11 minute read
STONE AGES The Thing’s rocky evolution
INNERVIEW Rick Hoberg Interview
Conducted by Jon B. Cooke on May 20, 1996 • Transcribed and copyedited by John Morrow
[below] A nice example of Gil Kane’s presentation art, for an unknown character. [next page, top] Rick Hoberg retold Thor’s origin in What If? #10. [next page, bottom] Unrealized R-S pitch The Outcast, set in 1990, featuring Jack’s “Slitha”, an “organic engine of destruction.” [Rick Hoberg (born 1952) has had a highly successful career as both comic book artist and animator. He began in the mid-1970s working on Tarzan comics for Russ Manning, and later assisted him on the Star Wars comic strip from 1979–1980. Other comics work includes The Invaders, Conan, and What If...? for Marvel Comics, plus All-Star Squadron, Batman, The Brave and the Bold, and others for DC Comics. He’s been active since 1978 as a storyboard artist and model designer for all the major animation studios, and had the privilege of working at Ruby-Spears while Jack Kirby was in their employ.]
JON B. COOKE: When did you first meet Jack? RICK HOBERG: Oh, I met Jack years before I ever worked with him in the animation industry. I’m pretty sure the San Diego Con was the first time. Jack was always the most congenial of people. He was always willing to tell stories and sit with the fans and talk with them. JON: Your art took some inspiration from Jack? RICK: Of course. I’m one of those people who in the 1970s subscribed to the three Ks of comics: Kirby, Kubert, and Kane. Jack Kirby is to me the essence of storytelling excellence. His figures literally move on the page. JON: How did you get involved in animation? RICK: I was pulled into it literally by Mark Evanier. He gave my name to Doug Wildey, the creator of Jonny Quest, and Doug was producing a show over at HannaBarbera at the time. I went over to see him and got a job from him right off the bat. Doug ended up honing my skills better than any other person I’ve worked with. He was marvelous. Just a wonderful human being. One of the most giving teachers I’ve ever worked with. The guy literally had no qualms about sitting down and teaching you something. That relationship continued until he passed away. We were good friends right up to the end. I saw Doug as a cross between Clint Eastwood and Bugs Bunny. [laughs] He had this New York/Brooklynese accent and he looked like Eastwood in a lot of ways. And he was always willing to pull a joke, but at the same time was always willing to be serious. He was just a wonderful guy. He inspired a lot of people, including Dave Stevens with his Rocketeer work. Many guys you’ll talk to who had any contact with Doug just loved the guy—a great fella. JON: What year did you get involved in animation? RICK: 1976. Shortly after I started working with Doug, after nine months or so, I ran off and started working on Star Wars stuff for Marvel, and then came back to work for him. We were working on a show called Godzilla, that’s shown even now on Cartoon Network. It was partnered with a show called Jana of the Jungle. Neither one of them were groundbreaking material, but they were a lot of fun to work on, and I know a lot of them won’t admit to it: Will Meugniot worked on it, Dave Stevens worked on it, Bill Wray worked on it. A lot of people in comics ended up working on that show. JON: Were you at Ruby-Spears before Thundarr started? Did John Dorman bring you on? RICK: I came in just after it started. Actually, Jerry Eisenberg and Larry Huber brought me over, and I began working for John Dorman. John was the storyboard supervisor over there. JON: What were your duties there? RICK: Layout department, basically. I did character design and layout on Thundarr and Plastic Man. Thundarr was a lot of fun to work on. It was a groundbreaking kind of show. Nothing like it had actually ever been done for Saturday morning, in that it was a real straight adventure show, with no funny animals in it per se. We didn’t have any dog sidekicks or anything like that; the nearest thing you had to it was Ookla the Mok, the big Wookie character. It did pretty well; it ran two seasons. At that time, that was good for an adventure show. At that point, they were looked at as almost kind of a break from the comedy shows. Kids were watching Thundarr.
The real groundbreaker I was involved in over at Marvel was G.I. Joe. It was tremendously successful. Even though it was syndicated, it was a huge hit, with marvelous ratings. I believe the G.I. Joe show was on for eight or nine years. JON: Steve Gerber mentioned being story editor of G.I. Joe as the highlight of his career in animation, along with Thundarr. RICK: It actually had some very good stories. You had a lot of good writers involved in that: Buzz Dixon and Steve Gerber, Roger Slifer was there. It was the first time comic book people were pulled in big time on the writing end. It didn’t rely on any formula of the time. It didn’t rely on having to deal with comedy. You could do a comedy episode, but you didn’t have to have a funny animal or comedy relief sidekick. It just relied on the straight character of the heroes involved, and the
villains; and the villains were total bad guys, which is something that hadn’t been done a lot. It was quite a good show, and I was happy to be involved. I only stuck around for the first season because there were other shows we were working on, like the Incredible Hulk, and the first Spider-Man and His Amazing Friends show. This led us along to breaking ground for further shows, cause at the time, most of the adventure shows being done were still done in these old vaudevillian-style staging methods, with characters were brought on Stage Left, and exited Stage Right, as opposed to cutting it like Hitchcock or Ford. We were approaching the cutting with a more melodramatic flair.
Jack actually was doing a lot of real fun designs over at Ruby-Spears. Even though some of the shows themselves weren’t particularly designed in that vein, he was always coming up with real energetic and interesting things. As I remember, he was the guy who designed the original Turbo Teen, which when you think about it, seems like a real Jack Kirby concept—a kid turns into a car. Even though I hated working on the show, it was fascinating to see his ideas were still being put forth in animation, and they actually were used in those shows back then. JON: What do you see as the most “Kirby” of those shows? RICK: Oh, Thundarr. He did quite a few shows. He did an unproduced knockoff of that She-Ra, Princess of Power thing that they did over at Filmation. He was always coming up with, especially, villain designs. He did some design work on The Pirates of Dark Water when it was initially put forward. There’s a lot of stuff he worked on. Jack would do things like design concepts. Sometimes they’d get painted up, sometimes we’d just ink them. In the end, they’d quite
often get Gil Kane to do a real nice comp, and they’d get painted from that. Some of those paintings are quite lovely. JON: Have you seen the trading card set? It’s called Jack Kirby: The Unpublished Archives, but a good fourth of it is Gil’s work. It’s not factually correct, but it’s still fascinating and beautiful. RICK: No, I haven’t at this point. But I think this is why that’s in there. Jack did a lot of the actual designs you’ll see, and Gil Kane ended up doing the compositions they used to help sell the ideas. Jack would be a conceptual artist, but he’s not the one whose art they would use to sell it. Technically,
Influencees Evan Dorkin Interview
Conducted by Eric Nolen-Weathington in September 2022
[below] A page from Superman and Batman: World’s Funnest, wherein Evan did a masterful job of channeling Kirby in his dialogue. The very Kirbyesque art is by David Mazzucchelli. [next page, top] Kirby’s version of Space Ghost from Space Stars Finale for the 1981 Space Stars show. [next page, bottom] For TwoMorrows’ Kirbyinspired book Streetwise (2000), Even drew his autobiographical story “The Soda Thief!”. Our thanks to Evan for again helping us out, by inking this issue’s cover! [next two pages] Kamandi sketches by Evan (including Klik-Klak!), and a couple of simian-based presentations by Jack. [Cartoonist Evan Dorkin (born 1965) is best known for his comic books Milk and Cheese and Dork, but his experience runs much further than the printed page. With wife Sarah Dyer, he’s written for such animated series as Space Ghost Coast to Coast, Superman: The Animated Series, and many others. His most celebrated work within mainstream comics is arguably his 2000 one-shot DC comic Superman and Batman: World’s Funnest, which he wrote for a who’s who of comics’ best artists to illustrate. He’s received widespread acclaim for his Eisner Award-winning Beasts of Burden books, and he recently returned to the comics of Bill & Ted with Bill and Ted Are Doomed (2021). He’s currently heavily involved in animation, and Kirby is a never-ending influence on his work, as you’ll see here.]
ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON: What was your first encounter with Kirby’s work? EVAN DORKIN: I can’t pinpoint my first exposure to Kirby’s work, but the first Kirby comic I remember buying for myself was Marvel’s Greatest Comics #55, which reprinted the story where the FF fought Thor, Spider-Man, and Daredevil. This was in 1975, and I was ten years old. ERIC: Were you old enough to be aware of Kirby’s move from Marvel to DC? EVAN: No, it would have been a few years too early for me. At that time I would have been mostly reading newspaper comics and Tintin, which was running in Children’s Digest magazine. ERIC: Did you read any of his DC work regularly? EVAN: I did not. I didn’t like DC when I was a kid, I only collected Marvel. I would read my friend Clifford’s Atlas comics, my sister’s Harvey and Archie comics, but for some reason I just didn’t take to DC at all. I didn’t start reading DC comics until the ’80s. I came to Kirby’s ’70s DC work even later. ERIC: As you were starting out drawing, did you ever try to copy his stuff? EVAN: Oh, of course. Mostly the Fantastic Four, inked by Joe Sinnott—with absolutely terrible results. [Eric laughs] ERIC: What elements did you take away from Kirby and incorporate into your own work? EVAN: Intensity. Energy. Bombast. Mayhem. Action. Crowds. Costuming. Detail. Huge, wide-open screaming mouths. Monstrously large screaming mouths. That’s where Milk & Cheese’s mouths came from. ERIC: Did you ever meet Kirby in your early days of attending comic conventions? Did you ever show him your comics? EVAN: I met him when I was a teenager, on line at a con, getting a comic signed. Like most people, I gushed and stammered at him while he signed my copy of The Fantastic Four. I never had an opportunity to show Kirby my work; I wouldn’t have done so even if I had the chance. I did meet Kirby briefly at the San Diego Comic Con after I broke into comics. Bob Schreck introduced me to him in 1992 during his 75th birthday event. I shook hands with him and gushed and stammered just like when I was a kid. [Eric laughs] ERIC: What were some of your favorite cartoons growing up? EVAN: The old studio cartoon shorts, any Disney cartoons that got shown on The Wonderful World of Disney, Scooby-Doo and all the Saturday Morning junk, the Peanuts and Rankin-Bass specials. Living in Brooklyn meant having access to a lot of TV stations, so I was also a fan of things like Kimba the White Lion, Speed Racer, and The International Animation Festival show on PBS. When I got older, I loved the early syndicated Nelvana specials, Battle of the Planets, and Star Blazers. I saw Yellow Submarine, The Phantom Tollbooth, and Wizards in the theater. I was into animation as much as comics and monster movies. ERIC: Did you watch Thundarr the Barbarian? And, like I did, did you watch the credits just to see the names of the comic creators who worked on that show? Were you paying attention to that kind of thing by that point?
IF YOU ENJOYED THIS PREVIEW,
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