Comics Interview: Dissected – Issue #12
Welcome to the latest instalment of a brand-new feature here on Nerdly, where one of our comic gurus, Ian Wells, delves into comics history and dissects Comics Interview, the long-running journal of interviews and criticism from David Anthony Kraft (DAK).
Respect For DAK
In this issue DAK kicks things off talking about how much writing he is still doing in other forms. Borrowing a page from his book I want to take a more extended look at his comics career as I don’t feel I done it justice in the first issue. I mean no disrespect but I feel ‘journeyman writer’ is best to describe his career. It is an impressive catalogue of work, where he can play claim to having worked on legendary characters such as; Kamandi, Tarzan, Captain America and She Hulk. In 1984 he finished a long stint on Worlds Finest, so you can add Batman and Superman to his repertoire of characters. He is best known at Marvel for a twenty-plus issue run on The Defenders. This is what I mean by ‘journeyman’ he has this long runs on classic characters but his name never comes up as a standout name on a title. Of course, I am 100% sure that out there DAK is someone’s definitive Defenders writer. He has also recently taken up an Editorial Consultancy role with Marvel Books and can often be found contributing to the Marvel Age. What is impressive about all this is when you compare him to some of today’s modern writers who have a few books out a month and a trendy newsletter, then all of a sudden they fall behind. DAK was writing solid comics, and conducting interviews for his own magazine which he oversaw every detail of. And to top it all he is doing everything the old-fashioned way. Respect where respect is due!
Less is Moore
At the time of this interview in June 1984, Alan Moore is really at the top of his game. Marvelman, V for Vendetta and his work on Swamp Thing all began two years prior to this and they all get time in the spotlight here. Very early on in this interview he mentions wanting to explore what Superman has done to Earth via his presence. It is something he is exploring in Marvelman and it will come up again in two years more famously with Dr. Manhattan in Watchmen. I found this interesting as I assumed something like Watchmen would already be planned out. Previous interviews in CI have alluded to the purchase of the Charlton characters by DC. Of course, Moore could just be showing his media training and keeping his cards close to his chest. Moore confesses to being a Marvel ‘Zombie’ up until 1968. After that point he claims the characters lost their integrity. Whereas Superman and Batman still have theirs, nothing can disrupt it. My counter to this would be the Marvel characters of the Lee, Kirby, and Ditko era are of course younger and therefore had less integrity to lose. From a personal point of view I have never seen the appeal of Superman, or Spider-Man for that matter so two flagships for each have one thing in common. I think Marvel tends to be more cyclical. Perhaps maybe only Spidey and Cap have remained constant. Everything else moves with the times. In my opinion Moore’s work on Captain Britain is as good as his more popular works. I would put it in the category of comics showing a maturity before the dark, mature explosion of 1986. The biggest take away from Moore in regards to that series is that he says he often finds himself wanting to destroy a character before rebuilding them. A theme we see in his work and the late 80’s as a whole. One thing Captain Britain has in common with V for Vendetta is its sense of Britishness. He has even heard minor complaints for the latter because of this. Warrior magazine has low distribution in the US, so it is reliant on word of mouth and his peers liking his work for it to break through to the masses. So it would be a big help when he can cite Frank Miller as a fan. There would be someone reading this in 1984 who is a huge Miller fan and upon seeing his seal of approval will seek it out. He goes on to say V reads much better as a whole piece rather than chapter by chapter. This got me thinking about his works and both V and Watchmen I obviously read years after they came out so it was as trade paperbacks for me. To my knowledge, the chapters in Warrior were very short so V would have been a frustrating read. Whereas Watchmen is one big story but each chapter (issue) is so rich it can be enjoyed for what it is. His work on Swamp Thing is probably one of the few times he has done what people would recognise as mainstream monthly comics. On the subject of Swamp Thing, Moore is well known for his tome-like scripts so it was surprising to read here how much free reign he gives…. Going as far to say he doesn’t want to burden them. The interview reads really well as the the two interviewers…. have a good synergy with Moore. Nowadays he comes with a preconception of being a curmudgeonly old man, just recently a quote of his was blown out of all proportions online! To be honest I was a little intimidated going in to dissect this interview. I thought Moore’s intellect would be too highbrow. Of course, he is younger here and it feels like he is just riding the crest of a wave, he is letting the work speak for itself. He does have strong opinions but he doesn’t use this space to drive them home.
Special Assignment with Jose Luis Garcia Lopez
This is a very timely interview with the recent news that his DC style guides are finally seeing prints for the mass market. With this being in a the news and seeing some of the images accompanying it I am convinced as a child I had a Batman colouring book that was entirely Lopez artwork. Apart from this early, unintended exposure to his art I am not overly familiar with his output of work. What I do know though DAK completely sums up in his intro and that is “Long respected.” This is backed up by the amount of people I follow on Twitter who were sharing the news of his style guide coming to print. At the time he is doing what he calls special projects for DC, but has come back into the monthly fray firstly with Star Raiders and the Atari Force which is the focus of this interview. Recently I heard Jason Aaron say this is one of the odd DC comics he fell in love with as a young reader. This is one of the instances in reading CI where I have to make a trade-off as a reader. I have absolutely no interest in Atari Force, but I am completely invested in Lopez as an artist. There is a fair amount of the interview dedicated to his life story, rather than being a full focus on his latest work. He talks of growing up in Argentina and finding American comics, where he was inspired by the likes of Roy Crane and Alex Raymond. As a teen he worked at all levels of a publishing company, doing everything from translations to paste-ups. I feel this is part of the modern artist’s journey that is going away because of advances in technology. The interview turns to his own experiences and philosophy when it comes to inking his own work. “Even the best inkers cannot do justice to another artist’s work… It’s like having a son and entrusting that nurturing to other parents.” DAK is able to bring a certain point of view to the specifics if inking as he has collaborated with Lopez on an issue of Tarzan so he has seen the pencils in the raw state. He calls Lopez’s pencils powerful and does feel something was lost in the inking. Moving on to process talk, Lopez takes us through his basics. He plans out the whole page, including how many panels will be on a page. He feels it is better to think of the piece as a whole page rather than panel by panel. “I want to get something visually exciting on the page, while at the same time telling the story.” Once he has this worked out the page is sketched out on tracing paper at actual size. When it comes to inking his own work he of course has room for improvising. A solid interview with a legend, who dished out some lessons along the way. Even though I am not an artist I am always fascinated by the very best, talking about their craft and we certainly got that here.
Legendary Jack Davis
Jack Davis is just one of those names you know even if you haven’t sampled his work first-hand. He is best know for his work on the EC horror series Tales From the Crypt, as well as work in Mad magazine. In his credit box he is credit with work on Marvel’s (Atlas/Timely in his day) Rawhide Kid. The Marvel Westerns are really tempting me at the moment, so it might not be too long before I sample some Davis of my own. As well as loving process/shop talk I really do just love stories from ‘back in the day.’ When you read these interviews with the old-school guys it becomes apparent really how integral the New York City backdrop is to everything. It gives off the same kind of vibe as the American comedy scene. I mean where else can you open up an interview with a guy telling a story of having his car stolen upon moving to NYC. The interview as usual is accompanied by a series of works and they really show the spread of Davis styles and work. There is everything from loose sketchy pencils, to highly detailed caricature work and a self-portrait with such an eye-catching thin ink line. Anyone with a real affinity for the EC comics may be surprised to read he is not proud of his horror work, as he felt it overstepped the mark at times. As well as the NYC vibes another connecting moment for a lot of this these old-school guys is of course World War Two. Davis was a Naval man and when stationed in Guam he did a single panel strip every day for Navy News called ‘The Boondocker.’ This links back to the praise of DAK’s output I was praising earlier compared to some standards set today! Davis is such a master of the art form that the topics cover the disciplines of pencil, inks and colours. You know he is an artist of great stature when asked about the state of modern comics he calls out Heavy Metal and Joe Kubert as his top picks. This is top interview with a cartoonist great. People who are more tuned to the world of professional cartoonists will take a lot more away from this than I did.
The Orz Part Two
Tom Orzechowski kicks things off in the second part of his interview with a little snippet of X-Men history I wasn’t aware of. The quartet of himself, Chris Claremont, John Byrne and Terry Austin had all previously worked together on Star Lord. Fans and people on an editorial level obviously felt this combo clicked so they had them all reunite on X-Men. Cliche to say, but the rest is history. This second part of the interview offered much more shop talk that I was hoping for in part 1. He talks of a complicated typeface he created for X-Men but then ditched after six issues as it was too intricate! Now I am going to have to dig out my Classic X-Men issues to see if I can spot the change. The unique font for Dark Phoenix comes from using and old brush that offered little in the way of control. When asked what the most important criteria for lettering is. He replies with being legible. This may seem like a really simple and obvious answer. The font has to be easy on the eye, it really is as much a part of the package as anything else in my opinion so the answer isn’t as outlandish as it seems. It was really fascinating to hear how he has a letterer’s equivalent of a ‘morgue file.’ He describes it as a lot of books dating back to the 20s and 30s. As well as being one of the most sought-after letterers in the business he has also done some logo design. When he breaks down his thought process for logo design it shows a level beyond what you may think necessary. His first step is to think about the audience, the publisher and the characters. Things get really in-depth when he researches what he refers to as the validity of a design. By this he means he looks for precedent where certain letters have been used before and tweaking them for his needs. After all these years it is finally nice to put a name and face to the creator of the Wolverine logo. A logo that has stood the test of time and will be returning to the comic in September.
Louise Simonson
Louise Simonson is making her second appearance in Comics Interview already! But she is so well respected and such a pleasant individual I’ll let it slide! This time around she is being interviewed for a role as editor at Marvel. Comics under her watch include X-Men and New Mutants, the Conan stable of books and Star Wars. I have been reading comics for over twenty years but it was really refreshing to read her break the process of a comics inception to reaching the printers. I started out as a casual reader before becoming more interested in the machinations of the industry. To a casual fan this information is of secondary interest and back in the day not readily available. I would recommend anyone wanting to break into comics to give this a read. Even if you are going the solo self published route it does offer a good basic 101 level of things. In all she says it is a 4 to 5 month process, with creators often working on five issues of the same series at once. Simonson makes mention of upcoming miniseries for Nightcrawler, Longshot and Wolverine/Kitty Pryde on the horizon, which will expand the X-verse even further. Seems obvious to say that X-Men is the highest-selling comic at the time. Jim Salicrup who is conducting the interview though still believes despite this they don’t have wider recognition outside of comics, where you have the likes of Hulk and Superman on TV and in movies. I don’t know how close to release the interview was done but she says New Mutants has dipped in sales. It seems only few issues of CI ago when we saw the adverts highlighting Bill Sienkiewicz joining the book. This is probably just the age-old case of the sales information being outdated before you even get it! To my knowledge, those Sienkiewicz issues of New Mutants were popular from the jump, as opposed to gaining acclaim long after. Just a bit of fun to end mention is made that her husband Walt Simonson’s first issue on Thor is now worth $12! Throwing on my old eBuying Comics hat a raw NM is upwards of £100 which seems a little low in my opinion to some other so-called Marvel keys.
NEXT: Gerry Conway! Ernie Colon! Don Rosa!
