Sal Buscema: Comics' Fast & Furious Artist Preview

Comics’ Fast & Furious Artist

by Jim Amash with Eric Nolen-Weathington

Table of Contents Introduction by Walter Simonson . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4 Chapter One: Inspiration All Around. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6 Chapter Two: A Heroic Departurre . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 17 Chapter Three: How to Break in the Marvel Way . . . . . . . . . . 33 Chapter Four: The Workhorse Hits His Stride . . . . . . . . . . . . 59 Chapter Five: A New Start with a Different Company . . . . . . . . . 87 Chapter Six: The Craft of Creating Comic Book Art . . . . . . . . . . 97 Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

DR. STRANGE, HULK, SILVER SURFER ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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Chapter One

Inspiration All Around Jim Amash: You probably don’t remember when this happened, but I know you know when and where you were born.

Sal Buscema: Of course. [laughs] I was born in Brooklyn, New York, on January 26, 1936.

My father’s name was John, and my mother’s was Sadie. My brother John was eight years older than I, born December 11, 1927.

(below) For many years, Sal participated in Friday night live model drawing sessions at a local college. While in his teens, he had to rely on drawing from the statues housed at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. ©2010 SAL BUSCEMA

JA: Do you have any other brothers or sisters?

SB: Yes, though unfortunately they’re all deceased. The oldest, Al, was born on July 28, 1923. My sister, Carol was born on June 22, 1929.

JA: Who was the first one to draw in your family?

SB: In so far as I can remember, it was John.

I recall a couple of occasions — and this is a

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recollection from when I was five or six years old — when my brothers both painted a landscape of some kind. It was sort of a friendly competition. I think they may have been painting from a photograph. They were both working in oils, and having a good time. It was just a fun thing that they were doing.

John was always dabbling in this kind of stuff. He loved to draw and paint. I think Al — there was a very friendly sibling rivalry between them. They were very close, very devoted to each other. They loved each other dearly, as we all did. Al may have been kidding around and said, “Hey, I can do as well or better than you can. I’m going to paint a picture of this right next to you.” They both had canvas boards and a couple of easels.

JA: What inspired you and John to draw?

SB: My maternal grandfather, whom I never knew — my mother was just 13 when he passed away — was a musician by profession.

He taught music; I believe it was the accordion that he taught. He also made accordions, and was an amateur artist. According to my mother he was quite good. She described in great detail some of the work he did. I believe he worked mostly in charcoal. I remember one description she related to us about a drawing he did that was rather large of this young boy and young girl running through a forest in a wind storm with the trees blowing around them. The way she described it was quite impressive. Unfortunately, all his work is lost. We never saw it, so I only have her descriptions to go by. But that may be where we got some of the genes.

The earliest recollection that I have is of John sitting at the dining room table drawing.

He loved to draw. I would say that John was greatly responsible for me pursuing drawing.

He always said that as a kid I was better than he was. I’m not sure I agree with that, because I always believed that John was maybe not necessarily more gifted than I — although his drawing was much better. I did not consider myself a really good draughtsman by any stretch of the imagination, and

John was definitely much more dedicated than I. John was definitely an inspiration, but I got my inspiration from other areas, as well. I loved to go to museums as a kid.

When I was in high school, I visited the Metropolitan Museum of Art as often as I could. It was almost like a home away from home for me. I particularly loved the room they had devoted to Michaelangelo’s sculptures. Of course, primarily they were all reproductions, but excellent ones. I just loved that room. I spent hours in there drawing the sculptures.

JA: What time period are we talking about?

SB: I went to a junior high school that was actually the first year of high school. So when I went to the High School of Music & Art in New York, which is now the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts — John went there also, by the way — I was actually in my second year, which would put me at about 14 and a half.

JA: When you were drawing the sculptures, what were you paying attention to?

SB: At that age you’re really not paying attention, Jim, because you’re so young.

You’re a neophyte in whatever you’re endeavoring to do. I was simply trying to reproduce what I saw. That’s all. I was just having fun because I enjoyed drawing.

JA: There were two high schools in New York: Music & Art and the School of Industrial Arts. Why did you choose Music & Art? SB: Probably because that’s the school that John went to. [laughs] Being eight years older than I, you have to consider that I was just a little kid when John was going to high school.

John was kind of a hero to me. Even in later life he was a man that I greatly admired. If it was good enough for John, it was good enough for me. In later years I somewhat regretted it, because Music & Art was devoted to the finer arts, whereas Industrial Arts was devoted to commercial arts. And that was what I wanted to be: a commercial artist.

When you graduate from Music & Art, you really don’t know anything about the commercial art industry, which is the field that I wanted to enter. In the Industrial Arts high school, you would have gotten some very, very pertinent training in that respect.

JA: Would John ever critique your work to try to help you?

SB: Absolutely, constantly. I remember one instance. There was a photograph of an Oriental man, a rather large profile shot in Life magazine. I decided, “Oh, I’d just love to draw this,” and I drew it on a pad with a regular #2 pencil. I always showed my drawings to John and the rest of my family. He just flipped over it. “Boy, this is just terrific!” and he explained to me why he thought it was so good; that the pencil strokes I had used gave the flesh an almost breathable feeling. I’m paraphrasing what he said, but words to that effect. He was very encouraging. I remembered what he said, and tried to apply it to another drawing that I did of a similar head, but it didn’t come out nearly as good. [laughter] So what I did subconsciously did not work consciously.

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(above) Sal’s older brother, John Buscema, at his drawing board, circa mid-1970s.

Chapter Two

A Heroic Departure

JA: John had already come back to comics before you got into the field. Why did John go back to comics?

SB: John lived in Port Jefferson, Long Island, which is quite a distance from Manhattan. He had to commute, I think it was close to five hours a day. Maybe not quite that much, but pretty close. It was really wearing him out. He would get home very late at night. It was the type of business where if they asked you to work on the weekend, you had to work on the weekend. If he had to work at night, a lot of times he would miss the last train going out to Long Island, and have to spend the night in the city. He really hated that side of it. He loved the work, but he hated the commute. It was a real conflict for him.

Ironically, he ran into Stan Lee on the street one day. They got to talking and Stan said, “Hey, the comic book industry is beginning to flourish again, John. Come and see me. We need guys.” When he saw that opportunity of being able to work at home, it was no contest. He took it up right away.

JA: What did you do? Did you make an appointment with Stan?

SB: I actually made up six pages of pencil samples — just a very simple storyline. I used the Incredible Hulk as the character.

Let me digress for a minute. I had to learn how to do comic books. I had never drawn super-heroes before. I had storytelling ability because of my training in film strips and that kind of thing, but I had no idea how to do comics. So I went out and bought a whole bunch of Marvel comics. I bought those drawn

JA: Why did you leave Design Center to go into comics?

SB: For the simple reason that I’d always liked them. I didn’t have that [chuckles] hatred that John said he had. And it also afforded me the opportunity of working at home. That is a tremendous plus. You have that independence and freedom. I’m a fairly disciplined person, so I didn’t have to worry about goofing off. For as long as I’ve been doing comics I put in a regular five-day week, eight hours a day. I was commuting into Washington, DC, and the traffic was horrible. It took me over an hour to get to work and over an hour to get home, unless there was an accident and it took a lot longer.

Once I added it all together and saw that comics were on the way back and things were going well again, I said, “Let’s take a shot and see what happens.”

JA: So John didn’t suggest it to you.

SB: Oh, no. As a matter of fact, I asked him, “Do they need guys?” and he said, “Yes.” 17

(below) Opening splash page from The Incredible Hulk Annual #14. It is fitting that Sal used Hulk in the samples he drew in order to get work at Marvel. Sal went on to draw The Incredible Hulk over an incredible tenyear run.

ART COURTESY OF EELCO VELDHUIZEN

HULK ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

(above) A photo of Sal during his Avengers days used in Marvel editorial material.

(below) For this 1969 cover illustration for Marvelmania Catalog #2, Sal reworked his splash page from Avengers #71.

ART COURTESY OF JERRY BOYD

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

by Jack Kirby and Gene Colan and all the guys who worked for Marvel, and literally worked every night for about a year to learn how to do these things. I was that determined to do it. I thought my wife was going to divorce me. [laughter] Literally, I would come home from work, we’d eat dinner, and I’d go down to my studio. I had a studio at home even though I didn’t do any freelance work. And I would just work and practice, and work and practice.

JA: What were you concentrating on?

SB: How to produce a dynamic page. When I saw what guys like Kirby and Gene Colan, and my brother, and Jim Steranko were doing, I would draw up a page and I would look at it and say, “God, this is awful.” It took me a whole year working practically every night and every weekend. There were also some things going on at the studio where I was working that I was not happy about, so this was a very, very attractive alternative.

JA: Did you show the samples to John?

SB: Oh, sure. The first few samples I did which I thought were okay, he ripped them to shreds. He said, “You’re going to be competing with guys that can put this stuff to shame.

You’ve got to be as good as they are.” He criticized them over the phone, and essentially what he said was, “Your drawing is okay.

Everything is okay, but you need to become 150% more dynamic. The stuff’s just got to fly off the page. You have to be much more powerful. What you’re doing is too passive and too quiet.” That was the kind of thing Stan wanted from all of his guys. The first time I talked to Stan he went through that same spiel. He told me he wanted everything to be powerful. “Once you draw it and you think it’s good enough, redo it and make it even better.” In other words, John was relating to me what Stan had related to him.

So I went back to work some more. He saw things that I was not able to see at the time.

Once I got into the business, then I realized what he was talking about. Once I got the hang of it I made up those six sample pages of pencils — just pencils, which I regret, because I wanted to be an inker. [laughter] I didn’t want to pencil. My first few jobs for Marvel were inking jobs, but I did those while working for Design Center. I wanted to work full-time for Marvel, so it was out of necessity that I penciled.

JA: What did Stan Lee think?

SB: He loved them. He asked me to come on up to New York, which I did, and I went through the most fantastic interview I’ve ever had in my life. [laughs] Stan was leaping on his chair and his desk, just to relate to me physically what he wanted on a comic book page. It was fascinating and it was charming all at the same time. He made the sound effects, the whole nine yards. I thought the guy was going to leap out the window. He demonstrated every other way you could possibly demonstrate what he wanted on those pages — the dynamics and so on.

JA: Did you have to go home and do more samples?

SB: No, they started me on The Avengers, which was a nightmare because it was a group book, and those are the most difficult to do. I believe Sam Grainger was the inker.

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JA: So if you drew a character sneering, you’d be sneering.

SB: Oh, absolutely. And everybody does that.

I remember John doing that all the time. The few times I did work with John, I would look up sometimes, and he’d have a real snarl on his face.

JA: Were you identifying yourself with those characters? Were you putting yourself in those scenes?

SB: Not really. I tried to feel what was happening. If somebody lunges at somebody else, you’ve got to feel it. You want to feel the impact of the blow. You want to feel the fist going past the guy’s jaw. You’ve got to feel that inside you before you start drawing it.

JA: Jack Kirby told me once that sometimes if he was angry about something, that anger would come out on the page. Did you ever feel that way?

SB: I didn’t let what was happening to me personally effect what I was doing on the page. But when you’re working on the page, you’re living the moment of the page. You’ve got to, otherwise it won’t work.

JA: How did you develop your concept of character design and costume design?

SB: I don’t know if I ever had it. [laughter] People don’t think that’s one of my strong points. Later on, into the ’80s and ’90s, I got fairly good at it. I don’t think I ever created any characters that were very prominent.

I’m not sure I ever had a great feeling for it.

Creating characters and costumes was not one of my strong suits. One of the ones that lasted for a while was the Falcon. John Romita drew the initial costume, but they wanted to jazz it up a little, which I did in a Captain America story. I redesigned his costume, and they loved it. I thought, “Oh, my God. It’s just awful.” They thought it was great. What do I know?

JA: In the early days of you working for Marvel, how often did you go to the offices?

SB: I would probably go up there three or four times a year. Every two or three months or so.

JA: What were your impressions of Sol Brodsky?

SB: Sol was the nicest guy in the world, a great human being. I loved working for him,

and I think everybody else did, too. If you did something he didn’t like, he would yell at you on the phone. “Come on, Sal. Get with the program,” or something like that. But he was a terrific guy.

I remember one thing specifically. It was the first Silver Surfer book that I inked over John’s pencils — the one with Thor [issue #4].

There was a one-panel close-up of Loki, who was supposed to be in a spirit form, so the holding figure lines had to be very, very light to make it seem like he's not flesh and bone.

Sol called me and said, “Sal, this is weak. It’s not such and such and so and so.” “Sol, this is what the story calls for.” There was a pause and he said, “Well, okay, but this is what I want you to do with it.” He sent it back to me, and I had to redo a few things on the head. I think it was because Sol didn’t want to admit that he was wrong. [laughter] I won’t accuse him of that, really, because he was a great guy to work for, and I got very, very few calls from Sol about anything like that.

JA: Did you spend any time with John Romita?

SB: One specific time was when they asked me to do a Spider-Man story. I believe they were considering giving me Amazing Spider-Man, which I think John was working on at the 25

(above) Cap may be avoiding the issue, but he’s right. Sal was told to jazz up Jazzy John’s recent costume update for the Falcon, and the wings Sal added had the additional purpose of enabling our hero to fly.

ART COURTESY OF WWW.ANTHONYSNYDER.COM/ ART CAPTAIN AMERICA, FALCON ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

JA: As you were learning in those early days, were you fast or slow?

SB: At first I was very slow. If I knocked out six or eight pages a week I was happy. Then I started getting a little bit better, and I could probably do a couple pages a day. But once I hit that five-year transitional period, I was like a machine. I could grind the stuff out. What was amazing about it, to me anyway — and there might be people who disagree with me — was I was doing the best work of my career. It was just an amazing process. Everything just fell into place, and all of a sudden I found it very easy to do. And it was a lot more fun.

JA: How long did it take you to get comfortable with the concept of super-heroes and super-villains? It was such a change for you.

SB: I was never uncomfortable with it. I thought it was a blast. I had a lot of fun.

JA: John was always saying how he hated these characters, but you didn’t feel that way yourself.

SB: No, I did not. I enjoyed it. I thought it was a great way to make a buck. [laughter]

(above) Sal inked John Romita on this cover to Amazing Spider-Man #95.

He also inked Romita’s loose breakdowns for the interiors of this issue.

ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS

SPIDER-MAN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

time. Because this was the number one book for Marvel, Stan wanted to talk to me in person about it. I had to go up to New York, and talk with Stan and John. They were both telling me things I needed to know about the character and so on, and then John and I went out to lunch. We had a real nice lunch together, and John was relating to me how he approached doing comics, and we talked about personal stuff — family and such. It was a very pleasant lunch. And I don’t think I ever got to do the Spider-Man book, and I can’t remember why. Maybe they just thought I wasn’t ready. Shortly thereafter John did very loose breakdowns on a SpiderMan book that they wanted me to do the finishes for. That was one of the few Amazing Spider-Man books that I worked on.

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JA: Do you think John really hated superheroes as much as he said he did?

SB: You know, Jim, there’s a dichotomy here.

John did not enjoy drawing Spider-Man. John enjoyed drawing people. When you’re doing a character like Spider-Man, you’ve got to draw buildings and cars, you’ve got to draw all the junk that goes on around these guys — the interiors of rooms, and so on and so forth. That’s what John did not enjoy. He loved to draw. Drawing was his life. If this man was for some reason unable to draw, he would’ve died not when he did, but years and years earlier. He ate, slept and breathed drawing. This was the reason he did not enjoy comic books that much. Now, I’m not sure the [chuckles] hatred that he professed was as intense as he made it sound. For example, he loved drawing Conan, because Conan was pure fantasy. He didn’t have to draw skyscrapers. He would draw these neat, little historical towns that really did not exist. He could create anything he wanted. He really enjoyed that part of it. That’s where the dichotomy exists. John loved to draw, but there were some things he hated drawing, and unfortunately in comic books you have to draw all this other stuff.

To a great degree, I’m like that, too.

That’s why I didn’t enjoy penciling so much.

How long did I draw Spectacular SpiderMan? I did Spider-Man for twelve years, and I enjoyed a lot of it, but there was a lot of it I did not enjoy.

JA: What led you to start inking for Marvel?

SB: I wrote Sol Brodsky a letter. I wanted to find out who to talk to about getting inking work, and my brother said, “Talk to Sol.” So I wrote this very nice letter and told him all about myself, and that I could do anything with a brush or pen, and that I was also very disciplined and a very dependable individual.

I told him there was nothing more that I would like to do than ink work for Marvel. He called me and said, “Sal, we don’t have anything right now, but hang loose and I’ll try to come up with something for you.” I called him a couple of times just to bug him a little bit

and let him know that I was still alive, and eventually the first job came through. It was a rush job. I knocked myself out to get it back to him real fast. It was a Western. I believe the character was called Gunhawk. He had two guns, and for some reason he grabbed the left gun with his right hand and the right gun with his left hand. I don’t know how that’s physically possible [laughter], but that’s what he did. I don’t remember who the penciler was, but I worked my fanny off on that to do as good a job as I could possibly do.

JA: The reason I’m asking is that I have “Gunhawk” [Western Gunfighters #1] down as 1970, but Silver Surfer came out in ’69.

SB: It can’t be 1970, because that was the first job I did for Marvel, and I remember the month. It was June of 1968.

JA: Maybe it didn’t get printed right away.

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(below) This early ’70s ad was obviously done for a comic convention program book — most likely one of the New York Comic Art Convention shows. Sal’s first inking assignment for Marvel was a “Gunhawk” story, but by the time of this ad the Western hero had picked up a partner.

ART COURTESY OF WWW.ANTHONYSNYDER.COM/ ART

THE CAT, GUN HAWKS, MANTHING, SHANNA THE SHE-DEVIL, SPIDER-MAN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. DOC SAVAGE ™ AND ©2010 ADVANCE MAGAZINE PUBLISHERS, INC. D/B/A CONDÉ NAST PUBLICATIONS.

Chapter Three

How to Break in the Marvel Way

JA: You worked on Sub-Mariner for a while, again with Roy. How did you feel about drawing underwater environments?

SB: It was fun. It was better than drawing buildings. [laughter] JA: As you continued to work with Roy, did he still give you the same amount of plot?

SB: Roy was very consistent. He gave you a plot, which means there was no dialogue, and he wasn’t telling you specifically what to draw.

He wrote a plot that was very complete, but yet gave me tremendous freedom to do what I wanted to do. He may have called me and talked about certain aspects of the story for clarification purposes, but other than that, he would send me a plot and I would go to work.

JA: What were your thoughts on the SubMariner’s personality?

SB: I enjoyed the character primarily because he was off-beat. Also, because he was not of this world. He was of the undersea world — a rebellious type of character with enormous power. He could do everything, he could fly. He had the one weakness: If he was out of the water too long, he lost his strength.

It was fun, too, in the sense that I didn’t have to draw conventional backgrounds. I had to draw all these wonderful undersea scenes.

JA: You left around the time you started inking Conan. I wondered if maybe that was the reason.

SB: Maybe. You probably know this better than I do, Jim. That was when Barry Smith was doing Conan. I remember doing some work over Herb Trimpe on The Hulk.

JA: What did you think of Herb’s pencils?

SB: I hate to say this, but Herb was not a good draughtsman. I think he would be the first one to admit that. But Herb was a wonderful storyteller. His work was very graphic, which is one of the reasons Stan loved Herb’s storytelling. I think Herb wzs a very talented guy. Drawing was not his strength, but storytelling was. I think he did a terrific job on The Hulk, and I think I’m the only guy who drew The Hulk longer than Herb.

He did it for about seven years, and I did it close to ten, I think.

JA: If you got a penciler whose sensibilities were different than yours, how would you meld yourself to be part of a team? Joe Sinnott, like you said, when he inks someone, he always shows through. The same was true of you, but to a lesser extent.

JA: Did you feel like it was a challenge to make a regal man out of a guy just wearing swimming trunks?

SB: No, it was very easy with him. I didn’t have any problem with that. I love the way John did it. John made him an almost godlike figure.

JA: How did you feel about his arrogance?

SB: That’s just one of the aspects that makes him a fascinating character. And he had a lot to be arrogant about. [laughter] JA: Why was your stay on Sub-Mariner so short? I think you were only there for a year or so.

SB: I think they asked me to do something else.

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(below) They say that clothes make the man, but in Namor’s case it’s all about the attitude.

Here Prince Namor, the Sub-Mariner, in all his regality, prepares for a royal wedding. This panel comes from page 19 of Sub-Mariner #36. Inks by Bernie Wrightson.

ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS SUB-MARINER ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

(below) Detailed pencils, indeed! It’s no wonder it took Sal a long time to ink Barry Smith’s Conan pages. And that’s all brushwork, too! On the left is page 7 of Conan #9. On the right is a panel from the final page of Conan #6.

ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS

CONAN ™ AND ©2010 CONAN PROPERTIES INTERNATIONAL, LLC

SB: It’s simply because of my approach. I believe, having also been primarily a penciler for most of my career, it’s up to the inker to be as true to the penciler as possible, unless you get the word from the powers that be. I’ll give you an example. When Barry WindsorSmith started doing Conan, he was a kid with a tremendous amount of potential, but his drawing left a lot to be desired. I think he would admit that he was not a particularly good draughtsman yet. He was a wonderful storyteller, and I tried to be as true to him as I possibly could, because that’s my approach to inking: Be true to the penciler.

He sort of dropped off the scene for a while, and when I saw the work he was doing years later I said, “My God, this guy’s improved 500%!” He was terrific. But back

then Roy would call me and ask me to correct a face or an ear or some detail. In one instance, Conan was taking a swing at somebody and Roy was not pleased with it. It just didn’t work, and he asked me to fix it. In those cases, yes, I would definitely do it, but only when I was asked to. I’ve always believed that if the client, whether it’s Marvel or DC or whoever, is happy with what the penciler did, then it is up to the inker to be true to the penciler.

That’s how I want guys to ink me. If I’m penciling something and I’m doing finished penciling, I want them to be true to my penciling. Unfortunately, a lot of times guys were not. This is why I was so dissatisfied with so many of the inkers I had.

JA: You inked several issues of Conan, and you got to see Barry improve during that time, but it always seemed like he was more of a designer than a draughtsman.

SB: It took me an eternity to ink his stuff. If you want to see tight pencils... they could have shot from the pencils. When I would finish inking his work, I’d have pencil on my hand, my arm, and every other part of my body. [laughter] He was amazingly tight.

JA: In 1970, after Neal Adams left X-Men, you penciled one issue which Sam Grainger inked. It turned out that was the last issue of X-Men before they went to reprints, and then a later revitalization. Do you have any memory of why you did that one story?

SB: It was probably just a fill-in job they asked me to do. Maybe nobody else wanted to do it. [laughter] I never asked. They’d just

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(right) Valkyrie reaffirms her decision to join the Defenders in this panel from Defenders #5 inked

by Frank McLaughlin.

ART COURTESY OF WWW.ANTHONYSNYDER.COM/ ART DEFENDERS ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

(below) It may well have been decided that the Defenders book needed a woman’s touch, and why not? Valkyrie, the subject of this ’70s commission piece, made an interesting addition to the non-team.

ART COURTESY OF WWW.ANTHONYSNYDER.COM/ ART DEFENDERS ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

SB: That must have been when he and I were talking about this possibility of a new book. I thought it was fun. The whole premise of the book is that these are very reluctant heroes.

Sub-Mariner certainly didn’t want to join a

group. The Hulk didn’t want it; he just wanted to be left alone. Dr. Strange was trying to hold them together with his leadership qualities in order for them to accomplish whatever goals they had. It was a very interesting idea, and I enjoyed it.

JA: Team books are hard to do because you have so many characters to move around. You had fewer characters to deal with here, and from the tone of your voice it sounds like you liked The Defenders more than The Avengers.

SB: Yes, I did, primarily because I liked the characters better. My guy [the Hulk] was in there. Sub-Mariner was kind of an off-speed character, and I enjoyed doing him. The same with Dr. Strange. That’s why I liked it better than The Avengers. There were also fewer of them, so it was not quite as difficult a book to do as The Avengers. The Avengers was a really tough book.

JA: Do you remember the thinking behind introducing the Valkyrie? Was it because they felt it was time to have a female member?

SB: I think that was probably the case. “Let’s get a beautiful girl in there.”

JA: How much input did you have on plots with Steve Englehart?

SB: That’s something I never really got too involved with, Jim. I left the writing and the plotting to the writers and the editorial staff.

I can recall a few instances where I may have been consulted or asked a question. I don’t remember any specifics, though. It was something I didn’t get involved in that much. I had all I could handle with penciling the book.

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(below) Falcon takes on the retconned Cap and Bucky of the 1950s.

Somebody had to be running around in the suit if the real Cap was frozen in a block of ice during that time, right?

Too bad they were a couple of bigots. Captain America and The Falcon #154, page 3. Inks by John Verpoorten.

BUCKY, CAPTAIN AMERICA, FALCON ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

JA: With his strength he could have easily killed somebody, but he never did.

SB: No, because he was not bad. He did have that much control, which is one of the things they wrote into the story. They cleverly worked out the circumstances so that he never killed anybody, because then the people that misunderstood him would be justified in feeling the way they did.

JA: Did you have any sympathy for his alter ego, Dr. Banner?

SB: Of course. Who wouldn’t? Put yourself in a situation like that. He’s a very sympathetic character. He’s trying desperately to undo this damage that was done to him. He’s spending his whole life trying to do that, and nothing seems to work. And I’m glad, too, because if it did work, then we wouldn’t have the character anymore.

JA: It was not long after you took over the art on Captain America that Steve Englehart started writing some really terrific stories.

SB: I had a lot of fun working with Steve.

The one that I really enjoyed was the story — and I think Roy had something to do with it — bringing the old Captain America [of the 1950s] into the picture. That was just so bizarre and really off the wall, that I really got a big kick out of doing that. I kind of hated what they did to the old Cap. I mean, they made him out as kind of a bigot, you know? I don’t think the old Cap was a bigot, but there had to be a contrast between the two Captain Americas. Essentially, one of them had to turn out to be a bad guy, and it worked. We got a lot of great comments about that series. Everybody I’ve talked to at conventions brings that up.

Steve was great. I enjoyed working with him tremendously. He would call me with the plots most of the time, and we’d kick them around. I’d ask him questions like, “What are you doing here? What are you doing there?” It was very much like the relationship I had with Len Wein. The chemistry wasn’t quite the same, but I did work very well with Steve, and I hope he felt the same way, because we did produce some good stories.

As an aside, I was told at the time that for some reason Cap did not sell well. It was always at the bottom of the barrel, no matter who did it — whether Jack Kirby did it, or my brother, or Gene Colan, John Romita... no matter what. When Steve and I got on the book — and I give Steve as much credit as anybody; he certainly deserves it, because he came up with some great ideas, some great stories — if I remember correctly, the book hit #5 in sales. It really shot up the charts.

That was very, very gratifying. Here again, it was not me and it was not Steve; it was a combination of the two of us. In any successful marriage in comics the writer and the artist have to gel, and if they do and the chemistry is right, the book is going to be a success.

JA: I thought it was some of Englehart’s best writing, and I think it was some of your most inspired art, to be honest with you.

SB: Well, it was because we enjoyed what we were doing.

JA: The only thing I didn’t like was Vince Colletta’s inks.

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(below) As a direct of the result of the “Secret Empire” storyline, a disillusioned Cap forsakes his name and costume and becomes The Nomad. Not a bad costume, but it’s just not the same as the classic, star-spangled longjohns he’d made famous. Captain America and The Falcon #180, page 11. Inks by Vince Colletta.

CAPTAIN AMERICA, NOMAD ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

Richard Nixon. Was that a conscious effort on Englehart’s part or your part to not reveal who he was?

SB: I think that’s the way Steve wanted it, and I agreed with it 100%. I didn’t think that we had to be that obvious about it. You know, it’s fairly obvious anyway. Saying, “Oh, my God! It’s Richard Nixon!” is about the only thing we didn’t do. [laughter] JA: And that led into the Nomad storyline where Steve Rogers quits being Captain America. Did you have any feelings on that part of the storyline?

SB: I just wish they hadn’t done it. [laughter] I kept wondering, “What is the point?” I didn’t understand the purpose of it. “Okay, if this is what you guys want to do, let’s go ahead

and do it.” Frankly, I thought it was silly. He was Captain America, for God’s sake. He knows that there’s good and evil. That was the part I objected to, painting Richard Nixon as a totally irredeemable character, which was not the case. He was a politician.

Look at the crap that goes on today in and out of the President’s office. It happens all the time. Was Watergate bad? Yes, it was bad.

Nixon was not directly responsible for Watergate, but he was definitely responsible for the cover-up. He made a huge, huge blunder, and he paid for it as he should have paid for it. But that was the part I objected to.

JA: You hit on something important, and that’s the psychology of Captain America, a character who’s been through World War II. If anybody in the Marvel universe would have his head together, I would imagine it would be Captain America.

SB: Absolutely. All of a sudden he’s so terribly disillusioned. Give me a break. This is so unreal. But it gave them a direction to go in.

Whether it worked or not, personally speaking, I don’t think it did. It wasn’t Captain America anymore. You give him a different costume. Okay, fine, he’s not Captain America. Captain America and the costume are one. If you change that it’s no longer Captain America.

JA: Steve Rogers is almost a cipher at times, because that Captain America costume is so powerful for the statement it makes.

SB: Exactly. I wonder what they’re going to do with that in the movie. You know how they change things in movies sometimes. You can’t change that costume. It is so gaudy, yet it is so wonderful because it is so unique. As I said, the character and the costume are one. You can’t separate one from the other.

JA: You drew some Marvel Team-Ups starring Spider-Man and other characters. How did you feel about doing a book like that?

SB: I was happy to be working on any book.

That’s kind of a blanket statement. If Marvel called me up — whether it was John Verpoorten or Stan or Roy — and they said, “Sal, would you like to do such-and-such?” I’d always say, “I would love to,” because it was work. I’m a very pragmatic individual, and I like that regular paycheck coming in. And back then, before the contractual thing came into

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vogue, you were a freelancer, and you earned your check by the amount of work that you did.

That was your livelihood. And if you were one of those fortunate guys, which I thank God constantly that I was, who had work all the time, that was just a joy. And that’s one of the reasons I consider myself a company man. It’s not a totally selfless thing. There’s a certain amount self-interest there, because I want to make sure that I’m working on a daily basis.

I’m kind of beating around the bush here.

Did I enjoy doing that book? Yes, I did. First of all, because there was a new character to deal with every month, which made it kind of interesting. But primarily because it was work. This is my feeling — I don’t know if other people feel this way. I’ve heard guys say, “Oh, I really want to work on this character.” After a while, when you’ve done a dozen super-heroes, they’re all pretty much the same. They’re all a bunch of guys in spandex running around saving the world every month. The only difference was the Incredible Hulk. Spider-Man was a different

type of character, the Sub-Mariner was different, Man-Thing... those were the characters that I loved to do, because they weren’t cut from the same cookie cutter.

When you ask, “How did you feel about this book? How did you feel about that book?” — pretty much the same way. It was work. I enjoyed working. I loved doing what I was doing, and I sure enjoyed it when that paycheck came.

JA: You did some Marvel Two-in-One stories with the Thing as the main character. The Thing, of course, has a different personality than Spider-Man. SB: And he’s a great character that I should have mentioned, too. I love that character.

He’s tough to draw, though. He’s very difficult to draw. His personality is very difficult to capture.

JA: How did you handle the iconography of the character? Did you think of his skin as plates or rocks?

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(above left) Spider-Man was, indeed, a different type of character, as was his team-up partner in Marvel Team-Up #45, Killraven. Inks by Mike Esposito over Sal’s breakdowns.

ART COURTESY OF WWW.ANTHONYSNYDER.COM/ ART

KILLRAVEN, SPIDER-MAN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

(above right) The X-Men for all their mutant angst were still essentially your garden variety super-heroes.

Marvel Team-Up Annual #1, page 1. Inks by Mike Esposito over Sal’s breakdowns.

ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS SPIDER-MAN, X-MEN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

Chapter Four

The Workhorse Hits His Stride

JA: Was there ever a case where an assignment came along that you liked better than what you were doing, and you asked to switch books?

SB: No. JA: I thought your work sometimes suffered from doing breakdowns because of who did the finishes. Would you be more forgiving with someone finishing your breakdowns than with someone inking your full pencils?

SB: You had to be, because you’re not giving them as much to work with. Under the circumstances, it was a necessity. During that period when I was doing pretty much nothing but breakdowns for Marvel, it was because that’s what they asked me to do. They wanted

to get more work out of me, and the only way I could give them more work was by doing breakdowns. Everything was there except the blacks. I did not spot the blacks. I didn’t mess around with textures that much. I would do a texture or design on a shirt or tie.

JA: But you wouldn’t do rock textures.

SB: No, no. Everything was done in line. All the details were there. There was nothing vague. The only thing the inker had to do was spot his own blacks.

JA: How many pages of breakdowns could you do in a day versus full pencils?

SB: On a good day I could breakdown four or five pages. That was a comfortable day. With

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(below) Breakdowns for What If? #44, featuring Captain America versus his ’50s counterpart, which was inked by Dave Simons.

ART COURTESY OF WWW.ANTHONYSNYDER.COM/ ART CAPTAIN AMERICA, WATCHER ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

(facing page) Incredible Hulk #269, page 7, written by Bill Mantlo with full art from Sal. HULK ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

(below) The opening splash page of Incredible Hulk #219, with finishes

by Ernie Chan over Sal’s breakdowns. Chan was an excellent artist in his own right, but when inking others he tended to overpower their work.

ART COURTESY OF EELCO VELDHUIZEN

HULK ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

full pencils, probably two-and-a-half to three a day. Once I got to that five-year point I mentioned earlier, I got comfortable enough with it that I gained speed, because I had a lot of confidence in what I was doing.

JA: On books you did breakdowns on, they didn’t always put the best person over you.

Do you feel that hurt your reputation at all?

SB: I think so, but there again it was a necessity on both sides. I was doing what Marvel was asking me to do, and I had no problems with it because, monetarily, it was wonderful.

I was making a lot of money. You know, I wasn’t terribly worried about my reputation side of it, because I never was a big fan-favorite anyway — so that side of it didn’t bother me.

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After a while, I think I got the reputation of being a hack. That didn’t sit very well. I heard that from a couple of different sources.

But I said, “Well, I’m doing what the company is asking me to do. If I rebel against that, then maybe I’m no longer a company man.”

I don’t have that big an ego, Jim. That’s the thing. Everybody has an ego, and I certainly have one, but I think the key word here is that I’m a very practical individual. I did what I thought was necessary. Then it got to a point where that was no longer necessary, and, unfortunately, nobody told me about it. [laughs] I found out about it sort of sideways.

I think it was during a conversation I had with Bill Mantlo when I was working with him. We were talking about one thing and another, and how this came up I don’t remember, but Bill said, “You’re getting the reputation of a guy who just bangs the work out.” I said, “Well, I don’t bang it out. I’m just doing what Marvel asks me to do.” He said, “Well, they’re not doing that kind of thing now.”

Here is the classic case of the terrible lack of communication, and it was my fault because I didn’t go up there often enough.

The reason for that impression of me was simply because this was what was expected of me for a long period of time. They were constantly asking me, “Sal, can you do this?” because I was one of the few guys they had who was fast enough to do fill-in issues and my regular work at the same time. I was being depended upon to do this, and I was more than happy to do it. Obviously, the money was great, but I also felt like, “These people really need me.”

I felt like I was a really important part of the operation. I considered Marvel a client — my only client. I was going to do everything within my power with whatever ability I had to keep them as happy as possible.

Then, all of a sudden, Jim Shooter becomes editor-in-chief, and the whole policy changes.

He said, “We’re not going to do things this way anymore. I want the very best quality that we can get. I want people to spend a lot more time on the books. I don’t want guys turning out four and five books a month. I want guys to do one book a month, and to put all that they’ve got into that one book.” There was one problem with that: Nobody ever told me about it.

When I found out about it, I called Jim Shooter immediately. I said, “Jim, this is what I’ve heard. What’s going on?” and Jim very

SB: Of course it did. One of the problems with working away from the establishment is communication. You may say things over the phone that can be construed in a completely different way than what you intended. As I said before, I regret not paying more visits to Marvel so that they could know me better as a person, rather than as just a voice on the phone. You can have people saying things about you that you don’t even know about.

Then you find out some time later, and how do you defend yourself against something like that? It’s very difficult, if not impossible, to do.

(above) Sal obviously had fun drawing the Hulk. It shows in every page. Incredible Hulk #245, page 22.

ART COURTESY OF EELCO VELDHUIZEN

HULK ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

(facing page) A page from one of Sal’s stories for Savage Sword of Conan.

ART COURTESY OF RAIMON FONSECA

CONAN ™ AND ©2010 CONAN PROPERTIES INTERNATIONAL, LLC

one of those guys who seems to be able to handle situations. I think I just called him, and said, “Ralph, this is just not working. I don’t want to do the book anymore.” And I really regret doing that, because I enjoyed The Hulk. It was one of the books that I had a lot of fun with.

I thought it was funny, too, it was shortly after that incident that I found out I had the reputation of being very difficult to work with. And I had never, never had that problem before. Or since, for that matter.

Evidently there was some bad-mouthing going on at the time.

JA: You rose above it, but it had to bother you to hear that.

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JA: It’s also a testament to your work, because for a lot of people, not being around the office is career suicide.

SB: Exactly. John, for instance, lived in Long Island, and he didn’t go up to Marvel very often, but he sure went up a heck of a lot more than I did. With me it was an all-day affair. I had to lose a whole day’s work, which I hated doing because they kept me so busy. I had to catch a train very early in the morning. I didn’t want to fly up, because the trip from the airport to New York was horrible. You literally made better time with the train, because you got off right there in the heart of the city.

You’d grab a cab, and be at the office in five or ten minutes. It was a two-hour ride from the airport into the city. It was a hassle for me. I did it at first, I made a few trips up there, but then after a while I didn’t feel any great necessity. I spoke to people on the phone, and it worked fine for many years.

But it was a lack of my knowing enough about human relations, and this is where I kind of lost it a little bit. That’s why I should have gone up there more often, so they could get to know me, the person, rather than just my voice on the phone.

JA: You did some Conan covers and one story.

SB: I think I did a few of the black-and-white magazine stories, too.

JA: I assume you referred to your brother’s work. We talked before about how John preferred Conan to super-heroes. Did you have the same feelings?

SB: Absolutely. I loved the character. Conan was a great character. And sword-andsorcery just reeks of fun for the illustrator.

It was so much fun. It really whetted the creative juices.

(above) It appears Sal got the feel for drawing Spider-Man pretty quickly, as evidenced by this panel from Peter Parker, the Spectacular Spider-Man #3. Inks by Mike Esposito.

ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS SPIDER-MAN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

(facing page) Spidey doesn’t get much more spidery-looking than in this illustration for the Spider-Man: Round Robin trade paperback collection.

SPIDER-MAN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

JA: Speaking of sorcery, you did a little Dr. Strange, too, outside of The Defenders. I was wondering how you felt about that character.

SB: I thought Dr. Strange was one of those characters that was quite unique. Anything a little off-beat, a little off the wall, was what I enjoyed doing. Dr. Strange was definitely in that category.

JA: You had a long run on Spectacular Spider-Man in the 1980s to early ’90s.

Considering the status of that character, did you feel an added responsibility that you might not have felt on a fill-in title or lesser title?

SB: I approached every book the same way. I tried to give it my best under whatever circumstances I was working. I never got a book and thought, “Ah, this is an unimportant book. I’ll just bang this out,” or, “This is a really important character, so I’ll really do my best.” I tried to be even-handed with everything that I got, because I wanted to maintain whatever success I had achieved at Marvel.

JA: When Steve Ditko drew Spider-Man, he put him in strange poses. He made him more spider-like.

SB: Nobody draws like Steve Ditko. He had such a unique body language he’d give to his characters. Nobody could capture that.

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I thought of Spider-Man as a spider.

That’s all you can do. [laughs] I did things myself in my studio trying to capture certain positions. How can you make a human body look like a spider? I would literally try to assume those positions myself, and that would give me a basis from which to work.

With him and the Hulk especially, when I had them do their thing — when I had Spidey swinging through the city, when I had the Hulk leaping from one place to another — I always tried to exaggerate what they were doing. Because of the nature of those characters — especially Spider-Man — Stan, as I recall, wanted him to be off the wall and offbeat. He loved that Ditko approach to the character. Of course, when John Romita took it over, being such a good draughtsman, he gave it a completely different flavor.

I tried to do my own thing with the character, especially when I started the Spectacular Spider-Man series. That was something I got excited about, because I had never been asked to launch a new series before. And, of course, launching a SpiderMan book is kind of a feather in your cap, so I got really excited about that. I think I did the first 20 or 25 issues. I gave it my all.

JA: The initial idea of that series was to focus a little more on Peter Parker, and the supporting characters than Amazing Spider-Man did, but it didn’t seem like they worried about that too much once they got into the series.

SB: I never really got that feeling, either. To me, it just turned into another Spider-Man book, which was fine. I had no problems with that. If you don’t want the book to fail, you have to concentrate on the character. They don’t buy the book for Aunt May and Mary Jane. They buy the book for Spider-Man. That’s where you have to go.

Witness the success of the character in the movies. They’re treating the movies, as far as I’m concerned, exactly the way the character was treated in the comic books. It’s the singular most successful character in the comic book industry, as far as I know. The only one that rivals it may be Batman. X-Men at one time was the number one bestselling book, but that was a group of characters. But Spider-Man sold phenomenally well, and the supporting cast had a lot to do with it. There was a realism about that series that was unique in the comic book industry.

(right) Larry King makes an appearance in this September 1, 1996 Spider-Man Sunday newspaper strip. Inks by Joe Sinnott.

ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS SPIDER-MAN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

(below) Sal not only became friendly with a teenaged Gary Groth and his family, but he also provided this cover illustration of Dr. Strange as well as a short interview for a 1969 issue of Groth’s Fantastic Fanzine.

money in it. It just wasn’t worth it on a monetary basis to do it permanently. I was happy to do it as a fill-in anytime, as a favor to Stan.

ART COURTESY OF JEFF BELL DR. STRANGE ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

JA: Between the ’70s up until 1996 when Marvel went bankrupt, how often did you go to conventions?

SB: Not a whole lot. There was a young man, a teenager at the time, that I met who was a big comic book fan, and I got kind of friendly with him and his parents. His name was Gary Groth. The first convention I went to was one he put together. I wanted to help him out, because it was his first venture. I think he was only about 16 or 17 years old at the time. He might have been younger. His mom and dad helped him out, too.

I did not do a lot of shows. John and I would have conversations about this. After doing a few conventions here and there, we decided, “This is a money-making operation for the people who run these conventions.

This is not a charity. They don’t do it for the love of the industry or the love of the fans.

They do it to make money.” Every convention that I’ve ever been to has been like that.

JA: That’s not always true, but more often than not, yes. I used to put on conventions, and as long as we broke even we were happy.

SB: If there’s somebody out there who’s a little more altruistic, I don’t think I’ve ever come in contact with them. I think you will admit that San Diego doesn’t do it to be altruistic. San Diego does it because it’s a big business.

JA: I’ve known a couple of exceptions, but for the most part you’re right about that.

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SB: There are exceptions to every rule.

Anyway, John and I decided that we were not going to do these things for nothing.

Whenever I talk to people they say, “You can make money by charging for sketches.” I just tell them, “Look, I’m not going to charge a nine-year-old kid $25 for a drawing. I would rather charge you a fee, and then you can advertise the fact that Sal Buscema is going to be there doing free head sketches of any character that they want.” A lot of them bought that. They thought that was a great idea.

There were also a lot of times when people would call me about a convention, and as soon as I said, “This is my fee,” there would be this pause, and then they would say, “Oh, we don’t pay. We only cover your expenses.”

“Sorry, I don’t work for nothing, and I consider this work. If I’m going to work for you for nothing, I’d just as soon stay home, and do my own work and make money.”

When you’re talking about the bigger conventions — New York, Philadelphia, whatever — it’s a money-making operation. But I think it’s because of my policy that I have not been invited to that many conventions.

JA: You’re not the only person who’s charged for an appearance.

SB: No, I’m sure I’m not. As a matter of fact, the prices I charged were probably a lot more reasonable than most of these guys.

JA: Do you enjoy conventions?

SB: I enjoy meeting the fans if I’m at a table just signing autographs and doing quick head sketches and that type of thing. I get a kick out of that. I’m not too crazy about the panels, though. John and I only did one convention together, and that was years ago in New York. We were together for maybe an hour at a table doing sketches, then he had to go his way, and I had to go mine.

But the simple fact of the matter is that it’s a business. It kind of ticked me off when people would ask me to come to their convention and I’d tell them, “My fee is such and such,” and then they’d say, “Well, we don’t pay.” “Wait a minute. You want me there, you want my brother there, you want a whole bunch of other people there, because we are the people that are going to be drawing fans into your convention, and hopefully making you a potful of money, and yet you don’t want to pay for the work that we’re going to be doing.” It just annoyed me.

On the other side — I want to be fair about this — a lot of times people would call and ask me to do a convention. I’d say, “Is it a weekend, a day, or what?” They’d tell me, I’d say, “Okay, my fee is this in addition to expenses,” and they’d say, “Okay, that’s fine.” They wouldn’t even bat an eye, and I appreciated that because they handled it in a very professional manner. I’m not sure about this, but John and I may have been the first ones to do this. I can’t think of anyone else that was charging before us. John said, “You know what’s going to happen. Nobody’s going to invite us to conventions.” I said, “Well, that’s okay, because I can think of other things that I’d rather do on a weekend.”

I was invited to Barcelona, Spain, to do a convention there. It’s a huge convention.

Believe it or not, it actually dwarfs the one in San Diego. I believe they told me that they get 90,000 people there. It’s held in an old train station that is no longer in service, and they used the entire space. It was mammoth. I got to meet the legendary Will Eisner and his wife there. What a delightful man he was, and his wife was just a sweetheart. My wife and I just 83

(above) A 1994 convention head sketch of your friendly, neighborhood Spider-Man. ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS SPIDER-MAN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

Chapter Five

A New Start with a Different Company

JA: You were doing a lot of inking for Marvel up to the time they went bankrupt. A lot of editors lost their jobs. A lot of books were cut.

SB: In the space of two or three months, Marvel got rid of two or three hundred people. It was a bloodbath. I lost all of my work.

JA: What were your thoughts on the company going public?

SB: I thought it was a good sign. I had no idea that the company was going to get into any kind of financial trouble. I’m a capitalist through and through, and I thought it was a good idea. I even floated the idea of buying some stock. I’m glad I didn’t. [laughter]

advance. I’m always looking five or ten years down the road, and I had plans for essentially doing what I’m doing now. My thoughts were that I would like to go to issue #350 on Spectacular Spider-Man and that would have been right around the time I could retire.

Then all I wanted to do was ink one book a month — that’s all — just to maintain a presence in the industry, and to do something that I really enjoyed doing. Well, that’s essentially

JA: How did you get the news in ’96?

SB: I knew what was happening. I anticipated it. I was only doing Spectacular Spider-Man at the time, and I got a call from Ralph Macchio telling me that all the sales were down and they were going to have to make changes.

I said, “That means I’m not doing the book anymore,” and he said, “Right.” I said, “Am I doing anything else?” He said, “ Well, I don’t have anything for you, Sal. I don’t know about any of the other editors.” I said, “Essentially, the answer is no.” It was a nice conversation, because Ralph and I always got along well, but that was the end of it.

I was under contract to Marvel at the time, and the contract stated that as long as I was under contract I couldn’t work for anybody else. So I had to call Bob Harras, who had recently taken over as editor-in-chief, and tell him I was terminating my contract. The contract was almost silly, because either party could terminate it any time they wanted to. In this case, I terminated it because I had to earn a living, and to do that I had to get work from other people. He said, “Fine, Sal. We hope things will turn around. We’ll be in touch.”

And then I went to DC, and happily they started giving me work.

This is very important. I was near the end of my career. I was 60 years old, so I wasn’t far from retirement. It bugged me a little bit, because I’m a guy who likes to plan way in 87

(below) Sal’s run on Spectacular Spider-Man ended earlier than he would have preferred, with issue #238. Inks by John Stanisci over Sal’s breakdowns.

ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS DRAGON MAN, SPIDER-MAN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

what’s happened to me now, so in that respect I have been very, very blessed. But the big thing — and this is the point I want to make — there were so many guys with families they needed to support, and these were the people I really felt for. My career was essentially behind me. I had to squeeze out a few more years the best that I could, but there were so many guys in their 30s and 40s that still had years to work, and all of a sudden the whole industry went to pot, and all these people were out of work. It was just a terrible, terrible time. And I’m not saying this to sound noble or anything like that. Believe me, I was very, very upset. I’d been working for Marvel for over 30 years, and here I was just shoved aside. But it happened to so many other people, and they were the ones I really felt for.

JA: Who was your first contact at DC? SB: Mike Carlin. The first project they put me on was a doozy. It just blew me away that they would trust me with it. It was a double-sized issue with Batman. And they asked me what writer I would like to work with! I had read some stuff that Chuck Dixon did. He wrote The Punisher when John Romita, Jr. was drawing it, and that was just a fantastic book.

When they asked me who I’d like to work with, I immediately said I’d love to work with Chuck Dixon. The next thing I know, I’m getting a plot for Detective Annual #10.

JA: How closely did you work with Chuck?

SB: It was a good story. It had to do with foreign intrigue and a South American dictator, and I just had a ball with it. But I really didn’t talk with Chuck. I got the plot in the mail, and I dealt with the editor, I sent the pages in, and that was that.

JA: Did you work from a plot or a full script?

SB: I’m pretty sure I worked from a plot. I’ve done a couple of very small penciling jobs for Marvel in the last three or four years — just two or three pages where they wanted an “old-fashioned” style, and they asked me to do it, which really makes me laugh. [laughter] They were full-script, and I hated every minute of it. I despised it.

It was so refreshing when Stan came up with the new concept of having the artists work from plots. It was revolutionary, and I think it was responsible, more than anything else, for the creative explosion in comic

books. I cannot understand why they’ve gone back to full scripts.

JA: How did you feel about drawing Batman?

SB: It was great! I was just flipping out when they asked me to do Batman, because I love the character. And the plot that Chuck came up with was just wonderful. I really had a lot of fun working on that. It was great working with the Batman team, too. They were a bunch of nice guys.

JA: How was the money?

SB: I was getting paid exactly the same as I had been at Marvel. Scott Peterson, the Batman group editor, and his two associate editors took me out to lunch, and the reception that I got from them was just wonderful. It was so gratifying. They seemed really happy to have me. Unfortunately, it didn’t last too long, because the whole industry was falling apart.

But it reenergized me. It was a whole new experience, and I took advantage of the situation in the sense that I did what I did not do when I was with Marvel. I went up there more frequently. Not that much, because I only worked for DC for two or three years, but I made several trips up there to let them know that I was alive and breathing. The short time that I worked for them was great. I enjoyed it thoroughly, and they treated me superbly. I can’t say enough about it.

JA: For the most part, you just wanted to ink at this point. You didn’t want to pencil anymore.

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(above) A moody Batman in these panels from a ten-page story for Batman 80-Page Giant #2. Sal did the full art for this story, a rarity during his time at DC. ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS

BATMAN, ROBIN ™ AND ©2010 DC COMICS.

(facing page) A full-page splash from Sal’s first job for DC: Detective Annual #10. Inks by one of Sal’s favorite collaborators, Klaus Janson.

BATMAN ™ AND ©2010 DC COMICS.

(right) Very often while at DC, Sal was called in to ink new pencilers. He handled many different styles, and it was Sal’s versatility that made him ideal for such situations.

In Batman/Scarecrow 3-D, Sal inked Carl Critchlow, a British artist with a somewhat cartoony style who had worked for 2000 AD, but only did a handful of jobs for DC in the late ’90s.

BATMAN, ROBIN, SCARECROW ™ AND ©2010 DC COMICS

(below) A page from Batman Chronicles #16’s back-up story, “Harold,” penciled by Chris Renaud, who after working in comics from 1996-2000 left to go into the field of animation.

HAROLD ™ AND ©2010 DC COMICS

(above) The one title Sal worked on with any consistency for DC was The Creeper. There he inked Shawn Martinbrough’s high-contrast pencils for the entirity of The Creeper’s twelve-issue run.

THE CREEPER ™ AND ©2010 DC COMICS

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But with Klaus, I couldn’t wait to get the pages, because I enjoyed inking him so much.

It was an absolute blast. I wanted to work on his pencils forever.

He’s a master black-and-white artist.

Black-and-white art is more difficult to do than color. He does things that are just brilliant. In that respect, it was so much fun just to see his pages, because his pencils were pretty tight. He has a very stylized flavor to his drawing. It was almost to the point that I could say, “Gee, I wish I penciled like this.” It was not work, believe me. To use the old cliché, it was a labor of love.

JA: Of the DC characters you worked on, and you worked on a fair amount, which was your favorite?

SB: I would have to say Batman. Batman is a very unique character. He’s very dark and foreboding — not quite over the line.

JA: You penciled Superman: The Man of Steel, too. Did you think of Superman as something special, or was he just another super-hero to you?

SB: Who ever knew that I’d be doing Superman one day? In that sense there was a little bit of excitement there, but once you get into it, it’s just another job.

JA: Why did you leave DC after only three years?

SB: Business started slowing down for them, too. The sales were not good. The Batman editors I had been working with — Scott Peterson and Jordan Gorfinkel and the rest — all left at different times. They had kept me constantly busy, but I guess the editors that took over decided that they didn’t want my services any more. I officially retired when I turned 64. I’m still working, though.

JA: You’ve been working on Spider-Girl for quite some time.

SB: And I hope we’re on it for quite some time to come, too. I have a fantastic relationship with Ron Frenz. Ron is a friend, and Tom DeFalco is a friend.

Tom is not only a terrific writer, he’s also a delightful guy. We had a great working relationship, and we still do, although we’re not in contact as much as we were when he was writing Spectacular Spider-Man for me. I’m

just doing the inking on Spider-Girl. I don’t know anybody who knows more about this business than he does. His storytelling ability is outstanding. This is a guy who really knows how to write. He could probably teach writing; he knows it that well. Ron and I talk about this a lot.

Now, Ron is one of the guys who does contribute an awful lot to plotting and ideas and so on. And Ron has enormous respect for Tom’s ability and talent, simply because the guy just knows what he’s doing. He knows how to tell a story. When I worked with Tom on Spectacular Spider-Man, it was just as smooth as silk. Tom has a talent for stimulating you and really bringing the best out of you.

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(above) Before their longstanding pairing on Spider-Girl for Marvel, Sal inked Ron Frenz on Superman: The Man of Steel #94.

SUPERMAN ™ AND ©2010 DC COMICS.

(facing page) One of the many artists Sal inked during his brief tenure at DC was legendary Batman artist Jim Aparo.

Batman #558, page 18.

ART COURTESY OF SPENCER BECK BATMAN ™ AND ©2010 DC COMICS.

Chapter Six

The Craft of Creating Comic Book Art

JA: We’ve talked some about the craft of creating comics, but let’s really focus on that now. Let’s start with your philosophy regarding working with writers.

SB: The way I enjoyed working was getting the plot from the writer. I wasn’t the type of penciler that would contribute a lot. I always felt that my job was to interpret what they put in their plot and turn that into 22 pages of pictorial storytelling. To me, that was difficult enough.

And the other side of it is I can’t recall anybody ever calling me up and saying, “You know, Sal, this really doesn’t work. You’ve got to redo this.” I’m not throwing accolades at myself, I’m just simply stating a fact. One of the things I heard from so many people was that the reason they enjoyed working with me was because I told the story so well pictorially.

My philosophy was to try to give the writer what he wants, so that when he writes his dialogue it’s going to be as easy for him as it can be. That’s what I always worked towards. So the personal relationships between me and the writers frankly did not exist in many cases. I would do a book, and then I’d get the plot for the next one and I’d sit down and think about it, figure it out, and execute it. Then I’d send the pages in and get the next plot. That’s the way it worked. It was almost machine-like.

JA: As far as the writers you worked with, who was the most helpful to you in terms of the direction they gave you in the scripts?

SB: Len Wein, Tom DeFalco, Marc DeMatteis... guys I worked with for a period of time. So many of the writers I only did a few books with. It’s really hard to get a handle on that. But the guys I mentioned were just consummate professionals, and that in and of itself was a great help to me. They made my job easy.

of panels that my brother did. [laughter] It was on a Captain America book, and it was simply because Stan wasn’t happy with the storytelling. Not the drawing, obviously, because the drawing was fantastic. I had gone to the office for some reason and Sol Brodsky asked me, “Sal, we need this panel changed.

Can you do this and this?” And I said, “I’d be happy to.” As a matter of fact, I was thrilled to, because it was literally the first penciling work that I did for Marvel. It was kind of gratifying that they asked me to change something that John did.

JA: When you were drawing super-heroes, how conscious were you of proportion?

SB: You had to be conscious of it, because you’re drawing heroic people. The proportions have to be there. It’s very difficult to make somebody look heroic if they’re dumpylooking. This is something that Stan required.

He wanted all of the super-heroes and heroines to be very heroic-looking, and that’s the way you do it. They’ve got to be eight, nine heads tall.

It was the same with the villains, because they have to look like a match for the superheroes. The philosophy, at least when I first started with Marvel, was that the heroes always had to look like the underdogs. There always had to be the sense that, “Oh, my gosh, he’s in trouble now!” You wanted to make the super-villains look like formidable

JA: Moving on to penciling, were you ever asked to redraw panels?

SB: Not a whole lot, but, yes, I was. As a matter of fact, one of the first things I ever did for Marvel, believe it or not, was redraw a couple 97

(below) Cap certainly looks heroic in these panels from Captain America #153. Inks by Jim Mooney.

ART COURTESY OF AL BIGLEY CAPTAIN AMERICA ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

opponents, so you had to give them the same proportions. Of course, it depended on who it was, but the reader had to see that the villain posed a real challenge to the super-hero.

If you’re drawing Loki, he’s a god. Even though he’s an evil god, you have to give him that persona, that aura. He has to look majestic. It all depends on what the super-villain is all about and what the hero is all about.

Spider-Man is kind of a departure from that, because Spider-Man is a teen-aged kid. At least, that’s the way he started. He’s smallish.

He’s a departure, and that may be one of the things that made Spider-Man become the number one super-hero in the comic book universe. He was smaller, but look at what he was capable of.

The Vulture was creepy-looking and not heroic-looking at all. The very nature of a

vulture, it’s probably the ugliest bird out there. You had to capture that persona in the character. And the same thing, in a different way, for Doctor Octopus. Where the Vulture could fly, Doc Ock had those mechanical arms. His stature was anything but heroic. He was a short, plump professor type. This is the challenge that every comic-book artist has.

He has to be convincing to the audience with whomever he happens to be drawing, and to do that he has to be versatile.

I did a podcast interview recently, and I was bowled over that anybody would even want to bother with this, but it was celebrating my fortieth year in the industry. They had some surprise guests, and one of them was Stan, which absolutely blew me out of the water. I had no idea that he was going to be on the show, and I was deeply honored because, 99

In the page from Spectacular Spider-Man #163 (facing page), you can see how Sal draws Spidey as slender and wiry. And villains don’t come much creepier than Hobgoblin and Carrion. The panel from Spectacular Spider-Man #210 shows Spidey’s rogues as terrifying, and the reactions of their victims sells that idea. Full art by Sal. ART COURTESY OF WWW.ANTHONYSNYDER.COM/ ART

ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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Art Gallery

(above) We begin the gallery with images of Sal’s favorite character: The Hulk. And what better place to start than with this illustration done for Mighty Marvel Calendar for 1975 — obviously, this was December’s image. As it happens, December 1975 was the cover date for Sal’s first issue as penciler of Incredible Hulk, and the start of his nearly ten-year run.

ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS

HULK ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

(facing page) A commission illustration of Ol’ Greenskin.

HULK ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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Cover art for Incredible Hulk Annual #14, cover dated December 1985. Inks by John Byrne, who also wrote the issue.

ART COURTESY OF EELCO VELDHUIZEN

HULK ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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Like many other comic book artists, Sal would occassionally sketch on the back of whatever board he happened to be working on — either to work out a problem or simply to take a break and have a little fun drawing something different. The drawings on these two pages come from the backs of two such boards.

HULK ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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From left to right: Ron Frenz, Sal Buscema, and Tom DeFalco — the creative team behind Spider-Girl. This photo was taken at the 2008 Pittsburgh Comicon.

A recent photo of Sal inking at his drawing board.

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Without question, one of Sal’s most memorable covers. Avengers #89, cover dated June 1971.

COURTESY OF SAM NEWKIRK

AVENGERS, CAPTAIN MARVEL ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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Sal drew several covers for Marvel’s many reprint titles of the '70s, which meant he was able to show his interpretation of some of the key moments from Marvel’s history, including the coming of Galactus. Marvel’s Greatest Comics #36, cover dated July 1972.

COURTESY OF SAM NEWKIRK

FANTASTIC FOUR, GALACTUS ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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Iron Man #34, cover dated February 1971.

ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS

IRON MAN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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A page from “The Night Before X-Mas,” part of 1994’s Marvel Holiday Special.

X-MEN ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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SAL BUSCEMA:

Comics’ Fast & Furious Artist

In 1968, Sal Buscema joined the ranks of Marvel Comics and quickly became one of their most recognizable and dependable artists. Following in the footsteps of his big brother John (above) Artwork done for Universal’s Islands of Adventure themepark’s Marvel Super Hero Island, which opened in 1999. These and three Buscema, Sal quickly came into his other pieces are on display in the park as large, full-color standees.

Inkspenciled

by Timsome Townsend. own, and of Marvel’s ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS most memorable storylines, such as the original Avengers/Defenders war, ALL CHARACTERS ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC. as well as “The Secret Empire Saga” and the Nomad arc in the pages of Captain America. He also had a tenyear run on the Hulk and drew 100 consecutive issues of Spectacular Spider-Man, making him one of the few definitive artists of the Bronze Age. Sal Buscema: Comics’ Fast & Furious Artist, by Alter Ego’s Jim Amash with Modern Masters’ Eric NolenWeathington, explores the life and career of this true legend of the comics industry, through an exhaustive interview with the artist, complete with extensive examples of his art, including a deluxe color section, and a gallery of work from Sal’s personal files.

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(facing page) Sal has inked the work of Ron Frenz more than any(192-page other artist, thankswith in color large& part to their longtime collaboration on$10.95 the HARDCOVER 16 bonus color pages) $46.95 • (Digital Edition) various incarnations of Spider-Girl. Spider-Girl #79, page 17, cover dated December 2004.

Pencils by Ron Frenz. http://twomorrows.com/index.php?main_page=product_info&products_id=793 (176-page trade paperback with color) $26.95

ART COURTESY OF HERITAGE AUCTIONS

QUEEN OF THE GOBLINS, SPIDER-GIRL ™ AND ©2010 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

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