Comics Interview: Dissected – Issue #18

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).

Rod Reed

Rod Reed was the first person to write Captain Marvel outside of Bill Parker and is credited with some of Captain Marvel’s best Golden Age stories, building up a strong working relationship with Kurt Schaffenberger. I found it interesting that he said his scripts weren’t very detailed, only when they needed to be, such as for a big fight or something. I always assumed that the older generation was more focused and had the attention span to write detailed scripts as the norm. When you hear about the ‘Marvel Method, ‘ you assume everything before then was more by the book. The nice thing about these interviews with the older generation is that they usually come with a heart-warming element or a slice of Americana. Here Reed retells his encounter with Bill Finger while working at Fawcett. He calls Finger a “Pro’s pro,” and says everyone held his Batman in such high esteem, way above even Superman. Short and sweet to kick things off this month.

Understanding McCloud

Scott McCloud falls into that category of what could be an intimidating interview. Obviously, we are a few years out from the book that everyone knows him for, ‘Understanding Comics’, which I have to confess I haven’t read! So, going into it, I am expecting a strong, opinionated and passionate discussion about comics. It will be interesting to see if there are any seeds for ‘Understanding Comics’ mentioned, as the main focus of this interview is Zot! After all that build up, the interview starts on a completely relatable note, that being McCloud’s childhood friend Kurt Busiek was the one who got him into comics by lending him his original X-Men collection. And then we do get some insight into how his mind is reacting to comics from those young days to now. Calling them “a creative medium and not a genre.” Going on to say unwritten rules say comics have to be about certain subjects, in a certain way. Following on from this, he is asked which current comics are breaking away from the norm. to which he gives some titles which are becoming common denominators in the pages of CI. American Flagg, Mr X, Nexus ans Love & Rockets. “…there is a lot of good stuff coming out, and a lot of bad stuff.” And that is comics and comic book movies to bring it to recent times in a nutshell. Really, it is true of any form of medium. While Marvel and DC may still seem cemented in their ways. Image, Boom and a handful of other publishers seem to be pushing stories other than superhero ones more so than ever. To back this up with personal experience, three books I have loved in the last five years or so are Southern Bastards, The Good Asian and Rare Flavours. Next up, McCloud serves up an interesting theory of the industry being made up of three major comics markets. Those being America, Japan and Europe. Each one comes with its own respective ‘tree trunk’. Osamu Tezuka and Herge being those ‘trunks’ for Japan and Europe. While here he doesn’t offer up an American example, he did say earlier in the interview, “every comic on the stands owes more to Kirby than anyone else.” Tezuka is cited as an influence on Zot! So getting a name check here isn’t a big shock. At the end of the interview it is revealed that this is the first of two parts, with the second part focusing on ZOT! So I will put a pin in things here as I think it would be more appealing to dig into his creative process rather than get his opinion on all things comics.

The Art of Suydam

I came to comics in the 2000s when the industry was regrouping and looking to push forward again. This led to me often wrongly pigeonholing certain creators. Suydam was one such creator, who I had down as a cover artist. Called upon when a story wanted a Horror tone to proceedings. Interviewer Steve Ringgenberg wastes no time diving into Suydam’s latest project, ‘Mudwog’, as an artist, the character comes from Suydam playing about with anatomy, wanting to create a character out of one particular body part. “Mudwog is a nose that walks and talks.” Mudwog started out at Heavy Metal before switching to Continuity Comics. Suydam’s fandom took him from Spider-Man, like most American boys, then onto Creepy and EC Comics. So perhaps my early inclination to peg him as a horror guy wasn’t so wide of the mark. His love of EC saw him visit Jim Warren at the age of 17 to show him his work. His break through however, would come at DC after Joe Orlando liked the horror slant to his work (see I’m a good judge of character) and stuck him on House of Secrets. Moving on to influences, it is a journey that follows his reading patterns, going from Ditko to Frazetta. One name that has now come up more than once in CI when the question of influences is broached, and that is Al Williamson. Seeing Suydam’s work for the first time on those modern colour covers as I did, you see they carry a certain feel. I would say his style has an earthy, mud-like quality to it. So I was very surprised to see how that translates to black and white.

Tom Condon

In the intro to this interview by D. Jon Zimmerman, Condon is called out as one of the faces of the sweeping changes that have occurred at DC in recent years. In a nutshell, his job entails managing the editors, so he does have a lot of scope to deliver a potentially good interview as he must oversee a lot in his day-to-day. One of the first revelations is that, coming from a book publishing background,d he is looking for new graphic novel ideas. To me, this is something Marvel and DC attempted at this time and have never really cracked. When was the last time we had an original story from either of them presented as a graphic novel? Throughout a year how many average quality and overpriced one-shots do we get? Would people be happier to do away with these and pay a bit more for a graphic novel? Everything is still focused on the monthly and then collecting as a trade. Now, don’t get me wrong,g I don’t want monthlies going anywhere. But would something like Absolute Batman have a bigger impact being released as a GN? Would an event comic be better served having the core title be a GN, then all the ties remaining as floppies? The interview veers into a personal direction as Condon walks us through his career in publishing and how he ended up a DC. It doesn’t really make for riveting reading as it’s not comics-centric.

Sales Tales

Carol Kalish is one of those people who falls into the category that their career in comics would make a very interesting tell-all book. DAK is going one-on-one with Kalish for this interview, and I feel right from the off, he tries his best to paint her in a positive light. Now I didn’t know her at all ( in fact everything I have read is positive), but it seems like her role as Head of direct sales for Marvel saw her butt heads with a lot of people in the industry. And really that is to be expected, it comes with the territory and I wouldn’t expect her to be any different. She performed her role with such a strong personality and dedication that it earned her the nickname “Marvel’s Mistress of Propaganda.” The early part of the interview kind of goes against what I was saying about her career making for a good biography. That’s not because it’s not interesting, but more because the format of CI doesn’t always allow for elaboration. When it does, it is at the interviewer’s discretion. So she glosses over huge portions of her career so DAK can finally ask what her role at Marvel actually involves on a day-to-day basis. It is not the most exciting answer, and to be honest, it doesn’t make the understanding of her role any clearer. In fact, I would say I understand the relationship less between Publisher, distributor and retailer even less now, but that is a me problem. The cynical side of me assumes her role really is sizing up the opposition and rubbing up the distributors and retailers to make Marvel stand out above all competition. There is some promise when the conversation turns to the subject of Walden Books carrying Marvel Comics. We take it for granted nowadays that we can usually get a decent offering in big book stores. It is interesting because it kind of goes against the grain of what we have seen in the pages of CI. Remember, we are at the height of the direct market, every issue we are reminded that the independent retailer market is growing, as is the output of independent comics. Now we are seeing the other side of the coin. One of the Big Two working in partnership with a big corporation. However, it is completely in line with a quote from Kalish “I see the industry in terms of what’s good for Marvel.” Carol Kalish is someone I picked out from the very first issue as a name who may provide some interesting points. Whilst this interview failed to meet those expectations, she remains a very important figure in comics history and I hope a second interview in future issues would provide more of what I’m looking for.