Comics Interview: Dissected – Issue #15

Welcome to the latest instalment of our Dissected feature here on Nerdly, where one of our comic gurus, Ian Wells, delves into comics history and looks back at Comics Interview, the long-running journal of interviews and criticism from David Anthony Kraft (DAK).

SalicrUp Front

First of all, credit where credit is due. The little cartoon of David that accompanies every Upfront this time is sporting a hat like Grim Jack and is captioned ‘Grim DAK’. I do love a good pun. We get a peak behind the creative process at CI as here DAK outlines the duties of Jim Salicrup as Editorial Consultant. Now he doesn’t go big on detail, it is more a chance to pay tribute to a friend. That is something that always comes across in the pages of CI, everyone who works on it seems like friends first, working colleagues second. The pair have known each other for over ten years, having met at Marvel. Salicrup was instrumental in CI hitting the newsstand in the first place and continues to contribute as an interviewer and elsewhere across the magazine.

Grim Reading Part 1

I know John Ostrander as the architect of the Suicide Squad, writing a defining 4-issue Deadshot series and penning one amazing Wolverine annual. Here he is talking Grim Jack and I have read one issue of this series, that being the one featuring the TMNT. Grimjack is a comic I have heard Kevin Smith sing the praises of many a time on his various podcasts. To me, it seems like a cool concept that had the fortune of coming out at the right time with the Direct Market and people’s willingness to try new things out. Mike Grell had chosen Ostrander to take over Starslayer and within those issues he teamed with Timothy Truman and they introduced Grimjack in a backup story. The character of Grimjack had lived with Ostrander 5 years previous to him bringing him to First Comics, originally starting out as a character for a series of short stories. Grimjack is the kind of character that appeals to the Wolverine demographic, he is old and has a mysterious past. These to me are two big traits of the independent boom of the 80’s. In a revelation that would have given hope to aspiring writers in the CI audience Ostrander, 35 at the time had only been writing comics for two years. Stan Lee was of course 37 when he created the FF and it is little nuggets like that we all cling to! Ostrander still considered himself a fan right up till 32 when he was still regularly buying comics. Mike Gold at First Comics was a friend and invited him to write on spec. Another nugget worth holding onto, though with inflation it is probably not a realistic one. He reveals being a comic book writer is paying better than any previous job! The conversation moves onto how comics have evolved from their origins, to the Marvel boom of the 60’s to how they are currently. He makes an interesting point that Marvel and DC are always competing. Through the years they have the sales figures to back up who was top at any given time. He goes on to say he doesn’t think First Comics sees other indies as competitors, but they have Marvel and DC in their sights. Fast forward less than ten years from this moment and Image broke the Big Two dominance. I did always wonder why Ostrander didn’t have a big Marvel back catalogue then reading him absolutely tear Secret Wars apart probably explains it. “It lacks any semblance of characterization. It’s just bad writing.” It can be no surprise all of his Marvel work came after Shooter’s departure.

Ad Space

Two DC books advertised caught my eye this month, so immediately I had to see if they actually saw print and how they were received. However, I don’t think I will be rushing out to hunt them down as I am on a new budget now. First up we have The Hunger Dogs, which is billed as the ‘astonishing’ sequel to the New Gods saga. It was #4 of the DC Graphic Novel series and Jack Kirby intended it to be the conclusion to the New Gods story he started in 1971. Editorial saw things differently as Darkseid was now a marketable character. Delays and revisions saw the final project be very different to Kirby’s plans. The second is America vs The JSA, a four-issue mini-series. It too saw publication in 1985. It just seems a really cool Earth 2 concept and upon reading the synopsis it seems a good concept if telling a JSA story to appeal to old and new readers. Elsewhere we have Comico going strong with ads for Evangeline and Mage. The Mage advert is an awful design. Then we have an ad for The Steve Ditko Collection and the Amazing Heroes 1985 preview issue. This ad combines the two Fantagraphics properties of AH which showcases Love & Rockets on the cover.

Grim Reading Part 2

It is interesting that Ostrander and Truman weren’t interviewed together with Grimjack being a ‘first look’ or featured interview. It means this issue has two separate artist interviews as Val Mayerik follows. Right in the intro Chris Henderson mentions a secret First/DC crossover Truman is currently working on, but can not talk about in this interview. A quick internet search turned up no results sadly. Grimjack is Truman’s first (no pun intended) comic work. Previously he was working in magazine illustration before taking his work to Joe Staton at a con, who immediately invited him to the First Comics offices. He is a Kubert School graduate, where he heard many a horror story about comics but the allure of being a fan was too strong. Something of a familiar pattern in the pages of CI lately has been creators saying Marvel has stagnated. After reshaping the industry with fresh ideas in the 60’s everything from then has just been a rehash. I would say there were solid Marvel stories in the 80’s, within CI we have recently seen the end of Miller’s Daredevil and the Moench Master of Kung Fu. I suppose though once you drift away from something because of feeling it isn’t for you it is a struggle to go back. The two interviews don’t go too deep on Grimjack, what is apparent is they both see their work as a 50/50 creative partnership. One last comment of interest is when he says he wants the art in Grimjack to have more whimsy, moving away from the style of Neal Adams and John Byrne. I totally get where he is coming from. If anyone has read my Wolverine Wednesday reviews over recent weeks I made mention of loving the idea of seeing a Wolverine comic done in what I called a Tin Tin style. I think we will be seeing more of Truman in the pages of CI in the coming months.

Kung Fu Kartooning

Val Mayerik is perhaps best known for his work with Steve Gerber on Howard the Duck. What I didn’t know was his work for Eclipse and Heavy Metal. So before reading this interview my preconceived notion of someone who I thought was a Marvel guy is completely shifted. He is currently re-teaming with Gerber for a project called Void Indigo for the Marvel Epic line. Gerber returning to Marvel is a big deal after the fall out from Howard the Duck, as Mayerik explains he went through every contingency with his lawyer to make sure he owned it all. Void Indigo doesn’t seem like my sort of story so rather than dwell on the story details Mayerik divulges I thought it would be better to dive into the art talk. With Void Indigo being fully illustrated and painted it took him two months to complete. Back in #9, in the interview with the Mullaney brothers, they mentioned a series they had at Eclipse written by Superman co-creator Jerry Siegel called The Starling. Well, Mayerik is the artist on that and says it may be moving from backup feature to its own monthly series. Another of his old Marvel works caught my eye in the interview a story called Paradox from Marvel Preview #24, I feel I could pick this up on the cheap and just from the title I didn’t know they run stories in that series. The interview then turns to his other passion, that being karate which he got into around 19 years old. Obviously Salicrup is then quick to ask if his two passions ever collide. I got excited at this point imagining Marvel missed a trick by not putting him Master of Kung Fu or something! But he says he had no desire to do a book like that or Iron Fist as the superhero aspect outweighs the karate and the writers didn’t know martial arts. He has used his knowledge he says in more subtle ways for his art. He cites John Buscema as someone who choreographs good fights “The fighters stood rooted to the earth.” Further adding then about his own fight scenes “That’s what I like to get across… To show these people have gravity and weight.”

Collen Doran

Like so many names appearing in the pages of Comics Interview, I first heard a lot of the ones attached to the indies on Cartoonist Kayfabe, Colleen Doran is another one of them. Just from the snippets of info I had from these shows, I didn’t realise how extensive her career, especially for the Big Two, was. It is kind of a discredit that she shares this interview space with Richard Pini. The interview is to put a spotlight on her new comic Distant Soil where she is pulling double duty as plotter and artist. I found it both interesting and annoying that she didn’t want to give away too many details of the story. I say interesting, it is more a level of respect that she would rather use this space to discuss her positive journey of being a female artist in a male-dominated world. The annoyance comes then from Pini answering for her. Her journey began showing her art to Bob Layton at a con and having artist friends tell her she didn’t have the guts to make it. She says how these setbacks made her more determined. The art accompanying the interview gives me Barry Windsor Smith vibes, and she does note him as an influence alongside, Kelly Freas, Norman Rockwell, Russ Heath and John Byrne. Although of the latter’s latest style she is less complimentary “It looks to me like he does very, very rough sketches and the just slap-dashes inks on them. He used to do such nice work.” The scathing attacks don’t stop there, next on her hit list after Brian Talley asks if The Comics Journal has reviewed Distant Soil yet “I don’t care what Comics Journal Says! Who died and left them in charge? I don’t like their general attitude… They seem to think they can elevate themselves by making everyone else look smaller.” In the first part of her interview, alongside her picture she seemed so reserved! I loved it though, I felt Distant Soil wasn’t for me so this edginess to the interview made it a fun read.

Curious George

It was only a matter of time before George Olshevsky turned up for an interview. He was named checked in Warren Reece’s first interview as ‘Fan on The Street’ and I always assumed he would show up after that as the people involved in CI seem to move in the same circles. In the 70’s Olshevsky produced an extensive Marvel Index which he self-published. This led to the project he is now working on, The Marvel History. Looking through the internet I couldn’t find a title of this name, from this era with Olshevsky’s name attached. I did find ‘The Official Marvel Index published between 1985-1988 so I assume they took the name from his original self-published work and reused it for the official version. He is something of a tech whiz, which in 1984 is a big deal. Perhaps an even bigger deal was the near-mythical reputation he earned on the convention scene for his indexing. He used to carry around a 250-page printout of said index, which weighed nearly 15 pounds! By bringing it to cons word of mouth spread and he was soon printing copies off for fellow fans. One cool detail of this story is that when he decided to do a magazine version of his index and approach Stan Lee about using photos of the actual comics themselves, Marvel were already aware of him through buying his lists to keep the Bull Pen up to date on things. Another issue and another positive example of the power of fandom. It is getting kind of depressing (maybe that’s too strong) reading these and then comparing these positive experiences to the shit we see on a daily basis with comic fandom on social media. My take away feeling from all of this is to absorb everything Olshevsky is telling the reader about self-publishing an index/fanzine and just fucking doing it. He lays it all out; from servicing an audience to finding good collaborators and learning on his feet about getting ripped off by printers! But at the heart of it, he started out because he enjoyed it.

Legendary Letters

Things kick off with a letter from Mike Grabowski. Now his letter isn’t anything special. Lots of praise for CI, citing what interviews he has enjoyed and what he has enjoyed about them. He mentions how the interview with Jose Luis Garcia Lopez has turned him into a fan. With this, the editors see fit to run a piece of Lopez’s art alongside the letter. When I went through the Lopez interview myself I said how I thought his artwork was in a Batman colouring book I had as a kid. Well, the image they use here I definitely remember colouring as a kid. It is Batman, Robin and Batgirl looking out over Gotham. Next up Roger A. Price of The March Dimes writes into present CI with an award. The Central Ohio chapter have bestowed this award on DAK and the team for their help in supporting the Mid-Ohio-Con. Finally, we have some heat in the letters column and it comes from none other than Tony Isabella! He has taken offence with how Doug Moench tells the story of leaving Moon Knight as told in CI #11. It seems Moench feels Isabella was lined up to replace him on Moon Knight, but Isabella says he was only ever considered a fill-in writer. A fact he can back up from his interview in CI #4. His letter kind of turns into him interviewing himself as he outlines what some of his plans were for Moon Knight. This is the most mileage we have had out of the letters pages. Going in at the start I was expecting bickering fans, not pros!

NEXT: Legion of Superheroes!