge him by his work because he’s so different. In his books, it’s his id—a cleansing of his soul—getting all that stuff out of there. It really works because it’s kind of real.” The graphic nature of Weasel #4 shocks even Julie. “I’ve known him for fifteen years and he didn’t prepare me. He just said, ‘That’s number four in pencils.’ I read it and couldn’t believe it. ‘Dave, this is all sex!’ He said, ‘Well, Left: Goin’ to the Chapel, Aug. 1995. yeah. It’s part of the story.’ Below: women eliminate the middle-man, Crumple, 1996. “‘Okaaay’ I said. ‘Do you think it’s okay to publish this?’ I think it’s what had to come out in that story.” At the heart of the artist is a love for the films of director David Lynch. “We went to a midnight viewing of Eraserhead at one of the repertory theatres in Ottawa. It’s brilliant. We never missed Twins Peaks. The phone rings and we’d say, ‘Who the hell is calling us during Twin Peaks?!’ “I think David Lynch enjoys leading us along a certain path saying, ‘Ah ha! You thought I was going to do that but I didn’t.’ The element of bizarre really appeals to my Dave, such as David Cronenburg’s movies.” “One that surprised me was years and years ago, he did a sex book called Cynthia’s Petal’s Really Fantastic Alien Sex Frenzy. Somebody wrote in and I thought, ‘Oh my God, here it is.’ It was a woman writing and she had huge amounts of praise for this book, She said, ‘I’ve never found a comic book dealing with sex that is so positive for the woman and it’s fantastic. It’s so pro woman.’ I thought that was pretty freaky cause I was all set up for a negative, ‘Oh, how could you, you pig?’ I’m always expecting that kind of thing.” His love for the auto-bio material of the 1990s indie crowd aside, Julie claims Dave’s work (especially on Weasel) is not of that nature. “It really amuses him that people think that he’s Simon and I’m Tina. I think it’s pretty funny too, but also kind of embarrassing because issue four is pretty sexual. I totally blushed when I read

that. I’m halfway to being a prude, so it’s really funny when I see his stuff. “We’re both quite nicely messy. You feel quite comfortable when you come into our home because you don’t feel like you’re going to wreck anything. I suppose there is some of that in there, as well as his want to do paintings, to be a fine artist. “Today it’s different. When he does commercial work, from a financial standpoint, it’s not as desperate as it used to be. The commercial stuff he does now is much more rewarding and challenging.” In Crumple, the lead male characters are of a dubious moral nature. The planet is invaded by alien spores with which the fed-up women of the society willingly implant themselves, leading to a moral tale of a society without a need for males; especially men who view women mainly as creatures of subjugation to male whims. Is Dave Cooper afraid of being replaced? “No,” laughs Julie, “I think he just thought of the most frightening kind of thing that might happen and wrote about it. In many 202

Above: Julie pops up on cover to collected strips of Pip & Norton, 2001. Left: thumbnails and finished inks for Dave’s TVP strip.

ways, he’s more of a feminist than I am. I’ve heard people ask Dave, ‘Do you hate women that much?’ He would have to explain to them, ‘That’s not how I think. It’s satire.’” Independent reaction to his work is what Dave craves. As an artist, he needs this. “It still spurs him on. He loves fan mail. He may not be as quick to answer them because he doesn’t have that much time but he just loves it. We get fan mail from all over—Singapore, England and Australia. We have really, really good friends in the States now because of his career. We have friends in Spain. We can’t believe that they live so far away. We just want them near.” It would please Mrs. Ayers and DeCarlo to hear the days of driving to the post office continue to dwindle. “He sends artwork by e-mail—some of the smaller stuff—just for approval. Mostly, to print, he’ll burn them on a CD and send them. The Internet has saved us so much money and time. Just communicating with his publisher, our phone bills used to be like two hundred dollars. I would never raise an eyebrow, but now it’s under a hundred and it surprises me when it’s like fifty dollars.” With her presence around their house—the same house in which Julie was raised—she is hands-on in Dave’s process. While avoiding all-nighters, Dave is in his studio drawing and painting every day. “His mother told me this very sweet story of how when kids are normally starting to write—five or six years old—he would be drawing all the time. She was a little worried he would never learn to write because he was so busy drawing. I thought that was very cute and it’s so appropriate—he’s still like that.” Dave’s work has undergone massive stylistic changes in the past fifteen years and little of what has developed is apparent during his teenage years. “He usually hates everything he’s done previously. Even stuff from last year or the year before. He doesn’t hate it with a passion but he’s not there anymore. 203

“He’s held onto super-hero or Conan kind of things from when he was thirteen and they look so funny. A few years ago, he photocopied them and made little minis to give away at conventions for a kick. “Pressed Tongue had pages that were humongous and they were all meticulously inked. He should have used a white marker on dark paper but they didn’t have that kind of stuff back then. The covers were just gorgeous. He’d paint and use pencil colors on them—really nice work. “He gets up around seven or eight, has breakfast and he’s off to work within an hour. He works all day until I get home and we have dinner together at six or seven. He has a studio on the ground floor at the back of my father’s apartment. My dad’s not bad for an eighty-one year old but the reason we moved in is because he used to fall a little and couldn’t get up on his own. Having Dave walking through the apartment all the time makes my dad feel better that there’s a presence in the house. He’s only fallen once since we moved in about four years ago and luckily Dave was there to help.” A driven, focused man during the daytime hours he keeps, Dave’s studio is filled with music, mostly Jazz or Afro-Cuban or punk. The Impressionists are clearly an influence on his painting, but Dave maintains a healthy obsession for art books of all styles. “We have so many books. He’s a bit of a bibliophile, and likes nicely produced art books, antique illustrated books. He even got a few books of foreign languages, like Arabic. He likes the lettering—Chinese characters as well. You’d probably recognize it in Encyclopedia. “He quite likes it when I come down, especially when he’s inking. We like spending a lot of time together. Recently I took on babysitting my brother’s kids. It takes me out of the house for practically the whole day and we miss each other quite a bit. We’re so used to being together. “When people first meet him—if you’re just meeting him in a non-comics scene—I think people get the impression he doesn’t really like them. What makes him such a quiet guy is because he’s thinking about work all the time. You know how some people totally try to charm you? He doesn’t do that. He’s very secure. He’s interested in people but he’s also repelled by really needy people we’re both trying to learn how to stay away from. “People have asked us why we don’t move to California or Seattle, move to a big city where there is a comic scene and that just comes back to how Dave likes his anonymity. He actually left the house while I was being interviewed for this book—he felt so awkward for me! He really enjoys meeting with other comic book artists and talking about the medium, but we’re not overly social people. We might go out once a week, if that. We might have friends over, once or twice a month. We just prefer to be together quietly.” Being together with Fantagraphics is something Dave prefers versus the rigors of self-publishing. “He really admires how they continue to put out really good books. He trusts their judgment. They listen to him as well.” Not unlike Joe Kubert, Dave draws and keeps a written diary on vacation. Not unlike Muriel Kubert, Julie doesn’t view this as a distraction from their time together. “I can’t even understand that way of thinking. This is what Dave is and it’s what I really like about him—how he’s so preoccupied with his art. I wouldn’t want to change that at all.” Julie’s favorite work now by Dave is the television program x-32b in Weasel. “It’s just so loopy! It’s very tactile, the way he colors it. All that is colored on the computer and I just can’t believe it. It’s inked on paper and scanned in. The characters are interesting. It’s very bizarre stuff.” It can’t be more bizarre then what Julie calls Dave’s encyclopedia nonsensica material in Weasel. Endless pages of text with organic machinery pulsating on every page read like a Jack Kirby/Robert Crumb construct combined with Ditko’s Randian tracts translated into some alien language. 204

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“With some of the pages,” says Julie, “he organized it to be a contraption that on one page is completely closed, but then on the next page you could see a bit more of it. If you hold that page up to the light you can see through it and it has the neat effect—as long as the printing job lined everything up. He drew out the font very clearly on paper and scanned it in. It’s actually a font suitcase on our computer.” The creative process does involve input from Julie, but the stories Dave draws have been brewing in his head for quite a while and are generally delivered pen to paper as they will stand—a good example being the Ripple serial in Weasel. “I remember him talking to me about it years before he started actually serializing it,” says Julie. “It’s been brewing and brewing and finally it’s ready to come out. “I see the thumbnails. He always warns me, Above: one of Julie’s dreams makes it into TVP strip, 2001. ‘Okay, these are the thumbnails’ but they’re sometimes Left: ‘encyclopedia nonsensica’ strip in Weasel #4, 2001. hard to interpret. I’m usually looking at this over his shoulder at his table, so he’ll talk me through it. That’s usually the first proofreading. I’m very critical, I try not to be, but I am. He’s learned to appreciate it! ”He’s very meticulous about his work. He knows I’ll catch any little mistake, but there are very few. It usually comes out in his lettering. I’m reading the pencils and might say, ‘This word isn’t all that clear.’ He’ll say, ‘I know I’ll fix it in the inking. I know what that word is—don’t worry.’ “He does write a script to perfect the dialogue but his thumbnails are very complete and he does all his thinking with the thumbnails. When he’s penciling, he doesn’t spend a whole day on a page and then realize, ‘This last panel does not work. I’ll have to redo it.’ When he inks, he’s in such a good mood because everything comes together so beautifully. He just loves inking. “Because Dave now colors on the computer, he’s been asked, ‘Why don’t you do everything on the computer—maybe do the pencils on paper, then scan it in?’ We have a tablet that’s like drawing on paper, but Dave enjoys the inking process so much, I’m sure he’ll never do it that way for everything. I’m sure he’s done it with really quick projects when he just doesn’t have time but he hates that, preferring to do it on paper.” While Dave may not use Julie as a literal model, she does see herself in his work. “I’ve seen myself in the TVP strip. I’m actually one of the characters. When I see his nice, big, round women, I know I’m the inspiration for them. The one who’s pregnant on the chair with that weird test tube in her? That was one of my dreams. I told him and he remembered it. A lot of the TVP stuff comes out of dream material—his mostly. If I tell him some kind of odd dream like this one, he’ll remember and use it, if it’s appropriate. He won’t write a story just because. It’ll just happen naturally.” One of the elements Julie enjoys the most is the inside covers of Weasel. “This is the only area where he does that kind of work, and they’re so free compared to the other stuff. There’s the one with the girls with the big grinning teeth. That’s a beautiful piece. I like the water. He doesn’t often put water in his pieces. “He had a show back in September and did this huge painting about eight feet across. It’s in our living room now. It was his first oil painting with water in it, called Black Duck Pond. It’s the only painting he’s done that he has named. Usually, I end up naming them for him. “When he sells them, he feels kind of sad, like losing a friend. But he’s happy too because somebody liked them so much that they wanted to own them. There’s this one painting he had up to sell, but he didn’t really want to. We still have it. It’s his first oil painting. Usually he likes to sell his pieces because our house isn’t that big.” One area Julie rarely intrudes upon is Dave’s trip to the San Diego Comic Con. She believes her presence will preoccupy the artist at a time when business is at hand. “Dave keeps asking me to go because we love to travel together. I tell him this every time—I don’t want him worrying, ‘Is Julie having a nice time?’ because that’s exactly what he’d be doing. He’d make dinner plans with somebody and think, ‘Would Julie really want to go dinner with these people? Would she be bored with the comic talk all the time?’

“The one I started going to regularly is the Small Press Expo in Bethesda. That’s a great convention. It’s not mainstream. It’s all the stalls with the book publishers. Fantagraphics is there and Top Shelf. It’s cheap enough to get a table for the up-and-coming artist so they can expose their work.” Two days after Weasel #1 arrives on the stands, Dave’s artistic career almost comes to a crashing halt. “The silly boy,” laughs Julie. “We were cycling to a pool hall, going through the parking lot and he went up the side of a ramp, not the ramp proper. The side of it looked smooth with a nice little hill. He goes up that one at a pretty high speed and he’s heading for the other side and realizes too late that it’s a much steeper drop. “His wheel goes down and he slips over the handlebars. I saw it happen. He twisted his body, landed on his elbow, onto his shoulder, and then kind of scraped his face on the cement. I thought his face was in ribbons for sure. We were wearing bike helmets, thankfully. “I came up behind him and I took off his helmet. He’s holding his elbow and says, ‘I think I broke it!’ He moves it and it sounds like a whole bunch of wet marbles. It was terrible. I said, ‘Dave, Dave, from the impact it’s just water on the bone!’ It was open to the air, bleeding continuously. It wouldn’t stop with pressure or anything. “We rush to the emergency, x-ray his elbow and that little ball at the end of his elbow was shattered. He had an operation that night and pins put through it. We bought the x-ray of the pin. He used it as the backdrop for the letters page of Weasel #2. “It was his left elbow. He kept kissing his right hand and saying, ‘Thank God, I didn’t break you’ because he was in a cast for weeks and weeks. I had to go to SPX that year with him because I had to carry all his bags.” Whether it be letters from peers or awards from the industry, Julie paints Dave as a giddy man-child, but one who is also petrified of public-speaking. “He got a letter or an email from England saying, “Congratulations, you won this award here.’ That was a few years ago, during the Suckle years. The next one was an Ignatz. Being nominated thrills the pants off him, but then he starts to worry he might have to go up on stage and accept this award. His gut becomes a big, sour pit. I know everybody says they hate public speaking but he really hates it. “One time he got up on stage, thanked me, I cried my eyes out and everybody went ‘Awwwww’ and cheered. When he came down and talked to me about it he asked, ‘Was my voice all warbling?’ I said, ‘No, you were fine—you were great,’ and he just couldn’t believe it because he thought his knees were shaking and his voice had gone all warbley, but it was just in his head.” Julie’s exposure to the close-knit independent crowd has left her with indelible memories. “I met Gary Groth and I really like him. The first time I met Gary, we stopped by Fantagraphics for a visit to see what it looked like. Pressed Tongue was already out. We sat in Gary’s office for a bit and he called Jim Woodring and said, ‘Dave Cooper is here and he’d be interested in meeting you. Would you be interested in meeting him?’ “We went to Jim Woodring’s house, which was amazing. We visited him in his house, met his wife, his kids. I couldn’t tell you what I did on that trip because that outshines everything else. Dave had Jim’s rat walking around on his neck and ever since he’s wanted a rat but we have two cats.” While the couple enjoys the connections made from the comic book scene, the question remains: will the industry be able to keep emerging talents like Dave Cooper around for the long haul? Will the dwindling number of super-hero-obsessed fans hold sway over the market, forcing artists with an alternative vision out into fields of a more commercial nature? Even Matt Groening, the creator of The Simpsons, tags 206

Dave to do backgrounds on Matt’s animated prime-time show Futurama. “When work in the animation field comes up,” says Julie, “we have to discuss it quite a bit. At first, when they propose a project (or whatever input he would have on a project), it sounds like a minimal amount, but it always turns into this huge stressful job. “With animation, it’s just the nature of that business—everything needs to be done quickly. When Dave has to do his part, he may have to do it right away. He’s always on time, but he always feels the pressure. A lot of revisions might need to be done and that might take time away from his own stuff, so we always discuss whether he should take it or not. Most of what he does in animation is designing, so that requires a lot of him. He would make so much money but our happiness is so much more important. We live within our means and don’t feel like we’re poor or struggling. “From a financial point of view, from an intellectual point of view,” says Julie, “he can do things on his own terms now. He does enjoy some of the commercial work, which is now more illustration or animation designtype stuff. He does the feature for Owl Magazine—Dr. Zed—every month.” In an ideal world, Dave would continue on his current path. “The really commercial stuff, the illustration work, I think we still need that. He’d love to be doing what he’s doing now—Weasel and painting and, eventually, kids’ books. “He organized Weasel in a way that he’s thinking, ‘How can I fit in doing some painting and a comic?’ Every cover is a painting—an oil painting. It’s working out really well.” Julie paints Dave as a lover of children’s books, but since a parent could easily pick up Weasel by mistake... “Even when he was a little boy he knew he wanted to make children’s books when he was older. For the longest time, he was thinking—he’s back and forth about this—of having a pseudonym for his children’s books, so the kids won’t accidentally pick up his really sexy issues of Weasel. Maybe they have access to a computer and they punch in Dave Cooper and see all this stuff—he doesn’t want that. They’ll figure it out on their own when they’re old enough. “I don’t think he’ll ever stop doing comics entirely, but there is so much he wants to try. I wouldn’t be surprised if in five years, he has more illustration work. You’ll see more of his images in magazines, but he’s not actively seeking that type of work yet. He’s mostly focusing on the painting and comic book work.” The work is a far cry from the Norman Rockwell-inspired material of Dan DeCarlo and John Romita. Will Eisner envisioned an expansion of the medium beyond super-heroes, but Left: a page from ‘Dan & Larry,’ Dark Horse Presents, 1997-98. maybe not to this degree. The medium Below: Dave & Julie, January 2002. may not hold it. There will always be people willing to put pencil to paper until the last tree is cut down, but this industry has lost years of the likes of Neal Adams, Jim Steranko, Seth and Cooper to more profitable fields. As the industry balances delicately on a frightening precipice, the winners and losers aren’t going to be the artists and creators—they can always draw something else and get paid for it. The winners and losers will be the fans, who will either revel in the variety, or wallow in the loss of more great talents. The beacon of hope for the consumer is they alone have the means to motivate change, to inspire an industry to retain the likes of people as different as Will Eisner and Dave Cooper.

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ABOUT THE AUTHOR Blake Bell has killed a guy. He stands as tall as Jim Shooter, and is younger than everyone in this book. He’s had poems published in London, articles in Comic Book Artist, and currently resides in Toronto. We tried to stop him from writing this book, but we couldn’t extradite him out of Canada in time. Now, it’s too late. He’s hard at work on his next two books: 1) his sense-shattering examination of the career of Spider-Man co-creator Steve Ditko. 2) a real history of Marvel Comics, where the creators are valued more than the men in tights.

THANK YOUS

Thanks to every single one of the women and men in this book who put up with my constant badgering for more details about their lives and careers to produce the best book possible. Thanks to Ger Apeldoorn for his incredible Kurtzman package; Jerry Bails for helping me “see the light” early on in the writing stage; Peter Birkemoe at The Beguiling store in Toronto (www.beguiling.com) for some of the Dave Cooper images; Dan Ripoll, Don Mangus and Steve Fears for all the Ric Estrada images; Dave O’Dell for providing the 1950s Bill Everett images; Walt Parrish for his Cliff drawings (check out his web site at www.thecliffguy.com for even more); Gary Sassaman for scheduling the San Diego Comic Con panel based on this book; Ramon Schenk for his 1950s Colan and Ayers’ images; Greg Strohecker for the late 1970s Alan Moore strips; Marc Svensson and Mike Catron for a lot o’ intros at the 2001 S.D. Con; Roy Thomas for the Kurtzman Annie Fanny roughs and clown drawing by Harvey for Roy and Dann’s wedding; Don Van Horn for virtually all of the Sim images; to all the Colanuts: Bob Reilly, Glen Gold, Dominic Milano, Ken & Kay Huggins for the Iron Man/Cap and Jack The Ripper Colan pencil pages; to Trina Robbins for her Melinda memories and Denis Kitchen for his counsel and his Adele and Ann memories (those are copyright 2002 Denis Kitchen, so if you’re going to steal them, please contact Denis through his professional web site at deniskitchen.com); my in-a-pinch transcribers Deanne Waltz and J’amal Walton at Longbox.com; and the biggest thanks go out to John Morrow and Jon Cooke for all their support and believing in the project from the get-go, and the two most important people in my life, Jen and Luke, who put up with all my strange behavior on the home front in 2002. They have to live with this guy and haven’t fed me to the wolves... yet. Thanks also to Mark Burbey, Mike Burkey, Mike Costa, Michael T. Gilbert, and Chris Murrin for their contributions.

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Will Eisner does what? Alan Moore said that? Dave Sim’s really like that? Penetrate the surface for a deep look at the roller coaster life of comic book creators and their partners over the past 60 years. Buy a ticket to ride with: Adrienne

Colan

Virginia

John

Romita

Lindy

Dick

Ayers

Loretta

Ric

Estrada

Ann

Muriel

Will

Adele

Josie T.

Eisner

Joe

Joanie

Anne

Gene

Stan

Harvey &

Dan

Murphy

Kubert

Lee

Kurtzman DeCarlo

Archie

Goodwin

Deni

Loubert

Dave

Sim

Melinda

Gebbie

Alan

Moore

Howard

Cruse

Batton

Lash

Sedarbaum

Jackie

Estrada

Julie

& &

Dave

Cooper

1995

In The US

TwoMorrows Publishing Raleigh, North Carolina

ISBN 1-893905-16-0