Comics Interview: Dissected – Issue #13

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).

Up Front

In the Up Front this month DAK comes up with the idea of doing an opinion poll for Comics Interview. This doesn’t feel like a conventional opinion poll as DAK doesn’t set any specific questions. Instead, he is looking for readers to tell him what have been their favourite interviews and who they would like to be interviewed. The replies will play out in the letters pages so that might see me shine more of a spotlight there in the coming months. In the last few months, the Up Front has dropped off, not really offering much to the magazine.

From Comics to Screenplays

Firstly I didn’t know Gerry Conway’s screenwriting credits were so extensive. Mostly he has worked in TV but in this interview he is talking Hollywood, having written for the Fire and Ice movie and now moving onto the Conan sequel. Conan is a character I don’t know a lot about in comics or movies as it is not a genre I gravitate towards. That said I did really like the first volume of Savage Avengers, where he is the lead character as more familiar Marvel heroes are transported to his reality. It has long been suggested that studios should get people who write comics to write comic book movies. Perhaps most famously was Kevin Smith putting the idea forward when he was asked to write and direct the Superman movie of the ’90s. It is not an argument I agree with too strongly and this interview is a good source for examining both sides of it. Most obviously is the fact there are things you can do in comics you can’t do in movies and vice versa. Conway describes a scene in his screenplay for Conan where our hero takes a 60-foot drop into a hole. Yes, Barry Windsor Smith could draw the hell out of that. But having Arnie pull it off with that era’s special effects and stunt work was a tall order. Although he doesn’t outwardly say it you get the sense he enjoys the creative freedom of comics much more. There is also an element of him disliking the phoney side of Hollywood carrying through. If anyone has read the book “Comic Writers on X-Men” it seems anyone who worked in comics in the 70’s and 80’s has had a crack at an X-Men screenplay. Conway with long-time collaborator Roy Thomas is no different. Alarm bells were immediately set off with me when he says “We’re doing our own version of an origin story…” Why? The X-Men are the X-Men. I understand you might not want to start like the comics with the original five, but Stan Lee made the origin story easy, they were born that way! Moving onto the comics side of things, he talks about his time on JLA and asks to be taken off the book because he has become a continuity nightmare balancing the team members and their lives. I don’t know if it’s inadvertent or not but he then goes on to give the plot of Crisis on Infinite Earths as their solution to his continuity complaint. This issue is from July 1984, so you would expect the interview to be within a two-month window. The first issue of Crisis dropped in April 1985. I wonder how many fans at the time read this and either got really excited or didn’t think anything of it. Then the series hits and it is huge for DC and the blueprint of event comics. Does anyone remember it being mentioned here?

What The Duck?

All I knew about Don Rosa going into this is that he drew Donald Duck and Scrooge McDuck comics. I enjoyed Duck Tales as a kid but never had any exposure to the comics. But then this interview drew me in with Lou Mougin’s very first question about one of Rosa’s other characters. Apparently Pertwillaby, an old newspaper adventure strip was one of the sources of inspiration for Indiana Jones. While I don’t go as deep in my collecting of Indiana Jones as I do other things, it has certainly left an impression on me. Add to the fact that The Pertwillaby Papers seemed like a passion project for Rosa then I am immediately interested. Rosa was inspired by Carl Barks to do his own action/adventure strip, with some humour thrown in. Newspaper strips are something I have wanted to dig into for a long time now. I tried some James Bond ones the other year and that left me lukewarm on trying more. I think price is going to play a factor in finding collections of these old strips but Pertwillaby is a contender now. Just a quick word on the art accompanying the interview, I see a lot of Ed Piskor in the panels from Pertwillaby. Rosa calls his style cluttered as he doesn’t worry about artistic layouts. This made me do a double take of the cover image to a Rosa collection on the previous page and what sprung to mind upon seeing it was the old ‘Usborne Puzzle Adventures’ books, particularly Agent Arthur. The pages of those stories were cluttered as there was obviously a puzzle to solve on every page. I would say if you looked you could find direct influence from Rosa on Paddy Mounter! It’s funny how the thing I know Rosa for most is the the thing he talks about least here.

A Weekend At Ernie’s

Ernie Colon is an artist I first learnt about after his passing in 2019. I learnt he was a pioneer for Puerto Rican artists working in comics and at the ‘Big Two’ in the 1980s. In this interview he is filling the role of writer, artist and editor as he talks up his new original graphic novel for DC The Medusa Chain. The interview is conducted by Roger Slifer who worked as an editor alongside Colon on DC’s New Talent Showcase. I like that once again in the interview a note is made that the interview is taking place over a bite to eat, this time some Chinese Colon has ordered in. Reading this it soon became clear to me how little about Colon I knew, having already pigeonholed him as an artist. The Medusa Chain started life as a novella before he gave it to Dick Giordano to read. Slifer brings up the point that there has been negative feedback in fandom that ‘graphic novels’ lack the ‘novel’ aspect in regards to the true literary sense. “My whole training is putting complete emphasis on the storyline.” is Colon’s reply. The Medusa Chain does sound like a good read so the curse of me spending money from these interviews continues! It seems like a good genre mash-up of Sci-fi and crime noir, with morality at its core.

Retailer: David Weaver

It is such a small world! I watched a video about Benders. The guy doing the video did not do the store or David Weaver any justice. At first he didn’t seem like your usual speculator but about midway through the video all the telltale signs were there. Benders definitely feels like a store I would have a lot of fun digging through and hopefully plugging some gaps in my collection. I thought it would interesting to get Weaver’s perspective both from the modern video and from this interview where he has his finger on the pulse of comics in the Bronze Age, but it s a rather routine affair. Starting with a bit of back story for the store, Weaver explains how there has been a book store on the site for twenty-five years. With Weaver buying the store five years ago. When it was a bookshop they were selling news stand comic. Weaver then states that only 30% of his current business is comics. Talking of current sales it comes as no surprise when he says X-Men and New Teen Titans are his biggest sellers. As for books that get a lot of ad space in CI, Jon Sable and American Flagg sell well. On the other hand, despite all the hype, interviews and adverts Comico books aren’t connecting in Benders. One point that comes up that links to the video I saw is the subject of horror comics. Weaver says how The EC Libraries are big sellers when it comes to graphic novels. In the video, he says how anytime pre-code horror comes into the store it sells right away. Weaver’s last interesting point is when he says Marvel are doing too many special reprint issues. He feels they are hurting the back issue market, which the speciality stores are dependent on. There are some echoes of that today with facsimile and Marvel had the True Believers line a few years back. While it is not the same problem as Weaver is saying they do bring problems of their own. I have no qualms with them existing, especially when the True Believer issues were £1. It is a very good way for new and old readers to pick up older issues that are out of their price range. The problem lies in the secondary market where people are reselling at stupid prices and even getting them slabbed as 9.0 NM’s!! Following on from Mougin and Rosa talking about Indiana Jones, Weaver jokes about being stuck with a bunch of Indiana Jones #1’s. I do wonder why it never caught like other big screen tie-in comics. Whenever I see an issue in a 50p box I check it out. It is a world that lends itself perfectly to comics.

Fan On The Street

Up until now I have largely disliked the fan on the street segment. Last time out I particularly rallied on its treatment of women in comics fandom and that kind of continues here. For the uninitiated Kelly Nichols was an adult star. So again it has the feel of boys being boys, the assumption being there is a cross-over audience. The interview is conducted by Lyman Rand and in his introduction he points out how DAK has a taste for the “bizarre and outrageous.” I have to admit Nichols has proper comic book fan credentials. Even if Rand’s writing in the introduction is a little cringe; “I offer Kelly Nichols as living proof that comics fans come in all shapes, sizes and job descriptions.” Nichols gets her love of reading from her family. Starting off by reading her Father’s massive pulp collection. Her Mother too had a collection of Edgar Rice Burroughs hardbacks and then later she and her brothers would start on comics. Silver Surfer was the one that turned her onto Marvel. More fascinating than her comics upbringing is her early stuntwoman career. This saw her double for Jessica Lange in the 1976 King Kong movie. So geek credentials both as a fan and professionally!

Letters

Thirteen issues in and the letters page is hotting up! Barry Dutter is back! In a letter that takes a whole page, he is defending his honour (?) and hating on She Hulk. Dutter is Comics Twitter before Comics Twitter. That’s right he’s a real asshole! His opening rebuttal to Amy who wrote in in a previous issue is crass and I will give him no further limelight. Next up James Van Hise goes after the one and only Warren Reece, essentially calling him a Marvel shill. He remembers his appearance on TV and how he only talked up Marvel and was allowed to do so by the interviewer. Hise wants Reece to know there is a world outside Marvel Comics and suggests Will Eisner, Hal Foster, Pacific Comics and Judge Dredd.