Write Now! #20 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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FRANK MILLER

F I S I NA SU L E!

695

In the USA

#20

Spring 2009

WILL EISNER

MICHAEL USLAN

COLLEEN DORAN

M AG A Z I N E Issue #20

SPRING 2009

Read Now! Message from the Editor-in-Chief .....................................................page 2 THE SPIRIT SECTION begins on page 3 He Dared Evil on a Dark Knight Interview with Frank Miller ................................................................page 4 Keeping the Faith Interview with Michael Uslan ............................................................page 6

THE SPIRIT NUTS & BOLTS Thumbnails to Pencils to Script to Finished Comic: WILL EISNER’S THE SPIRIT #24 Pages from “Veterans’ Benefits,” by Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Chad Hardin and Wayne Faucher..............page 18

Conceived by DANNY FINGEROTH Editor-In-Chief

Producing Results Interview with F.J. DeSanto ..............................................................page 25

Managing Editor ROBERT GREENBERGER

Odd Lot Perspective Interview with Deborah Del Prete ................................................page 30

Consulting Editor ERIC FEIN

Not-So-Secret Agent Interview with Denis Kitchen ..........................................................page 32

Proofreading ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON

Will Eisner and the Art of Adaptation N.C. Christopher Couch looks at a pair of Spirit stories........page 36 The Spirit of Comics! Interview with Will Eisner (re-presented from Write Now! #5)..............................................page 43 On the Creator’s Life: Interview with Colleen Doran..........................................................page 51 Being Discovered… Again… and Again… and Again… Alex Grecian on breaking into comics—several times ............page 65

Nuts & Bolts Department Script to Thumbnails to Pencils to Finished Comic: AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #574 Pages from “Flashbacks,” by Marc Guggenheim, Barry Kitson and Mark Farmer ................................................................................page 60 “But What Does Danny Think?” Danny Fingeroth sums up seven years of Write Now! ..........page 69 Feedback Letters from Write Now!’s Readers ................................................page 71

Designer DAVID GREENAWALT Transcriber STEVEN TICE Circulation Director BOB BRODSKY, COOKIESOUP PRODUCTIONS

Publisher JOHN MORROW

Special Thanks To: ALISON BLAIRE TOM BREVOORT KIA CROSS DEBORAH DEL PRETE F.J. DeSANTO WILL EISNER MARK EVANIER DAVID GREENAWALT KATE HUBIN STEVE KANE DAVID HYDE ADAM KERSCH DENIS KITCHEN JACKIE KNOX JIM McCANN FRANK MILLER ERIC NOLENWEATHINGTON CHRIS POWELL BEN REILLY ALEX SEGURA VARDA STEINHARDT STEVEN TICE MICHAEL USLAN STEVE WACKER

Danny Fingeroth’s Write Now! is published 4 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614 USA. Phone: (919) 449-0344. Fax: (919) 449-0327. Danny Fingeroth, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Write Now! E-mail address: WriteNowDF@aol.com. Single issues: $9 Postpaid in the US ($11 Canada, $16 elsewhere). Four-issue subscriptions: $26 US ($44 Canada, $60 elsewhere). Order online at: www.twomorrows.com or e-mail to: twomorrow@aol.com All characters are TM & © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © the respective authors. Editorial package is ©2009 Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrows Publishing. All rights reserved. Write Now! is a shared trademark of Danny Fingeroth and TwoMorrows Publishing. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

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READ Now ! Message from Danny Fingeroth, Editor-in-Chief As you may have heard, this is the last issue of this magazine that so modestly bears my name in its logo. It makes me think of the joking observation that was old when Woody Allen’s Alvy Singer character makes it in 1977’s Annie Hall. He compares romantic relationships—and life—to a restaurant of which a complaining patron says: “The food here is terrible—and such small portions, too!” So while getting out each issue of WN was always way more work than I’d anticipated, I was almost always proud of the finished results. And now that the magazine’s seven-year run is over, it seems like it went by in a flash. “Such small portions,” indeed. Sure, WN will continue to be available in digital form and as print back issues from the TwoMorrows website. And I’ll still be hawking issues at conventions. There may even be some kind of continuing web presence with new material. But WN as we’ve known it is no longer to be. But, hey, there’s still this issue. Let me tell you about it… The recent Spirit movie has put everybody in a Will Eisner state of mind. Not that anybody doing comics doesn’t always have Will looking over their shoulder just a little bit, but especially now, when the winter days are short, and ragged newspapers blow through the dark, cold city streets, and people shiver from the pelting force of the precipitation known as “Eisenshpritz”… Where was I…? Ah, carried away by the atmosphere that comes along with many a Spirit story… Anyway, this issue of Write Now! focuses on the Spirit: the character, the comic, and the movie. (And there’s some extremely cool non-Spirit stuff, too.) We lead off with interviews with movie folks: writer/director Frank Miler, producer Michael Uslan, co-producer F.J. DeSanto, and producer Deborah Del Prete. The interviews each add important insights on how Eisner’s unique comics vision was translated into (especially of interest to Write Now! readers) a screenplay and then, of course, a movie. The saga of how The Spirit got made is an incredible story all by itself. Then, we speak to Eisner’s longtime friend and publisher Denis Kitchen. Denis tells us how he came to work with Will, and what he learned from the relationship. We also have an article by Eisner–scholar N.C. Christopher Couch about a little-discussed aspect of Will’s Spirit stories: those that were adaptations of classic short stories. Eisner has spoken about how certain short-fiction authors were great influences, and here, Mr. Couch shows us how Will homaged them via The Spirit. 2 | READ NOW

Back in 2003, two years before his passing at age 87, I had the honor of interviewing Will for issue #5 of this magazine. I knew him casually, but had never before had the chance to speak to him at such length about his art and craft. There’s a lot to be learned from what he has to say in the interview, and I thought it was the perfect thing to have in an issue dedicated to his work. We’ve also got an excellent Nuts & Bolts section featuring script and pencil pages from a recent issue of DC’s Will Eisner’s The Spirit by Sergio Aragonés, Mark Evanier, Chad Hardin, and Wayne Faucher. These guys beautifully bring the Spirit’s comics adventures into modern terms. As for the excellent not-Spirit material, we’ve got an inspirational interview with writer-artist Colleen Doran, who tells us how she creates work like A Distant Soil—and how she deals with the realities of the art and the business aspects of comics. Then, Alex Grecian talks about how his writing career got going and how his and artist Riley Rossmo’s Image series Proof came to be. And in another nifty Nuts & Bolts section, we’ve got some exciting script and pencil art by Marc Guggenheim and Barry Kitson from Amazing Spider-Man #574! Hope that’s enough. If it isn’t, what are you going to do— stop buying the mag? But seriously… thanks to everybody who’s been there for Write Now! these past seven years. But before we start blubberin’, why don’t you enjoy this Spirit-centric issue of Write Now!—and then join me in the last few pages where I get to look back on WN’s history and thank all sorts of people and try to figure out some profound words to exit on. Write Away! Danny Fingeroth Editor-in-Chief

LAST MINUTE SHAMELESS HYPE: Did I ever tell you about my books Superman on the Couch; Disguised as Clark Kent; and The Rough Guide to Graphic Novels? Oh, I did? Well, no need to mention them again, I suppose… —DF

While the impetus for focusing on the Spirit in this issue of Write Now! was the recent Frank Miller-directed movie, I never need much of an excuse to spread the word about Will Eisner and his creation. The things Eisner discovered, invented, interpreted and demonstrated over his long career are every bit as relevant to established and aspiring comics writers and artists today as they ever were. In the pages that follow, we hear from some of the key people behind the movie (Eisner-fanatics all); from a few of the creators on the current run of Spirit comics; from Will’s longtime publisher and friend; from a critic who has given eye-opening attention to Eisner’s work; and, finally, from the Master himself, via an interview I was fortunate enough to be able to do with Will in 2003. Eisner called the comics supplement he supplied to newspapers The Spirit Section, and that seemed an appropriate title for this series of features that follows. I hope you enjoy Write Now!’s own “Spirit Section.”

—Danny Fingeroth

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He Dared Evil on a Dark Night:

THE FRANK MILLER INTERVIEW

Conducted via e-mail by Danny Fingeroth December 4, 2008

RANK MILLER changed the way comics are done, starting with Daredevil, moving on to re-vision Barman in The Dark Knight Returns. Other triumphs for the writerartist included Martha Washington, 300, and, of course, Sin City, which was turned into a sleeper-hit movie which he codirected. A longtime friend and colleague of [© 2008, SCI FI. All rights reserved.] Will Eisner, Miller was the natural choice to bring The Spirit to life as its writer-director.

Frank took a few minutes to give us talk to us about the character and the film… —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: When did you first discover The Spirit, Frank? Which characters and strips appealed to you? FRANK MILLER: I first discovered The Spirit when I was on a bicycle when I was 14 years old picking up comic books and discovering the works of Will Eisner who I thought was a new guy who was blowing everybody else out of the water. Then I discovered it was all written and drawn before I was born. So yeah, that’s how I discovered The Spirit. My favorite characters were the Spirit himself, Commissioner Dolan and Sand Saref.

The first The Spirit movie poster. Art by Frank Miller. [© 2008 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit trademark is owned by Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.]

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DF: Please talk a little about your process of using art from the Spirit comics to do storyboards. How did you go about picking stories, scenes and characters? How did you come up with the idea to do that in the first place? FM: I drew my ass off. I did not use Eisner’s artwork except as inspiration for the director of photography and for the crew and for the actors. But I did not

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION want to replicate his work. I think he would have felt disgraced by that. I came up with something new using his material that respected the boyish vigor of the original creation. DF: Did you ever find yourself imagining conversations with Will while you were working on the movie? If so, how did they go? FM: I imagined those conversations only every g*dd*mn day. How did they go? That’s between Will and me—and he’s dead. DF: Would you ever want to write and/or direct movie versions of any of Will’s later, non-Spirit, work— A Contract with God, etc.?

Will Eisner and Frank Miller had discussions and debates through the years, some of which were captured for a Dark Horse-published book, titled, appropriately enough, Eisner/Miller. [© 2005 Will Eisner.]

FM: No. I would not want to do it because The Spirit is the most romantic work he did. And I don’t believe that Family Matter or A Contract with God should be directed by me. It should be directed by the types of Aronofsky who understand naturalism better than I do. DF: How do you reconcile the serious and humorous sides of Eisner’s original stories? FM: Will was a full man who lived a full life—and he knew that life was dark and scary, beautiful and funny—and he incorporated all of them into these little seven-page stories. And that’s what is so magnificent about The Spirit and that’s what I tried to keep alive in the movie.

Miller’s splash page for 1981’s Daredevil #170. The look and feel of the page are influenced by Eisner’s Spirit splashes, especially where the title and credits become part of the art. Inks are by Klaus Janson. [© 2008 Marvel Characters Inc.]

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KEEPING THE FAITH:

THE MICHAEL USLAN INTERVIEW

Conducted via phone November 6, 2009 by Danny Fingeroth Transcribed by Steven Tice Copy-edited by Danny Fingeroth, Bob Greenberger and Michael Uslan

ICHAEL USLAN is the producer on The Spirit, and shepherded the project along for more than a decade. He’s also executive producer of all the Batman films, including 2008’s box-office phenomenon, The Dark Knight.

Michael is a writer, producer, and entertainment lawyer, with a list of awards including an Emmy, a People’s Choice and an Annie. Among other achievements, Michael is also the man who brought Stan Lee and DC Comics together for the historic Just Imagine Stan Lee Creating the DC Universe line of graphic novels (as recounted in detail in Write Now! #18). His many comics writing credits include the Batman: Detective #27 graphic novel, and an upcoming arc in DC Comics’ The Spirit series. I spoke to Michael over the phone in the period leading up to the release of The Spirit movie. While the main topic was the creation the movie’s script, needless to say, our conversation digressed here and there, in what I think were productive directions. His infectious enthusiasm for the project—and for everything he works on—comes through loud and clear in this wide-ranging interview. Enjoy! —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: Thanks for taking the time to talk about The Spirit, Michael. You’re credited as the producer. But, like most movies, this one has other folks who wore producers’ hats and I know you’re eager to give them credit. MICHAEL USLAN: F.J. DeSanto’s a co-producer, Linda McDonough is a co-producer. Producing with me is the utterly amazing Deborah Del Prete and Gigi Pritzker. And executive producers are my wonderful, wonderful mentor Benjamin Melniker, and Steve Maier. DF: I guess I’ll start at the beginning. When did you first see The Spirit comic? Was it like the rest of us, in 6 | WRITE NOW

Jules Feiffer’s book, The Great Comic Book Heroes? MU: Y’know, that’s been a source of debate between me and one of my best friends, Bobby Klein. Bob, who is now a genius at Intel, was my comic book buddy growing up, and to this day we, from time to time, cowrite introductions for DC Archives editions. We just did a piece for Roy Thomas’s TwoMorrows’ All-Star Companion Volume 3, so we still dabble in it together. Bobby and I have been debating that, and there are three possibilities. I thought it was the Feiffer book. Bobby thinks that it was the Help! magazine reprint that came out in 1962. And I can’t tell you for sure. Bobby does make a strong case that it was the Help! magazine first. And then after that, the early Spirit stories I saw would be the ones in the New York Herald Tribune, then the two Joe Simon-edited reprint issues over at Harvey. Then there were “The Spirit Bags” reprints. And then, by the time I got to high school, the

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION Spirit appeared on the cover of the underground comic, Snarf, I believe, and then had the two fifty-cent issues of his own, if memory serves me. By then I had latched onto other Eisner stuff. Bobby’s father worked at the Fort Monmouth army base, so we were privy to Will’s PS Magazine, also, on a regular basis. Something that we saw really early on may have predated all of this—but it wasn’t Eisner. Bobby and I used to go to a flea market, Collingswood Auction, near our homes, near Asbury Park, New Jersey, and every Friday night they had a backdate magazine stand there, and this guy would come in from New York with boxes and boxes full of old, old comic books, and because they were old, he sold them for a nickel apiece.

the convention in—I want to say ’68, but I don’t have the con booklets in front of me—where Eisner made an appearance. I don’t know that it was the first big con that he did, which I think came later, but at one of those conventions when I was in high school I did meet Will just as he was being exposed to this thing called comic book fandom. I had a chance to hear him speak, and to talk to him, and that, to me, was the be-all and end-all, because as I began to go to these conventions, that’s when I began to see The Spirit. That’s when I saw the inserts and expanded my horizons in terms of this character, and began to realize that what Orson Welles and Citizen Kane are to cinema, that is what Will Eisner and The Spirit are to comics.

DF: Who would want old comic books? MU: Right. And it was in that batch, for five cents, probably sometime around maybe 7th grade, that I got an IW or a Super reprint titled Daring Adventures with the Spirit in it. It was definitely not Eisner, but that might have been my first, or one of my real early, looks at the Spirit as a character.

DF: Did you have a friendship with him then? MU: I just sort of met him. We didn’t really develop a relationship until about 1994, when I got a call from Will. He indicated to me that Steven Spielberg’s people and some other people in Hollywood had contacted him about the possibility of doing The Spirit as a movie. And, being the businessDF: The Feiffer book came out in man that he was—and he was ’65, and it was definitely my first a great businessman—he did a awareness of the character. lot of investigating, and spoke to MU: Well, no matter which ones a lot of people, and he said may have been in what order, it everywhere he spoke to people, was certainly the Feiffer book my name kept coming up. And with the color insert that was he said, “I know you went the one that had the impact. through hell and it took you ten years to bring a dark and serious DF: When did you meet Will? version of Batman to the screen the way Bob Kane and Bill MU: I met Will when I was a Will Eisner firmly embraced the independent spirit teenager. As you know, I was at Finger and the gang had intend(pun intended) of the underground comix, licensing ed him to be, as this creature of the very, very first comic book Denis Kitchen to reprint some Spirit stories in 1972’s convention ever held, which the night stalking criminals from Snarf. Eisner also provided this new, then-topical cover to the issue. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] the shadows. And everyone tells was in New York City, July, me you love comics, you know 1964. Bobby Klein and I went comics, this is your passion. Is this something you there. My parents took us. It was at a fleabag hotel on might be interested in?” I said, “Yeah!” So my business the Bowery called the Broadway Central—which later partner Ben Melniker and I met with Will at the collapsed on itself! My mother was appalled. We had Harvard Club on 44th Street shortly thereafter, and we to step over unconscious drunks in the hallway in had a wonderful meeting of the minds. I think Will order to check in. There were roaches on the wall. realized at that point the unbridled love I had for comics, and the passion I had for The Spirit, and my DF: That was probably better than conscious drunks. understanding of Will’s work on The Spirit. And slowly, MU: [laughs] Sure. That was the first convention, there over a period of time, he and Ben worked out the were 200 of us there. A few years later, I think it was MICHAEL USLAN | 7

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION terms of the deal—which was always interesting to sit in on, because, from time to time, the two of them would start speaking Yiddish to each other, and I would be sitting there picking out a word here, and a word there, and wondering what was going on. But Ben and Will had a very, very good understanding. They were roughly the same age. DF: Is Ben still active? MU: Yeah. Ben is 95, and the other day, when it was nice out, he was playing 13 holes of golf. Ben is a legend in the motion picture business.

time to time, and to some of my buddies who were comic book historians to make sure I was on the right track. It’s funny how life works, but there are many interesting ways that, either directly or tangentially, Will Eisner’s path and mine crossed. DF: So you were telling me how you got involved with Ben Melniker. MU: At the time, I was reading about Ben every day in the front page of Variety. He was setting motion picture history back then. First of all, as a backdrop: Ben ran MGM for 30 years. He started with them in 1940, and was with them until about ’72. Ben put together the deals for Ben Hur, Dr. Zhivago, 2001: A Space Odyssey, Gigi, and all their musicals of the ’50s and ’60s. It was Ben who had the dealings with Stanley Kubrick and David Lean, and was in charge of all the David O. Selznick pictures for them. He negotiated Grace Kelly’s contract with her dad. He negotiated Elvis Presley’s contract with Colonel Tom Parker. And it goes on and on and on.

DF: How did you become involved with Ben to begin with? MU: When I initially began to negotiate with DC for the rights to Batman in early ’79, I knew I could not do it on my own. Yes, I was now an experienced motion picture production attorney having worked for threeand-a-half years at the only major studio at the time based in New York City, which was United Artists in its heyday. But I was too emotionally involved. I DF: Sounds like an amazing needed somebody who could guy. Now, to bring things back get in there and negotiate the to The Spirit… Eisner called deal without just saying yes to you, which is fascinating. That everything in order to get it must have been an incredible done. And I needed somebody experience and a tribute to who knew how to mount a prowhat you had accomplished. duction, because I had been MU: It was a really, really cool learning how you produce and thing that happened, and it was finance films, working at UA, because of the success of the where I was in charge of legal first Batman movie, and and business affairs over a numbecause of the people that he Eisner’s cover to 1940’s Eisner & Iger Studios-proknew in the comic book indusber of really great pictures—that duced Jumbo Comics #15, featuring his creation, gave me my training, including Sheena, Queen of the Jungle. The Spirit debuted in try, in particular, who pointed the same year. [© 2009 the respective copyright holders.] him in my direction, that said, early Rocky pictures, Black Stallion, Raging Bull, “This is the guy who has undergone a human endurance contest for the ten years it took Apocalypse Now, which was a crisis every day of to bring Batman to life as a dark and serious movie.” work. Interestingly, because they all knew at UA I was So we met, we hit it off, we had an understanding. a comic book buff, anything that was comics-oriented Then it took some time for Will and Ben to work out wound up on my desk, and for a long time we had the details. And we knew. And I told Will that this was Sheena, Queen of the Jungle—a character Will creatgoing to be a challenge, a long-term thing, because the ed—in development over there, and it was left to me Spirit is a guy in a fedora and tie, without superpowto attempt to untangle the copyright morass and the ers, without all the toys and gadgets and vehicles, who lost history of Sheena. I spent an awful lot of time has heart and soul, who has the human interest eledoing that, dealing extensively with Will’s former busiments of Frank Capra, the film noir elements of Orson ness partner Jerry Iger, also with Thurman Scott, who Welles, the suspense elements of Alfred Hitchcock, all used to own Fiction House, and I talked to Will from 8 | WRITE NOW

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION Batman, Spider-Man and X-Men out of the mix for a moment. What had been the most successful franchises?” And up to that time it was Men in Black, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, The Mask. So I was able to specifically point to these properties that had originated in lesser-known comic books, to give executives examples they could latch onto and understand that it’s okay if it’s not a locomotive of a title. But if the story’s great, and the characters are great… From the 1987 ABC Telefilm version of The Spirit: Above, Sam J. Jones as Denny Colt’s alter ego. Left, Jones with a pre-Deep Space Nine Nana Visitor as Ellen Dolan. [© 2009 the copyright holders.]

kind of wound up in one. I said, “This is not going to be an easy sell. We are in this for the long haul.” My God, if I knew it would be thirteen-and-a-half years till this movie would come out, I might have jumped out a window. But I never do things the easy way, and I never do anything the short way. Constantine took about nine years; National Treasure was, like, ten years. Everything seems to take a long, long time to get done. When the good things happen, after ten years to get a Batman, for example, or all the years to get a Dark Knight and a Batman Begins, you turn around and you look and you say, “It was worth the wait.” DF: The Spirit, in a way, must have been the opposite challenge of Batman. I mean, Batman is one of those characters everybody knows the name, and I’m sure everybody you took it to thought they were an expert on it in some way. But the Spirit is much more of a niche property. MU: Oh, it definitely is. I’ve now been in trenches 33 years in Hollywood doing this, day in and day out. Finally, we had a breakthrough. Hollywood people finally are getting this now. It’s not about having a property that everybody in the world knows, or having a property that’s 60 years old, 30 years old, or 20 years old. That’s not what it’s about. Some of the greatest franchises to be built based on comic books have been done on the basis of titles that have never sold more than 5,000 copies per issue. It’s truly about the stories and the character. I said, “Look. Take Superman,

And I had a really good pitch for The Spirit. I love pitching. It’s my favorite part of the whole producing process. I would passionately pitch this thing and get them intrigued by the story. Now, unfortunately—and the reason it took so many years—is that the production execs would always say, “Okay. Love the story, love the character. But, of course, we’ve got to get him out of the fedora and tie and get him into some kind of spandex and a cape.” “Goodbye,” was my response, and Ben and I would turn around and leave. “This is a great story, we love your pitch, but in this day and age, you’ve really got to have superpowers, and he really doesn’t have superpowers, so we should make him a real ghost who comes back and…” “Goodbye.” And I would up and leave and later send them later a copy of The Spectre or Deadman to take a look at if they were interested in doing something like that.

That’s the kind of stuff that we continually ran into, because there have been far too many execs who didn’t get it, who didn’t get comic books, who didn’t grow up in our era, who grew up in an era where comics were considered lurid, cheap entertainment for children, and these people did not have the respect for the creators, the artists and the writers, did not have respect for the integrity of the characters. Another argument that we’ve won, finally, generally speaking, after 33 years in the trenches, is proving to producers that comic books are not synonymous with superheroes, that if you walk into a Barnes & Noble, or a Borders, or a Virgin Megastore, any genres you see on their bookracks, I can bring you in comic books. And they finally get that now. Graphic novels have been a big help, there. That’s why you’re now seeing Road to Perdition and 300 and A History of Violence, and Constantine, The Spirit, Sin City, getting done. Because that door has finally been opened, and they finally get that there are other comics-based things besides costumed superheroes. DF: One of the challenges of the Spirit has to have MICHAEL USLAN | 9

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION been that the stories are often not about him. And his personality is somehow a bit nebulous. To me, it was always about the feel of the strip itself, and the guest stars, the femmes fatales and the villains. But the Spirit himself seemed almost a blank slate. MU: Because he was you, he was me. He was Everyman. He’s the guy that we were all identifying with that was “normal.” He was the guy who was in the midst of a comic book-like world, but was human, was a real person, trying to live this existence, with, next to Batman, the greatest rogues’ gallery of villains—well, let’s call them villainesses, with the exception of the Octopus, the Worm, and a few others. He was us. He was not a Marvel superhero out to save the world from an alien invasion. He was not the Justice League of America out to save America from being taken over by a mad scientist. He was a guy from the ’hood who was looking to make his neighborhood, his precinct, his slice of Central City a safer, better place for all the neighbors and friends that he grew up with, to live and work. And that meant dealing with some bad cops, corrupt politicians, racketeers, gangsters, and the occasional Octopus and femme fatale. So The Spirit in the comics is a Frank Capra movie in terms of its heart and soul. It’s Meet John Doe. The Spirit is known as the first, and perhaps only, middle-class superhero, as the guy who can’t afford a SpiritMobile to get around the city, who has to rely on public transportation, or Dolan to give him a ride. That’s the charm and the beauty, and that’s what sets the character apart. DF: Originally the idea was that he died, but was in suspended animation, and then he decided to wear the mask to work outside the law, right? MU: Yeah. To me, the way I always read it was Denny Colt was a guy who was probably bounced out of police academy, couldn’t stand the red tape and bureaucracy, not a guy for following all the rules, and when the “death” incident occurred, it gave him an opportunity. He is maybe the first hero patently aware of the absurdity of his own situation, because, as he crawls out of his own grave, and is sitting there in Wildwood Cemetery gasping for air and thinking, “Whoa. Maybe this dying is not the worst thing that could have happened to me. Maybe this is a chance for me to do something good, something special, that I couldn’t otherwise do. Maybe if I can convince the bad guys I’m the spirit of Denny Colt, the spirit of justice back to track them down, maybe I can be a comic The young James Garner, an actor Eisner had thought would be perfect to play the Spirit. [© 2009 the copyright holders.] 10 | WRITE NOW

book superhero come to life and be really effective.” It’s got that kind of absurdity and the Spirit keeps his tongue firmly planted in his cheek, but he gives the hero thing a shot. But once he’s out there, and is doing it, he gets the crap beaten out of him left and right, and realizes it’s not quite always the way it seems in the comics. There’s a little bit of that to it, as far as I was always concerned. DF: I’ve always understood it was Eisner’s satire on superheroes, really, that he knew he was doing stories for an older audience in the newspapers. MU: True. And if you want to follow that line, it’s the same thing Stan Lee did when he created Spider-Man. Stan created Spider-Man as a parody of Superman, not as another superhero. It hasn’t quite played out that way, but I think there was some of that in what Will was doing with the Spirit, albeit, yes, for an older audience. DF: In the 15 years since you first spoke to Will about doing a Spirit movie, are there many versions of the story that you pitched? MU: From the beginning, I said the heart and soul of this has got to be Sand Saref. They’re tied together as kids, their origins are tied together; there’s a beautiful structure to it. Then, with Ellen, you have a love triangle to play off of. I said to Will, “Wherever we go with

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION this movie, this thing has got to start with Sand Saref.” And the Octopus was always in from the beginning. His tentacles reach everywhere to crime in Central City, and he has to be a pervasive presence.

going to be speaking at the memorial, and I ran into Frank Miller there. I hadn’t seen Frank in a number of years, so I went over and congratulated him on Sin City. I said, “You know, Frank, they’re going to be teaching what you guys DF: Did you have a did there for years in film writer attached to the schools. It’s really breakearly pitches? through. For all these MU: No. Periodically, years, I’ve been trying to over the years, we talked make comic books into to a number of different movies, and you just people about possibly made a movie into a writing it. As you might comic book.” I then said, normally do, you read “Frank, I’ve got The things, you have some Spirit. Truly, you are the ideas, you meet some only person, really, who people. At one point in could write and direct time, late in the game, this movie. You and Will we had Jeph Loeb come had a very, very special in and do a treatment. relationship. You totally But, ultimately, everyunderstand this man. thing changed for me You totally understand when I saw Sin City. I his work. You totally The cover to Jules Feiffer’s 1965 The Great Comic Book Heroes. It said, “We can now do The was this book that introduced a new generation of comics fans to understand the Spirit. Spirit movie. Now I see it. the original superheroes of the 1930s and ’40s, including The Spirit. You need to do this The technology is finally The book was edited by novelist E.L. Doctorow. The Superman figure movie.” And he said, here.” And one of the rea- is likely by Joe Shuster. [Book copyright © 1965 by The Dial Press. Superman “Me? Touch the work of © 2009 DC Comics.] sons that I think we’re in a the master? Bring the Golden Age of comic book moviemaking now is work of Will Eisner, the Spirit, and translate it onto the because of the things I mentioned before. First, the screen? How can I possibly touch that? How could I do fact that the studios, the powers-that-be, the talent that? I can’t possibly.” And afterwards I go and I sit pool, they all kind of get it now that comics are not down, it’s just before the memorial’s starting. Ten minsynonymous with superheroes. Number two, they get utes later he taps me on my shoulder. I turn around, and he whispers into my ear, “I can’t let anyone else that you don’t need a high-profile title to make it work, that you can just rely on properties that are great stotouch this.” ries and great characters. Number three, the technology has caught up, so now it’s feasible on a certain kind So, Danny, I have to just ask the one question. What’s ten minutes in a person’s life? [laughter] of budget where you can do a Green Lantern or a Because that ten minutes changed everything. I went Silver Surfer without it looking cheesy. When I saw Sin rushing back to my producing partners, who were the City, I realized—in terms of the whole noir look, the wonderful Deborah Del Prete, with whom I had my whole highly stylized look of the city created by Will day-to-day producing relationship with, and Gigi Eisner, the rain, the gutters, every aspect of it, the logos—that we now had the technology that could con- Pritzker, and Ben, and F.J., and Linda McDonough. And I said to Deborah, “We’ve got an opportunity here.” She vey that, and make it work, and make it look right and says, “This would be phenomenal. We’ve got to pursue work great. this.” So all of us were on board to try to make this happen. After all the exasperating and frustrating expeCoincidentally, it wasn’t long after I saw it that I was riences trying to set The Spirit up over the years, my at Will’s memorial in downtown New York. I was MICHAEL USLAN | 11

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION T luck changed. One of my very good friends in L.A. is a wonderful actor named Dan Lauria. Dan played the dad on The Wonder Years. And Dan, every Monday night in L.A., had a theater group that he had put together to encourage writers in Hollywood to write plays, and then they would do readings of the plays. He had top stars who would come out for free on a Monday night, and they would get up there on the stage and read the plays written by screenwriters who were, many of them, Emmy Award-winning television writers, and movie writers, out in L.A., who didn’t have a lot of opportunity to write for the stage. So many great actors had been a part of Dan’s group. The readings took place in the Coronet Theater, which was owned by Gigi and Deborah and their company, Odd Lot. And it was Dan who introduced me to Deb and Gigi. So, when I met Deb at the Coronet and we were talking, she says, “Michael, we do smaller movies, but we would love to do something bigger. If you come across something that’s really special, please bring it to us. We would love to do something with you.” I said, “All right, great.” Some years went by, and I finally decided, “Well, let me take The Spirit over to Deborah and Gigi and see if maybe they might understand what this is, especially since they come out of independent filmmaking as opposed to studio filmmaking. So the day came, I went into Deborah’s office, and she said, “So, Michael, what did you bring me today?” I said, “Deb, I’ve brought you the greatest individual creative work ever to come out of the comic book industry in the last 70 years.” And she looked at me and said, “Don’t tell me you have the rights to The Spirit.” And I looked up into the sky and said, “Momma, I’m home!” [laughter] Those were my exact words. I said, “Deborah, how do you know about The Spirit?” She says, “Well, don’t tell anybody, but I’m a comic book collector. I’m a Legion of Super-Heroes completist.” Well, that was it. And it’s been a wonderful journey with the a great group of people. DF: Have all the producers been involved in the story and the screenplay? MU: In the story process, it’s primarily been Deborah— besides Frank, of course. But F.J. has been essential, as has Linda. DF: Did Frank come in with a story, or did you hand off an idea to him? MU: We left it to Frank to come up with what he wanted to come up with. But I think everybody kind of knew going in that it was going to be Sand Saref; we 12 | WRITE NOW

Cover (which also served as the splash page) to the Spirit story that first appeared on October 6, 1946, “Meet P’Gell.” What little boy could resist the femme fatale’s “warning”? [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

knew it was going to be the Octopus. Beyond that, it was Frank who came up with using Silken Floss, and making sure Plaster was in there, and Lorelei. It’s all Frank. And as it moved into the actual filming of the thing, it was Deborah on the set every day, Deborah working hand-in-hand with Frank. DF: Now, in The Spirit comics, there are at least two distinct eras, the prewar and the postwar, and probably within those there’re even subdivisions. How did you, collectively, figure out which era the movie would be visually, and in terms of the amount of satire and humor? MU: It’s a combination. And when you have a director, and especially a writer-director, who has a vision, who you know understands the material and just gets it, and respects the creator, respects the characters, respects the material, it’s important to step back and give him the creative field to take that vision and execute it, and be as supportive as possible with that vision and give him the creative room that he needs. If I had to categorize it, there’s a portion that’s early

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION Spirit, when he was still a little darker, when it wasn’t as comical or whimsical. But then, in the spirit of Gerhard Schnobble, Rat-A-Tat the machine gun, and the mysterious lady who, as it turned out in Eisner’s story, did come from Mars, it’s absolutely filled with the Eisner humor and irony, and the over-the-top action of the Spirit, and the larger-than-life villains. All of that is what you might think is representative of the postwar era. It’s a wonderful blending that I think succeeds well, and I think it reflects both periods of Eisner and both tones Eisner was capable of delivering in Spirit tales. DF: I remember Eisner was famous for, the name of almost every character was some kind of pun, or Yiddish reference, or a topical reference, ”Slim Mozzle” and “Awesome Bells,” and “Ward Healey.” Are those kinds of things in the movie, as well? MU: Oh, absolutely. And comic book fans, comic book historians, comic book insiders are going to find lots of winks to them throughout this movie, and all I would say is pay attention to everything from street signs and truck signs and characters’ names, and take the ride with Frank.

DF: All right, so you’ve got the movie, and Frank basically went off to write it. How many drafts did he go through? MU: He wrote a couple of drafts, and everybody had a lot to say initially, as we were getting going, and then, boom, off he went. And you just stand back. It was a great thing to watch him just go to town. Deborah closely collaborated with him creatively, and they bonded beautifully. DF: Was a lot of it rewritten by the actors as they were filming? MU: No. Frank was in control of the whole situation, from start to finish. One of the things that I was most impressed by with Frank… everybody knows he’s one of the great graphic artists of our generation, if not of all time. And his storyboards were just awesome, just amazing, so we knew, visually, this was going to be stunning. And with visual effects by the phenomenally talented artists from The Orphanage, we knew this film would literally become a comic book on the screen. I had been dealing with The Orphanage and introduced them to Deborah and Linda, who went as crazy for their work as F.J. and I had. Frank had this wonderful palette with which to work, creatively. The most interesting thing was how great he was with the actors. There’d be a take, and then Frank would go in and he’d be talking to the actors, and then you would see the next take in the dailies, and you would see a performance that just jumped a whole level. And then they would have another conversation, and then you In The Spirit comics, readers only ever saw partial views of the villainous Octopus, usually his distinctively-gloved hands, as seen in the comic art. In the movie, Samuel L. Jackson plays the character, and is fully seen from the get-go. [Comic art © 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] [Photo: © 2009 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit trademark is owned by Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.]

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THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION had the next take, and it would just jump another level. The give and take, and his relationship with the actors, was just wonderful. DF: One of the big things for Spirit fans is that Eisner never showed the Octopus, but obviously you’ve got Sam Jackson playing him. What made Frank decide to actually show the guy? MU: Well, it’s one thing when you’re dealing with six or eight pages of story in a comic book, even if it’s a serialized comic book, where you can Eisner by Eisner. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] easily not show the and drawing The Spirit, it was contemporary for the villain. But Frank had clear creative choices to make times. What do you mean, a period piece?” It was kind regarding that on film. It was a daring choice, because of funny to me when we announced our going forward this is a two-hour spectacle, and he wanted a very, with The Spirit movie, and the first thing I see on the very strong villain in there. Internet is people going, “Well, of course this has to be a 1940s period piece. That’s what Will would have DF: Was there any input from Denis Kitchen or Ann wanted.” Eisner, anybody like that? MU: We have been in close contact with Denis from the beginning, and with Carl Gropper, who is running the Eisner business. We talked to Ann from time to time. Denis has been very active and is very helpful. And we’ve all had an attitude of, “We’re in this together as one big family, and we want to do right by Will.” And I’ll tell you, one of the great things, Danny, is I had a chance to deal with Will, to talk to Will, for, like, ten years before he passed away, on this project, and luckily Deborah and Odd Lot came on in the nick of time, and I was able to introduce them all to Will, and we were able to arrange to spend some time together at Will’s last San Diego convention. So they had also an opportunity to talk to him, and hear him, and go over the questions. There are so many things that I talked to him about… that I know his feelings about. It started with a question that when I asked it, I thought he was going to slap me in the head. This was really early on. I said, “Do you see this as a 1940s period piece?” He yelped, “A period piece? I never, ever, wrote stuff as a period piece on The Spirit. Whenever I was writing 14 | WRITE NOW

DF: In terms of all the stuff that Will would put in the comics, I think fans are going to be curious about, say, the Spirit logos being different every issue and being part of the background. Is there a cinematic equivalent in the movie? MU: Frank has just done an incredible job in making use of the state of the art of this green screen technology. The movie has its own look. One of the great things for me is it captures the spirit of The Spirit. It’s a wonderful blend, a hybrid of Frank Miller and Will Eisner. And people ask, “Well, is that a conflict?” It doesn’t have to be a conflict, but a hybrid between two of the greatest graphic storytellers at work. Somebody asked me recently, “The Spirit’s outfit in the movie is black instead of dark blue, so therefore it’s Frank’s Spirit.” And I said, “Did you see The Dark Knight?” And they said, “Yeah.” I said, “Did you like it?” “Loved it.” I said, “Did you feel that it was respectful to the integrity of Batman?” He said, “Absolutely.” I said, “So, in the comic books, do you see a gray-and-blue

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION cloth costume, or do you see a black, armored suit?” And then there was this pause. I said, “Because what you have to keep in mind, when you’re watching The Dark Knight, you’re not watching the work of Bob Kane and Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson and company, period, end of story, up there. You are watching the work of Bob Kane and Bill Finger and Jerry Robinson and company through the sensibilities of director Christopher Nolan, who brings a contemporary feel to it. What you have in The Spirit movie is the work of Will Eisner as presented through the sensibilities of director Frank Miller.” As a result, a 13-year-old kid, a 19-year-old kid, a 29year-old adult, a 40-year-old adult, who has never read a Spirit comic book, who doesn’t know a thing about the Spirit, will be able to go into a movie theater and sit down and say, “This is cool.” And that’s really, really important. The Spirit may have a fresh coat of paint on him, but the movie is so much the spirit of The Spirit. DF: I’ve read there’s going to be a Titan book, The Making of The Spirit. That sounds like it should be great. MU: It’s magnificent. I just got the first copies of it. It’s probably the highest quality of any making of a movie book I’ve ever seen. It’s written by Mark Cotta Vaz. And I just got The Spirit pop-up book. That’s another thing

Will would love. There are such high quality products coming out in association with this, from the books, and the publications, and the comics, to the statues and other items, really high quality products. And they have carefully been monitored and selected over the time, and I’m very happy with that program, as well. DF: Is there anything about the script or the writing of the movie that I forgot to ask, or that you want me to make sure people know about adapting movies? MU: Well, number one, Frank Miller deserves all the credit for this script, and for the way he executed the script. But I want to give a special tip of the hat to that lovely lady producing partner of mine with whom I still get to talk about Adventure #247 when we have lunch, who sat there every day on the set, and through post-production, and creatively has been so important to the whole process. Deborah Del Prete is just one of the nicest people I’ve ever had the opportunity of working with, and she’s just been a beacon throughout this, creatively, and deserves so much credit, in support of Frank, for the picture. DF: And you were very enthusiastic about F.J. DeSanto’s involvement, also. MU: F.J.’s wonderful. That’s insufficient. There is no one else I know in this business who knows so much about comic books and about film-making. He’s

Triptych poster for the Miller Spirit movie. [© 2008 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit trademark is owned by Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is registered in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.]

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THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION become a master of two industries and not only is creative, but grasps the business side of “show business.” He’s also an expert in Japanese cinema, manga, and anime. When you’re working with somebody who starts out as a kid who loves this stuff, you find you not only have a coproducer but a playmate. We still meet Wednesdays at our comic book store. He’s been working with me for over 15 years, and I had the chance to introduce him to Will, to introduce him to many creators from the Golden Age and Silver Age of comic books in situations where he could spend time with them. And F.J.’s gotten deeper and deeper into the comic book industry as a writer while he’s also been producing. DF: You guys are writing a story arc for The Spirit comic, aren’t you? MU: Doing that is absolutely frickin’ awesome! Talk about a daunting, challenging task. We were scared to Eisner’s classic “Plaster of Paris” splash page, from the Spirit story that first appeared death when we got the November 7, 1948 [ © 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] assignment. But I would hope that Will would like DF: Did any of the stuff from any of the modern what we are doing with it. It’s edgy, but has his humor comics that Darwyn Cooke and the other folks do end and the kind of themes that Will dealt with. It brings up influencing the movie at all? back a lot of the classic villains, and has something to MU: No. That was really Frank, and the specific Eisner say about our society, but something to say with a comics that he picked out that were special to him. He sense of humor and a sense of irony. Make sure you was very much a Silken Floss fan—that was pure Frank. tell all your readers to try us out and pick up The Spirit There wasn’t much of a backstory for Silken, so he and #26, 27, and 28. Artists extraordinaire, Justiniano and Scarlett Johansson had to sit down together and figure Walden Wong, do a brilliant job evoking Eisner and are out how she would be this character, what her backcontemporary and highly cinematic. If you like the artstory might have been. I am happy to say that, in the work of Darwyn Cooke, check these guys out. I have pages of the DC comics that F.J. and I have written, seen the future of comic books, and its name is you’ll be learning a whole heck of a lot more about Justiniano. the backstory of Silken Floss, who and what she is. 16 | WRITE NOW

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION And we’re using some of the other femmes fatales of The Spirit movie. In fact, our first three Spirit stories in the comics have not only the Octopus, but Silken Floss, Lorelei, and Plaster of Paris. DF: Who’s doing the art on those covers? MU: The covers are by the legendary Brian Bolland. How lucky are we? Stunning stuff! They are eye-grabbing and represent a shout to the fans that a new era of Spirit begins here.

MU: Yeah, he did look like Dolan. But what you need are professional actors. You can’t just go for a look. You’ve got to go with someone who can deliver. And Gabriel Macht is unbelievable. Gabe, to me, is James Garner 50, 60 years ago, around the time he was doing Maverick. DF: Well, isn’t that who Eisner always used to say he thought should play the Spirit—James Garner? MU: It is. He and I totally agreed, from the first meeting, about that. We all knew that that’s what we were looking for in an actor, and everybody agreed, when we saw all of the auditions, that Gabe was the guy.

DF: The movie has just about all the Eisner femmes fatales. Aside from just having a lot of beautiful women on screen, was there a thematic reason to have so many of DF: Do you want to talk about anythem all in one place? thing else upcoming? I know you MU: Because it fits into the story. have Shazam and The Shadow in One of the most amazing things I the works. loved watching as we were filming it MU: We’re doing The Shadow with was the Plaster of Paris sequence. Sam Raimi and Josh Donen. F.J.’s Eisner’s “Plaster of Paris” story splash working with me on that. We have is almost like a strip tease, in a that project over at Sony. It’s being sense, the way she reveals herself. written by Siavash Farahani. I knew And it’s in the movie! It comes to life Walter Gibson, The Shadow’s driving in front of your eyes, with the beaucreative force, having done some tiful, sexy, exotic Paz Vega. And it’s work with him, which makes this very incredible to see that stuff come special to me. Plus, the way I broke right out of Eisner’s page, through into the comic book industry was via the eyes of Frank. The same thing my first writing job, The Shadow for with his Ellen Dolan and Denny O’Neil. I did The Shadow #9 Commissioner Dolan. Now, a postand #11, the latter of which is the script to all of this: I told you Dan Shadow meets the Avenger issue. So Among Michael’s earliest comics writLauria had introduced me to my intense passion for the Shadow ing credits is The Shadow #9. The Deborah and Gigi, and, of course, goes back to those days. series was heavily inspired by both there was no way we’re making the character’s radio series and pulp this movie without Dan Lauria, who Billy Batson & the Secret of magazine stories. Cover art is by Joe Kubert. [© 2009 Conde Nast.] is probably, in a sense, the godfaShazam is at Warners with director ther of it all. And Dan does the Pete Segal and producer Michael most magnificent job playing Commissioner Dolan. His Ewing. A writer will be coming aboard shortly. Doc relationship with Ellen—played by Sarah Paulson, wonSavage we won’t even be announcing until one of the derfully, as a contemporary woman—their relationship big upcoming Comic-Cons, but it will be a spectacular is so real, their chemistry is so great, they are the ride! It’s already attracting top talent who are fans of anchors for the audience watching this movie. Every “The Man of Bronze.” On the writing side, F.J. DeSanto time things get a little bit crazy and fantastical, with the and I are writing a three-issue story arc for DC’s The Octopus and these women and the way the violence Spirit comics starting with issue #26. We are greatly unfolds between the Spirit and the Octopus, there excited about it and are desperately working with you’ve got, suddenly, Commissioner Dolan and his artists Justiniano and Wong to evoke Eisner, utilize cindaughter absolutely anchoring the picture, bringing us ematic storytelling, and give it a contemporary feel. We right back to reality. And that’s a wonderful thing that think fans of Eisner and Darwyn Cooke might want to they’re able to do. give The Spirit #s 26-28 a look-see. DF: It would have been great to see Will as Dolan. He always used to joke that when he was young he looked like Denny Colt, and then, when he got older, he looked like Dolan. He really did look like Dolan.

DF: I look forward to hearing how those projects progress. Thanks, Michael. This was great fun. MU: Thank you, Danny. I enjoyed it.

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DC Comics is currently producing a much-praised run of new Spirit stories by top creators. Here, we see the cover to Will Eisner’s The Spirit #20. It’s penciled and inked by Paul Smith, of Leave it to Chance fame.

Here’s the first page of Sergio Aragonés’ thumbnail drawings to the issue’s story. Sergio’s famous self-caricature makes the page more than just information. It’s a welcome to co-creators Mark Evanier and Chad Hardin. But the page also contains important information as to where penciler Chad will find reference for the art that— starting on the next page—Sergio has sketched in.

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Sergio and Mark are longtime collaborators (on Groo and many other projects). Here’s how Mark describes their working process for this particular story: “Sergio made up a storyline and wrote it out in his way. Sometimes, when we work together, we discuss the plot in advance and sometimes, we don't. The Spirit has generally been one of the ‘don't’ cases. I’ve had almost no input into any of the stories before they're drawn.

“Sergio’s version was sent to the editor, Joey Cavalieri, who sent it to the artist, Chad Hardin, and I got a copy either from Joey or Sergio. Chad penciled it his way, then turned it in to Joey, who sent the art off to the inker and a Xerox of the pencil art to me. Once I got it, I hauled out my copy of Sergio’s breakdown and used it as a guide to help as I composed copy to fit what the artist had drawn. I think I had to phone him once or twice to ask about certain story points.”

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Mark continues: “When I was done with the dialogue, I uploaded it via e-mail to Joey and FedExed him a copy of the pencil art with balloon placements indicated.

“After the lettering was done, the letterer e-mailed me a PDF and I did some proofreading and I think I rewrote a couple of things at that stage. I sent my changes to Joey, he sent me a check and that’s about it.”

So Sergio’s thumbnails are the equivalent of a written plot. Penciler Chad has freedom to vary camera angle and so on as he proceeds through the story.

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Just as Will Eisner always found a clever way to work in the strip’s logo in his Spirit stories, Sergio and Chad make the twisted vines in the foreground treetop spell out the logo. The monkey hanging from the letters is another clever touch, as is making the story title into dog-tags, resonating the military context of the story, and adding a three-dimensionality to the words.

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Note how what Mark has submitted is the dialogue for the story. This is similar to what you’d see in a story done “Marvel style” (plot first). But in this case, the story was actually sketched panel-by-panel by Sergio, so there was no need for Mark to describe any of the action.

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Chad takes advantage of a flashback to play with the layouts, setting the past-sequences apart from the “present time” story. The close-ups add impact, and the panel borders became wavy to cue the reader that the top tier is set in different time than the rest of the page.

A subtle device that carries the story along is the way the Spirit’s third thought balloon leads us into the flashback. (We also learn that the Spirit doesn’t sleep with his mask on.)

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Chad subtly alters the pacing by changing the camera angles from those in the thumbnails. Of course, Sergio’s sketches are hilariously funny, sort of an inside joke between the creators (and now us). But the tone of the actual drawn page has to be converted to a dramatic one for the content of the story—although the portrayal of the “grieving widow” is clearly supposed to be humorous, and Mark and Chad play it that way.

Note that there are two word balloons indicated with the number 4. Mark or Joey changed the placement at some point. The final page has balloon four connected to balloon three. Imagine it done the other way. It’s one of countless choices that have to be made to produce a comics story.

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PRODUCING RESULTS:

THE F.J. D E SANTO INTERVIEW

Conducted October 27, 2008, in person, by Danny Fingeroth Transcribed by Steven Tice Copy-edited by Danny Fingeroth, F.J. DeSanto, and Bob Greenberger

.J. DeSANTO is co-producer of The Spirit movie. He has a number of motion pictures currently in development including The Shadow (Columbia Pictures) which he is co-producing with Michael Uslan, Sam Raimi and Josh Donen, Shazam (Warner Bros) with Peter Segal directing, Doc Savage (Branded Entertainment), Sabotage (iNDELIBLE Entertainment), and Loony (iNDELIBLE Entertainment). Also, he co-produced the animated directto-home DVD Turok: Son of Stone (Classic Media) which was distributed by the Weinstein Company. In 2005, he served as an assistant to the producers of Constantine (Warner Bros). He has been responsible for acquiring, developing and maintaining a large slate of projects based on comic books, graphic novels, manga and anime while also overseeing deals with writers, agents, comic book companies, creators and movie studios. Before joining iNDELIBLE Entertainment in 2008, he was the Senior Vice President of Production and Development and Producer for Comic Book Movies Inc., and spent nine years as Vice President of Development for Michael Uslan and Benjamin Melniker (Executive Producers of the Batman franchise). F.J. is also a comic book and manga writer. He has written an original manga based on Star Trek: The Next Generation for TokyoPop, for release in 2009, and is a cowriter (with Michael Uslan) on an arc of The Spirit for DC Comics. He is currently developing several graphic novel projects for 2009. I spoke with F.J. in his iNDELIBLE Entertainment office in October, where we talked about the creation The Spirit movie, as well as many other topics. —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: You have an interesting overall take on The Spirit movie, F.J. Please share it with the Write Now! readers. F.J. DeSANTO: The movie, to me, feels like, if Frank Miller were to do a Spirit graphic novel, this would be it. It’s filtering Eisner through his eyes and pen—you’ll see frames of it that look exactly like something Frank drew, and that’s exciting.

DF: Tell me a little bit about the origins of the movie. FJD: Michael Uslan can give you the better details, but when I started working with Michael, which was at the end of ’94 or the beginning of ’95, he had just gotten the rights from Will. Because of the success of Batman, Will understood that Michael had the proper love and understanding of The Spirit. As a kid, I’d always see the character at conventions and stuff, but never knew much about him. But then, obviously, being in an office with Michael, there were comics, and I spent a good portion of my first couple months there just reading everything, starting with The Spirit Casebook, and then the Warren Spirit reprints Those were my education. The Spirit Casebook is huge. This is the Kitchen Sink book, and that’s what Michael would use a lot of, because the story “Ten Minutes” was in it, and a lot of the other main Spirit stories. From that point on, I watched Michael for years trying to set this movie up, from the time I started as his assistant, and then eventually his head of development, and then the head of production. When I was pitching it myself to places, I was amazed at the complete lack of understanding people would have of the character. But we pitched it actively for a long time. And, believe me, people made offers. There was a prime-time animated series offered by

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THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION a big studio. But again, there were all these little caveats like, “You’ve got to make him a ghost,” or, “You’ve got to put him in spandex,” and it was just literally, “Nope,” and we’d just walk away. And this had been going on for ten, twelve years.

DF: What else has Odd Lot done? FJD: They did a great movie called Green Street Hooligans with Elijah Wood. There was a Jennifer Lopez movie, The Wedding Planner and some other movies. DF: How did Frank become attached to the movie, and then did he throw out everything you had and come up with his own story, or did he work with what you guys had been working on? FJD: We had always been under the impression that Frank was going to go do Sin City 2, but suddenly he was available. And then Michael had the first conversation with him, and it just sort of snowballed. It happened very quickly.

DF: Did you guys have an “elevator pitch,” a short summary of the concept you could give people? FJD: Michael did it best by telling them the story of “Ten Minutes,” because it embodied the tone and feel of Eisner. And there was a Sand Saref story. We xeroxed certain stories together, like Sand Saref, to show the best of The Spirit. But the pitch was very simple: “the greatest work in the history of comics, the Citizen Kane of DF: Did Will have any input on early comics.” It was just always presentversions of the story? ed that way, always presented as a FJD: Will had passed away before Green Street Hooligans was an Odd Lot proguy who has no superpowers, who duction that featured a post-Lord of the Rings Frank came onboard, but we had is a middle-class superhero, possibly Elijah Wood. [© 2009 the copyright holders.] spoken with him about the film. He the first Jewish superhero. That was was very much like, “Ah, do whatevhow we pitched it, the average guy protecting his neigher you want.” But at his last San Diego Comic-Con, in July borhood. 2004, myself, Michael, Deborah Del Prete, and Linda McDonough, who’s the other co-producer, along with me, DF: Had many of the producers you pitched to heard of on it—we sat with Will, because we had just finished our the Spirit or Eisner? deal with Odd Lot, and started talking to him. We were FJD: It’s interesting. Michael would call this era “the just announcing the project. Jeph Loeb was originally Golden Age of comic book movies,” and it is. But I would involved, but then he went through that horrible tragedy say, in my 15 years with Michael, the first five years was with his son’s death, and he had to back out. So we sat convincing studio people that the comic book was an down with Will, and the only thing he was really adamant acceptable form of source material. And then you had Xabout was, “Don’t make it a period piece.” That was the Men and Spider-Man. People went, “Oh, these comic only time he sort of got agitated, and he specifically said, books are great.” Everybody wanted a comic book proper“Whenever I wrote and drew anything with the Spirit, it ty, but it had to be a superhero. So that was the next five was of its time. If you go back and look at it, it was always years. And the last five years is when it sort of blew wide contemporary.” That was the one thing he was really firm up. People became open to stuff like Road to Perdition. about. “What else, Will?” “Do whatever you want.” “Hey, there’s comics-based stuff that’s not superheroes.” So to the studios now, a comic book is a piece of source material that’s no different than a novel, a play, or a newspaper article. And now you have guys my age—mid-thirties—guys who are now execs, and who now have that understanding about comics, who look at Eisner and the source material as something to be revered. DF: So obviously, a Spirit movie this was in the works long before Frank was involved. FJD: We went down the road with a bunch of writers. We went down many different avenues. But just, look, this business is silly. A lot of it’s fate, a lot of luck, a lot of it’s putting the pieces together. It really took off once we partnered with Odd Lot, because it gave us the freedom of an independent company getting behind it and putting it together, as opposed to just, we’re going to set it up at a studio. 26 | WRITE NOW

DF: So the story as it appears on screen, where did that originate? FJD: It’s a culmination of Frank knowing what he wanted to do, and then we all discussed it. Everything previous to Frank coming on board was out the door. It was all from scratch. Frank very much knew from the start it was going to be about Denny Colt and Sand Saref. Michael and I had a lunch with Frank in midtown when we first started talking about the movie, and he had all these ideas. And I remember another lunch with Frank—it was me, Deborah, and Linda. They were in New York doing a film, and we met at a restaurant in Madison Square Park, and Frank came, and he had stacks of photocopies of Will’s comics. He started shaping the story by going through the Will stuff. Later, I’d get calls from Frank’s office—because I was

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION the only producer who lived in Manhattan—I was a subway stop away, so I would occasionally get a call, he can’t find, for instance, the “Plaster of Paris” story, but he has to have a certain edition because he remembers the painted cover. It was the Warren issue with “Plaster.” I would say, “Okay, I’ll bring it over.” So I would drop stuff off, and we’d get into conversations for an hour about the Octopus, or the Legion of Super-Heroes, or samurai movies. But the movie—it was all in Frank’s head. He knew he wanted to take a bunch of different Spirit elements and put them into one film. The original idea was not to do the origin, and then it eventually evolved to where the origin was going to be in there, only because the emotional depth of the characters in the story, especially when it’s focused on Sand as the main female character, is that backstory is very important. The whole Sand and Denny backstory, which is one of my favorite parts of the movie. DF: Most people, including me, usually divide the Eisner Spirits into the pre-war and the post-war eras, where it was more dead-on serious before the war, and then later on, in the ’40s and ’50s, there was more humor in the stories, and more satire. Does the movie fall on either side of that divide? FJD: To me it’s a mixture of both. There’s serious stuff, but it’s also very light in places. It’s very tongue-in-cheek. DF: Just having a character named “Sand Saref”—which is a type style—is pretty funny to begin with. FJD: But it’s treated seriously. The movie has an edge to it, but it’s got that tongue-in-cheek quality, too, which I really like about it. Like I said, it’s a big comic book on screen. DF: I got the impression that you were more involved with The Spirit than any of the other things you’ve worked on with Michael. What was your role, and how was it different from what you’ve done on the other movies? FJD: This was my first movie as a producer in any way, shape, or form, so a lot of it was really being involved in its development. Once they go into actually making it, it becomes a different thing. Then you have the director, you have the crew, etc. But getting the starting line is where I was involved the most. DF: Were you giving notes on the script? Were you sitting and plotting with Frank? FJD: By the time Frank relocated to L.A. for the movie, he had basically set up shop in the Odd Lot offices,

working with Deb and company there. He had a drawing table and would storyboard everything out. I’d be out in L.A a lot, and we’d get together whenever I was there, usually about once a month for a week. One night out of that week we would just sit at the back of the W hotel and riff about things, just socially, and that was really exciting. He was remarkably collaborative in terms of, if you had a suggestion, he’d definitely listen to it and take it into account. With each draft, Linda and I would combine everyone’s notes into one document, and I remember sitting down ready to hand these notes to Frank and being absolutely scared out of my mind. “I’ve got to give this guy script notes.” Michael’s used to it, but I didn’t know Frank that well yet, and I hoped he wouldn’t launch across the table and slap me. But he was remarkably collaborative. He will listen to you, and if he thinks there’s a good idea in there, he’ll figure out a way to blossom it out into something even cooler. DF: Is there a moment you can point to in the movie and go, “That’s based on something I came up with?” FJD: No, it’s actually more of a team effort. Like, when you look at the notes and you go, “Oh, good thing we thought of that.” I can sit there and go, “Man, I remember when that came up, I remember when we talked about that scene.” If there’s one thing I remember, it’s when we did our first cast reading. We had Sarah Paulson, who we’d just cast the day before as Ellen Dolan, and the one thing I remember sitting with Linda, and saying, “Wow, Sarah’s so good. I hope they can expand the script to give her more to do.” I guess a lot of people thought so too, ’cause Deb and Frank put their heads together, and then Frank wrote this beautiful scene between Ellen and Commissioner Dolan that justifies both their motivations, why they’re involved with the Spirit, etc. It’s one of the more touching scenes in the movie.

DF: So there was a version of the script, then you cast the movie, and then Frank rewrote for the cast? FJD: In the movies they’re constantly revising and rewriting, so after the point we were in Albuquerque, shooting the movie, Frank and Deborah worked very closely together to whip the script into shape as it kept going. But when you have your actors, the movie starts to become more of a reality, and it changes. Some movies go into shooting without even a finished script. The Spirit had a finished script that evolved as we kept going. DF: You had basically what’s called F.J. DESANTO | 27

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION the shooting script, what you start shooting with, correct? FJD: The shooting script is what you go in with. And, look, you can’t stop somebody like Frank, whose brain is always working, from coming up during shooting with cooler stuff than what’s in the script. DF: Did the actors improvise stuff that was then added in? FJD: That’s more of a Frank question. I think he gave them freedom. Just in the time I was there on the set, he seemed very happy working with the actors. Watching him with Gabriel, with Eva, was exciting, because you could see his excitement. And I think people really enjoyed working with him because he brings an enthusiasm to it. On a completely separate note, I remember going out to dinner one night in Albuquerque with a costume designer and my friend Todd Holland, who was the assistant art director, and they said, “This is one of the best shoots I’ve ever been on.” “Why?” “Because we rarely get to work with a director who’s an actual hands-on artist, who can speak that same language. Not just, ‘Hey, make this more blue.’” He could sit there and shape a visual concept, and tone it, and speak in the artist-speak that they could understand, and I think that’s why, visually, the movie is so stunning. Frank knew how to convey what he was after to the artists that were working on the movie. I think he liked that. The props in particular are crazy in this movie, and I think people liked his enthusiasm. DF: Is there anything that you remember about the writing process, or some important lessons you learned that maybe somebody could learn by hearing you mention it? FJD: What did I learn? I think it was just fun to see it all come together. Watching Frank and his enthusiasm for working with people is really exciting. I can remember sitting at the condo he was staying at in Albuquerque, and he had these storyboards that were just gorgeous. It was just great to see him draw these pictures that match the things that he’s writing on the page. A significant chunk of that is thanks to Deborah, who gave him the freedom to work that way, as opposed to if we had done this for a movie studio that probably would have put a tighter leash on the whole process in terms of creativity. One thing Frank did, which I felt was great, was he xeroxed all his favorite Spirit stories. So there was, at the production office in New Mexico, a table with a bunch of binders with those stories that if 28 | WRITE NOW

anybody involved with production wanted to know more about the characters and the story, Frank picked those specific stories. Watching how Frank worked with Gabriel, in particular, was amazing. Frank was guiding him, giving him the right stories to read and all that, and really getting him in the mindset of who this character is and why he exists. And that was cool to watch. The main lesson I took away from the Spirit experience is “be collaborative.” Now that Michael and I are doing an arc of The Spirit comic book, having been the guy doing the notes for a lot of years, to now be on the other side, writing comics and getting notes from an editor is a change. But one editor said to me, “You’re very easy to deal with, for a movie guy.” And I went, “Well, you know what? I know the position you’re in.” But back to the movie, Frank busted his hump on the script, especially as it got closer to shooting. He was just living it. He and Deborah in particular were shoulder-toshoulder as it evolved in its final steps toward the shoot and beyond. He’s such a great writer. You can hear the words on the paper, the way he describes things. He doesn’t have to say much, but he conveys it perfectly, and that’s what was really exciting. As I was reading the script, I could see it in my head, and the movie is actually much cooler than anything I ever imagined. DF: Were there many script drafts? Or were there just little changes? FJD: There’d be changes here and there. There was always. That’s what filmmaking is about. Frank coming up with something cooler, or you realize, “Hey, the story’s better if we do it this way.” The one element that went through it from the beginning was Sand. It was always going to be Sand Saref story.

DF: Now, switching gears, you’re writing, with Michael, some issues of The Spirit comics. And not only do you have to live up to the Eisner legacy, but you have also Darwyn Cooke, and Mark Evanier and Sergio Aragonés’ versions, too. FJD: It’s very daunting. You can count on two hands the number of people who have touched the Spirit, besides Will’s original stuA poster that was part of the build-up ad dio guys. So when Michael came campaign to The Spirit movie premier. It to me and said, “We’re going to homages Eisner’s use of The Spirit logo as part of his stories’ splash designs. Here, one of the write Spirit comics,” I went, “Cool! movie’s slogans gets the Eisner-style-treatment. Okay.” And then it sort of hit me, [© 2008 Spirit Films, LLC. All rights reserved. The Spirit tradelike, “Oh sh*t. You’re going to mark is owned by Will Eisner Studios, Inc. and is registered write this character.” I think the in the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office.]

N THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION Spirit’s one case where anybody who loves comics can find something they’d like; whether it’s the whimsical stuff, the serious stuff, the romantic stuff, etc. And that’s what I like about The Spirit movie. It gets very romantic. At its core, it’s about a guy who loves his city, he loves Ellen. But he has a higher calling. He was brought back for a reason. So with the comics, F.J. gave Michael Uslan notes (comments) on his I think Darwyn’s script for the Detective #27 graphic novel (which run on it is perMichael discussed in WN! #6). [© 2009 DC Comics.] fect, and you can rarely say that in comics. There’s not a bum issue in his run. So the first thing we did was get those 12 issues, because I don’t even think the other stuff had come out yet. So we went to Joey Cavalieri, the editor at DC, and Michael pretty much knew the kind of story he wanted to tell, And Joey said, “Okay.” The ideas started flowing right then and there and we came out knowing the stories would involve Lorelei, Plaster, and Silken Floss. DF: On a nuts-and-bolts level, how do you share the writing duties? FJD: It’s funny, because we’re doing another comic project, and it’s completely opposite. But on The Spirit, we sort of talk the story through, and then Michael goes and writes maybe a page or two, and sends it to me. I do a pass on it. And then I send it back, and it goes back and forth like that. When Michael wrote his Batman graphic novel, Detective #27, a couple of years ago, I watched that unfold. He’d give me pages: “Give me notes on this.” So that was my first real exposure to comic book writing. But it’s funny, a lot of comic artists are going into film. I’m a film guy that goes into the comics. I went to NYU film school, so I was in film and TV, so there was a lot of writing. I wrote screenplays and stuff. And then, when I broke into the film business, I was doing so much writing and reading for work that I never entertained the idea of writing comics.

But, about ten years ago, when Michael came up with the Just Imagine idea for Stan Lee at DC, I started thinking about writing comics. I would occasionally throw an idea by DC. “No, no. You’re a film guy.” But over the last couple years I’ve come very close. My all-time favorite character is Dick Grayson, so I pitched some Nightwing ideas, but then the editor left. Then I got the Trek gig at TokyoPop. Michael and I and the director of The Mask, Chuck Russell, developed an original manga idea that Michael and Chuck came up with. The idea was, “Let’s develop the movie in the pages of the manga and then branch it out to other media.” So we did that, and I was the point guy on it, because I’m a manga freak and worked closely with Paul Morrissey, the editor at TokyoPop on it quite a bit as it was developing. TokyoPop was also doing Star Trek manga based on the original series, which I loved. I said to Paul, “Man, I love those Trek mangas. They’re the only Star Trek comics I’ve read in a long time.” And he said, “You should pitch some ideas” So I went and I had a conversation with the Trek editor, Luis Reyes and he tells me, “You obviously know Trek.” So I pitched him five ideas. He loved four of them. And they sent them to CBS, and they get rejected. I ask, “Why’d they reject me?” “Well, there’s this new Trek movie being done by J.J. Abrams, and you can’t do anything with the original series.” So the Luis said, “Look, we’re going to switch to Next Generation. We can touch that world.” And I went, “I don’t know the Next Generation nearly as well as I know the original Kirk and Spock show.” But I did research, and I watched tons of episodes. I had one idea, and CBS went, “Great. Sold.” But I’d never written a comic book in my life. Luckily, I’d seen Michael’s scripts, and Geoff Johns, who I go back with almost ten years, had shown me scripts, so I knew the format. So I took the treatment and would go through it to divide it up for my comics script. It came out to 45 pages of comics. And then I sent it in, and the editor came back and goes, “You wrote an episode. You didn’t write a comic book, you wrote an episode. Let me show you how to do a comics Trek story.” Basically, what he did was trim tons of fat off of my script. “Do you know how many balloons this would take up? You have, like, three balloons in this one little panel, and we can get it down to two…” And I went, “Oh.” And then I did another draft, and as I kept going, it got easier to do. DF: It’s definitely difficult to transition from one medium to the other. Anyway, F.J., before we wrap up, anything else you want to say about The Spirit movie? FJD: I hope everyone goes and sees it. DF: Everybody go see it. Thanks, F.J. FJD: Thank you, Danny.

THE END F.J. DESANTO | 29

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ODD LOT PERSPECTIVE:

THE DEBORAH DEL PRETE INTERVIEW

Conducted via e-mail by Danny Fingeroth December 21, 2008

eborah Del Prete is a longtime comics fan who has had a successful career in Hollywood. She’s directed (Simple Justice, Ricochet River) and has produced over a dozen films, including The Wedding Planner and Green Street Hooligans. She’s a partner (with Gigi Pritzker) in Odd Lot Entertainment, which teamed with Michael Uslan and co. to produce The Spirit for Lionsgate Films. Deborah took some time to tell me how the script to The Spirit was developed. —DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: When Michael Uslan came to you with what he called “one of the greatest comics properties ever,” you knew he was talking about the Spirit. What had been the significance of the Spirit to you before that? DEBORAH DEL PRETE: I was a life-long comic fan, mostly DC Comics (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, etc.) but when I started to go to San Diego’s Comic-Con when I moved to L.A. in 1992, I discovered Will Eisner and The Spirit. I was amazed by the mature writing and modern style that came from a comic from the ’40s. DF: From your perspective, how did the script and story come about? DDP: Basically, I worked closely with Frank Miller on the script. He wrote a first draft after I told him he had carte blanche to use any of his favorite Spirit stories. We agreed it would focus on the Octopus as the main villain and the Spirit’s childhood sweetheart, Sand Saref.

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DF: What were the biggest challenges in adapting The Spirit to the screen in terms of overall tone and of the characters’ dialogue? DDP: Taking so much rich material (The Spirit comics) and boiling it down to one story. Also, making sure it had a contemporary feel. DF: What kind of notes did you find yourself giving on the script? DDP: I gave the kind of notes I always do. I try to speak for the audience so it’s mostly about when I think something is unclear or if I think there is a logic issue in the storytelling. I think my most significant notes came after we did the table read. At that point, I felt we needed two more scenes—one early in the film with the Octopus and Silken when he’s asking his henchmen why they haven’t found Sand Saref. After I told Frank we needed that scene, he came back with the wacky “foot thing” scene, which I loved. I also felt we needed a later scene with Ellen and Dolan, and one night Frank wrote the father/daughter scene that helps to give the audience a better understanding of the Spirit’s complicated relationships. DF: How did Frank’s unique approach to storyboarding help the development of the script? DDP: Working with Frank is like working The Wedding Planner was a hit movie with no other director. produced by Deborah Del Prete. [© 2009 the copyright holders.] First of all, he completely storyboarded the movie so it made it much clearer to all involved exactly what he’s looking for.

N THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION work on the movie, we mostly discussed what he didn’t want. The Spirit should never carry a gun for example and I made sure we kept to those wishes. As far as Frank goes, we went through many permutations and much fine-tuning of the story, but it was always about Sand Saref and The Octopus. One character that was barely there originally was Silken Floss, but after Frank met Scarlett Johansson, he expanded the role and her interaction with the Octopus, which gave them much more humor.

DF: How did the script—and the movie—evolve from your initial meetings with Will and with Frank, to the finished movie? DDP: When I met with Will before we had Frank to

DF: Would you ever want to do movie adaptations of Will’s later, more personal work? DDP: I think it will be unlikely because they are basically straight dramas, which isn’t the type of films I’m focusing on now.

THE END

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NOT-SO-SECRET AGENT:

THE DENIS KITCHEN INTERVIEW

Conducted via e-mail by Danny Fingeroth December 18, 2008

enis Kitchen began his career in 1968 as a selfpublished underground cartoonist, leading to the formation of his pioneer publishing company, Kitchen Sink Press. For thirty years he published creators such as R. Crumb, Will Eisner, Harvey Kurtzman, Milton Caniff, Al Capp, Scott McCloud, Dave McKean, Mark Schultz, Howard Cruse, Justin Green, Alan Moore, Art Spiegelman and Charles Burns. During these years Kitchen Sink won industry awards far disproportionate to its market share, and sometimes more than any other publisher. In 1986 he founded and for eighteen years served as President of the Comic Book Legal Defense Fund, a 501 (c) 3 non-profit organization dedicated to defending the industry’s First Amendment rights. Since the demise of Kitchen Sink in 1999, he has diversified his activities. He is a partner with designer John Lind in Kitchen, Lind & Associates and with Judith Hansen in Kitchen & Hansen Agency, literary agencies representing prominent comic artists and writers. He has expanded Denis Kitchen Art Agency (founded in 1990) into an entity exclusively offering original work by Eisner, Kurtzman, Capp and other clients. Here, Denis takes some time to answer my questions about his unique relationship with Will Eisner. —DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: When did you first become aware of Will’s work, Denis? DENIS KITCHEN: I was too young to have seen the original Spirit newspaper inserts. I first became aware of Will’s work when Harvey Kurtzman featured “Bring Back Sand Saref” in his Help! magazine #13 in late 1961. I was fifteen and pretty damn impressed. I don’t think I saw anything else until Harvey Comics published a two-issue Spirit experiment in 1966. By then I certainly wanted to see more, but there was no organized fandom, no reprint programs, no way to even figure out how many Spirits there were. It was a complete vacuum except for a handful of fans doing mimeo zines, and I wasn’t in that tiny loop. 32 | WRITE NOW

DF: How did you first meet Will? DK: I started drawing my first underground, Mom’s Homemade Comics, in 1968, and successfully selfpublished. Then I started publishing others, the beginning of Krupp Comic Works (later Kitchen Sink Press). Phil Seuling, the impresario of the earliest comic book conventions, became aware of my small Midwest operation around 1970. Phil began distributing Krupp’s titles and also hired me to do custom cartoons for his catalogs and flyers. He invited me to be a guest at his summer 1971 convention in New York City. It was my first and, it turns out, Will Eisner’s first convention as well. I was rummaging through back issue boxes like any other fan when Maurice Horn, a French comics historian, saw my name tag and said Will Eisner was looking for me. I assured him he was mistaken, but he insisted on taking me to meet Will. We met in a private suite and, after quick formalities, Will expressed intense curiosity about underground comix: their distribution, the freedom, the royalty system, etc.

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION with fans and soon Will, clearly uncomfortable, excused himself. I didn’t see him again the rest of the weekend and figured it was the last time I’d ever talk to him. DF: When did you first work with him? DK: I followed up the convention with a letter and samples of other comix. I suggested he might find them more palatable, which he did. Then I wasted no time. I proposed reviving The Spirit. He was skeptical that my hippie market would be responsive, especially after the Harvey newsstand experiment had failed just a few years earlier, but he agreed to let me give it a try.

I explained what we were doing at all levels and he said these were all the things he wished he had had when he started. I tried talking about the “old days” of comics, a subject I was intensely curious about, but he’d drop a tidbit or two and kept coming back to undergrounds. It was a pretty heady experience. Will’s interest was purely academic because he hadn’t actually seen any undergrounds, so we walked down to the dealer’s room where Phil had several tables covered with the latest. Will grabbed one at random, flipped through it and stopped at a particularly explicit and disturbing S. Clay Wilson page. Will blanched. He had no idea just how outrageous some comix were. I normally took glee in seeing undergrounds shock an older generation, but I was suddenly aghast that I was “losing” Will, the new convert. As we debated the merits of complete artistic freedom, a young artist named Art Spiegelman, standing nearby, joined the fray along

DF: What do you think there is about the Spirit that could make the character appeal to a wide audience? DK: Well, to start, Will’s art is so wonderful that it just pulls you in, especially the classic splash pages, the distinctive feathering, the luscious women, the masterful layouts. No offense to Write Now!, but art is the initial attraction for all comics. Then with The Spirit you also have the skillful writing, likable characters, memorable villains, concise plots packed generally into just seven pages. You’ve got romance, action, mystery—the whole package. And, as we’ve seen, it’s timeless. The Spirit has been entertaining generations for almost 70 years.

DF: Have you been involved in the previous attempts to make a Spirit movie? DK: Not really. At Kitchen Sink I optioned Alan Moore’s From Hell, was heavily involved with The Crow, and got Mark Schultz’s Cadillacs & Dinosaurs on CBS, but Will regularly optioned The Spirit on his own during the nearly 30 years that I was his publisher. That included the made-for-TV movie. When Mike Uslan’s group exercised their option a dozen or so years back, they tied it up until the movie Frank Miller just made. So when Kitchen Sink went under in 1999 and my role changed to being Will’s art and literary agent, the die was already cast in terms of The Spirit in Hollywood. However, my partner Judy Hansen and I are working to develop certain of Will’s graphic novels. DF: What was your involvement with the current Spirit movie? DK: Hands off. I’ve met with the producers and Frank and saw his script drafts, but I’m not in the movie DENIS KITCHEN | 33

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION business. Will understood that Hollywood would make the Spirit movie it wanted to make. He had no illusions about influencing the process and, frankly, no interest in meddling in another medium. Other than helping assemble the image bible for merchandise, quality control, and participating in the DVD extra, I’ve kept a distance. I didn’t even visit the set because I was literally too busy during the shooting. I’ll have to meet Scarlett Johansson another time...

comics, where you can be an auteur. A cartoonist doesn’t have to fight with a writer over a script, or fight with an artist over interpretation or layout; with a singular vision he can theoretically move seamlessly or at least more efficiently through the process. It’s hard to separate the writer from the artist in Will, but I certainly know which aspect he was most proud of. At conventions he’d often sit at the Kitchen Sink booth signing for a line of fans, and during the minute or so he and a fan were one-onone, the most frequent comDF: How did his style evolve ment was, “Mr. Eisner, I love over the years, on The Spirit, your art,” or “Mr. Eisner, your art and on his later work? is just amazing.” And he’d nod Mostly completed by Eisner before his 2005 death, DK: The short seven-page and thank each person graExpressive Anatomy for Comics and Narrative is Spirit weekly format forced Will the third and final volume in The Will Eisner ciously. But every once in a to work economically; to estab- Instructional Series, a project Kitchen helped shepwhile, a fan would say, “Mr. lish the premise and get to the herd from idea to print. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] Eisner, I love your writing.” In resolution quite quickly. There those instances his face would wasn’t time or space to ruminate or stray. Despite glow, he’d look up and genuinely be grateful for the those apparent limitations, he created some real gems. compliment. Though I’d disagree with him, Will He played with various genres, balanced the fight thought drawing was a relatively easy mechanical scenes, the smooching, the tension and the humor process. For him it was seemingly effortless. But he and then jumped right into the next story with no time thought writing comics was a much more intellectual off. The discipline was good but the pace tough to susprocess; one which called upon a greater talent and tain. He also had to write for a newspaper audience, a insight. family audience, ranging from little kids to octogenarians. It was different with his graphic novels that came DF: Are there other Eisner-related projects you’re later. There, the stories he wanted to tell determined involved with? the length, a luxury he didn’t have with The Spirit. And DK: I was recently involved, along with Peter Poplaski, he was able to write for a peer audience. He was in finishing Expressive Anatomy for W. W. Norton, the proud of what he did with The Spirit but much proudfinal part of Will’s instructional trilogy [along with er of his later work. From an artistic point of view, his Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic art also evolved. The prime Spirit art is gorgeous and Storytelling]. It was largely written and penciled when tight and the folds in the clothing and the brushwork is Will died. I helped with Insight’s Spirit Pop-Up Book, a wonder to behold. In later years, Will’s artistry didn’t adapting the same Sand Saref story I first discovered in diminish but he learned to tell the stories with a more 1961. I work closely with DC on their long-running economical line and fewer details, but no less masterSpirit Archives series, just about to wrap up, and with fully. Dark Horse on their upcoming collection of The Spirit: The New Adventures. DF: Will once told me he wasn’t a writer or artist but a cartoonist. Do you agree, or do you think an objective Handling the sales of Will’s artwork is another observer can separate the writer in Will from the responsibility, and there are serious buyers for his work artist? well outside of comic fandom, including fine art collecDK: I understand what he meant because a cartoonist tors willing to pay serious money for prime stories, has those combined skills. Some people can write covers and pages. We’re seeing a major trend for blue great and some can draw great. Those are rare enough chip comic art: geniuses like Eisner, Kurtzman and talents. But the combination is especially valuable in Crumb are increasingly being treated like museum 34 | WRITE NOW

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Denis worked closely with DC on their just-concluding Spirit Archives hardcover collections. On the left is the cover art to #25, which collects the entire run of the little-seen 1941-44 Spirit daily newspaper strip. On the right is the cover art to #26, which features Eisner’s post-1952 Spirit material. Both covers, of course, are by Will. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.]

artists. Probably my most satisfying involvement is curating or providing original Eisner art for exhibitions— there have been roughly 20 since Will died. Sometimes his work has simultaneously been in three or four exhibitions, often overseas: recently Paris, Amsterdam, Frankfurt, and Athens. Next year his art will be in Brussels and Poland, among others. It’s a shame that Will didn’t live to be the centenarian most of us expected; virtually all of his work is in print, the Eisner Awards are going strong, there’s The Spirit movie and merchandise in the works, and art traveling around the world. He’d be pleased that interest in his life’s work continues to grow. DF: Anything else you’d like to say about upcoming Kitchen projects? DK: Well, despite so much happening with Will’s legacy, I actually am involved in other things! I recently coauthored a book with Paul Buhle, The Art of Harvey Kurtzman, for Harry N. Abrams’ new ComicArt imprint this spring. It includes a ton of images that have never before been seen. Harvey, like Will, was a great friend and mentor, so doing a book about his career was intensely satisfying. It was sad, though, in reviewing his career to see how Kurtzman never quite achieved the

success his talent and influence would imply. I also just co-authored Underground Classics with James Danky, another book on Abrams’ Spring 2009 list, connected with a traveling exhibition Jim and I co-curated, consisting of 50-some underground cartoonists. It debuts at the Chazen Museum in Madison in May. On a personal artistic level, coming full circle, I have a sketchbook in the works and in late 2009 or early 2010 Dark Horse is publishing The Oddly Compelling Art of Denis Kitchen, a career overview. My partner John Lind designed or was involved in the design of all the books I’m mentioning here. And then there’s my 11-year-old daughter Alexa, whose third book, GrownUps are Dumb! (No Offense) will be published by Disney/Hyperion this summer. With those projects, representing a couple dozen clients and estates with two different partners, and packaging other books, there’s not much time for loafing. DF: Thanks, Denis! DK: My pleasure, Danny.

THE END DENIS KITCHEN | 35

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WILL EISNER AND THE ART OF

by N.C. Christopher Couch

ADAPTATION

ike most creators, especially of popcontent for newsstand comic books. The ular culture, Will Eisner’s Spirit studio had been very successful, producstories would often reference ing lots of memorable properties and well known works of fiction as well making Eisner remarkably financially as celebrities from all fields. Eisner successful for one so young; he startwas saturated in the works of O. ed in comics at age 18, and was Henry and Guy DeMaupassant, only 25 in 1939, when he left the among many others, as well as studio to create The Spirit. Of in the popular radio, music, and course, he couldn’t turn out a movies of his time. Part of the three-feature weekly comic book by fun of reading The Spirit is himself, especially since he was also catching Eisner’s cultural refermanaging the enterprise. He essenences. (“Awesome Bells,” for tially organized a new studio, and he instance.) In a few cases, though, and Iger worked out an amicable Eisner made a point of adapting agreement about which artists might specific stories to comics form in the follow him, and which would stay with context of a Spirit tale. Here, comics his former partner. If The Spirit somehow scholar N.C. Christopher Couch examfailed, then Eisner would be in an excellent ines those cases, and along the way position to return to packaging content shows us how Eisner used his literary N.C. Christopher Couch by James Barry. for comic books. In fact, as it turned [© 2009 James Barry] influences to inform The Spirit in out, “The Spirit,” “Lady Luck” and other general. It’s a great insight into Eisner, and into the art features created for the comic book supplement were and craft of comics writing in general. Enjoy! later reprinted in a variety of Quality comic books. After Eisner returned from service in World War II, his Spirit —DF studio was used more and more to produce licensed comics, including P*S Magazine for the Army. Eventually When Will Eisner was offered the opportunity to create Eisner dropped The Spirit altogether to concentrate on his own weekly comic book as a newspaper supplement this kind of contract work, which was much more profin 1939, he jumped at the chance. He would suddenly itable in the booming postwar American economy (and have the same kind of autonomy that many newspaper post-Wertham comics industry) of the 1950s, the period strip artists enjoyed—the comic would be circulated by a that Henry Luce called “The American Century.” syndicate, and overseen by comics publisher Everett “Busy” Arnold, but effectively Eisner would be his own If Eisner was doing so well in creating original material editor and publisher. The proof would be in the pudfor comic books, why did he move on to doing a comic ding—if the supplement was successful, if enough newsbook newspaper supplement? There was no hint in 1939 papers bought and kept it to make a nice profit for all or 1940 that comic book sales were going to do anyconcerned, then it was a success. But it would all be in thing but grow. (Later in his career, Eisner would say, Eisner’s hands. He would create the lead feature—The “I’ve seen this industry die three times!”, but there was Spirit, of course—and oversee the backup stories that no hint of that then.) The explanation Eisner has offered would fill out the book. most often is that he wanted to create comic books for readers who were more intellectually adult than those Before starting The Spirit, Eisner sold his interest in attracted to comic books. But why did he expect to find the Eisner & Iger Studio to his partner, Jerry Iger, and such readers among the consumers of newspaper effectively abandoned the business of creating original comics? Weren’t these also read by children? The stereo36 | WRITE NOW

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION type is that the Sunday paper gets split up among the family, Dad reads the front page, business and sports, Mom reads the “ladies’” sections, and the kids go for the comics. Didn’t Mayor LaGuardia read the comics to the kids over the radio during the New York newspaper strike? Where were the adult readers Eisner was looking for?

Sunday funnies, either. In the 1930s, the great adventure strips had continuities that ran for two months or more. Even the family strips, like Bringing Up Father or The Gumps might have stories that continued over weeks and months. Gasoline Alley famously featured characters who grew, changed and aged at the same pace as the calendar time in which the strip ran (and continues to run). Most humorous strips, however, confined their stories to each daily or Sunday strip. There really was nothing equivalent to a short story in the newspaper funnies. The strips with longer continuities were novels, or perhaps novellas, while the single-strip stories were more like jokes or vaudeville routines or, perhaps when they were at their best, poems.

They were there; the Sunday funnies offered a variety of strips, aimed at a variety of demographics. Bringing Up Father and Gasoline Alley, with their humorous but also moving and realistic depictions of family life, attracted male and female, adult and child readers. Little Orphan Annie captured the attention of the nation, and its political content attracted the But short stories were everyIn P.S. Magazine, Eisner used appealing illustration commentary from newspapers as where in comic books. They and commonplace situations to help train soldiers well as huge gouts of mail. And weren’t usually very different on how to handle preventative maintenance on the adventure strips, from Milton from each other. Otto Binder everything from engines to sun block. Here’s his Caniff’s atmospheric Terry and the cover to 1956’s issue #44. [© 2008 copyright info.] and C.C. Beck brought humor of Pirates to the lush and sensual a delightful, self-deprecating sort Flash Gordon of Alex Raymond, could appeal to anyone to the adventures of Captain Marvel, and Dada playlets who went to a Douglas Fairbanks, Jr. movie, which was as good as those of Ring Lardner appeared in the Plastic everyone. So the adult readers were there, if Eisner could Man stories of Jack Cole. But mostly the short stories only reach them, if he could just get them to pick up the were crime stories, where a mystery would be solved, “Comic Book Supplement,” as The Spirit sections were and the costumed hero would right the wrong and bring often labeled in a box at the top left. the criminal to justice. They were often inventive, as writers like Batman’s Bill Finger came up with a hundred difHis first answer to this problem—attracting the readferent and colorful story settings, and equally clever vilers—is well known. He created the amazing splash pages lains to defeat. But the stories simply didn’t have the that the feature is famous for. (These engaging splash range and resonance of the kind of fiction that Eisner, as pages, which Eisner said were designed to get readers to well as Finger and other voracious readers among the start reading as soon as they saw the supplement, were early comics creators, like Jerry Robinson and Jack Kirby, limited to The Spirit and never appeared in any of the were finding in the collected works of a Poe or a Bierce back-up features like Klaus Nordling’s Lady Luck.) Of or an O. Henry. course, once he had the readers hooked, Eisner had to give them something that they would read, and come In 1948, Eisner actually chose to adapt two stories by back to read again the next week. And if he was looking American masters into The Spirit. A close look at how he for adult readers, as he has so often said, he had to give did this can help illuminate his working methods, and them something they wanted, something familiar but also help highlight some of the reasons the stories in new at the same time. And Eisner had an answer for The Spirit were so inventive and influential. that: he gave them short stories, and not just crime and mystery stories, although there were plenty of those, but When, in the summer of 1948, Eisner adapted these short stories in a variety of genres, told in a variety of two short stories, he presented them as the Spirit’s voices, running the gamut from comedies to ghost stochoices, selected “from his vast library of mystery and ries to parables. intrigue, the works of classic masters in the field.” Each adaptation begins with a dramatic splash page showing This was something readers weren’t getting in the the Spirit preparing to read the story to Ebony. The first, WILL EISNER AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION | 37

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION Hugh Morgan, a western hunter and loner. The second is the first-person account of the only witness, reporter William Harker, read aloud to the coroner’s jury. The third returns to the narrative of the inquest, and the fourth consists of excerpts from Morgan’s diary, which the coroner read to himself earlier in the story, while he and the jury awaited Harker’s arrival to testify. Eisner shows the inquest on the first two pages, setting a dark tone in the candlelit room of the cabin where the jury meets. The next page and a half are the killing of Morgan by “the damned thing,” an invisible savage creature, which takes place outdoors in broad daylight. Eisner created tension by using close-ups, swirling gunsmoke, and crowding the pages with panels. The end of the inquest takes only half a page, and the final page of the story is a collage of panels created like torn pages from the diary, with drawings and captions in script. Bierce’s story referred to pages ripped and torn from the diary, and Eisner’s page carries that idea visually.

of Ambrose Bierce’s “The Damned Thing,” first published in 1893, appeared on July 25, 1948. One of Bierce’s most memorable stories, it was adapted in 2006 for television in Showtime’s Masters of Horror series, with a teleplay by Richard Christian Matheson, directed by Tobe Hooper. The second was Edgar Allen Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher,” first published in The Gentleman’s Magazine in 1839, which appeared on August 22, 1948. The best-known media adaptation is the 1960 Roger Corman film version, which featured a screenplay by Richard Matheson, father of Richard Christian Matheson. Adapting “Usher” may have influenced at least the title of Eisner’s next Spirit story. In Poe’s story, a burial crypt is referred to as a donjon, and the August 29, 1948 Spirit is entitled “The Prisoner of Donjon,” using the antique spelling of the word for the tale of Simon Smudge, an inmate who doesn’t want to be let out. Eisner’s adaptation of “The Damned Thing” is a model of economy. He devoted the full first and last pages to the Spirit and Ebony framing device, so only five pages were left in which to turn the Bierce story into sequential art. Bierce’s short story is divided into four equal parts, each with its own subhead, and each a different sort of text. The opening describes the inquest into the death of 38 | WRITE NOW

Dave Schreiner, editor of the Kitchen Sink Press reprint of the story, noted “the original title Bierce chose was ‘The Damned Thing,’ but the 1940s newspaper reader apparently could not stomach what the 19th century reader could, so the title was sanitized,” changed simply to “The Thing.” In Schreiner’s interview with him, Eisner said “Ambrose Bierce was always able to convey horror and terror and fear so beautifully… He always left me with the frustration that I could not capture visually what he captures. On page four, in the second-to-last panel, Bierce writes ‘There was a loud savage cry, like that of a wild animal!’ You can envision that in your mind; you can hear the cry. On paper, you’re missing that dimension, but you’re still trying to visualize it. You can’t get it. I was not successful here.” But in most other ways, Eisner’s adaptation was marvelously successful. For example, Eisner made one small change in the story that makes visualization easier. At the end of the inquest, Harker asks to read Morgan’s diary, but the coroner refuses and slips it into his pocket. In both Bierce’s story and Eisner’s adaptation, the coroner says, “The book will cut no figure in this matter…all the entries in it were made before the writer’s death.” But in Eisner’s story, Harker’s hand is shown holding the diary and, without changing Bierce’s dialogue, the reader believes the reporter takes it. The last page of the adaptation, featuring the diary pages, then reads as though Harker and the reader of the story are sharing the secrets of its pages, making Eisner’s captioned images stronger and more acceptable as a shared visualization of the diary’s entries. Unlike “The Damned Thing,” Poe’s “The Fall of the House of Usher” has relatively little dialogue, and only a single voice, the first-person account of the unnamed

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION narrator. The story has been adapted many times, including into comics by Richard Corben and P. Craig Russell, as well as films and plays. Its events can be summarized briefly: the narrator comes to visit his distressed friend Roderick Usher in the family mansion, discovers The last images of “The Thing.” that Usher’s sister Eisner’s visualization of Bierce’s story gives it, as Chris Couch explains in Lady Madeline is ill, this article, an interpretation that she dies and is makes the reader almost a participant. interred in a “don[© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] jon” within the castle to prevent grave robbery, she returns (whether through supernatural means, or as the victim of premature burial is left purposely vague), the narrator flees, and the mansion collapses into a tarn, a highland lake. Poe was a master of the Gothic romance, a literary genre whose popularity began in the mid-18th century, fueled by atmospheric terror tales like Horace Walpole’s Castle of Otranto (1764) and M.G. Lewis’s The Monk (1795). Northanger Abbey is a wicked satire of the Gothic thriller, a type of story that thrilled the hearts of refined female readers, who were particularly fond of the works of Mrs. Radcliffe such as The Mysteries of Udolpho (1795). Eisner opens his adaptation of the story with specific references to this literature, with “the Spirit” in Gothic lettering on a vellum codex. Since the conceit of these stories is that the Spirit is retelling them to Ebony, Eisner is also able to link his version to the seasonal element of Sunday funnies through their banter on the first page, as the Spirit explains to Ebony that he’s turned off the lights because “it’s so hot tonight... I thought it would be cooler.” Eisner has noted, in the Schreiner interview, that “I would have to, from time to time, pay dues to acknowledging seasons and holidays,” as he does in this August-dated story. And having the lights out provides the motive for Ebony to light a candle, setting up a symbol used throughout the subsequent pages. The title, “The Fall of the House of Usher,” appears on page 2, and next to this, Eisner drew a knight’s helm, sword and shield. These prefigure a medievalesque romance the narrator will read to Usher as Madeleine arises. The heart of Poe’s Gothic story is the escape from the

crypt and resurrection of Madeleine, while the climax is the collapse, the “fall of the House of Usher” into the lake. After the opening with the Spirit and Ebony, Eisner had six pages left for the Poe story. He allotted two pages for the resurrection of Madeleine, the final page for the “fall” of the house into the tarn, and then used one each of the other three pages for the narrator’s arrival at the House of Usher, his meeting with Roderick (in which dialogue and visual details quickly establish the latter’s mental state), and for the death and interment of Madeleine. When Eisner commented on the story to Dave Schreiner for the Kitchen Sink Press reprint, he said he thought that, because it lacked dialogue, it was more a work of illustration for a story than “a truly visual comics story.” Analysis of the Eisner’s version, however, shows that he addressed the perceived lack of dialogue in several ways. First, given the limited space he had to work with, Eisner used a remarkably large amount of Usher’s speech to the narrator. Eisner’s atmospheric story is filled with smoke from guttering candles and on page 4, which otherwise lacks dialogue, the smoke forms ethereal balloons around the narrator’s words, making them read as speech rather than captions. In Poe’s story, the sounds of WILL EISNER AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION | 39

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION T Madeleine breaking free from her coffin and leaving the burial chamber are paralleled in the noises described in a knightly romance the narrator reads to Usher to calm him, The Mad Trist of Sir Launcelot Canning. Poe invented this book, although it’s reminiscent of Sir Walter Scott’s prose. Poe thus created within his single story a pair of texts that echo one another, combining the narrator’s stream of consciousness account of the events preceding the fall with his reading aloud of the fictitious romance to Usher. The two parallel narratives are in different literary genres, the knightly romance embedded in Poe’s Gothic tale. As the narrator reads the text, he hears the very sounds he read of in the tale. They are the hero’s exploits in the book, but in the Gothic story, they are the sounds of Madeleine breaking free of her tomb. This parallel is effectively rendered by Eisner into sequential art by the appearance of the romance read aloud in word balloons—the only time in the Eisner story that the narrator “speaks”—which parallels the narration rendered as captions. Yet a third, parallel level is created by the sound effects, which move the description of sounds in the romance to the “real” world of the comic book story. It’s a tour de force by Eisner, using comic means to create an effect parallel to Poe’s literary structure. Eisner also used some of his trademark visual effects, not only to create a Gothic atmosphere, but also to create other visual equivalents of Poe’s language. The famous opening passages of “The Fall of the House of Usher” evoke the atmosphere around the mansion with words and images, including gloom, desolate, terrible, bleak walls, blank windows, rank sedges and decayed trees. Eisner drenches the opening page in rain, his soaking, puddling precipitation that Harvey Kurtzman named “Eisenshpritz,” although Poe’s text makes no mention of this. The adaptation was laid out and loosely penciled by Eisner, and then the tight pencils and inks were done by his assistant at the time, Jerry Grandinetti. The watery effects, although finished by Grandinetti, are clearly part of the visual universe Eisner created here, and Eisner himself redrew parts of the story throughout. For example, the blowing papers, scudding across the courtyard and catching on the mansion’s ridgeline in the first page of story, were drawn by Eisner. In his interview with Schreiner, he described them modestly as one of his “characteristic clichés.” The drenching rain and the blowing papers create a sense of abandonment surrounding the House of Usher, and also create a visual analogue of Poe’s descriptive language. Also in the prose story’s opening passage, Poe’s narrator asks, “What was it that so unnerved me in the contemplation of the House of Usher?” and offers this partial answer: “Beyond doubt, there are combinations of very simple natural objects which have the power of thus affecting us…” Eisner filled the story with such objects: flickering candles, carafes and wine glasses which Usher 40 | WRITE NOW

can’t fill without spilling, candelabra and chess pieces. The most striking use of a “simple natural object” is in a small, borderless panel on page 4. Here, Eisner has drawn an hourglass with the last sands running out of the top. He’s made the round top of the glass into the floor of a room in the mansion, where Usher is telling the narrator “that the Lady Madeleine was no more!” The metaphor perfectly suits Poe’s atmosphere, visually marking a key moment in the story, as time runs out for Usher’s sister. The final effects in the story are created, not metaphorically, but by literally depicting what Poe describes, even things that might normally be considered invisible. For example, Poe’s narrator described Usher’s mansion, when he first saw it, as appearing whole but not really sound, like wooden furniture rotting from the inside out. The narrator particularly notices a “barely perceptible fissure” which runs from roof to base. In the final scene, as the narrator flees, the mansion cracks apart along this line and the light of “the full, setting and blood-red moon” surrounds him, and he turns and sees the House of Usher fall into the lake. This page is the most like illustration, with a caption at the bottom of each panel. But the narrative is so active, it works as sequential art. The

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION Spirit.” Although not exactly ghost stories, Eisner created at least a half dozen Spirit stories about characters lost in time, miraculously long-lived individuals who appear in the Spirit’s world from the past. These include Old West outlaw Sam Chapparel, Revolutionary War veteran Abraham Pewter, Nazi scientist Adolphe Link and Donjon Prison inmate Simon Smudge. Spirits explicitly identified or strongly indicated to be ghosts include Capitan Muerto, a Spanish Conquistador, John Dailey, an industrialist who returns from the dead to take revenge on his murderous partner, and Andre Bouchard, who haunts his friend Maurice Maywee after a Nazi doctor uses Bouchard’s blood in a transfusion. This last story is entitled “Journeys into the Bizarre No. 1: The Case of the Inner Voice” and, though set in the Spanish Civil War, recalls the haunting American Civil War stories of Bierce. Eisner created a witch with magical powers for his Halloween seasonal stories, Hazel P. Macbeth, who was identified as a descendant of the Salem Eisner uses the panel shapes, lettering style, and weather-effects to crewitches. Although lighthearted and seasonal, sevate a specific type of atmosphere—literal and figurative—that lures the eral of these stories were not unlike Arthur Miller’s reader into his “Usher.” [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] 1953 play The Crucible (film adaptations 1957, 1996), as Hazel was persecuted by bodies that satitop three panels show the narrator caught by the light rized the House Un-American Activities Committee from the rending mansion. The second tier of two panels (H.U.A.C.), a prime force in the political witch hunts of shows the whirlwind that destroys the mansion, first as the post-World War II red scare. semicircular speed lines surrounding the narrator, then as literal circles filling the sky. Eisner captures the spirit of A number of Eisner’s darker characters, like those of Poe’s story, not through metaphor, but by drawing Poe, appear to reflect the darker sides of human psycholimages directly from Poe’s text. Like many of Eisner’s ogy. Although, as with Poe, applying to Eisner a rigid Spirit stories, this adaptation uses a variety of visual and Freudian structure of Id, Ego and Superego would be too textual techniques to create a unified work. constricting and insupportable, it is hard not to see Eisner’s Spirit appears at first glance to be a detective comic, in some ways not unlike Batman. The Spirit is a former police detective—an ex-cop—who’s now, in effect, a private investigator like the detective protagonists of Dashiell Hammett or Raymond Chandler. In that context, why would Eisner include as “classics” from the library of “the great criminologist,” the Spirit, two stories that basically deal with the supernatural? Eisner clearly never saw his Spirit stories as being limited to detective fiction. His stories are famous for their focus on characters other than the Spirit, who often steps aside and lets children, veterans, politicians or other human types dominate. Less noticed, but equally important perhaps to the overall impact of Eisner’s work, are the number of Spirit stories that deal with the supernatural, with Gothic themes, or with darkly symbolic characters rooted in psychological archetypes, all characteristic of the work of Poe and Bierce. Perhaps Eisner was just utilizing a set of possibilities opened up by naming his character “the

Eisner characters like the top-hatted dandy with the Iago smile Mr. Hush, psychopathic murderer Mr. Dusk, and the scoundrel and scam artist Mr. Carrion and his beloved vulture Julia as anything other than archetypes or symbols of the unconscious. Mr. Hush, “the Whisperer,” was gossip personified. Dusk was married to the beautiful, savage Twilight, a psychosexual pairing that incarnates the relationship between lust and violence, while Mr. Carrion, the most light-hearted of Eisner’s archetypes personified sexual uncertainty. Eisner said of him, “I was never absolutely certain of Carrion’s gender, his sex. In 1947, in newspapers or anywhere else, you very carefully did not call much attention to abnormality.” In his final appearance, he abandons human society for the “gay camaraderie” of his beloved Julia. Poe and Bierce, like other 19th and early 20th century masters of the short story, were never content to be limited to one or a few literary genres. Although O. Henry did little with the supernatural, and Ring Lardner and Guy De Maupassant were social commentators and realWILL EISNER AND THE ART OF ADAPTATION | 41

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION ists, these writers also explored society high and low, corrupt and idealistic. In The Spirit, Eisner claimed the same ambition, the same writerly freedom for himself that any and all of these writers did in their work. Although Eisner only adapted other writer’s works in these two cases, they serve as a good measure of his literary aspirations, and give insight into the kinds of stories he was doing. No genre, no type of story was off limits in the world of The Spirit. That’s what set it apart from the other adventure comic In images at once representational and abstract, Eisner conveys Poe’s idea of the House of Usher splitting apart. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] books of the day, which were dominated by crime stories. at Kitchen Sink Press, editor in chief at CPM Manga, and teaches comics as art and literature at the University of Eisner could do it all. Massachusetts Amherst and the School of Visual Arts. He is currently editing Conversations with Harvey N. C. Christopher Couch has a Ph.D. in art history from Kurtzman, and writing a book on early Batman artist Columbia University. He is the author of numerous and editorial cartooning stalwart, Jerry Robinson. books and articles on Latin American art and on graphic novels and comic art, including, with Stephen Weiner, The Will Eisner Companion: The Pioneering Spirit of the Father of the Graphic Novel. He was senior editor

THE END

SOURCES On Eisner’s life and career, Bob Andelman’s Will Eisner: A Spirited Life (Milwaukie, OR: M Press, 2005) is the best single source, based on extensive interviews with Eisner and his friends, family and collaborators. Eisner also gave literally hundreds of interviews during his long career, but one of the most important appeared in The Philadelphia Record (October 13, 1941), reprinted in Catherine Yronwode and Denis Kitchen, The Art of Will Eisner (Princeton, WI: Kitchen Sink Press, 1982, p. 44). Many of the Spirit stories and characters discussed above are also treated in The Will Eisner Companion: The Pioneering Spirit of the Father of the Graphic Novel by N. C. Christopher Couch and Stephen Weiner (New York: DC Comics. 2004). The Eisner stories discussed here were reprinted in The Spirit #33 and #34, (Kitchen Sink Press, 1987). The issues featured interviews with Eisner by editor Dave Schreiner, published in the column “Stage Settings,” from which all Eisner quotes are drawn. The stories are reprinted in color in vol. #17 of DC Comics’ The Spirit Archives, which reprints the entire run of the series from 1940 to 1952 in 24 volumes. For Ambrose Bierce’s fiction, the best single compendium is The Short Fiction of Ambrose Bierce: A Comprehensive Collection, edited by S. T. Joshi, Lawrence I. Berkove, and David E. Schultz (3 vols.; Knoxville: University of Tennessee Press, 2006), which collects every known short story by Bierce, including 42 | WRITE NOW

many that have not been reprinted since Bierce’s time. “The Damned Thing” appears in vol. 2, pp. 857-864. “The Fall of the House of Usher” is in every Poe collection, but most readers find it in his Tales of Mystery and Imagination. The finest illustrated edition is by the Irish artist Harry Clarke, published in 1923 and recently reprinted by Dover. An especially useful and enjoyable collection is The Annotated Tales of Edgar Allen Poe, edited with notes by Stephen Peithman (New York: Doubleday 1981). In addition to “The Thing” and “The Fall of the House of Usher,” the Spirit stories referred to include the stories of the following characters (with date of their appearances), whose biographies are synopsized in the Will Eisner Companion: Sam Chapparell (10/10 and 11/14/48), Abraham Pewter (4/28/46), Adolphe Linke (5/25/47), in the Companion’s “Nazis” entry, Simon Smudge (8/29/48), Capitan Muerto (1/25/48 and 2/1/48), in the Companion’s “Castanet” entry, John Dailey (6/6/48) in the Companion’s “Abel Ferguson” entry, and Andre Bouchard (8/11/46), in the Companion’s “Maurice Maywee” entry. For the characters Hazel Macbeth, Mr. Hush, Mr. Dusk and Mr. Carrion, see the alphabetical entries in Companion, which list all their story appearances. —NCCC

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The Spirit of Comics!

THE WILL EISNER INTERVIEW

Conducted via telephone March 26, 2003 by Danny Fingeroth Transcribed by Steven Tice / Copy-edited by Will Eisner This interview first ran in WN! #5. It seemed appropriate to represent it in this Eisner-centric issue. It stands up to—and actually gets even better with—repeated readings. Enjoy! —DF

rom the dust jacket of the hardcover The Spirit Archives, currently being published by DC Comics:

“Will Eisner’s career spans the entire history of comic books, from his formative days in the 1930s through the 1940s, when he revolutionized narrative sequential art with his internationally famed series, The Spirit, to the 1970s, when he created the contemporary graphic novel form. In addition to his award-winning graphic novels, he is the author of the influential study Comics and Sequential Art.” Or, as Dennis O’Neil says in his introduction to DC’s upcoming The Will Eisner Companion by Chris Couch and Stephen Weiner: “Will Eisner is an Artist.

“He has a vision of the human condition and the means to communicate that vision to us. It is essentially a tragic vision, though not a morose one, and that may be why he no longer does melodrama; in the world that Will has been presenting for the last quarter-century, problems are not solved by violent action and big, fluffy endings are impossible. This is our world, focused and purified and magnified, displayed for our amusement… “There aren’t many analogies, either inside or outside cartooning, for what Will does. We’re not discussing caricature here—rather, something like caricature’s smarter older brother, a graphic strategy that not only exaggerates the exterior but uses exaggeration to suggest the interior.” To which allow me to add: Will is one of the few titans about whom it can truly be said that, without him, there would be no comics artform and no comics industry. It was one of my life’s honors to conduct this phone interview with him. —DF DANNY FINGEROTH: I want to thank you for taking the time to do this interview, Will. What are you working on right now? I know you’re in the middle of a project. WILL EISNER: I just completed a book that Doubleday is publishing called Fagin the Jew. It will be published in September, I believe. I just sent off the final art the day before yesterday. DF: That’s not part of the DC Library? WE: DC lost the bid on it. They wanted it, but Doubleday made me an offer I couldn’t refuse. DC always gets “first look” at any graphic novel I do. DF: And are you starting something new now? WE: Well, I always have... I have a file here that says “do me now.” [laughter] I’m just starting another book now. DF: My understanding is that you don’t like to talk about projects you’re working on. WE: I generally don’t, and the reason for it is it dilutes itself if I talk about it, because while I’m working on it, I’m developing ideas and so forth. It just dilutes itself in my mind. DF: At this point, how many hours a week do you devote to work? WE: I work pretty steadily. When I’m not traveling, I work from nine to five. DF: Wow. WE: Every day, five days a week. DF: What, you take the weekends off? How dare you? [laughs] EISNER | 43

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION T back to doing The Spirit, by 1950 I realized I had done all I wanted to do on The Spirit, and the opportunity to expand into teaching material with sequential art presented itself. So I started a company producing instructional material in sequential art, or comics, as you might call it. It lasted for about 25 years, and then in 1972, ‘73, I stumbled into Phil Seuling’s conventions and discovered that the underground artists—I’m talking about Robert Crumb and Art Spiegelman and Spain Rodriguez and Denis Kitchen and a couple of others—were really using comics as a pure, literary form, in that they were addressing the establishment mores and morals of the time, and that encouraged me to go back to the area where I wanted to spend my life, which was producing comics or sequential art for adult readers, with grown-up subject matter. DF: Now, the stuff you’d been doing in the interim twenty years was in comics format but in an educational milieu? WE: Yes, what you might call the comics format. Actually, it was the sequential art format. It is the arrangement of images in a sequence to tell a story, and whether you do them on three tiers or two tiers, with nine or six panels to a page, is irrelevant. It’s how you arrange the images in an intelligent and readable sequence to convey an idea or tell a story that is really the heart of the definition, if you will, of what I want to do. And in 1975—or ’76, I guess, somewhere in there—I began doing what I believed was a novel form addressed to adult readers. And out of that came A Contract with God. DF: You’d always aimed at adult readers, even with The Spirit. WE: Yes. Writing for young readers was one of the problems that I had during the Eisner and Iger Studio years, and one of the reasons I went in for The Spirit—which was quite a gamble at the time, for various reasons. I wanted to talk to an adult audience. A newspaper readership would give me that. I was always very impatient talking to the very young readers. I didn’t really know what to say to them. [laughs] DF: You mean talk to them beyond just the basics of superhero action/adventure? WE: Well, candidly, superheroes are one-dimensional characPencils for a page from Will Eisner’s graphic novel A Contract With God. ters. You can’t do very much with them. And life experiences This art is among the unpublished pieces to be printed in Dark Horse’s upcoming are filled with story material. Everybody’s concerned with surhardcover volume The Will Eisner Sketchbook. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] vival and the life experience is concerned with that and how WE: My wife says Saturday and Sunday are her days. to deal with it. So it’s a wide-open area, there. DF: Well, that seems to work for you. I’m going to ask you a DF: Now, in different hands, these can be very bleak subjects, bunch of questions that range from the pretentious to the but you certainly seem to do them joyously. picayune. So if there’s anything that you think is too stupid to WE: Well... that’s an interesting point you just made, calling answer— them “bleak.” Every once in a while people do say to me, WE: I’ll give you stupid answers. “Your stories are bleak” or “there’s a noir quality to them.” DF: Thank you. [laughs] Well, okay. You’ve been doing comics That’s French, you know. [laughter] I don’t see it that way. First and graphic storytelling for an amazingly long time and your of all, I’m not a moralist. I’m not really writing books to define stuff is still wonderfully fresh, innovative and exciting. Would human morals. I consider myself doing reportage, reporting to you say there is an overall theme or purpose or direction in my fellow man the things I see. I see a man lying in the street, your work, from the beginning to now? Or has it changed nobody paying attention to him is something I want to turn to over the years? my fellow man and say, “Hey, look at that, look at that. He’s WE: Well, the direction has always been to explore areas that lying there, nobody’s paying attention.” The other thing is, I haven’t been explored before. I guess that’s the way to put it. think it’s necessary to explore the purpose of life. That’s what I believe that this medium is a literary form and that it has not drives us in living. In one of the books I did, there’s a story been used as fully as it could. So all of my experience, all the called “The Big Hit.” At the end of the story, I have this one things I’ve been involved in since 1950, certainly, have been guy saying to the other fellow, “Living is a risky business.” an effort to employ this medium whose language is sequenReally, the whole business of living and survival is very much a tial art—that’s the medium that we’re talking about—in areas part of how we think as human beings, so if you can talk that it had not tried before. For example, when I was in the about that, it has resonance, it means something. It’s useful. military between 1942 and 1946, I realized that the medium What I want to be is useful, obviously. is usable as a teaching tool, very effective as a tool. So I sold DF: Do you think that focus, that direction, comes from the the military on the use of that. It was very successful. I went Depression era and World War II era experiences? 44 | WRITE NOW

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION WE: Living through the Depression has made me sensitive—as it did with all the people who also lived through the Great Depression—sensitive to the human struggle for survival. This is really the heart of all living. Everybody’s concerned with survival. Anytime you discuss it, it is of importance to an adult reader. Now, one of the problems with writing to young readers is that I cannot discuss heartbreak with a fourteen- or fifteenyear-old kid, because to him, heartbreak is if his father didn’t give him the keys to the car or something like that. Or maybe his girlfriend decided he was a nerd. DF: That’s heartbreak for that kid. WE: That’s heartbreak, true. Youngsters are not concerned with survival. DF: But, it’s different. WE: It’s a different kind of heartbreak. But in one of my books—I think it was A Life Force, where this man is trying to decide what life it all about—I discuss the meaning of living, what is it, what it’s all about. He compares himself to a cockroach. It gave me a chance, again, to expand the capacity of the medium. DF: It seems that certain subject matter that, say, in The Spirit, you may have been addressing in a more metaphorical way, you’ve been getting with more directly, or at least with a different sort of metaphor system, since A Contract with God. In other words, it seems that you did have some of those same concerns when you were doing The Spirit, but your way of dealing with them changed when you “came back”—what it seemed to the public was coming back—with A

Contract with God and so on. WE: Well, one thing we don’t realize is that the artists and writers, like everybody else, grow. They grow up. [laughter] That’s a very interesting point, however, because one of the reasons I never really wanted to do a daily strip was, I discovered that daily strips would not allow the artist to experiment and grow, necessarily. He remained pretty much the way he was when he first started. If you look at the daily strips over the years, the ones that have survived for 50 years, they’re pretty much the same as they were when they started, and there’s no room for experimentation. The joy, for me... the truth of the matter is, you’ve got to love what you’re doing, you’ve got to enjoy what you’re doing in order to do it well. If you don’t like what you’re doing, you don’t do it well. Nothing good is ever done without enthusiasm, really. And for me, the opportunity to cut new paths is to try new things. The real excitement for me is to do something that nobody has ever done before, if I can do it. Unfortunately, it’s very hard to invent the wheel, because somebody has already done that, but... [laughs] DF: There’s steel-belted radials, though. WE: [laughs] Okay. But the point I’m trying to make is that the excitement in any medium is to explore new territory, with all the risk that’s involved. And it’s a great risk, because you could spend a whole year working on something only to discover that it’s a bomb. [laughter] DF: To me, looking at your work over the years, one significant change is that you yourself describe as going from a cinematic style to almost more of a theatrical awareness, where people are more “on stage.” WE: That’s an interesting point, very perceptive of you, because I have always been influenced largely by live theater. And the reason for that is that live theater is closest to reality, and all the work I do is pressing for reality. All my work starts out by saying, “Now, believe me…” Even The Spirit was an attempt to create a believable hero, even though he wore a mask, which was kind of an idiot thing. [Danny laughs] I tried to make him believable. Now, the cinematic stuff I did early on was really a practical approach, because while you’re writing, in this medium anyway, you’ve got to be aware of the fact that reading patterns are influenced by other media, and in the ’30s, movies came along and began to influence reading patterns. They added to the reader’s understanding a whole new visual language, influenced graphic literacy, if you will. Movies began using the camera as the reader, so to speak. Or the audience became the camera, and the camera would look through somebody’s armpit, or look down from the ceiling. You had bird’s-eye-views, you had worm’s-eye-views, and so forth. Those are part of the language they were introducing. EISNER | 45

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So I employed them, because I’m always eager to reach my reader, and this was a new visual language. Now, when I started back into the graphic novel, I moved back into the live theater/real stage format, which I’ve always found to be the most sure way of communicating with my audience. One other thing I should say is that live theater has a sense of reality that movies do not have. You sit in the theater and people are doing something on the stage, they’re real people, they’re real. You are looking in on a real incident. In movies, you’re looking at something that only seems to be real. It’s an artificial reality. DF: Comics can mimic film or they can mimic theater. You’ve taken those elements and, in at least two eras, created a whole new vocabulary for people. What’s the appeal of the visual in presenting your message? You have things you want to say and messages you want to get out. Why not straight prose? What’s the appeal of the picture in there? WE: That’s an interesting point. Prose is a different medium. I write with pictures. Now, when people ask me what I do, to answer it as quickly as I can, I say, “I’m a writer. I write with pictures.” This is my medium, and I think there is an advantage to sequential art, because, first of all, it communicates more rapidly than text alone. Text cannot be dismissed, because text is capable of revealing the great depth that single images or static images cannot do. And that’s one of the challenges of this medium. This is something that’s challenging me all the time, how to better transmit internalization— which text can do. For example, someone writing with prose or text alone can say, “Sam Brown entered the room. His whole life experience taught him that there was danger here, and he sensed it” and so forth, and it goes on and on. Well, 46 | WRITE NOW

doing that visually, you are unable to step aside and tell all about Sam Brown’s long life experience and the dangers he’s been through. So these are the challenges that text deals with. But, nonetheless, we’re living in a time, what I call a “visual era,” in which text alone is under siege. DF: That’s a polite way of putting it. WE: Well, I think it’s about as accurate as you can be. Whenever you try to describe something, you have a tough time trying to get an accurate word. [laughs] The era we’re living in now is characterized by the fact that a huge amount of information is being poured out on us at this geometric rate of growth, and we don’t have time to read. I remember when I was teaching at the School of Visual Arts, I was trying to get my students to read, and I discovered that most of them had not read the novels that I was forced to read as a kid. They weren’t even reading short stories, which sort of went out of fashion. Used to be very fashionable in the ’30s, which really taught me how to write this kind of stuff, because I was a great reader of short stories. But the times we’re living in, communication is largely done by imagery. And I’ve got to be conscious of that and aware of it. I believe that is what I feel I’m providing in working in this medium, what everybody working in what you call “comics” is providing. I hate the word “comics,” it’s a misnomer. But it’s like “Kleenex,” you know? You don’t say facial tissue… so it has stuck. DF: I guess the other shift I noticed in your work over time— and again, I’m sure I’m not the only one nor the first one, but I thought I’d mention it—is that in The Spirit, you had to get your personal statements in as metaphor through the characters, through clever storytelling devices. Now you go directly to the personal and to the memoir. But in other interviews— and I’m sorry to throw quotes at you, but I’ve been reading nothing but interviews with you for three days [laughs]— you’ve talked about how painful it is to delve into these memories and put them on paper… WE: Oh, it is. DF: But there must be some appeal to it for you to keep doing it. What’s exciting about that process for you? WE: I don’t know how other writers work, but I can only write about things that I know. Either things I’ve seen firsthand, experienced personally, or received maybe through a third party. As a matter of fact, one of the reasons I’ve been unable to write science fiction stories is because I’ve never met aliens from another planet. I don’t know any androids. DF: [laughs] As far as you know. WE: [laughs] I don’t know, maybe I have. Some of the publishers I ran into very early on were probably from another planet. So I prefer to write from what I know. And it allows me to do some things which are very realistic and very understandable by my readers. For example, I’ve always used climate or rain—which, by the way, Harvey Kurtzman used to tease me about and call it “Eisnerspritz.” DF: [laughs] There should be a TM after that. WE: [laughs] I should copyright that, I guess! People understand climate, they understand weather, they understand rain. Everybody has felt rain, so if I can employ that in the process of conveying an idea or telling a story, I do that. So as far as philosophy is concerned, the first time I became aware that I could possibly, in this medium, deal with a philosophical idea or a morality concept was in The Spirit, with the story of Gerhard Schnobble, a little guy who could fly. I did that and to my surprise it worked out well, it came across well, and it got a good response. And I was pleased. And it survives. As a mat-

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION ter of fact, the story has remained memorable among the Spirit stories. People keep constantly talking to me about it. In Denmark, there’s a building wall with a painting of Gerhard Schnobble on it. A city-financed mural. DF: And yet, I don’t think today you would do a story about a guy who thought he could fly who gets caught in a shootout. Today you seem much more involved in recounting— WE: Real stories, yes. The Schnobble story was really a philosophical statement, if you will. But now I prefer to deal with reality. DF: But reality often from, say, the ’30s, ’40s, ’50s. WE: Well, those are the years that I know. But apparently it doesn’t really matter, because the principles of the thing stay the same. The last book I did, the one that came out last year, The Name of the Game, which is a discussion on the whole idea of marriage and so forth, spanned two generations. Dropsie Avenue was an attempt to do a history of a neighborhood, that dealt with generations. But, as a matter of fact, I prefer to do things set in the past because that will not change, where today is liable to change on me. [laughs] DF: Is there some inner drive you feel to get this down on paper, to record a certain time and place in history? WE: No, no, it’s just an environment that’s very comfortable for me to write in. DF: Because my parents are from the Bronx of those years, where many of your stories are set, it’s fascinating for me to see what in your work intersects with stories I’ve heard from them and from my other relatives. WE: We all want to know how it was. In fact, in doing the autobiography Heart of the Storm, I remember my father telling me about his life in Vienna. He was a young painter in Vienna, an artist. And I was so eager to find out how it was then. As a matter of fact, many years ago I stopped off in Vienna when I was traveling around Europe on a business trip just to walk the street, the Prada, that he walked on. Just to get the feel of it. It’s a thing to do. I know other people do the same thing. I know Art Spiegelman went to Europe and I think he visited one of the concentration camps just to get a feel of what it felt like, what it looked like. I think one has to do that to convey a sense of honesty in your work. DF: This is just a picky note, so feel free to ignore this question. I can understand changing the names of real-life based people in your stories, but why do you change the names of streets and neighborhoods that exist or existed? Just so nobody will give you a hard time about not getting an exact likeness? WE: No, no. Because... It’s the way Faulkner created his own county... it’s almost a metaphor. It’s “an example of.” And again, it enables me to connect with the reader. If I use an actual street, with a name that truly existed, I’d lose some of the intimacy I would expect from the reader. So if it’s a street that’s got a fictitious name, it could be a street that he remembers or she remembers. As you can see, my entire preoccupation is to connect with the reader. That’s one of the reasons why I don’t like to work in color. I prefer to work in a single line in black and white. I’ll sometimes print my books in brown because I think it’s a way of making it softer and easier to read, but I prefer not to work in color. DF: But The Spirit was published in color. WE: Well, that was necessary in those days. My attitude with The Spirit was totally different than my attitude today. DF: Are there authors who influenced you years ago and today? Anybody you can cite as a particular influence?

WE: As far as cartoonists are concerned, Milton Caniff was a very strong influence on me. Segar’s Popeye taught me a lot. Usually, the guys who influence me are people that I try to learn from. For example, Krazy Kat by George Herriman I discovered very early. As a matter of fact, I came upon him while I was selling newspapers in the street during the Depression, and his stuff was being published by King Features, in the Hearst papers. And I was blown away by that. I thought, “Wow, this is great!” And I’ve always remembered that he had the capacity of engaging the reader in a way that enabled him to avoid or eliminate panels. As a matter of fact, he was rarely consistent in his backgrounds. One scene had a moon and a tower, and the next scene, they were still talking in the same dialogue, but it was a rock of some kind. If you’ve seen it, you know what I’m talking about. So those three authors really taught me an awful lot. I learned an awful lot about storytelling from Caniff. And of course I had many years of reading short stories. O. Henry was a tremendous influence on me. So was Saki, the French author... DF: Guy DeMaupassant? WE: DeMaupassant. And I read a lot of Russian short stories. The short stories of the ’30s were really tremendously influential, and really, literally, taught me how to write The Spirit. Remember, doing a seven-page complete story every week was a lot more difficult than I thought it would be. [laughter] I

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION discovered something early on. I started off with an eightpager and then I discovered I was working at a rate of a page a day. [laughter] But I discovered there were only seven days in the week. I had to cut back to seven-page stories. DF: And you filled out the other nine pages with other people’s stuff? WE: Yeah. DF: Can you talk a little bit about how you create a story? From what I’ve read, you don’t use a typewriter or a computer. WE: I don’t use a typewriter. I do the text and pictures at the same time. DF: Do you do an outline in longhand first? WE: Sometimes I will. I’ll do like a laundry list of—I’ll start off with the ending. Before I begin, I know what the ending will be. I work my way up to the ending, which is my way of doing the story. DF: Does the ending ever change as you’re working your way toward it? WE: The ending doesn’t change, but I will alter the path with which I get to the ending, because as things happen, they suggest another happening which works into it. I usually prepare a pencil rough first, a readable dummy, from which I sell the book, actually. For example, at one time I had about four or five publishers in Europe and a couple publishers in this country and I would send out a dummy to them. Nobody really knows which you read first in a sequence, whether you see the pictures first or read the text first. DF: I can’t believe nobody’s done a study on that. WE: I believe you see the images first and then go to the text, because I think this is how it works in real life. For example, just visualize a man lying on the street and a fellow comes over to him and says, “Charlie, are you all right?” He looks at him first, bends down, and then says, “Charlie, are you all right?” It comes afterward. For that reason, for example, I don’t like what I call “umbilical balloons.” Harvey Kurtzman and I used to argue about that all the time because he liked to do balloons and text and have two or three balloons coming out of the same person. And I believe that’s all wrong, I don’t think it works. So each of us has our own style and technique and preference. A lot of people are using umbilical balloons,

but I don’t use them. DF: Have you ever drawn from anybody else’s script? WE: I have difficulty writing from a script that belongs to somebody else. The problem is, I would probably change it. [laughs] No, the way I work is I have a kind of a roadmap that I’ve set up in my mind, or I have a list. To give you an example of how it might work, say, would be the case of the Spirit story where this man comes from another planet, finds it difficult to live here, and then returns to the other planet. This was the basis of the story, and I wrote down a whole list of steps. How he arrives, he gets a job in the weather bureau, and my next step, he meets this lady, and so forth. And at the end of the book, he goes off to another planet. All that’s listed down. Then I start writing my stories. Now, each page for me is a mega-panel. I try to contain a number of cohesive incidents on a single page so the page has a containment in itself. But that’s also because I’m very conscious of the technology of the reading of this medium, so, for example, I believe that when you turn a page, you lose the reader for a millisecond. Unless you recognize that, you’re going to lose the thread of the story for them. I used to warn my students about the business of having someone on the last panel of page one, let’s say, start saying, “I am going to...” And on the next page he says, “Chicago.” You lose the reader in that millisecond, as they’re turning the page. That has to do with the technology of the medium. Now, that may change when we arrive at the point where all comics will be displayed electronically, over the Internet, so you’ll have a totally different kind of thing. DF: Do you think that’s going to happen? WE: Well... that’s been a long-running debate between me and Scott McCloud over this subject. A friendly debate, but an enthusiastic one, anyway. And I believe that what’s going to happen is that comics—or cartoons as still images, which print lives on—will become animated. So what you’re going to wind up with is animated cartoons. DF: Something like the “webtoons” that were popular, or were trying to be popular, a few years ago? WE: I don’t know what they were, what are webtoons? DF: You know, like the stuff that Stan Lee was doing with Stan Lee Media.

Eisner adapts Cervantes. Panels from The Last Knight: An Introduction to Don Quixote, one of the series of graphic novels he’s done for NBM in recent years, adapting classic literature, fairy tales, and folk tales. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] 48 | WRITE NOW

THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION THE SPIRIT SECTION Bemmelman the famous illustrator. A foreigner. And he said to me in broken English, “Don’t vorry, boy, somebody vill like your vork.” DF: [laughs] Did he look at your work? WE: No. I was carrying my big black portfolio, looking like the world had fallen in on me. DF: Now who was this guy? WE: Ludwig Bemmelman. He was a very famous book illustrator and painter. DF: It was wonderful that he said that to you. WE: Yeah, it was very encouraging. I walked out feeling a little better. DF: Any books or courses that you recommend to aspiring comics writers and artists? I imagine Comics and Sequential Art. [laughs] WE: Well, I would recommend that. I think that’s a very Will’s must-have books on comics theory and practice. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] good book. [laughs] And Graphic Storytelling and Visual WE: Oh, yeah, when he got into Flash animation? Narrative, too. Those books, by the way, are different from DF: Right, the Flash animation stuff. Scott McCloud’s book, Understanding Comics, which is very WE: They’ll progress into pure animation, which is being proimportant, in my opinion. Scott’s book is addressed to the duced in Hollywood today. So I think still images, which is broad public, and explains the phenomenon of comics, the what comics in print deals with all the time, loses something technology and the structure of it and so forth. What I tried to when it’s projected over an image through the Internet. do with Comics and Sequential Art and Graphic They’ve been trying to do that, a lot of guys have done that, Storytelling is provide something for someone who is workand it doesn’t work as far as I’m concerned. ing in the medium or teaching it. So I suggest those. But there DF: Well, it’s a different medium. are lots of good books... WE: So that’s where it’s going. I’m not very interested in For those who want to learn anatomy—because it’s very movies. I’ve never really been interested in getting involved in important to be able to manipulate the human figure if you’re the production of a movie. In fact, I’ve never really been eager going to talk about it and write about it—I think the anatomy to have any of my work made into a movie. I’m satisfied with books by George Bridgman are very, very valuable. And they’re the way it’s been done with print. I love print, and as far as cheap and easy for you to get. Everything I know about anatoI’m concerned, as long as I am able to work I will continue to my I learned from him. I took a course with him back at the work in print. I’ve had offers, as you can imagine, from time to Art Students League in the ’30s. time, to do a movie, to get involved in making a movie, and And writing, I think everybody who wants to write should was really not interested at that time. Of course, one should never say never… eh? DF: Because of positive things about print, or negative things about Hollywood...? WE: No, no. Well, Hollywood’s a story all in itself. It’s because I have really not yet licked print altogether. There’s a lot yet to conquer. DF: Well, if you haven’t, nobody has. Take my word for it. [laughs] You have had, certainly, a long and remarkable career. I imagine there have been setbacks along the way. Any advice for people about how to deal with career setbacks that would feel like impossible obstacles? WE: Stay with it. Don’t quit. Have faith in yourself. Believe in what you’re doing. Failures are a way of learning things. As a matter of fact, I was telling a story, last week I was speaking to a group of librarians and someone asked me the same question. One of the difficulties of this business is that you have to learn to deal with rejection. Every kid coming out of school, sooner or later, will walk into an art director’s office or a publisher’s office and the editor will look at his work and say, “now, don’t take this personally... but this is the stupidest, crappiest work I’ve ever seen.” DF: “But don’t take it personally.” [laughs] WE: “Don’t take it personally.” Well it happened to me, I remember, as a young kid. I showed my work to a magazine and the editor looked at this work and laughed and said, “These are the stupidest faces I have ever seen.” And I walked out of there very dejected. And sitting out in the wait- Demonstrating pacing in an illustration from the “Writing Process” chapter of ing room, waiting to see this editor next after me, was Ludwig Will’s book Graphic Storytelling. [© 2009 Will Eisner Studios, Inc.] EISNER | 49

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answers have been incredible and inspired many of the questions. Before we wrap this up, is there anything you want to plug? I know you’re going to be speaking at the Library of Congress soon. WE: I’ll be going there next week. DF: That’s very exciting. WE: Your article will come out long after that. The only thing I want to plug, I think, is Fagin the Jew, which is being published by Doubleday this fall. DF: Okay. And maybe when I send you the transcript, after you’ve done the Library, maybe we can do one or two followups by e-mail or something just so you can tell me about that, if you have the time, because that’s a very exciting thing. WE: Well, I’ll be talking about graphic novels. DF: Are you excited about speaking there? WE: What I’m doing now is accepting invitations to talk about the graphic novel. At long last the graphic novel has arrived. It’s being discovered by libraries around the world, all over the country. And I’m very eager to talk about that. I want to correct something. A lot of the people, librarians and other publishers, people who publish or buy graphic novels—I’m not talking about the readers—regard a graphic novel as nothing more than a collection of comics with a flat back. If it’s thick, if it’s got more than a hundred pages, it’s a graphic novel. So I’ve been running around trying to correct that and point out that the graphic novel is a literary form. It is written with a structure very similar to the classic novel. As a matter of fact, Signal From Space, a book I wrote... I wrote that book not because I wanted to write about science fiction, but I wanted to prove or show or demonstrate that a graphic novel could be written following the disciplines of a standard text novel, prose novel. DF: The structural disciplines, you mean? WE: Yeah, the same structural disciplines. It really worked. Anyway, that’s my conclusion. DF: Thanks for your time, Will, and for sharing your knowledge. And for all the great work. WE: Thank you, Danny.

read short stories. Go back to the old short stories of the ’30s, wonderful things. I’ve always believed that the best comic book, graphic novel, or sequential art, whatever you want to call it, is done by the same man who writes and draws it. And barring that, I think that someone who writes should be able to think graphically when he writes a book, in order to deal with the artist. As a matter of fact, I was talking about this with Neil Gaiman once, and he told me that he writes with the skills and the style and the talents of a specific artist in mind. So before he starts writing, he wants to know who the artist will be. So that’s a good tip. DF: Of course, if you’re Neil Gaiman, you can have some say in that. A lot of people just get whoever they’re assigned by the editor. WE: Well, no, I think even for a young writer who’s just starting to work at one of the major houses certainly, it would be in order to say, “Who is going to illustrate this, so I can write it better for this person” There’s some guys who can’t draw horses. So why do a story that involves a lot of horses? [laughter] DF: This is true, this is true. Anything you’ve never been asked? Anything you’ve always wanted to say for publication that you’ve never been asked about? [laughs] WE: Gee, no. I’ve been talking about this medium so long that I think I’ve gotten out everything I’ve had to say. Listen, your questions are good, very provocative. DF: Thank you. That means a lot. Your Advice from a father to a son from Eisner’s autobiographical graphic novel, To The Heart of the Storm.

THE END

ON THE CREATORʼS LIFE:

THE COLLEEN DORAN INTERVIEW Conducted via e-mail by Robert Greenberger November 2008

ob Greenberger says:

“Colleen Doran has been a writer, artist, illustrator, teacher, mentor and activist since breaking into the comics field as teen. Today, she is also an influential blogger and a general straight shooter. I first met Colleen at the beginning of her career and we’ve remained friends ever since but this was our first real chance to explore many of her influences and feelings about the business.” To which I’ll add that I’ve had the pleasure of moderating convention panels on which Colleen has been a participant, and her contributions to them always impressed me with her hard-thought opinions and her ability to defend them clearly and passionately. I’m extremely pleased she agreed to sit down and talk to Bob for Write Now! —DF

BOB GREENBERGER: Hi Colleen. Thanks for taking the time to chat. It’s pretty amazing we’ve known each other over 20 years. You’ve certainly come a far way. Your interest has always been more fantasy than science fiction or superheroes, was it that way from childhood? COLLEEN DORAN: I’m sorry, but that’s just not true. The first comics I ever read were superhero comics, and I developed a love for comics because I had a big crush on Aquaman! Aquaman comics were the first I ever bought, and when I made my first money, I got subscriptions to Justice League and Adventure Comics, starring Aquaman. My intention was to draw superhero comics eventually. I was in fan clubs and doing APA zines for superhero comics. I always liked them. BG: Well, I stand corrected. How did you discover comic books? CD: Well, when I was very little, we lived in a fairly poor city neighborhood, and I found some comics under the bleachers at school. I held on to them for dear life. And I would pick bottles out of the trash to redeem them for money to buy comics. But when I was really young, we moved out to a small town where there were no

stores and certainly no comics. And I think my parents threw my comics out, including my carefully saved Sunday Prince Valiant strips clipped out of the newspaper. So, I went for years with no comics, and kind of forgot about them. Then when I was 12, I got very sick with pneumonia, and a family friend brought me a big box of comics, and I was deliriously happy. I was hooked and never looked back! Almost all of them were Marvel superhero comics, but there were some DC Comics in there as well. I read them until they fell apart. BG: What led you to pursue a career as a writer/artist? CD: I won an art contest sponsored by Disney when I was five. I thought I would go to work for Disney. And my mother had been a classically trained artist. She was very supportive and used to give me books about art, and she gave me drawing paper. My father used to COLLEEN DORAN | 51

give me all his old papers from college to draw on. Almost all of my early drawings are on the back of university exams. I wasn’t entirely certain it was the sort of thing people did for a living. I entertained thoughts of becoming a doctor or an astronaut along the way. BG: If I recall correctly, you’re largely a self-taught artist. Was there ever any formal training? CD: Yes, but not until after I had already become a pro. Of course, I had some college, but a couple of years ago, I took some time off to take art classes at an art school—mostly digital classes. I really didn’t get much from the classes themselves, but from the time I got to devote to doing work just as a training exercise. I had not had time to simply study in years. BG: How did you make that essential first sale? What lessons can others learn from that experience? CD: I went to a science fiction convention and saw they had an art show. I was 15. I thought I could do some work as good as what I saw in that show. So, I went home that night, and my mom cut some mats for my drawings and we put them in the show. And I sold some pieces. Also, a lady named Linda Wesley had a small advertising agency, and she saw my work in that show and gave me a job. I guess the lesson is, just get out there and put your work in front of people. No one will find you if you are sitting in a corner being insecure about whether or not you are any good. BG: A Distant Soil was conceived when you were 12. Is it the same story today? CD: No, of course not! If it were everyone who read it would run screaming from the comic shop. Maybe they still do, but they are too polite to let me know. BG: You broke in in the early 1980s when there were very few women illustrators. What was harder, being a teen or a woman?

CD: Well, I’d say being a teen, because 15-year-olds are not women, they are children. Nothing is harder than having to face abuse and discrimination when you don’t have the faculties to understand it, or to handle it. I think I would have handled everything I experienced with a lot more savvy had I been ten years older. As a matter of fact, almost all of the serious problems I ever had in the business occurred before I was 21 years old. Bullies are abusive to people who can’t fight back, and when you’ve got some middle-aged editor or publisher abusing you, it’s a very intimidating thing for a kid. No one pulls that kind of nonsense on me anymore. I still have occasional problems with this or that client, but an adult knows what their rights are, and I can just pick up the phone and ring my attorney now. A child does not even know they’ve been taken advantage of sometimes, or blames themselves for their problems. Perhaps getting into the business so early was an advantage in one way, because I do meet some clueless 30-year-olds who can’t seem to stand up for themselves, or are incapable of reading a contract. Maybe I got my school of hard knocks out of the way early, but it’s not an experience I would wish on a kid. I only regret not confiding in my parents more about some of my problems. I was trying to protect them, because I was concerned about lawsuits and stuff. I had one publisher threaten to sue my family if I left the company, because my family was acting as my management. That was very intimidating to me as a kid. Now I know that publisher was full of crap, and I did eventually leave them. I just didn’t know what my rights were, and tended to blame myself when things went wrong. BG: You avoided DC and Marvel and managed to land A Distant Soil with WaRP. Was this your dream project? CD: I didn’t avoid DC or Marvel at all. As a matter of fact, I was offered a chance to try for a Legion of Super-Heroes gig by Keith Giffen when I was a teen fan of the Legion and working on an APA zine devoted to the comic. I was in several fan clubs, and often went to comic conventions with superhero art in my portfolio. However, I had signed a letter of intent for A Distant Soil with a small press, and had to Hal Foster’s classic Prince Valiant strip was inspirational to the young Colleen Doran. [© 2009 King Features Syndicate.]

52 | WRITE NOW

While still a teen, Colleen saw her creation, A Distant Soil, first published by of WaRP Graphics. She has since gone back to redraw these initial chapters. Here, her original covers to the first four WaRP issues. [© 2009 Colleen Doran.]

stick to my word to go forward with the project, even though it didn’t come out for a couple of years. I would gladly have worked for DC and Marvel, and began getting overtures from both companies in 1983. I began doing freelance work for DC in 1984, and for Marvel in 1986. I’ve been working for them both off and on ever since. If I was avoiding them, I wasn’t doing a very good job. I was quite skeptical about doing A Distant Soil in the small press, and told my friends not to buy it when it first came out, because I was not happy with the original version of the book. I had done some work using A Distant Soil characters for several small press gigs, mostly just pinups and stuff, but nothing was very impressive, I thought. I was not at all happy with my early publishers. They were small press, and not at all professional level. It’s always a dream to work on your childhood project and see it in print, but it’s better to be published well and to have confidence in the work you are doing. I wasn’t happy with the result or the publishing circumstances. A short time later, when I decided to start again, I chucked everything and started over from scratch, rewriting and redrawing it all! I am so glad I did that! BG: ADS has endured for two decades and multiple publishers. What speaks to you about the story and characters? CD: It’s a labor of love, obviously. It has a great deal of personal meaning for me, not only because it is something I have been working on since I was a kid, but because I am very much in love with my characters! They’ve been with me so long that it would be very hard for me to just walk away from them. The story is finite, so this is inevitable, but I go slower as I get closer to the end. I am afraid this is separation anxiety! I’ve put a lot of myself and my personal experiences into

the tale, and it is a metaphorical exploration of some of my feelings and experiences in the science fiction community and growing up in fandom, surrounded by such a strange group of people, some of whom were very nurturing, and others who were extremely exploitative and unethical. I think I just expanded on a lot of that weirdness and let it go in the story. I’ve tried to avoid the Mary Sue aspect of it, and I don’t really think any of the characters resemble me much, but some of my life is in there. BG: Talk to me a little about craft. How do you structure a story? Do you ever have to deal with ideas not flowing—or having too many ideas? Do you write a script for yourself and then draw or do you plot and draw as you go? CD: Well, that depends. When I was working for some early publishers, I had to write everything out, and often did full script. But later, I decided this was simply an inorganic and inefficient way of working that was solely for the publisher’s benefit and did nothing for me. What I tend to do now is a synthesis of sketches and copy. I often write free association copy. I almost always did that in longhand on legal pads, but lately I write on the computer. After I’ve written my breakdowns, I start doing thumbnails and script simultaneously. I may even write copy directly in the margins of the original art, and will make changes as I go. I reserve the option of doing a complete rewrite directly on the original art. Being able to write and draw the pages simultaneously means I tend to avoid those problems you get in a lot of comics where script doesn’t necessarily match the facial expressions and body language. I am pretty happy with the vast majority of the series. I found some bits of dialogue I would like to change in the final collection, if I ever get around to doing a masCOLLEEN DORAN | 53

sive tome of the whole enchilada. I can only think of about five pages of art that need a re-do.

had to do some serious legwork to find all of this stuff out.

I’m afraid there’s some stylistic inconsistencies in early art that are just going to have to stay. I really can’t commit to redoing… I dunno, the 120 pages of art I’d love to redraw! But there are five where the storytelling just isn’t correct. That’s later in the series. I may add a few pages for storytelling clarity.

People come to me all the time, e-mail me the most basic questions, and finding any of this info on your own today is incredibly simple. It’s really a waste of resources to come to someone like me with basic copyright and trademark questions. I wish people would come to me with meaty contract questions you can’t find out about in a basic Google search. But they almost never do. It’s a shame. This tells me that the creator is not willing to do legwork. It’s a very bad sign.

BG: You learned some harsh publishing lessons early on in a copyright dispute with a publisher. Has that led you to become an expert on creator rights? What can others learn from the experience? CD: I wouldn’t say I am an expert, but then, so many creators are so bad about the business end of publishing, that I probably seem savvy by comparison. That’s how bad publishers get away with so much. They exploit ignorant creators who don’t stand up for their rights. You don’t see them going after Frank Miller, do you? BG: Not at all. Years ago, some artists, like Gene Colan, had me speak to their art classes about the business side of being a professional artist. CD: I made it a point to be business-oriented from a very early age. While I was still a teen, and had worked for some unscrupulous clients who didn’t pay, or altered the work and published portions elsewhere without permission, or claimed copyright and trademark interests in my work even though those rights weren’t granted them by the contract, I knew I had better get on the ball and start standing up for myself.

I had been apprenticed by Frank Kelly Freas. Now, when I was a teen, his wife Polly handled all of his business affairs. When she died, I was pretty young. I spent a lot of time at Kelly’s house taking care of him, doing his cooking and cleaning. Kelly had been a major science fiction and fantasy artist for decades, but in many ways, he was helpless, unable to use even an oven, and generally ignorant about business affairs. Getting things in order for Kelly took months of work for a small team of people. During that time, Kelly spent hours talking to me, about what had happened at publishers with whom we were mutually displeased, and what had happened to him during the course of his career.

Basically, he did not want me to make the mistakes he had made. He had never learned to take care of himself, never learned the basics of law, and had many problems. He and I would talk for hours. It was strange, because I would go over Colleen penciled this 1992 Legion of Super there to clean house, but all he wanted to do on some days was I had started picking up books on Heroes #31 cover, which homages and satirizes classic romance comic covers. It talk and talk. And he had so much contracts, creators’ rights, and advice, so many hopes for me. Once women’s rights. I didn’t even know features her favorite legionnaire, Element Lad. Ink are by Al Gordon. [© 2009 DC Comics.] he even had a psychic come in and things like sexual harassment were tell me my future! That was interestagainst the law. Most people didn’t ing. It was also touching, because it showed me how know it was against the law. The Supreme Court deeply he cared about me, he even wanted to see into wouldn’t even have its first sexual harassment case my future and protect me on that level! until 1986, and many of the things we know to be illegal now were not case law then. It was important to have a role model like Kelly, because after a few bad experiences, you can sour on I got myself an attorney through the Volunteer the business, and you begin to think it’s all just a bunch Lawyers for the Arts, an organization I found out about of creeps out for what they can get. And then you see from a book. Keep in mind, there was no Internet for people like Kelly who are warm and generous and carresearch. I lived in a very small town, too. Our local ing. library was a little one-room shop in a dinky strip mall. I probably have more books now than they did then. I 54 | WRITE NOW

help someone I admired and respected. And that changed my life. BG: You have bounced between your own projects and work-for-hire projects, how do you choose? CD: Nowadays, I simply choose the projects I want to do. I am likely to turn work down even if I need the money. I just can’t stand drawing things I don’t want to draw. Life is too short. If it’s fun, and I have the time, and it pays well, I will do it. If not, I won’t. It’s that simple. You don’t do a good job when you are not enthusiastic about the work, and that will hurt your reputation. You might as well skip the gig and hold out for something better. Desperation is not good for your work. I don’t pick jobs because I need them. I pick them because I want them. BG: While not a big fan of superheroes, some of your earlier work was on the Legion of Super-Heroes. What do you like and dislike about super-heroes? CD: I like superheroes very much. I wouldn’t want to do them all the time, but now that I get all these highfalutin’ literary graphic novel assignments, I confess I pine for a chance to do a good superhero yarn once in awhile. I guess you’re just not that familiar with my work, but since you were at DC Comics for so long, and I rarely got offers to do superhero work, perhaps that explains why: editors at DC just had no idea I was interested! Too bad, maybe I should be more vocal about it. I like superheroes and would love to do more. Here’s a page from LSH #31, penciled by Colleen and inked by Al Gordon. The story was written by Keith Giffen and Tom and Mary Bierbaum [© 2009 DC Comics.]

He was determined I would not fall into the same dependency trap he was in. He was honest about every misstep he had made. I had been considering chucking the whole publishing thing, it had been so awful up to that point. We were talking about a bad time he had had with Paramount. He had neglected to get proper rights and permissions for some Star Trek prints he had made, and I recall sitting down and explaining to him some vagaries of trademark law. And he just looked at me funny and got this big grin on his face, and said, “I didn’t know that… You’re going to be all right. You’re going to do all right.” So, there I was about forty years younger than Kelly, and explaining to him something about trademark law. It made a big difference to me, the time I spent with Kelly. More influential than any bad experience I have ever had. Because my discussions with him helped me to process and put what I had learned into action, to

BG: Could you write a superhero comic? CD: Sure. Why not? I was offered Wonder Woman some years ago, but turned it down. I didn’t feel up to the challenge then. Now it might be different. BG: You’ve collaborated with Neil Gaiman, Warren Ellis, J. Michael Straczynski and so many others. What do you look for in a writer? CD: Talent. BG: How do they tailor their scripts for you? CD: You’d have to ask them, but all the ones I have spoken to say they feel confident I can draw good characterization, which some artists can’t do. Also, they are confident I will draw what they write. Some artists take a lot of liberties. I don’t. Warren Ellis knows that if he gives me a really challenging set design request, I will be able to draw it. BG: Okay, before we move on, I have to ask a question as a fan: will you and JMS ever get back to The Book of Lost Souls? CD: I have no idea. He has become so successful in COLLEEN DORAN | 55

Hollywood, that may be problematic. No one is more disappointed than I am, but Joe is such a great guy, and he’s been very good to me. And he has had such wonderful success with his films. I’d be the worst kind of friend to throw a fit and hold him back. That’s for losers. I don’t do that to my friends. I want them to grow and be very successful. If I can be a part of that, great. If not, that’s fine. I’m not a jealous person, and I am not insecure. It makes me feel good to see other people succeed. If you’re a real friend, you are happy for your friends when they do. BG: What have you learned from working with other writers that has influenced your own writing? CD: Working with JMS, especially, has got me to thinking about structure, pacing and craft. I guess because he is such a great craftsman, as well as storyteller. After working with him, I began to get very concerned about the technical aspects of my work in a way I never had before, and I began buying books on writing and brushing up on my grammar. BG: Have you written for other artists? CD: Not that I can recall. BG: How did it feel to have Neil Gaiman say Thessaly in Sandman was based on you? CD: Like Neil revealed my secret weapon. That character is this mousey little woman who looks completely normal, unglamorous and harmless. And in reality, she’s incredibly powerful, and extremely thorough, and you wouldn’t want her as an enemy. And in a way, I almost want to knock Neil up against the wall for blowing my truth. Then again, you can be a small, mousey little woman like me, and people just can’t get beyond the prejudices of their eyes. I don’t look like I could hurt a fly, and I am quite capable, of course. BG: When did you discover manga and what sort of influence has it had on you as both a writer and an artist? CD: I was visiting New York in the early 1980s when I first got into comics. And there was a woman named Leslie Sternbergh who was an underground cartoonist, who eventually went on to work for MAD magazine. While I was in her apartment, she handed me these books and said, “This reminds me of your work.” It was a manga series called From Eroica With Love, which is now being imported by CMX Manga, I believe. And I just loved it. It had a line quality, a story pace, and an 56 | WRITE NOW

aesthetic that I had been pursuing in a similar way in my own work, and had been getting a lot of flak for. None of my clients were comfortable with my aesthetic sense, and despite the fact that one client—who later bragged constantly about loving manga and being a great supporter of it in the early days—they did not want me to do the work I was doing. Every time I got hired, they tried to make my work into something else. When I discovered manga, I really began to dig my heels in. Here was this style of comic that was incredibly popular on the other side of the world, and which women were doing with great success. And here were these weird American people who were claiming women couldn’t do comics, including most women comics professionals, which was doubly weird. There was this horror of anything or anyone feminine about comics. So, I just decided to go my own way when I discov-

ered manga. I decided I wasn’t going to change my work to suit other people. My work doesn’t really look like manga, and it didn’t come from manga, but it did inspire me to stick to my guns.

the Beast, work-for-hire stuff like Spider-Man and your own creations. You’re both mainstream and independent. How do you see yourself in the field? CD: Even as you say. Mainstream and independent. I do what I want to do, what interests me. I don’t feel any obligation to stick to some kind of ideology, particularly when that ideology is someone else’s. I go my own way.

BG: What was it like lecturing about manga at the Smithsonian Institution? CD: It was a great honor, of course. I was scared to death at first, so nervous. What a responsiBG: You’ve got quite the online presbility. But after the first couple of lectures, I loosened up and ence today. What’s the benefit? CD: LOL! According to my family and ditched my notes and just went friends, there is none! They have all with it. I spent a lot of time studyconvinced me to spend a lot less ing for it, but it turned out to be a time online, and I am following lot of unnecessary effort, because through. I even set up Leechblock on most of the questions were pretty my browser to make sure the amount basic. But it was an interesting of time I can look at websites or blog experience, having to explain to is very limited. It keeps me from wanpeople things like why it is a Here’s Colleen’s cover to Amazing dering about and goofing off on the Western cultural prejudice that Spider-Man #326. Inks are by Al Gordon. web. It’s hard to be disciplined somemanga eyes look Western. I [© 2009 Marvel Characters, Inc.] times when you work at home, and remember an African-American since I live on a very remote farm on a mountain, I can woman asked me why all the manga characters looked get antsy for social contact and start chatting online white. That was a very interesting discussion, because when I shouldn’t. my assertion was that none of the manga characters look like human beings at all, but like cartoons. An Internet presence is good for advertising and proNobody, not even Caucasians, has eyes like those motion. An Internet presence is bad, because the saucer eyes in manga. It’s a cultural prejudice that investment of time may not be commensurate with the Westerners see Caucasians in those eyes. They are carrewards. It can be an insidious occasion to procrastinatoon eyes. No one has them. tion. BG: You’re a fangirl I would think, based on some of You have to discipline yourself to stay out of online your choices of assignment. You’re into Lord of the discussions, and avoid some of the Internet crazies, Rings and Star Wars, what else? When do you get to who may have blogs where everyone reads what they indulge those interests? say, in the same way people enjoy the freakshow. CD: While I am working! I get to watch great movies, and I often listen to books while I work, on CD. On my You want to be in touch with your readers and iPod. That is wonderful. I have a big collection of LOTR humanize yourself, but you also want to avoid begin statues and knickknacks. I try to make sure I get to contoo accessible, because you find your time going into ventions where I get to indulge my interests and have a answering lots of e-mail, posts, and career questions. good time with other fans. I don’t want to just go to And the hours tick away, and your deadlines creep up, conventions to make a buck or promote stuff. That’s so and you want to hit yourself in the head with a boring. I want to be with people of similar interests and hammer for not being more disciplined about time enjoy the experience. I’ve made some wonderful new management. friends that way. I don’t have huge fan obsessions outside LOTR, I don’t think, but I enjoy many things. LOTR is about the only thing I collect. That and King Arthur books, but frankly, my collection got out of hand, and I finally got rid of a lot of stuff. I was a big Anne Rice fan for a long time.

If you can limit your exposure while still getting your message about your work across, and getting important industry information out there, then that’s good. I’m happy with some of my writings on my blog about health insurance and creators’ rights. I get thank-you letters from people every single day for that, and that lets me know that the blogging is for the greater good.

BG: You’ve done licensed material such as Beauty and COLLEEN DORAN | 57

CD: Well, I actively mentor young creators in school. I get dozens of requests a year for mentoring from young artists at university, and take on a couple a year.

J. Michael Straczynski and Colleen collaborated on the creator-owned The Book of Lost Souls for Marvel’s Icon imprint. Here’re her covers to issues #1 and #2. [© 2009 J. Michael Straczynski & Colleen Doran.]

It has been a learning experience, surely. If anything, I have learned how extraordinarily bizarre some of the fan’s beliefs about pros in comics are. Some think we live lives of luxury and do nothing but fly to swank parties, and are all born with these great advantages, silver spoons in our mouths, money. Otherwise, how could we be successes? We must have had unfair advantages! There are some, well, I’ll call them semi-pro bloggers who have the same attitude. It’s like they’re trying to create some kind of have/have-not class war or something. I guess it makes people who don’t have what they want in life feel better about themselves to believe that others must have cheated to get what they want. I suppose it’s a common belief system. But since my family was extremely poor, and we had to work very hard to climb out of poverty, I find it pretty offensive when that nonsense is directed at me. Fortunately, I don’t meet many unpleasant people online, but maybe that’s because I tend to be very civil myself. My blog is a very civil environment. And if I notice a level of incivility on another blog or website, I simply block it from my browser. I don’t need to spend time with unhealthy people. If you want a quality life, spend it with quality people. I don’t let myself become involved in unnecessary Internet dramas, especially with bloggers who have a vested interest in getting you to up their hit counter. If they are making money getting their readership wound up with gossip and crazy talk, I don’t give them my money. I just turn them off and read something else. BG: In the fall, you published an extensive list of agents who handle graphic material. Do you see yourself as a mentor, advocate, or just a good member of the business? 58 | WRITE NOW

I do work as an advocate, not just someone who writes on a blog. I am on committees for various artist rights organizations that review legislation that comes up before Congress. We read proposals for our union and decide what to present or what not to present. I don’t want to overstate the importance of what I do: I am merely one of many people who do this sort of thing. But right now, I’m working on the new Graphic Artist Guild handbook of pricing and ethical guidelines as one of many creators who are consulted about standards and practices in my field of expertise. Being a good member of the business means being good to other creators. I learned this from Kelly Freas as well. Very early on, when we first met, I was showing Kelly my work at a convention and he took an awfully long time with me, giving me advice. That was very generous, because my work was not professional quality, even though I was being published. He must have seen I had promise and was educable. Some guy came over, about twice my age, and he was a real blowhard. He says to Kelly, “What are you doing? Giving out all of your secrets?” But Kelly just looked him up and down like he was an insect and said, “These are not my secrets. This is for anyone who wants to learn.” And he went right back on teaching me. The trick is, making sure to spend the time with the deserving creators and weeding out the people who are unlikely to move forward. That’s tricky. Lots of people come to me because they hear I will help them out. I simply cannot help everyone. Now, with Kelly, I was at a show, and he could spend time with me or leave off whenever he wished. And I do that at shows, too. I am happy to talk to people at seminars and when I am at my booth display. If there’s not a big crowd, come on over. We’ll talk. But I am not going to be able to let anyone who wants to hang out at my house or answer all of their queries in e-mails. That can get very time-consuming. And, of course, there is the ever-thorny problem of dealing with some misguided aspiring creators who think all women should stick together, apparently, regardless of ability. I can’t recommend you for a job if I don’t think your work is up to snuff, and that makes some people mad. Some people have been treated badly by publishers or by editors, and that is a shame. I feel sorry for them. But, I can’t give you access to a job

because I feel sorry for them having been treated unfairly in the past. I can only get you access to a job if your work is right for the job. I’ve made the mistake of giving some people of questionable ability a break, and in every case they blew the gig. And I have watched people who get incredibly wound up about very minor slights and problems, and even if they have ability, their behavior is a pretty good indication that I am dealing with someone who doesn’t have the mental chops to take criticism or stand up to pressure. I am very careful about dealing with people who have histrionic reactions to stress, rejection, or criticism. I think we’ve seen a few bloggers who fit this bill. They have lots of sad career stories, and after awhile, I see that one of their biggest problems is them. And I avoid them, because I know they probably don’t have the mental strength to take what this business dishes out. In every case, I’ve been right. They crack up at some point, preferably when they are far away from me. You feel sorry for them, but chances are, if you hire them, you’ll be feeling sorry for yourself at some point. This is meritocracy: if you have the ability, you should get a chance at advancement. And there is nothing egalitarian about talent. So, sometimes I have to say no to people, or at the very least, pick and choose who to help and when, so the time investment in them is in accord with my work schedule. That advancement has to go to the most worthy, not the most picked on. I think I am fulfilling my duty to my industry by volunteering and doing advocacy work, but the drawback is there are going to be some people who are disappointed when you are not all-giving. This can be miserable. I hope I don’t have to just cut out mentoring in future, but I have had to cut way back. Some people respond with vicious attacks to even the mildest criticism. Others are certain every big name

creator is just dying to steal their ideas. I usually refuse to look at portfolios, but on the rare occasions I do, it can be an interesting experience. You never know what you’re going to get. BG: With so many mainstream publishers now producing graphic novels, is it easier to sell new ideas? CD: And how. I don’t worry about my future the way I used to. I have every confidence there will be more work for me. And I turn work away I don’t want to do. I never used to turn away work, terrified there would be no more. Now I know it is important to be discriminating. You can’t waste your time doing work that has no meaning to you beyond the money. You’ll hate yourself for it. BG: You have had art gallery displays, you’ve illustrated for books (most recently Peter David’s Mascot to the Rescue), and you’ve done trading cards, where is your career headed? CD: Wherever I want. And I may change my mind about what I want tomorrow. I am not worried about being able to tackle anything. I know I have the ability and the mental strength to handle whatever comes. I am not afraid of anything. BG: I can’t thank you enough for talking shop, it’s been great. Tell me what you’re working on next. CD: I have two graphic novel contracts at Vertigo just now, one for Stealth Tribes with Warren Ellis, and the other for a book called Gone to Amerikay with Derek McCulloch. I was just told today I was up for some movie design work, but that is off later in the coming year, and you never know, might fall through. Regardless, I am expanding my digital painting skills, and just did a Star Wars illustration. I am trying to take a non-technical looking approach because I do not like digital art that looks digital. I want it to look as if it has been created by hand, and I think I am succeeding. Also, I want to be able to do more A Distant Soil, in my, ha-ha, spare time. So, that is on my schedule, but that is subject to change. Robert Greenberger, Write Now!’s managing editor, has worked in the comics field since 1980, logging time at Starlog Press, DC Comics and Marvel Comics. His novel, Iron Man: Femme Fatales, will be published this summer by DelRey Books.

THE END COLLEEN DORAN | 59

PAGE ONE (6 PANELS) PANEL 1 Establishing shot of the LANDSTUHL REGIONAL MEDICAL CENTER (see Appendix for reference). LEGEND1 LANDSTUHL, GERMANY. PANEL 2 Inside now. A wing of the hospital. Wide shot of the wing with a variety of SOLDIERS in various conditions lying on beds (see Appendix).

In Amazing Spider-Man #574, writer Marc Guggenheim tells a story that shows readers what had become of supporting character Flash Thompson. Flash was serving in Iraq, and his war experiences are juxtaposed against his memories of Spider-Man’s unique brand of heroism.

LEGEND DECEMBER. PANEL 3 CLOSE ON the LRMC SEAL (see Appendix) on a nearby wall. LEGEND IRAQ WAR, DAY 2026. PANEL 4 New angle. We’re on the side of one of the hospital beds. Close enough to the FLOOR to see the crumpled and discarded HOLIDAY WRAPPING PAPER lying on the floor near the bedside. Under the bed itself, we might glimpse of pair of ARMY BOOTS. SINGING (OFF-PANEL) It’s evening in the desert... PANEL 5 CLOSE ON a THE BEDSIDE TABLE next to one of the beds. There’s a CHRISTMAS CARD standing open on it.

Penciler Barry Kitson was challenged to integrate the story’s two separate aspects, one rooted in real life, the other in superhero fantasy. Here’s Kitson’s cover to the issue. Inks are by Mark Farmer.

SINGING (OFF-PANEL) I’m tired and I’m cold...

For this issue, could we deviate from our standard Brand New Day font for the legends and go with either Courier or Times New Roman (or the like)?

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN • “FLASHBACKS” (3rd Draft) • MARC GUGGENHEIM • PAGE 2 OF 40

PANEL 6 New angle. The “camera” has moved around so that we can now peek inside the card. The text of the card reads: Merry Christmas! Hope you don’t have an iPod. I put a song on it for you. Seemed appropriate. You’re missed here. soon.

Come back home

And come back safe, alright? Your pal, Peter And the off-panel singing continues... SINGING (OFF-PANEL) But I am just a soldier, I do what I am told... END OF PAGE ONE

The story is written full-script, allowing Kitson to know how much space to leave for dialogue and sound effects. This splash page, for example, is described, but Kitson added the spider web background, linking present-time and flashbacks.

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PAGE TWO (5 PANELS) PANEL 1 New angle. On the bed now. A pair of BRUISED HANDS cradle an iPOD TOUCH. On the display, we see the graphic for the song that’s playing:

From the top of the iPod a HEADPHONE CORD snakes up towards the top of panel. SINGING (OFF-PANEL) And I just got your letter... (cont’d) And this is what I read: You said, “I’m fading from your memory... PANEL 2 Reveal the patient: FLASH THOMPSON. The headphone buds in his ears. He’s singing along. Some bruises on his face. IMPORTANT NOTE: For the duration of this issue, whenever we see Flash in his hospital bed, we never see below his knees. FLASH (singing) “...so I’m just as good as dead.” GENERAL FAZEKAS (OFF-PANEL) Corporal Thompson?

FLASH Sure. I don’t get a lot of visitors. ‘Specially not ones with four stars. PANEL 5 We can now see that Fazekas is holding a THICK FILE as he takes a seat next to Flash’s bed. Flash has a thin smile on his face. GENERAL FAZEKAS You mind if I sit down? FLASH Only if you don’t mind if I don’t stand up. END OF PAGE TWO

Note the fact that Guggenheim calls for Flash to be listening to and watching an iPod. Aside from free publicity for Apple (both in the comic and in WN!), the device places the hospital scenes in the story firmly in the present.

PANEL 3 Flash is taking out one of the earbuds. FLASH Yeah? PANEL 4 Two-shot of General Fazekas and Flash. standing over Flash’s bed.

The General is

Also, Guggenheim’s note specifies how Flash is to be shown for all the present-time scenes in the issue. This relates to the surprise ending of the story.

GENERAL FAZEKAS General Fazekas. You got a minute or ten for me? AMAZING SPIDER-MAN • “FLASHBACKS” (3rd Draft) • MARC GUGGENHEIM • PAGE 4 OF 40

Kitson does detailed, highcontrast (to show the inker where shadows should be) thumbnail drawings to design each page. He then transfers the final design to a penciled page of artwork, inked, in this case, by Mark Farmer.

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #574 NUTS & BOLTS | 61

PAGE THREE (5 PANELS) PANEL 1

This story page encapsulates many of the contradictions of modern comics. Flash is a character who goes back to, literally, the first SpiderMan adventure. In stories of the 1960s, he served in VietNam. Guggenheim wants Kitson to allude to this visually as a nod to longtime readers, or those familiar with continuity, although, of course, if Flash is in his twenties, he couldn’t logically have served in VietNam.

Two-shot of Fazekas and Flash. GENERAL FAZEKAS At least your sense of humor remains uninjured, Corporal. FLASH You can call me Flash. does.

Everybody

GENERAL FAZEKAS Flash. (cont’d) What earned you that name? PANEL 2

Also, the subtly-handled implication of a sexual problem between Flash and the (unnamed in copy) Liz Allan couldn’t even have been done in even this oblique manner in a ’60s Spider-Man story.

New location. We’re with a teenage FLASH THOMPSON and his then-girlfriend LIZ ALLAN (an established character). They’re in the back seat of FLASH’S CONVERTIBLE,2 at night, at some lovers’ lane type makeout spot. Their clothing and hair is a bit mussed. Flash can’t look Liz in the eye as she tries to console him. LIZ ALLAN It was nice.

It’s okay.

Really.

PANEL 3 Back in the present. looks deadpan.

Almost identical to Panel 1.

Flash

FLASH High school football. PANEL 4 Still in a two-shot of Flash and General Fazekas. Fazekas is consulting his file now, looking down to read it. That so?

GENERAL FAZEKAS You play college ball, too?

2 Is there any way to make the convertible 60s-ish without making us feel like we’re in the 1960s?

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN • “FLASHBACKS” (3rd Draft) • MARC GUGGENHEIM • PAGE 6 OF 40

A little.

FLASH Before I dropped out.

GENERAL FAZEKAS Which would be when you enlisted. Volunteered, in fact. You did a tour in one of our other fine wars, I believe. PANEL 5 A shot of Flash fighting in the Vietnam War. However, keep the “Vietnam” of it all vague. Just jungle, uniform (see refrence below) and M-16, so that the image looks like it didn’t happen yesterday yet remains a bit timeless.

END OF PAGE THREE

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PAGE FOUR (4 PANELS) PANEL 1 Back in the present with Flash and Fazekas. still consulting his file.

Fazekas is

GENERAL FAZEKAS You got your discharge, yadda yadda yadda... then they called up inactive reserves... yadda yadda yadda... you’re in Iraq, am I right?

While the page is an important one for the reader, with important plot and character information conveyed—especially the discomfort between Flash and the General. It’s also static, with Flash confined to the bed, and the General sitting at his side. Kitson keeps shifting angles, expertly interpreting Guggenheim’s instructions, and makes the scene feel active.

FLASH If the file says so... GENERAL FAZEKAS The file says so. And I’ll tell you what else the file says. PANEL 2 Close on Flash.

Completely surprised.

GENERAL FAZEKAS (OFF-PANEL) It says I’m supposed to interview you in connection with a recommendation you receive the Medal of Honor. PANEL 3 Back to a two-shot. Fazekas looks pleased his bombshell has had the desired effect. Flash still looks shellshocked. GENERAL FAZEKAS You mind if I ask you a few questions? FLASH Sir, you can ask more’n a few. PANEL 4 Close on General Fazekas.

A thin smile.

GENERAL FAZEKAS Yeah, I figured that’d be your reaction. (cont’d) AMAZING SPIDER-MAN • “FLASHBACKS” (3rd Draft) • MARC GUGGENHEIM • PAGE 8 OF 40

Y’know, we’ve only awarded two Medals of Honor for service in Iraq so far, so this is kind of a special thing and the M.O.H. is pretty special to begin with. (cont’d) Generally (that’s a little pun), I like to get some background on the candidate first... (cont’d) You grew up in Queens, New York... END OF PAGE FOUR

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN #574 NUTS & BOLTS | 63

PAGE FIVE (5 PANELS)

On this page, we learn something new about a long-established character: that Flash had a difficult relationship with an abusive father. It adds texture to how the readers think about Flash, without contradicting anything we’ve learned about him in the past. Another skillful thing Guggenheim does here is reveal that, because the teenager idolized “at best, a masked vigilante, and at worst, a super-powered menace,” the FBI opened a file on Flash. And when Dr. Doom (only alluded to in dialogue, to keep the General’s point-of-view “real world,”) actually captured Flash (thinking he was Spider-Man), of course the government took an interest in the teenager. Again, Guggenheim brings us a new way of thinking about a character we may feel we know everything about.

PANEL 1 Widen back out to a two-shot of Flash and Fazekas. Reestablishing. Fazekas is reading from his file again. Yessir.

FLASH Forrest Hills.

GENERAL FAZEKAS Father was a policeman, I see. I suppose you grew up following his example. PANEL 2 Flashback. A teenaged Flash Thompson is getting punched by his father, HARRISON. It’s a sloppy, messy, nasty punch. Harrison wears a 1960s POLICE UNIFORM. His free hand clutches an empty LIQUOR BOTTLE. HARRISON THOMPSON Who’d your mom step out on me with, huh?! It must’ve been somebody, ‘cause there’s no way a loser like you could be any son of mine! PANEL 3 Back to the Present. looks surprised.

Fazekas reading the file.

Flash

FLASH Not really. There was another-Forget it. It’s stupid.

Of course, Kitson’s effortless-seeming visual storytelling makes these touches effective without the reader having to be hit over the head with the info.

GENERAL FAZEKAS Spider-Man is stupid? FLASH THOMPSON How did you--? GENERAL FAZEKAS In high school you started a SpiderMan Fan Club. The first of only three in the whole country, in fact.

FLASH THOMPSON Um, who told you--?

AMAZING SPIDER-MAN • “FLASHBACKS” (3rd Draft) • MARC GUGGENHEIM • PAGE 10 OF 40

GENERAL FAZEKAS It’s in your FBI file. FLASH THOMPSON I have an FBI file? PANEL 4 Close on General Fazekas.

Laying out his case.

GENERAL FAZEKAS Son, you started a club celebrating the exploits of, at best, a masked vigilante and, at worst, a superpowered menace to law and order. (cont’d) Of course, the FBI opened a file. (cont’d) And even if they hadn’t when you started the fan club, they certainly would’ve after you got abducted by the leader of a sovereign nation. PANEL 5 Flashback. Back to the events of Amazing Spider-Man #5. Young Flash is wearing the SPIDEY COSTUME (draw it in the old Ditko style with the big webs under the arms):

Flash is being held up by the throat in DR. DOOM’s iron grip. The Spidey mask is torn, almost in half, revealing Flash’s terrified face. YOUNG FLASH Let me out of here! Please! I’m not Spider-Man! You’re making a big mistake! Honest! You’ve got to believe me! You’ve got to!

Bah! END OF PAGE FIVE

THE END 64 | WRITE NOW

DR. DOOM Silence, you cringing sniveling coward! The famous Spider-Man! You’re nothing but a frightened weakling!

BEING DISCOVERED …AGAIN… AND AGAIN…AND AGAIN…

by Alex Grecian

riter Alex Grecian and artist Riley Rossmo are the co-creators of the Proof series, published by Image. (Issue #17 should be out in late February.) Here’s how Alex describes the inspiration for Proof:

“One evening, as my wife and I were having dinner with friends, somebody said he knew why Bigfoot hadn’t been captured yet: he works for the government. Everybody laughed and picked up their forks. I picked up a pen and began writing. The scene I wrote on my napkin eventually became the opening section of the first issue. “I e-mailed the idea to Riley that night and he loved it. “If Bigfoot were real, what would he want? Why would he work for the government? What would they have to offer him? The more I thought about it, the more fully-developed John ‘Proof’ Prufrock became.” But how Alex got Proof published—what in his career led to that moment—is what I wanted to know about. Like everyone else who earns all or part of his or her living making comics, Alex has his story of when that “magic moment” (or series of them) happened, where he went from being an “outsider” to being an “insider” of some kind. He tells that story here. Cover to Proof #1, by Riley Rossmo and Tyler Jenkins.

As with all first-person accounts in Write Now!, the idea behind printing such an article is not so a reader can do exactly what Alex or any other writer did (although attempting to do so would make an interesting premise for a story), but to inspire you to look at your own life, skills, contacts, etc. and see how you might be able to use them, as Alex used his. So read and learn (and it wouldn’t kill you to buy an issue of Proof—you might just like it)… —DF My goal, for as long as I can remember, was always

to create comics. But I’m pretty sure I took the most circuitous route possible to get there. I can’t point to a single moment and say “that’s when I was discovered.” But most of the progress I’ve made in my writing career has come about because the right person saw my work at the right time. The catch, of course, is that I’ve done an awful lot of work that reached the wrong person at the wrong time. Or didn’t reach anyone at all. And much of the work I’ve done, work which has fed directly into my writing BEING DISCOVERED ... AGAIN | 65

career, seemed at the time to have nothing to do with writing. Growing up, I didn’t know anybody else my age who liked comic books. When I reached that magic point at which future pros often begin to specialize, there was no one else around to specialize along with me. So I did everything myself. I created my own characters and “revamped” existing characters, wrote stories about them, drew them, practiced lettering... The only thing I didn’t bother with was coloring. After all, some of my favorite comics were black-and-white. I grew up in an environment where creativity was valued. My father was (and is) a professional writer, so that always seemed to me to be an achievable career goal. I wanted to write the Great American Novel. And, in my spare time, I wanted to draw comic books. So, during college, while I busied myself writing prose, I put together a portfolio and went about breaking into the comics industry as an artist. For some reason, it never occurred to me to combine my two career goals

and concentrate on writing comics. If it had, I might not have poured so much energy into drawing them, since that was always the weaker of my creative skill sets. I met Ande Parks while I was in college. He was on the verge of breaking into the industry as an inker and he introduced me to some of his friends. Through him, I met Phil Hester, who was doing some work for Caliber Comics and let me write and draw a two-page backup story for a book he was doing called Fringe. That was my first published work (if you don’t count some uncredited inking assists I did for Ande). I drew pinups for other Caliber books and, after meeting Batton Lash at a convention, sent some pinups and a back cover to him for his series, Supernatural Law. Batton introduced me to the writer, and soon-to-be publisher, Nat Gertler. Before I knew it, I was drawing The Factor for him. Our first Factor story was published in Negative Burn, another Caliber series, this one edited by Joe Pruett. The Factor spun off into its own anthology series through Nat’s new About Comics line, and I drew more of it, then moved on to draw another series for Nat. He was incredibly patient as I began to slow down. Each story took me longer to draw than the previous one had and each story looked worse than the one before it. I was discovering I didn’t enjoy drawing other peoples’ stories. Nat’s a fine writer, but I didn’t want to illustrate his scripts. I wanted to be doing what he was doing, not what I was doing. I learned how to format a script by looking at his and started writing scripts of my own. But I was still concentrating on the wrong end of the process by only writing stories I planned to draw. I still thought of myself primarily as an artist. Meanwhile, comics weren’t paying the rent. I took my portfolio around to ad agencies and print shops and got some work doing spot illustrations. On the strength of some brochures I’d designed, I landed a day job working for a printer/publisher, and learned how to get magazines ready for the press. That turned out to be valuable knowledge when I eventually began putting together a monthly comic book series for Image. But I’m getting ahead of myself…

66 | WRITE NOW

While I was working in the prepress department for that publisher, I was still freelancing as an artist and graphic designer and got head-hunted by an ad agency for a full-time gig. I’d done some illustrations for them and had been invited to sit in on a handful of brainstorming sessions as they worked on new campaigns for their clients. Brainstorming new ideas and fleshing

them out into new campaigns was a blast and the agency was using many of my concepts, but only paying me for the graphic design work I did. They hired me as an illustrator, but with the understanding that I’d be involved in the entire creative process. I flourished there, getting “promoted” within the agency from drawing spot illustrations to creating storyboards, writing ad copy and, eventually, directing TV spots. All of those skills helped me to think visually in my writing. But one of the agency’s partners didn’t fully understand the creative process and thought I might use up all of my good ideas on comic books. He was afraid I’d have nothing left for advertising work and required me to sign a non-compete contract that specified I wouldn’t do any freelance comic book work. The contract said nothing about prose fiction so I continued to work on my novel and spec screenplays. I also started writing and drawing minicomics, giving them away to pros at local conventions and mailing them to creators I admired. One of those creators, Scott McCloud, chose my story, “Little Remains,” for inclusion in his anthology 24-Hour Comics. That book also featured stories by Neil Gaiman and Steve Bissette. I was in such good company that I decided to use that credit as a springboard for a comic book writing career. That ridiculous non-compete contract had kept me from doing what I loved for too long. I quit my job at the agency, abandoned the still-unfinished novel I’d been working on and finally started writing and pitching comic book stories. With the McCloud-book credit as my “foot-in-thedoor,” one of those pitches was picked up by two publishers at the same time and I found myself in a bind. I researched comic book agents, picked the one with the most impressive client list, and sent him a letter, explaining my situation and my general inability to negotiate anything with anyone. I heard back from him within the week.

Rossmo’s art for a Seven Sons promotional piece 2009 Alexander Grecian and Riley Rossmo.]

drawing title sequences for ESPN, we sent the eightpage pitch to AiT/Planet Lar, but were told that we’d have to finish the book before AiT would seriously consider it for publication. So we finished it.

The pitch that got me the attention of two publishers and an agent has still never seen the light of day. My new agent didn’t like the deals I’d set up with either publisher and never had any luck placing that series elsewhere. But having done the work of selling that pitch put me in a better position to attract someone who could help me sell future work.

While Riley was painting Seven Sons, I started work on another prose novel, this time paying attention to something I enjoyed writing, crime fiction, rather than trying to write to a specific market. I finished my first crime novel in five months, sent it to my agent (who knew some literary agents) and immediately started my second crime novel. It took me nine months to finish that second book, mostly because other things kept happening. What “things”?

I was in the right place at the right time again when I met Riley Rossmo at the 2004 Comic-Con International in San Diego. We hit it off and put together an original graphic novel pitch called Seven Sons. Again trading on my single anthology credit and Riley’s experience

Well, for starters, when Seven Sons was published, we got a fan letter from Brian Wood, who’d done a lot of writing for AiT, Image and Vertigo. He loved Seven Sons and wanted to know what else we were doing. He was kind enough to give us an introduction to pubBEING DISCOVERED ... AGAIN | 67

lisher Eric Stephenson at Image. Riley and I enjoyed working together and wanted to follow up Seven Sons with something new, but didn’t know what. I contacted Joe Pruett, who’d published that early story of mine in Negative Burn. He’d relaunched Negative Burn through Image and remembered me. He was willing to publish anything I sent him, so Riley and I put together a short story about Bigfoot. As Riley and I were working on what would become Proof, and I was finishing my second novel, another publisher contacted my agent. I’d met the publisher at a convention and he liked my work. We’d Alex and Riley's first Proof story appeared in been looking for a project to do together, but hadn’t hit on Negative Burn #7. [© 2009 the copyright holders.] the right thing yet. He knew I’d written some scripts and asked if I could adapt one of his existing comic book series for the screen. My treatment wasn’t an unqualified success, and went through many rewrites, but it did pave the way for me to write more for the screen by giving me a screenplay sample to show around. I’m currently hard at work on a horror screenplay. While I was working on the publisher’s treatment and on my second novel, Riley and I decided our Bigfoot story would make a great ongoing series. We put together the entire first issue of Proof for Image because we assumed, from our experience with AiT, that we needed to have a completed project before we’d be seriously considered. We didn’t hear anything from them, so we sent them the second issue too. By the time we got a green light, we’d completed three issues of Proof and were on a roll. The enormous risk involved in producing so much of the series on spec has paid off tremendously for us, giving us a big headstart and helping us stay on schedule. It took me a long time to get around to achieving my dream. But everything else I’ve written—ad copy, movie treatments, novels, short stories—has hopefully made me a better comic book writer. And, looking back, I guess I can say I’ve been “discovered” over and over again. The comic book industry 68 | WRITE NOW

is full of gracious people and I haven’t been given enough words here to list them all. Without some of them, I might still be trying to break in as an artist! ALEX GRECIAN writes for a variety of media. His critically-acclaimed ongoing comics series, Proof, drawn by Riley Rossmo), is now in its second year of publication. The first two Proof trades, “Goatsucker” and “The Company of Men” are available now. He has several completed upcoming projects, including a series of all-ages graphic novels called Squeak! (with artist Kelly Tindall), a digital spin-off of Proof called Scotland Yard (with Riley Rossmo), and a series of prose crime novels.

“BUT WHAT DOES DANNY THINK?!” E

arly issues of Write Now! contained editorials from yours truly with the above title. Hey, I had my name above the mag’s logo, so I figured I should make some attempt at providing profound observations (or something like them) for my readers.

But as the WN went on, I realized that I was more interested in the opinions of the people we were interviewing and who were writing articles for the magazine. I already knew what I thought! Still, this is my last chance, in this context, to comment on the state of comics writing, although, I have to say, I still pretty much feel the same way:

So those are Write Now!’s parting words of advice: Write well. There. Got that out of my system. Now, let’s get to wrapping some other points up… I think it’s pretty cool that Write Now! lasted 20 issues, spawned a “Best Of” volume, and a how-to book and DVD (the latter two with Draw! ’s EIC Mike Manley). I think it’s pretty cool that even people who didn’t buy WN knew of it and thought it was the best magazine about writing comics. That it was the only magazine about writing comics was besides the point. Write Now! gave a place for people to come for information about writing comics and related media. I was able to get the best and brightest, as well as the up-and-coming, to talk about writing and the writing life in a way that they rarely get to do. We got people to talk about their creative process, and what they do to deal with setbacks, and to actually show— with scripts and art—how they pull the rabbits out of the hat. To hear that the magazine helped people find their own way and their own voice makes me very proud and happy over what we’ve accomplished.

It all started here, with Mark Bagley’s incredible cover to Write Now! #1.

[© 2009 Mark Bagley.] Comics are an incredible medium. They can tell any kind of story, or even convey mood, feelings, and ideas without the need for conventional narrative. By the same token, I do feel that a writer who sets out to write genre narratives (such as superhero stories) has an obligation to his or her readers to make stories clear and comprehensible. (It goes without saying that the more exciting, intriguing, interesting, novel, and colorful and all those other great things a story is, the better.)

Job #1 of a genre writer is making sure readers know who the characters are and what the status quo of those characters is. Everything else takes off from there. I’m not advocating doing these basics in a hackneyed or formulaic way. As legendary editor Julius Schwartz used to say, “be original.” There are great comics that experiment with time and place and character and convention. This is a wonderful thing. But if your goal is to tell genre stories to people who like genre stories—then do just that. Learn your craft. And if your editors and your peers—or even your teachers— won’t teach you, read up on what the masters of the craft have done in the past—and then adapt the principles they used to a modern audience.

It’s been a great ride, and there are a lot of people to thank. So let me start… Who Does Danny Thank? The list has to start with JOHN MORROW. From the moment I called him and pitched the idea for a writing magazine, he has been nothing but supportive. John and the entire TwoMorrows crew—especially ERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON—have always been nothing but a pleasure to work with. Thanks, folks! I also have to thank MIKE MANLEY, first for not getting ticked (or not telling me if he was) that I got the idea for WN from seeing the great work he was doing with his TwoMorrows art-oriented how-to magazine, BUT WHAT DOES DANNY THINK | 69

DRAW! Mike and I go back to when we were the writer-artist team on Darkhawk. It was great to once again be on the same publishing team as Mike, and to partner with him on the WNDraw crossover that blossomed into the How To Create Comics paperback and How To Draw Comics DVD.

Also deserving of massive thanks are people who took a chance on Write Now! by being interviewed or writing for it early on, no questions asked. This list would include: STAN LEE, BRIAN BENDIS, TOM DEFALCO, MARK BAGLEY, ERIK LARSEN, J.M. DEMATTEIS, JOE QUESADA, JIMMY PALMIOTTI, JIM SALICRUP, STAN BERKOWITZ, TODD ALCOTT, and ANNE D. BERNSTEIN. Other Friends of ol’ Write Now! (or FOOWN) would would have to include: MICHAEL USLAN, BRUCE JONES, TODD McFARLANE, TOM BREVOORT, MIKE MARTS, PAUL DINI, JEPH LOEB, J.M. STRACZYNSKI, NEIL GAIMAN, KURT BUSIEK, MIKE CARLIN, Howard Chaykin’s drawing of Reuben Flagg graced the cover of WN #4. [American Flagg TM & PAUL LEVITZ, © 2009 Howard Chaykin.] HOWARD CHAYKIN, RON FRENZ, SAL BUSCEMA, MICHAEL OEMING, NEAL ADAMS, STEVEN GRANT, JOHN OSTRANDER, CHRISTOS GAGE, JIM McCANN, DAVID HYDE, ALEX SEGURA, CHRIS IRVING, and a bunch of other folks I’m no doubt forgetting. THANK YOU!

On the staff front, thanks have to go out for stellar editorial help to BOB BRODSKY, ERIC FEIN, LIZ GEHRLEIN, and BOB GREENBERGER. For awesome design work—which often included suggesting and hunting down art—gratitude to CHRIS DAY, RICH FOWLKES, JOHN McCARTHY, and DAVID GRENAWALT. And hats off to the king of transcribers, Mr. STEVEN TICE! In addition to the above-mentioned Mr. Manley, many thanks for help and support to fellow TwoMorrows editors JOHN MORROW (wearing his other hat), ROY THOMAS, MICHAEL EURY, BOB McLEOD, and JON B. COOKE. Gratitude and love to my wife VARDA, my sons ETHAN and JACOB, and to BLANCHE, JIM, and PAT FINGEROTH for their faith in Write Now!, as well as in my other hare-brained schemes.

Thanks to the teachers, peers, and colleagues who helped me learn my craft, and to the great storytellers whose work inspired and continues to inspire me. Finally, cliché as it may sound, I thank you, the readers of Write Now!—not just for buying and reading the magazine—but for making a point of writing in or coming up to me at conventions to tell me how much you get out of the magazine. That means more than you can know. May your writing grow and thrive. Well, that’s it for now. You can still get hold of me via the WriteNowDF@aol.com, and you can still get back issues of Write Now!, either in print or via digital download at www.twomorrows.com. Write Away! Danny Fingeroth Editor-in-Chief

70 | WRITE NOW

Feedback

Letters from our readers

Here’s the last WN lettercol. Not much to say except to thank everybody who took the time to write in and tell me what you thought of the magazine. Your comments were always appreciated and seriously considered by me and the rest of the WN staff. Before we get to comments on the end of WN, we have a correction to last issue’s “Amazing True Stories: Writing Non-Fiction Comics,” by Jim Ottaviani. Seems that, despite the fact that at least four people proofread the article, the word “research,” which was used multiple times in Jim’s diagrams, was misspelled a couple of those times. (And now that I’m looking, I see that one diagram instructs you to “Wait with baited breath.” That would mean to have worms in your mouth. I believe the correct term is “bated breath.”) Here’s the official correction: A quick note on Jim Ottaviani’s flowchart in issue #19’s “Amazing True Stories”: Because of a production mix-up, it appears as if neither Jim nor the Write Now! editors did the appropriate research on how to spell “research.” The irony isn’t lost on any of us, we regret the error, and assure you that we do know how to use a dikshunairy. And now, on to some of the wonderful e-mailed comments I received when word of WN’s cancellation hit: Write Now! was really a terrific magazine, Danny, and you did a great job with it. It will be missed! Tom DeFalco (Former Marvel Editor-in-Chief, current writer of Amazing Spider-Girl) Just read about Write Now! folding. Sorry to hear it. It was a really fun magazine and you did a fantastic job with it, Danny. I was really happy to have been part of it along the way. J.M. DeMatteis (Writer of Moonshadow, Brooklyn Dreams, Abadazad and Editor-in-Chief of Ardden Entertainment) So bummed to read that Write Now! will be closing shop. What a shame—you have really done such a nice job with that book. Ed Catto (Publisher of Captain Action comics) I’m sorry to hear that Write Now! is stopping publication. I thought it a great magazine and something that the field really needed. All the other magazines in the comics world are geared toward the artist and the drawings. Write Now! was

the only one that dealt with writing. What a loss to the comics field. Marc Bilgrey (Author of And Don’t Forget to Rescue the Princess, and its upcoming sequel, And Don’t Forget to Rescue the OTHER Princess.) I’m so sorry to hear that Write Now! will soon be ending. It has been my favorite of the TwoMorrows magazines. I have every issue, and every now and then I’ll re-read an issue or two because of the informative and helpful info in it. Johnny Lowe (Letterer of 10th Muse and other fine comics) I’m crushed that Write Now! is being canceled. I subscribe and have given a subscription as a gift. Would it help if I added another subscription to Write Now!? Hey, if that’s what it takes… Scott Ryfun Say it isn’t so! As an aspiring writer this was the best comic book magazine for writers and the best comic book magazine out there, period. I loved the in-depth interviews and the script samples in Write Now! It really was a pleasure to read it…. This is really a special magazine. Pawel Goj I’m very sorry to see Write Now! go (both for its unique and valuable content, and because of knowing Danny Fingeroth), but I understand the difficulties of the niche publishing business. Sean Flahaven (Writer, composer, orchestrator, conductor, and producer— and graduate of the Danny Fingeroth-Dennis O’Neil tag-team writing course at NYU) Thanks everybody. And don’t forget, you can still get back issues (in print or electronically) as well as the Best Of Write Now! trade paperback, the How to Create Comics from Script to Print paperback and the How To Draw Comics From Script to Print DVD (the latter two co-created with DRAW!’s EIC, Mike Manley) from www.twomorrows.com and/or finer comics and bookshops, If you have any further questions or comments for me about Write Now!—or anything else—you can still contact me at WriteNowDF@aol.com, or c/o TwoMorrows, 10407 Bedfordtown Road, Raleigh, NC 27614. Thanks for writing! —Danny Fingeroth

FEEDBACK | 71

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NEVER-BEFORE-PUBLISHED galleries (complete with extensive commentaries by the artists) by PAUL SMITH, GIL KANE, CULLY HAMNER, DALE KEOWN, and ASHLEY WOOD, plus a feature interview and art by STEVE RUDE, an examination of JOHN ALBANO and TONY DeZUNIGA’s work on Jonah Hex, new STEVE RUDE COVER, plus a FREE BACK ISSUE #23 PREVIEW!

Features a new interview and cover by BRIAN STELFREEZE, interview with BUTCH GUICE, extensive art galleries/commentary by IAN CHURCHILL, DAVE COCKRUM, and COLLEEN DORAN, MIKE GAGNON looks at independent comics, with art and comments by ANDREW BARR, BRANDON GRAHAM, and ASAF HANUKA! Includes a FREE ALTER EGO #73 PREVIEW!

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Features an in-depth interview and cover by TIM TOWNSEND, CRAIG HAMILTON, DAN JURGENS, and HOWARD PORTER offer preliminary art and commentaries, MARIE SEVERIN career retrospective, graphic novels feature with art and comments by DAWN BROWN, TOMER HANUKA, BEN TEMPLESMITH, and LANCE TOOKS, and more! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: NOV073966

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ROUGH STUFF #9

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ROUGH STUFF #8 Features an in-depth interview and cover painting by the extraordinary MIKE MAYHEW, preliminary and unpublished art by ALEX HORLEY, TONY DeZUNIGA, NICK CARDY, and RAFAEL KAYANAN (including commentary by each artist), a look at the great Belgian comic book artists, a “Rough Critique” of MIKE MURDOCK’s work, and more! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB084188

Editor and pro inker BOB McLEOD features four interviews this issue: ROB HAYNES (interviewed by fellow professional TIM TOWNSEND), JOE JUSKO, MEL RUBI, and SCOTT WILLIAMS, with a new painted cover by JUSKO, and an article by McLEOD examining "Inkers: Who needs ’em?" along with other features, including a Rough Critique of RUDY VASQUEZ! (100-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY084263

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WRITE NOW! (edited by Spider-Man writer DANNY FINGEROTH), the magazine for writers of comics, animation, and sci-fi, puts you in the minds of today’s top writers and editors. Each issue features WRITING TIPS from pros on both sides of the desk, INTERVIEWS, SAMPLE SCRIPTS, REVIEWS, exclusive NUTS & BOLTS tutorials, and more!

Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with all the issues at HALF-PRICE! 4-ISSUE SUBSCRIPTIONS: $26 US Postpaid by Media Mail ($36 First Class, $44 Canada, $60 Surface, $72 Airmail).

WRITE NOW! #1

WRITE NOW! #2

WRITE NOW! #3

Get practical advice and tips on writing from top pros on BOTH SIDES of the desk! MARK BAGLEY cover and interview, BRIAN BENDIS & STAN LEE interviews, JOE QUESADA on what editors really want, TOM DeFALCO, J.M. DeMATTEIS, and more!

ERIK LARSEN cover and interview, writers STAN BERKOWITZ (JLA cartoon), TODD ALCOTT (“ANTZ”), LEE NORDLING (Platinum Studios), ANNE D. BERNSTEIN (MTV’s “Daria”), step-by-step on scripting Spider-Girl, 10 rules for writers, and more!

BRUCE JONES on writing The Hulk, AXEL ALONSO on state-of-the-art editing, DENNY O’NEIL offers tips for comics writers, KURT BUSIEK shows how he scripts, plus JIMMY PALMIOTTI, JOEY CAVALIERI, and more! New MIKE DEODATO cover!

(88-page magazine) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY022406

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WRITE NOW! #4

WRITE NOW! #5

WRITE NOW! #6

WRITE NOW! #7

WRITE NOW! #8

HOWARD CHAYKIN on writing for comics and TV, PAUL DINI on animated writing, DENNY O’NEIL offers more tips for comics writers, KURT BUSIEK shows how he scripts, plus FABIAN NICIEZA, DeFALCO & FRENZ, and more! New CHAYKIN cover!

WILL EISNER discusses his comics writing, J. MICHAEL STRACZYNSKI on Hollywood writing, BOB SCHRECK details his work on Batman, DENNY O’NEIL’s notes from his writing classes, FABIAN NICIEZA, PAUL DINI, and more! CASTILLO/RAMOS cover!

BRIAN BENDIS and MICHAEL AVON OEMING in-depth on making an issue of Powers, MARK WAID on writing Fantastic Four, BOB SCHRECK’s interview continues from last issue, DIANA SCHUTZ, SCOTT M. ROSENBERG, & more! OEMING cover!

JEPH LOEB and CHUCK DIXON give indepth interviews (with plenty of rare and unseen art), JOHN JACKSON MILLER discusses writing, MARK WHEATLEY on his new Image series, & more NUTS & BOLTS how-to’s on writing! TIM SALE cover!

Part One of “how-to”crossover with DRAW! #9, as DANNY FINGEROTH and MIKE MANLEY create an all-new character and ideas are proposed and modified to get a character’s look & origins! Plus interviews with DON McGREGOR & STUART MOORE!

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WRITE NOW! #9

WRITE NOW! #10

WRITE NOW! #11

WRITE NOW! #12

WRITE NOW! #13

NEAL ADAMS discusses his own writing (with rare art and a NEW ADAMS COVER), GEOFF JOHNS discusses writing for comics, a feature on the secrets of PITCHING COMICS IDEAS, MICHAEL OEMING and BATTON LASH on writing, plus more NUTS & BOLTS how-to’s on writing and sample scripts!

Interviews and lessons by Justice League Unlimited’s DWAYNE McDUFFIE, interview with Hate’s PETER BAGGE conducted by JOEY CAVALIERI, comics scripter/editor GERRY CONWAY, writer/editor PAUL BENJAMIN, plus more NUTS & BOLTS how-to’s on writing and sample scripts, and a JUSTICE LEAGUE UNLIMITED cover!

STAN LEE, NEIL GAIMAN, MARK WAID, PETER DAVID, J.M. DeMATTEIS, TOM DeFALCO, DENNY O’NEIL, and 18 others reveal PROFESSIONAL WRITING SECRETS, plus DeFALCO and RON FRENZ on working together, JOHN OSTRANDER on creating characters, and an all-new SPIDER-GIRL cover by FRENZ and SAL BUSCEMA!

DC Comics president PAUL LEVITZ on the art, craft and business of comics writing, STEVE ENGLEHART’s thoughts on writing for today’s market, survey of TOP COMICS EDITORS on how to submit work to them, Marvel Editor ANDY SCHMIDT on how to break in, T. CAMPBELL on writing for webcomics, plus a new GEORGE PÉREZ cover!

X-MEN 3 screenwriter SIMON KINBERG interviewed, DENNIS O’NEIL on translating BATMAN BEGINS into a novel, Central Park Media’s STEPHEN PAKULA discusses manga writing, KURT BUSIEK on breaking into comics, MIKE FRIEDRICH on writers’ agents, script samples, new RON LIM /AL MILGROM cover, and more!

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WRITE NOW! #17

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HEROES ISSUE featuring series creator/ writer TIM KRING, writer JEPH LOEB, and others, interviews with DC Comics’ DAN DiDIO and Marvel’s DAN BUCKLEY, PETER DAVID on writing STEPHEN KING’S DARK TOWER COMIC, MICHAEL TEITELBAUM, C.B. CEBULSKI, DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF, Nuts & Bolts script and art examples, and more!

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WRITE NOW! #14

WRITE NOW! #15

WRITE NOW! #16

BRIAN BENDIS interview, STAN LEE, TODD McFARLANE, PETER DAVID and others on writing Spider-Man, pencil art and script from MARVEL CIVIL WAR #1 by MILLAR and McNIVEN, JIM STARLIN on Captain Comet and The Weird, LEE NORDLING on Comics in Hollywood, and a new ALEX MALEEV cover!

J.M. DeMATTEIS interview on Abadazad with MIKE PLOOG, DC’s 52 series scripting how-to by RUCKA/JOHNS/MORRISON/ WAID, KEITH GIFFEN breakdowns, pencil art by JOE BENNETT, JOHN OSTRANDER on writing, STAR TREK novelist BILL McCAY on dealing with editors, samples of scripts and art, and more, plus a FREE ROUGH STUFF #4 PREVIEW!

Interview with Spawn’s TODD McFARLANE, Silver Surfer writers roundtable, script and pencil art from BRIAN BENDIS and FRANK CHO’s MIGHTY AVENGERS and from DAN SLOTT’s AVENGERS: THE INITIATIVE, an interview, script and art by DOUGLAS RUSHKOFF on his acclaimed graphic novel TESTAMENT, cover by MIKE ZECK, plus a FREE DRAW #14 PREVIEW!

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WRITE NOW! #19 WRITE NOW! #18

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Celebration of STAN LEE’s 85th birthday, including rare examples of comics, TV, and movie scripts from the Stan Lee Archives, tributes by JOHN ROMITA, SR., JOE QUESADA, ROY THOMAS, DENNIS O’NEIL, JIMMY PALMIOTTI, JIM SALICRUP, TODD McFARLANE, LOUISE SIMONSON, MARK EVANIER, and others, plus art by KIRBY, DITKO, ROMITA, and more! (80-page magazine) $6.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB084191

DARK KNIGHT and SPIRIT executive producer MICHAEL USLAN on the writing process for films, Dennis O’Neil on adapting THE DARK KNIGHT movie to novel form, BRIAN BENDIS script and LEINIL YU pencils from Marvel’s SECRET INVASION #1, mystery and comics writer MAX ALAN COLLINS discusses his career and upcoming projects, MARK MILLAR script and BRYAN HITCH pencils from their upcoming run on FF, DAN SLOTT script and STEVE McNIVEN pencils from Spider-Man’s BRAND NEW DAY, inside info on DC’s online ZUDA COMICS imprint from RON PERAZZA, ALEX GRECIAN talks about the making of his Image series PROOF!, and more! (80-page magazine) $6.95 Ships July 2008

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Annual Membership with one of $ these posters: 40 In The US

Captain America 23” x 29”

1941 Captain America 14” x 23”

Strange Tales 23” x 29”

Super Powers 17” x 22” color

Annual Membership with one of $ these posters: 50 In The US The Jack Kirby Museum and Research Center is organized exclusively for educational purposes; more specifically, to promote and encourage the study, understanding, preservation and appreciation of the work of Jack Kirby by: • illustrating the scope of Kirby's multi-faceted career • communicating the stories, inspirations and influences of Jack Kirby • celebrating the life of Jack Kirby and his creations • building understanding of comic books and comic book creators To this end, the Museum will sponsor and otherwise support study, teaching, conferences, discussion groups, exhibitions, displays, publications and cinematic, theatrical or multimedia productions.

Marvel 14” x 23”

Galactic Head 18” x 20” color

Incan Visitation 24” x 18” color

JOIN THE JACK KIRBY MUSEUM: www.kirbymuseum.org Jack Kirby Museum & Research Center • PO Box 5236 • Hoboken, NJ 07030 USA • Telephone: (201) 963-4383

DIGITAL

DRAW! (edited by top comics artist MIKE MANLEY) is the professional “HOW-TO” magazine on NS EDITIO BLE comics, cartooning, and animation. Each issue AILA LY V A features in-depth INTERVIEWS and DEMOS from FOR ON5 top pros on all aspects of $3.9 graphic storytelling, as well as such skills as layout, penciling, inking, lettering, coloring, Photoshop techniques, plus web guides and techniques, tips, tricks, and a handy reference source—this magazine has it all!

#1: ORDWAY, GIBBONS

#2: BLEVINS, TARTAKOVSKY

#3: RIVOCHE, GIORDANO

(108 pages with COLOR) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(116 pages with COLOR) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

(80 pages with COLOR) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

DRAW! #25

LEE WEEKS (Daredevil, Incredible Hulk) gives insight into the artform, YILDIRAY ÇINAR (Noble Causes, Fury of the Firestorms) interview and demo, inker JOE RUBINSTEIN shows how he works, “Comic Art Bootcamp” with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, “Rough Critique” of a newcomer by BOB McLEOD, and “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies and software! Mature readers only.

NOTE: Some issues contain nudity for figure drawing instruction. INTENDED FOR MATURE READERS.

See page 32 for subscription rates! Go online for an ULTIMATE BUNDLE, with all print issues at HALF-PRICE!

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#4: NOWLAN, LARSEN

#5: OEMING, WIERINGO

#6: WRAY, DeSTEFANO

(88 pages with COLOR) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(96 pages with COLOR) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $3.95

#7: BRERETON, #8: BANCROFT, #9: CROSSOVER TRENHOLM HALEY, RUIZ w/ WRITE NOW

#10: GARNEY, NOLAN

#11: RUDE, BALLESTEROS

#12: BAKER, HAWTHORNE

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(112 pages with COLOR) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

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DRAW! #26

JOE JUSKO shows how he creates his amazing fantasy art, JAMAR NICHOLAS interviews artist JIMM RUGG (Street Angel, Afrodisiac, The P.L.A.I.N. Janes and Janes in Love, One Model Nation, and The Guild), new regular contributor JERRY ORDWAY on his behind-the-scenes working process, Comic Art Bootcamp with MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS, reviews of artist materials, and more! Mature readers only. (84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#13: HORLEY, COOVER

#14: MAHNKE, NEDELCU

#15: BACK TO SCHOOL ISSUE

#16: CHAYKIN, JAY STEPHENS

#17: BRYAN #18: GUERA, LEE O’MALLEY JAMES TUCKER

(88 pages with COLOR) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84 pages with COLOR) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

DRAW! #27

#19: DOUG BRAITHWAITE

#20: JAFFEE, SIMONSON

#21: HASPIEL, #22: WILLIAMS, MILLER, JANSON PANOSIAN

(84 pages with COLOR) $6.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

(84 pages with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

#23: OLIFFE, WILLIAMSON

#24: VALLEY, GLEN ORBIK

(84 pages with COLOR) $7.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

Top comics cover artist DAVE JOHNSON demos his creative process, STEPHEN SILVER shows how he designs characters for top animated series, plus new columnist JERRY ORDWAY presents “The Right Way, the Wrong Way, and the ORDWAY!”, “Crusty Critic” JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews art supplies, and hit “Comic Art Bootcamp” with Draw editor MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS! Mature readers only. (84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

HOW-TO BOOKS

DRAW! #28

FAREL DALRYMPLE shows how he produces Meathaus and Pop Gun War, director and storyboard/comics artist DAVE BULLOCK dissects his own work, columnist JERRY ORDWAY draws on his years of experience to show readers the Ord-way of creating comics, JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews the latest art supplies, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only. (84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

PANEL DISCUSSIONS

TOP ARTISTS DISCUSS THE DESIGN OF COMICS PANEL DISCUSSIONS offers the combined knowledge of more than a dozen of the comic book industry’s top storytellers, covering all aspects of the DESIGN of comics, from pacing, story flow, and word balloon placement, to using color to convey emotion, spotting blacks, and how gutters between panels affect the story! Art professor DURWIN TALON has assembled the top creators in the field to discuss all aspects of creative process, including: • WILL EISNER • MIKE WIERINGO • MIKE MIGNOLA • DAVID MAZZUCCHELLI • DICK GIORDANO • CHRIS MOELLER

DRAW! #29

DAVE DORMAN demonstrates his painting techniques for sci-fi, fantasy, and comic book cover, LeSEAN THOMAS (character designer and co-director of The Boondocks and Black Dynamite: The Animated Series) gives advice on today’s animation industry, new columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

• SCOTT HAMPTON • WALTER SIMONSON • MARK SCHULTZ • MIKE CARLIN • BRIAN STELFREEZE • MARK CHIARELLO

If you’re serious about creating effective, innovative comics, or just enjoying them from the creator’s perspective, this guide is must-reading!

HOW TO CREATE COMICS FROM SCRIPT TO PRINT REDESIGNED and EXPANDED version of the groundbreaking WRITE NOW!/ DRAW! crossover! DANNY FINGEROTH and MIKE MANLEY show step-by-step how to develop a new comic, from script and roughs to pencils, inks, colors, lettering—it even guides you through printing and distribution, and the finished 8-page color comic is included, so you can see their end result! PLUS: over 30 pages of ALL-NEW material, including “full” and “Marvel-style” scripts, a critique of their new character and comic from an editor’s point of view, new tips on coloring, new expanded writing lessons, and more! (108-page trade paperback with COLOR) $15.95 ISBN: 9781893905603 (Digital Edition) $5.95 Diamond Order Code: JAN101118

WORKING METHODS COMIC CREATORS DETAIL THEIR STORYTELLING & CREATIVE PROCESSES

Art professor JOHN LOWE puts the minds of comic artists under the microscope, highlighting the intricacies of the creative process step-by-step. For this book, three short scripts are each interpreted in different ways by professional comic artists to illustrate the varied ways in which they “see” and “solve” the problem of making a script succeed in comic form. It documents the creative and technical choices MARK SCHULTZ, TIM LEVINS, JIM MAHFOOD, SCOTT HAMPTON, KELSEY SHANNON, CHRIS BRUNNER, SEAN MURPHY, and PAT QUINN make as they tell a story, allowing comic fans, artists, instructors, and students into a world rarely explored. Hundreds of illustrated examples document the artists’ processes, and interviews clarify their individual approaches regarding storytelling and layout choices. The exercise may be simple, but the results are profoundly complex! (176-page trade paperback with COLOR) SOLD OUT (Digital Edition) $8.95

(208-page trade paperback with COLOR) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905146 (Digital Edition) $10.95 Diamond Order Code: MAY073781

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95

COMICS ABOVE GROUND

SEE HOW TOP ARTISTS MAKE A LIVING OUTSIDE COMICS

DRAW! #30

We focus the radar on Daredevil artist CHRIS SAMNEE (Agents of Atlas, Batman, Avengers, Captain America) with a how-to interview, comics veteran JACKSON GUICE (Captain America, Superman, Ruse, Thor) talks about his creative process and his new series Winter World, columnist JERRY ORDWAY shows his working process, plus more Comic Art Bootcamp by BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only. (84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Feb. 2015

COMICS ABOVE GROUND features comics pros discussing their inspirations and training, and how they apply it in “Mainstream Media,” including Conceptual Illustration, Video Game Development, Children’s Books, Novels, Design, Illustration, Fine Art, Storyboards, Animation, Movies and more! Written by DURWIN TALON (author of the top-selling book PANEL DISCUSSIONS), this book features creators sharing their perspectives on their work in comics and their “other professions,” with career overviews, never-before-seen art, and interviews! Featuring: • BRUCE TIMM • BERNIE WRIGHTSON • ADAM HUGHES • JEPH LOEB

• LOUISE SIMONSON • DAVE DORMAN • GREG RUCKA AND OTHERS!

(168-page trade paperback) $19.95 ISBN: 9781893905313 (Digital Edition) $8.95 Diamond Order Code: FEB042700

BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 1 BEST OF DRAW! VOL. 3 Compiles tutorials, interviews, and demonstrations from DRAW! #1-2, by DAVE GIBBONS (layout and drawing on the computer), BRET BLEVINS (figure drawing), JERRY ORDWAY (detailing his working methods), KLAUS JANSON and RICARDO VILLAGRAN (inking techniques), GENNDY TARTAKOVSKY (on animation and Samurai Jack), STEVE CONLEY (creating web comics and cartoons), PHIL HESTER and ANDE PARKS (penciling and inking), and more! Cover by BRET BLEVINS!

Compiles more of the best tutorials and interviews from DRAW! #5-7, including: Penciling by MIKE WIERINGO! Illustration by DAN BRERETON! Design by PAUL RIVOCHE! Drawing Hands, Lighting the Figure, and Sketching by BRET BLEVINS! Cartooning by BILL WRAY! Inking by MIKE MANLEY! Comics & Animation by STEPHEN DeSTEFANO! Digital Illustration by CELIA CALLE and ALBERTO RUIZ! Caricature by ZACH TRENHOLM, and much more! Cover by DAN BRERETON!

(200-page trade paperback with COLOR) $24.95 ISBN: 9781893905412 Diamond Order Code: AUG078141

(256-page trade paperback with COLOR) $29.95 ISBN: 9781893905917 Diamond Order Code: JAN083936

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The Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze In America, 1957-1972 Time-trip back to the frightening era of 1957-1972, when monsters stomped into the American mainstream! Once Frankenstein and fiends infiltrated TV in 1957, an avalanche of monster magazines, toys, games, trading cards, and comic books crashed upon an unsuspecting public. This profusely illustrated full-color hardcover covers that creepy, kooky Monster Craze through features on Famous Monsters of Filmland magazine, the #1 hit “Monster Mash,” Aurora’s model kits, TV shows (Shock Theatre, The Addams Family, The Munsters, and Dark Shadows), “Mars Attacks” trading cards, Eerie Publications, Planet of the Apes, and more! It features interviews with JAMES WARREN (Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella magazines), FORREST J ACKERMAN (Famous Monsters of Filmland), JOHN ASTIN (The Addams Family), AL LEWIS (The Munsters), JONATHAN FRID (Dark Shadows), GEORGE BARRIS (monster car customizer), ED “BIG DADDY” ROTH (Rat Fink), BOBBY (BORIS) PICKETT (Monster Mash singer/songwriter) and others, with a Foreword by TV horror host ZACHERLEY, the “Cool Ghoul.” Written by MARK VOGER (author of “The Dark Age”). (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $13.95 • ISBN: 9781605490649

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TwoMorrows. A New Day For Comics Fans! TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 E-mail: store@twomorrows.com • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

BACK ISSUE #84

BACK ISSUE #85

BACK ISSUE #86

BACK ISSUE #87

BACK ISSUE #88

“Supergirl in the Bronze Age!” Her 1970s and 1980s adventures, including her death in Crisis on Infinite Earths and her many rebirths. Plus: an ALAN BRENNERT interview, behind the scenes of the Supergirl movie starring HELEN SLATER, Who is Superwoman?, and a look at the DC Superheroes Water Ski Show. With PAUL KUPPERBERG, ELLIOT MAGGIN, MARV WOLFMAN, plus a jam cover recreation of ADVENTURE COMICS #397!

“Christmas in the Bronze Age!” Go behind the scenes of comics’ best holiday tales of the 1970s through the early 1990s! And we revisit Superhero Merchandise Catalogs of the late ‘70s! Featuring work by SIMON BISLEY, CHRIS CLAREMONT, JOSÉ LUIS GARCÍALÓPEZ, KEITH GIFFEN, the KUBERT STUDIO, DENNY O’NEIL, STEVE PURCELL, JOHN ROMITA, JR., and more. Cover by MARIE SEVERIN and MIKE ESPOSITO!

“Marvel Bronze Age Giants and Reprints!” In-depth exploration of Marvel’s GIANT-SIZE series, plus indexes galore of Marvel reprint titles, Marvel digests and Fireside Books editions, and the last days of the “Old” X-Men! Featuring work by DAN ADKINS, ROSS ANDRU, RICH BUCKLER, DAVE COCKRUM, GERRY CONWAY, STEVE GERBER, STAN LEE, WERNER ROTH, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover by JOHN ROMITA, SR.!

“Batman AND Superman!” Bronze Age World’s Finest, Super Sons, Batman/Superman Villain/Partner Swap, Jimmy Olsen and Lois Lane go solo, Superman/Radio Shack giveaways, and JLA #200’s “A League Divided” (as a nod to Batman v. Superman)! Featuring work by BRIAN BOLLAND, RICH BUCKLER, GERRY CONWAY, JACK KIRBY, GEORGE PÉREZ, JIM STARLIN, and more. Cover by DICK GIORDANO!

“Comics Magazines of the ‘70s and ‘80s!” From Savage Tales to Epic Illustrated, KIRBY’s “Speak-Out Series,” EISNER’s Spirit magazine, Unpublished PAUL GULACY, MICHAEL USLAN on the Shadow magazine you didn’t see, plus B&Ws from Atlas/Seaboard, Charlton, Skywald, and Warren. Featuring work by NEAL ADAMS, JOHN BOLTON, ARCHIE GOODWIN, DOUG MOENCH, EARL NOREM, ROY THOMAS, and more. Cover by GRAY MORROW!

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Sept. 2015

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships Nov. 2015

(100 FULL-COLOR pages) $9.95 (Digital Edition) $4.95 • Ships Jan. 2016

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships March 2016

(84 FULL-COLOR pages) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Ships April 2016

KIRBY COLLECTOR #67

ALTER EGO #135

ALTER EGO #136

ALTER EGO #137

ALTER EGO #138

UP-CLOSE & PERSONAL! Kirby interviews you weren’t aware of, photos and recollections from fans who saw him in person, personal anecdotes from Jack’s fellow pros, LEE and KIRBY cameos in comics, MARK EVANIER and other regular columnists, and more! Don’t let the photo cover fool you; this issue is chockfull of rare Kirby pencil art, from Roz Kirby’s private sketchbook, and Jack’s most personal comics stories!

LEN WEIN (writer/co-creator of Swamp Thing, Human Target, and Wolverine) talks about his early days in comics at DC and Marvel! Art by WRIGHTSON, INFANTINO, TRIMPE, DILLON, CARDY, APARO, THORNE, MOONEY, and others! Plus FCA (Fawcett Collectors of America), MR. MONSTER’s Comic Crypt, the Comics Code, and DAN BARRY! Cover by DICK GIORDANO with BERNIE WRIGHTSON!

BONUS 100-PAGE issue as ROY THOMAS talks to JIM AMASH about celebrating his 50th year in comics—and especially about the ‘90s at Marvel! Art by TRIMPE, GUICE, RYAN, ROSS, BUCKLER, HOOVER, KAYANAN, BUSCEMA, CHAN, VALENTINO, and others! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER’s Comic Crypt, AMY KISTE NYBERG on the Comics Code, and a cover caricature of Roy by MARIE SEVERIN!

Incredible interview with JIM SHOOTER, which chronicles the first decade of his career (Legion of Super-Heroes, Superman, Supergirl, Captain Action) with art by CURT SWAN, WALLY WOOD, GIL KANE, GEORGE PAPP, JIM MOONEY, PETE COSTANZA, WIN MORTIMER, WAYNE BORING, AL PLASTINO, et al.! Plus FCA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more! Cover art by CURT SWAN!

Science-fiction great (and erstwhile comics writer) HARLAN ELLISON talks about Captain Marvel and The Monster Society of Evil! Also, Captain Marvel artist/ co-creator C.C. BECK writes about the infamous Superman-Captain Marvel lawsuit of the 1940s and ‘50s in a double-size FCA section! Plus two titanic tributes to Golden Age artist FRED KIDA, MR. MONSTER, BILL SCHELLY, and more!

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COMIC BOOK CREATOR #9 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #10 COMIC BOOK CREATOR #11

DRAW! #31

DRAW! #32

JOE STATON on his comics career (from E-MAN, to co-creating The Huntress, and his current stint on the Dick Tracy comic strip), plus we showcase the lost treasure GODS OF MOUNT OLYMPUS drawn by Joe! Plus, Part One of our interview with the late STAN GOLDBERG, why JOHN ROMITA, JR. is the best comic book artist working, we quiz PABLO MARCOS about the days of Marvel horror, plus HEMBECK!

The Broadway sci-fi epic WARP examined! Interviews with art director NEAL ADAMS, director STUART (Reanimator) GORDON, playwright LENNY KLEINFELD, stage manager DAVID GORDON, and a look at Warp’s 1980s FIRST COMICS series! Plus: an interview with PETER (Hate!) BAGGE, our RICH BUCKLER interview Part One, GIANT WHAM-O COMICS, and the conclusion of our STAN GOLDBERG interview!

Retrospective on GIL KANE, co-creator of the modern Green Lantern and Atom, and early progenitor of the graphic novel. Kane cover newly-inked by KLAUS JANSON, plus remembrances from friends, fans, and collaborators, and a Kane art gallery. Also, our RICH BUCKLER interview conclusion, a look at the “greatest zine in the history of mankind,” MINESHAFT, and Part One of our ARNOLD DRAKE interview!

How-to demos & interviews with Philadelphia artists JG JONES (52, Final Crisis, Wanted, Batman and Robin) and KHOI PHAM (The Mighty Avengers, The Astonishing SpiderMan, The Mighty World of Marvel), JAMAR NICHOLAS reviews of art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY demos the “ORD-way” or drawing, and Comic Art Bootcamp by MIKE MANLEY and BRET BLEVINS! JG Jones cover! Mature readers only.

Super-star DC penciler HOWARD PORTER demos his creative process, and JAMAL IGLE discusses everything from storyboarding to penciling as he gives a breakdown of his working methods. Plus there’s Crusty Critic JAMAR NICHOLAS reviewing art supplies, JERRY ORDWAY showing the Ord-Way of doing comics, and Comic Art Bootcamp lessons with BRET BLEVINS and Draw! editor MIKE MANLEY! Mature readers only.

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(84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $8.95 (Digital Edition) $3.95 • Summer 2015

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