comic book artist #13

THE MARVEL HORRORSHOW!

COLAN • WOLFMAN • FRIEDRICH • TRIMPE • MARCOS • PERLIN • THOMAS • HEATH

No.13May 2001

$6.95In The U.S.

Tomb of Dracula TM

Marvel Characters, Inc.

Art ©2001 Gene Colan

and Tom Palmer.

2 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 13 May 2001

Editor/DesignerJON B. COOKE

PublisherTWOMORROWS

JOHN & PAM MORROW

Associate EditorsCHRIS KNOWLESDAVID A. ROACH

Contributing EditorsROY THOMAS

JOHN MORROW

ProofreaderERIC NOLEN-WEATHINGTON

Cover ArtGENE COLAN, pencilsTOM PALMER, inks

Cover ColorTOM ZIUKO

ProductionJON B. COOKE

GREAT SWAMP GRAPHICS

NUMBER 13 CELEBRATING THE LIVES & WORK OF THE GREAT CARTOONISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS MAY 2001

C O N T E N T S

COMIC BOOK ARTIST™ is published bi-monthly by TwoMorrows, 1812 Park Drive, Raleigh, NC 27605, USA. 919-833-8092. Jon B. Cooke, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: P.O. Box 204, West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 USA • 401-783-1669 • Fax: 401-783-1287. Send subscription funds to TwoMorrows, NOT the editorial office. Single issues: $9 postpaid ($11 Canada, $12 elsewhere). Six-issue subscriptions: $36 US, $66 Canada, $72 elsewhere. All characters © their respective owners. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © their respective authors. ©2001 Jon B.Cooke/TwoMorrows. Cover acknowledgement: Tomb of Dracula ©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc. First Printing. PRINTED IN CANADA.

T H E M A R V E L H O R R O R S H O W !

DEPARTMENTS:THE FRONT PAGE: LAST MINUTE BITS ON THE COMMUNITY OF COMIC BOOK ARTISTS, WRITERS & EDITORS

What, no Eisner Award category for the TwoMorrows mags??? At least the Harvey Awards remembers! ..........1EDITOR’S RANT: THE SINISTER SEVENTIES

The revamping of the Comics Code and subsequent deluge of terror comics from Marvel ..................................4COCHRAN’S CORNER: RETURN OF THE “USED TO” MAN

J.R. Cochran, newspaperman and lover of comics, debuts his CBA column by talking with Alan Kupperberg ....5CBA COMMUNIQUES: LETTERS FROM OUR READERS

Scads of Toth commentary and corrections plus responses to our second (and final) Charlton issue....................6THE BACK PAGE: PRIMETIME FOR THE BROTHERS COOKE

Where Ye Ed discusses his younger brother’s 40th birthday and their shared dream ........................................110

May 2001 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 13 3

TranscribersJON B. KNUTSONBRIAN K. MORRISSAM GAFFORD

Logo Designer/Title OriginatorARLEN SCHUMER

MascotWOODYby J.D. King

Issue Theme SongEXCITABLE BOYWarren Zevon

ContributorsGene Colan • Tom PalmerMarv Wolfman • Roy ThomasHerb Trimpe • Gary FriedrichRuss Heath • Tony IsabellaDon Perlin • Pablo MarcosMarie Severin • Frank SpringerFlo Steinberg • Steve ShermanAlbert Moy • Tom HorvitzDavid A. Roach • Tom FieldTom Ziuko • Jon B. KnutsonFred Hembeck • Brian K. MorrisAnonymous • John R. Cochran Alan Kupperberg • Alex TothCat Yronwode • Sam GaffordJohn R. Borkowski • J.D. KingGreg Huneryager • F. San MillanWarren Sattler • Roger SternAllan Rosenberg • Jerry K. BoydBill Morrison • Bongo EntertainmentDavid “Hambone” HamiltonSteve Morger • Bob Layton/CPLSteve Cohen • Rob PollakAndy Ihnatko • Russ MaherasGisella Marcos • Myriam MarcosJohn Yon • Richard HowellChris Gage

Dedicated toBarbara KnutsonGet well quick, girl!

And to my baby broAndrew D. Cookeon the occasion ofhis 40th birthday!Happy-happy joy-joy!

N E X T I S S U E — T O W E R C O M I C S : Y E A R S O F T H U N D E R !

Visit CBA on ourWebsite at:

www.twomorrows.com/comicbookartist/THE MARVEL HORRORSHOW

FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE: @!!?*Our Man Fred makes amends with “The Man Who Lived Twice,” Brother Voodoo! ........................................13SPOTLIGHT ON MARVEL: SHADOWS AND THE DARKNESS

David A. Roach examines the short-lived but memorable horror anthology books from the House of Ideas ....14ROY THOMAS INTERVIEW: SON OF STAN’S YEARS OF HORROR

Marvel’s Editor-In-Chief on the Great Horror Revival at Marvel Comics during the Swingin’ Seventies! ..........18MARV WOLFMAN INTERVIEW: WOLFMAN BY DAY

The celebrated scribe of Tomb of Dracula on the title’s longevity and finding his own voice ............................30GENE COLAN INTERVIEW: THE COLAN MYSTIQUE

Tom Field talks to the extraordinary artist on his experience working for Marvel in the ’70s ............................48TOM PALMER SIDEBAR: GIVING FORM TO SHADOWS

The premier Gene Colan inker on the joy of delineating The Dean’s miraculous pencils ..................................55HERB TRIMPE INTERVIEW: THE INCREDIBLE HERB

A fun chat with the Hulk artist on the glory years of the Marvel bullpen and life in the ’70s............................58RUSS HEATH PORTFOLIO: SON OF SATAN #8Wow! Didja ever see the artist’s unbelievable job on this obscure mid-’70s Marvel comic? In glorious b-&-w! ......69GARY FRIEDRICH INTERVIEW: GROOVY GARY AND THE MARVEL YEARSA surprisingly frank and bittersweet talk with longtime Marvel scribe on his bullpen experiences ....................74DON PERLIN INTERVIEW: PERLIN’S WISDOM

The Werewolf by Night artist on his comics career—stretching back to the late ’40s and up to today ..............88TONY ISABELLA INTERVIEW: TONY’S TERRORS (AND TIGRA, TOO!)Jon B. Knutson quizzes the writer/editor on his first professional comics job and the Marvel horror line ........96PABLO MARCOS INTERVIEW: PABLO’S AMAZING JOURNEYFrom his Peruvian upbringing to current work, the superb artist discusses his life (plus great art!) ..................104Opposite page top: Courtesy of an anonymous contributor, this Mike Ploog art depicts four of Marvel’s greatest horror charac-ters from the 1970s: Dracula, Werewolf by Night, the Monster of Frankenstein, and Man-Thing. All characters ©2001 Marvel

Characters, Inc. Opposite bottom and this page: Selected panels from RussHeath’s glorious Son of Satan #8 artwork. Starting on page 69, we have afour-page portfolio from this superb job, sans word balloons! Courtesy ofthe artist. ©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc.All letters of comment, articles and artwork, please mail to: Jon B. Cooke, Editor, Comic Book Artist, P.O. Box 204,

West Kingston, RI 02892-0204 • Phone: (401) 783-1669Fax: (401) 783-1287 • E-mail: [email protected]


by David A. Roach

1968 was a truly momentous year for both Marvel and DC.Marvel had finally emerged from the shackles of its oppressive distri-bution arrangement with main rival DC Comics and the Marvel linebegan to expand and dominate the marketplace. DC was in the earlystages of Carmine Infantino’s revolutionary leadership with oldfavorites like The Atom, Hawkman, and Doom Patrol being can-celled, and a new group of artist/editors—Joe Orlando, Joe Kubert,Dick Giordano, and Mike Sekowsky taking over from the company’selder statesmen. However, few observers at the time would haveimagined that the year’s most significant development would beOrlando’s revamping of the moribund House of Mystery comic,replacing “Dial H For Hero”’s Robby Reed with an EC-inspired horrortitle.

The first few OrlandoHouse of Mysterys mix reprintswith passable new strips, butsoon the likes of Neal Adams,Alex Toth, Bernie Wrightson, CarlWessler, and Jack Oleck trans-form the title into a massive sell-er. Barely more that a year later,DC could boast of five regularhorror books: Murray Boltinoff’srevitalized Unexpected, DickGiordano’s House of Secrets andWitching Hour, and Orlando’sPhantom Stranger and House ofMystery. Inevitably someone atMarvel noticed all this activityand, just as eight years earlierwhen The Justice League ofAmerica prompted them to re-enter the super-hero field, so tooin 1969 did the House of Ideasdecide to launch their own mys-tery comics. Tower of Shadowspremiered in September 1969and was followed in October byanother bi-monthly title,Chamber of Darkness. Marvelhad finally entered the modernage of horror.Tower of Shadows #1boasts contributions from someof Marvel’s heaviest hitters: StanLee, John Buscema. John Romita,

and Don Heck as well as EC veteran Johnny Craig, but the best ofthe issue’s three stories is “At the Stroke of Midnight” by the GreatMaverick himself, James Steranko. The story itself hardly breaks newground—a cantankerous couple murder the husband’s uncle to inher-it his fortune and then meet a horrible fate in his festering mansion—but the manner of its telling is truly breathtaking and something veryspecial. Steranko had already made a name for himself as a trailblaz-ing innovator and here he tried every trick in the book—Krigstein-esque multi-paneled pages, color holds, vertiginous angles, black-&-white panels, chiaroscuro, and some of the best draftsmanship of hiscareer. The second issue features a typically beautiful Neal Adams

strip, “One Hungers,” while the first few issues of Chamber ofDarkness are also home to the best of the Marvel regulars, but evenat this early stage, there are signs that Marvel was not quite surewhat do do with these comics.Initially each book features the by now standard cadaverousnarrator—The Old Digger in TOS and Headstone P. Gravely in COD,dead ringers respectively for House of Mystery’s Cain and Warren’sUncle Creepy—but they are soon edged out by the innovation ofhaving each strip’s creators narrate the story, presumably on the basisthat the likes of Tom Sutton and Sal Buscema are scarier than anymere literary concoction. More significantly, the established stars arereplaced with a mixture of young, occasionally raw, talent and someof comics’ more temperamental veterans. While the likes of LenWein, Allyn Brodsky, and Steve Skeates are all given early scriptingopportunities, there are also rare chances for artists to write theirown material, a situation seized upon by Wally Wood. His four sto-ries in TOS #5-8 are all terrific fun, allowing him to wallow in hisfavorite Tolkien-meets-Prince Valiant subject matter. None of themare intellectually challenging but, boy, are they pretty! TOS #5’s“Flight into Fear” is probably the pick of the bunch.Over in Chamber of Darkness, the increasingly unhappy JackKirby is given a pair of rare scripting opportunities though at leastone, “The Monster” in #4, was altered considerably before publica-tion. Neither strip is exactly revolutionary but at least JohnVerpoorten’s bold inking is pleasingly true to Kirby’s pencils.Verpoorten appears in six issues of the horror comics, just edging outneophyte penciler Barry Smith as the lines’ most prolific contributor.Smith’s five stories come just before his emergence into stardom withConan and his Kirby fixation is still very much to the fore. His work inthe ’60s is characterized by all manner of visual tricks in the Sterankomold, and some rather indifferent, if energetic figure work. Smith isalways at the mercy of his inkers and while Dan Adkins does a beau-tiful job on TOS #5’s “Demon That Devoured Hollywood,” VinceColletta positively murders the Brit’s art two issues later. Smith’s mostattractive, and by far his most important, strip is the collaborationwith Roy Thomas in COD #4, “The Sword and the Sorcerers,” inkedby the artist himself. It’s story of a pulp writer confronted—andkilled—by his barbarian creation, Starr the Slayer, is cleverly told andattractively rendered but its true importance is as a dry run for Conanthe Barbarian. Starr is Conan in all but name, right down to hishorned helmet and his appearance here unwittingly foreshadows thecourse of Marvel’s success for the next decade. Where they wouldtry a succession of horror books and fail, the barbarian comics wouldmeet with immense acclaim and inspire a mini-industry of imitators.We will hear about barbarians again before this story is all told.One of DC’s rising stars—and horror stalwart—BernieWrightson makes a late appearance in Marvel’s horror books, con-tributing four great covers to TOS and COD combined and a decentstrip to COD #7. His cover to the ninth issue of Tower of Shadows isa particular treat for students of fashion featuring as it does a self-portrait of Wrightson sporting a very fetching pair of checkeredshorts and Indian-style moccasins. Nice! The next issue stars anotherWrightson contribution but it is not a horror strip and the comic is nolonger called Tower of Shadows. Significantly it is an example of thelack of confidence and direction which would plague Marvelthroughout its horror line. As early as TOS #6, reprints are beginningto appear and by the final issue of COD, barely six months later, thenew Material shrank to a derisory six pages.With its tenth issue, Tower of Shadows is renamed Creatures on

Shadows & the DarknessThe horror… the horror: It all started in Towers and Chambers

Spotlight: Marvel

Above: Courtesy of penciler MarieSeverin, here’s an exquisite

Severin/Bill Everett cover to thecontroversial Tower of Shadows #4,

featuring Jack Kirby’s much-changed story “The Monster.” To

find out more about this tale, checkout The Jack Kirby Collector #13,also found in The Collected JackKirby Collector, Vol. 3. ©2001

Marvel Characters, Inc.

EDITOR'S NOTE:Though he wrote it as an on-topicinstallment of his “Marginalia”

column, we think David A.Roach’s wonderful survey ofMarvel’s color comics horroranthology titles is a perfect

context piece to kick-start our ’70scelebration. Our esteemed co-

editor of the forthcoming WarrenCompanion is concerned little

mention is made of Marvel’s con-tinuing horror series stars, so bearin mind we’ll be covering Dracula,Frankenstein, Werewolf, etc. morecomprehensively later in this ish.


the Loose and Chamber of Darkness becomes Monsters on the Prowl. Bernie Wrightson’sstrip in the first Creature is no horror tale, but was instead the first comics adaptation ofRobert E. Howard’s legendary King Kull. Despite Wrightson’s art being poorly printed, theresulting fan acclaim soon led to a Kull title. Meanwhile, seemingly unnoticed, Monstersand Creatures continue to run new strips, albeit behind the Kirby and Ditko reprints. Alltold, nine new horror stories are printed over the course of the ensuing year and a half,strips that are almost certainly inventory tales from TOS and COD. Amongst many nicesurprises is a typically beautiful Ralph Reese chiller, an unlikely collaboration between Jack(First Kingdom) Katz and Barry Smith and one of Reed Crandall’s final art jobs.A Stan Lee/Manfred Sommer monsterfest in Monsters on the Prowl #12 is decided-ly out of left field since Sommer was a Spanish artist of some renown not recognized forhis horror work. Unfortunately the strip is not up to his usual high standard, unlike prob-ably the most interesting of the inventory stories. Len Wein’s “Underground Gambit” inCreatures #11 is a hidden gem revolving around superstar underground cartoonist RogerKrass, famed for his counterculture strip, Peter of the People. But Krass has a secret: He’sreally a “square” who loathes his hippy admirers. “Gibbering fools—they wouldn’t rec-ognize real art if it came up and bit them on the leg!” One day Krass is discovered bysuave talent scout Herbert T. Brimstone (hmmm) who promises theartist a lucrative contract if he will only sign up to Brimstone’s new syndicate. Which he does, of course! His hippy friends are appalled athis sudden transformation into a suit-wearing, short-haired youngexecutive—”I don’t believe it! Roger’s sold out to the Establishment!”Unfortunately—and don’t say you didn’t see it coming!—Brimstoneturns out to be the devil and Krass finds out just what it is like to be atrue “underground” artist.The moral of the story appears to be don’t sell out to The Man oryou will end up in Hell, a sentiment we can all relate to, right, kids?Herb Trimpe’s art is perfect throughout, from Krass’s Crumbesquecomic strip to his bouffant wig and peace sign medallion. No onedraws hippies quite like Herb. Sadly, once the inventory material runsout (with a final rogue strip by Rich Buckler cropping up in WhereMonsters Dwell #15) Monsters on the Prowl becomes an all-reprintbook (not before running another Kull strip, though this time as a pre-view of the newly-revived Kull book). For its part, Creatures on theLoose #16 stars another sword-&-sorcery strip, the underrated RoyThomas/Gil Kane “Gullivar Jones” feature. This runs for a few moreissues before being replaced by a further barbarian, Lin Carter’s“Thongor of Lost Lemuria.”Creatures on the Loose bucks the trend though. While Marvelseemingly lacks the will to compete head-to-head with DC’s anthologybooks, they are happy to flood the market with reprints. From WhereMonsters Dwell to Tomb of Darkness, the publisher brings out ten fullyreprint titles which plunders their ’50s mystery archives and theearly-’60s Kirby and Ditko monster strips. Unperturbed by this, DC’shorror line grows and grows, with new titles Ghosts and Weird WarTales soon joined by Swamp Thing, Weird Mystery Tales, ForbiddenTales of Dark Mansion, and Secrets of Sinister House. Horror sold andat DC seemingly anything could be given the mystery makeover, from weird Westernsand weird adventure to Gothic romance and even weird humor (the immortal Plop!).In 1972, Marvel finally hits paydirt. Marvel Spotlight, a horror version of DC’sShowcase, brings us “Werewolf by Night,” “Ghost Rider,” and “The Son of Satan” whileTomb of Dracula, “Man-Thing” (taking over the previously all-reprint Fear book) andThe Monster of Frankenstein all find an enthusiastic audience. These strips are essentiallyvariations on Marvel’s patented “super-heroes with problems” approach (“monsters withissues,” if you will) which makes the monsters the stars and introduces strong continuity,ensuring reader loyalty. Still, the continuing presence of DC’s books must have been aconstant challenge which Marvel, and Editor-In-Chief Roy Thomas in particular, simplycan’t ignore, so between October 1972 and May ’73, four new anthology books hit theracks.Realizing that the old titles had sometimes lacked direction, Thomas decides to builda new line around adaptations of classic horror and science-fiction stories. The first issueof the revived Journey Into Mystery sets the pattern of things to come with a powerfulRoy Thomas/Gil Kane adaptation of Robert E. Howard’s “Dig Me No Grave,” backed-upwith contributions from Ralph Reese, Steve Englehart, Jim Starlin, and Steve Skeates.Next month’s premiere, Chamber of Chills #1, is perhaps not quite so impressivealthough subsequent issues make up for that with some lovely Frank Brunner strips. Onemonth later, yet another new book is released: Supernatural Thrillers, which is to featurebook-length adaptations of varying quality. The first issue’s retelling of Ted Sturgeon’s“It!” by Thomas, Marie Severin, and Frank Giacoia is certainly strong but diluted some-what by its similarity to Swamp Thing, Man-Thing, The Heap, et al. The last of the fourbooks to appear is clearly a labor of love for Thomas: Worlds Unknown, which adaptsclassic s-f stories and is something of a dry run for the more highly regarded Unknown

Steranko:Master StorytellerA personal look at Marvel’s greatesthorror story, “At the Stroke of Midnight”

Even my first glance at Jim Steranko’s “At the Stroke of Midnight” fromTower of Shadows #1 told me there was something more going on here thancasual comic book fare. This horror tale, which is rather tame by the EC Comicsstandards of explicit gore, is a chilling nightmare; a Gothic noir tale of terror filledwith dread, draped in paranoia thick enough to make H.P. Lovecraft proud.Consisting of 90 panels in only a seven-page tale, this graphic tour de forcebroke new ground upon its publication in 1969, shredding comic book conven-

tions and proving Steranko was asmuch a student of film as sequen-tial art, building on the visualtechniques of the world’s greatestcinematographers. It is, simplyput, breathtaking in execution.Even today, it resonates withmood and atmospherics rarelymatched in our field. It’s a simplestory of retribution from beyondthe grave and, if you’ve neverseen it, find a copy right away; itneeds to be experienced to befully understood and appreciated. As Steranko’s “My HeartBroke in Hollywood” (in Our LoveStory #5) is the finest Marvel lovestory ever produced, so too is thisTower of Shadows story the bestweird story to be published by theHouse of Ideas—perhaps thegreatest horror tale printed by anypublisher, rivaled only by BernieKrigstein’s “Master Race” forinnovative technique. (Interestingly, the romanceand Tower stories were the lasttwo Steranko produced for Marvelin this period, a sad testament tohow out of touch the company—

and perhaps the entire industry—was in advancing the art form. Not to take any-thing away from Steranko’s superb super-hero comics of the period, but this is thework I’ll remember most when another 30 years has passed.)According to the 1998 Vanguard Productions book Steranko: Graphic Princeof Darkness, the story was originally titled “The Lurking Fear at Shadow House”,but the name was changed by Marvel’s editor. Steranko also submitted an extra-ordinarily bold and innovative cover for that first issue (printed on the gatefoldcover of the Vanguard book), but it was rejected by Stan Lee. (I urge readers toseek out Steranko’s original cover and comments on “Shadow House”; write to:Vanguard Productions, 59-A Philhower Road, Lebanon, NJ 08833.)For me personally, this story (and to a lesser extent Steranko’s impressivework on Nick Fury, Agent of SHIELD #3) served as a limitless well of inspirationfor my early attempts at a future in art. The year I discovered both books (1979),my high school literary magazine was littered with my swipes of Steranko’s work,feebly aping his moody lighting technique. Despite the crude rendering, “my”illos got rave reviews; I guess even my lack of skill couldn’t hide the brilliance ofthe source material. If not for the encouragement I got from that experience, Imay never have ventured into an advertising/graphic design career, and in turnmight never have started publishing comics magazines. I guess you could saySteranko’s work—particularly “At the Stroke of Midnight”—is at least indirectlyresponsible for the magazine you’re holding. As I learned in high school, a strongfoundation is important, and I started with the best. -John Morrow, publisher

Above inset: Courtesy of Albert Moy, the splash page of Steranko’s masterpiece, “At theStroke of Midnight,” from Tower of Shadows #1. ©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Conducted by Jon B. CookeTranscribed by Brian K. Morris

As a consulting editor for CBA, our next interview subject is heavilyrelied upon by us for deep background on many aspects of 1970scomics. It should go without saying to comics fans of Marvel’s“Second Wave,” that Roy Thomas served as Stan Lee’s immediatesuccessor as the company’s Editor-In-Chief for a short, but eminentlymemorable tenure, helming the celebrated horror revival, never mindinitiating the barbarian frenzy of that decade. It was Ye Ed’s pleasureto interview the talented writer/editor by telephone on March 8,2001. Roy copyedited the final transcript.

CBA: Marvel had traditionally been a catch-upcompany in that they would follow an innovativeleader, whether it was the crime or romance genre,whatever genre that was currently successful...Roy: Even Fantastic Four was follow-the-leader.CBA: I guess it was, but it became an anomalyunto itself.Roy: It wasn’t intended that way, that’s not whatMartin Goodman had in mind! [laughs] It was fol-low-the-leader, another super-hero book. It was onlyStan and Jack Kirby together who made it somethingmore.CBA: And then Marvel conquered the comics uni-verse in the ’60s. They were finally leading the pack!Roy: By the late ’60s, early ’70s, yeah… I think itwas in ’72 that Marvel finally passed DC in totalsales, but they were gaining all the way through. Inthat two weeks I spent at DC in ’65, they were hav-ing meetings about the heat from Marvel, and I wasstartled, because I hadn’t realized how much theyfelt the competition from Marvel, which of coursethey’d see Marvel’s sales figures since they distrib-uted Marvel.CBA: What was the concept behind the Tower ofShadows and Chamber of Darkness books?Roy: DC was having some luck with House ofMystery and House of Secrets. After all, Marvel at

one time had basically had a lock on the horror market… not in termsof quality, but in terms of quantity. [laughs] They had tremendoussales during the early ’50s, so it was a natural to try to get back intothe genre again. The only problem was that, after the first issue ortwo, with our being too busy to pay a lot of attention to them, theydidn’t have the focus Joe Orlando could give to the DC books byconcentrating on a handful of titles. Stan would concentrate on thebooks for the first issue or two, but then they were supposed to runthemselves. He wasn’t going to be in on every plot conference, and Ihad too many things to do to go over every little story, so we justtried to hire a bunch of people to do good stories. But they didn’tever have any unity. Carmine Infantino says that Joe Orlando was the“secret weapon” in DC’s mystery comics, and maybe to some extentthat’s true. Even though we had Archie Goodwin working there partof the time, we really didn’t have anybody that really concentrated onthat editorially. Archie was a freelance writer, and I was concernedwith other things, and couldn’t do all of it, nor could Stan.CBA: You started off incredibly, right out of the gate, with Towerof Shadows, having a superb story by Steranko. How was that

assigned to him? Did he come up with the story?Roy: I don’t recall, but I would imagine that Stan went to Sterankoas somebody who could do that kind of thing. Maybe Steranko hadtalked to him about it, I really don’t know. Didn’t Steranko do acover, but we weren’t able to use it, it wasn’t clear enough forGoodman?CBA: Yeah, right. It was an amazing cover.Roy: But it was a problem, because sometimes you had two orthree different people running the company. Stan and Goodman wereincreasingly on different wavelengths as the time came near the endof their relationship.CBA: With Stan focusing on those first two issues of Tower ofShadows and Chamber of Darkness, he was getting the best artists inthe industry to contribute, right? Steranko, Neal Adams, Wally Woodall did stories, even a young Barry Smith.Roy: And Vinnie Colletta inked Barry’s stories! Barry had all theseweird faces in trees in one story, and Vinnie just went, “It’s a tree!”and inked it like that! [laughter] That wasn’t one of our better pair-ings.CBA: Who determined the stories have the actual writers andartists introduce the stories?Roy: Probably Stan. I think he wanted to give the book some per-sonality, so he said, “Well, we’ll have the writers do some, and theartists do some.” Of course, the writer ended up writing the artist’swords, but I don’t think there were any artists who wanted to botherwith the writing. I would write Barry, and if he wanted to changesomething, that would’ve been fine. Those introductions were a nicetouch which evaporated after a few issues. Stan wanted to start offwith these host characters… like the “Gravedigger” that Sterankocame up with. That seemed like it was copying not just DC, but ECand everything else that had gone before, so Stan was looking forsomething different. I think that’s why he came up with the idea ofhaving the artists and writers introduce the stories. It was kind of cutefor the little length of time it lasted—not very long, I think.CBA: The titles obviously became reprint books...Roy: From the very beginning I don’t think sales were that great,and I don’t believe there was the commitment to stick around and doit, because they were so much trouble compared to the super-herobooks, having three different sets of writers and artists every issue, asopposed to one. We weren’t really geared for it, because we didn’thave a big editorial staff, like DC. Stan and I were editing everything,and the writers were editing what they did, and we had a few assis-tant editors that didn’t really have any authority… that was about it.We didn’t have the right kind of a set-up at the time to make a hit ofthose books. I think the black-&-whites did a little better later, simplybecause people like Marv and others could come in and be editors,concentrating on a handful of books.CBA: So Chamber and Tower were pretty much children ofneglect?Roy: I think so.CBA: Who was Mimi Gold?Roy: Mimi Gold was a young woman who worked at Marvel—Idon’t remember how she got a job—but she came in, worked as ageneral assistant around the place. The thing I remember most abouther, besides that she was a fun person, was that she took it upon her-self to spend a lot of time working on getting Barry Smith back intothe States after he was forcibly deported. The two of them wenttogether for a while. In fact, I remember when my wife Jeanie and Iwent to Britain in the summer of 1970, we spent a lot of time with

Son of Stan: Roy’s Years of HorrorMarvel’s Editor-in-Chief discusses the ’70s macabre mags

CBA Interview

Below: Roy Thomas, Marvel’s #2editorial guy, in mid-sentence

during a Creem magazine photoshoot. Dig that belt! Photo by

Raeanne Rubinstein. ©1973 Creem Magazine.


EDITOR'S NOTE:While an in-depth discussion onthe Marvel black-&-white horrorline was completed during this

interview, because of space considerations we’ve had to exciseall of that discussion. CBA hopesto include Roy’s insightful com-ments on that aspect of Marvel’shistory in a planned future issue

devoted to the non-Warren b-&-wmags. Our apologies to R.T.

the two of them, because she had gone over ahead. They weretogether for a little while after Barry came back, but then they wenttheir separate ways.CBA: Who was Allyn Brodsky?Roy: I forget how I met him, but I remember I had him come to myapartment once. He’d written a letter, and he was—no relation toSol—a nice personable young man in histwenties who was knowledgeable abouthorror. Although I’d seen the name before,he’s the person who really turned me on toH.P. Lovecraft. He became an assistant edi-tor. A lot of the writers had a left-leaningfeel to their writing, but Allyn was moreconservative, and that made for a little bal-ance. He turned out not to be the greatestproofreader in the world, but he did somewriting for the company for a while. I sawhim for the last time at Christy Marx’shouse, maybe 15 years ago. I wish I knewwhere he was now! He’s the guy whoended up doing most of the rewriting onthe “Casablanca” story [in Sgt. Fury #72,as related in Roy’s article “Play It Again,Stan!” in Alter Ego V.3, #6] and I’d like totalk to him about it and see what he canremember that the rest of us have forgot-ten, because he spent a whole weekendwith that monster! Allyn Brodsky, whereare you?!? [laughter] He was out in theL.A. area, last I heard.CBA: Was there talk in the office about liberalizing the Code?Roy: Oh, yes, Stan was always wanting to do that, because he feltincreasingly constrained by the Code. The drug thing was part of it, Ithink that’s what brought some of it to a head, but I think it wasalways constraining. Not that Stan wanted to go wild and return tothe horror days of the ’50s—he practically had nightmares aboutbeing kept off PXs in those days!—but combine the Wertham scare

with that American News debacle in ’57, and it was a bad decade. Hejust wanted to liberalize the Code so we could make our own choic-es, as opposed to having somebody tell us, “You can’t say this, youcan’t do that.”CBA: Did you sit in on any of those Code meetings?Roy: No, they were closed meetings. Stan had to go, though he

didn’t like to, just like Carmine didn’t. I haddinner once or twice once in a while withLen Darvin, the head of the Code, withwhom I was quite friendly. I rememberwhen I was married in ’68, he took mybride Jeanie and me out to dinner. We did-n’t always agree on the censorship stuff,but he was a nice guy. He’d been a lawyerand then drifted into being the head of theCode when Mrs. Guy Percy Trulock quit.CBA: When did Len become head of theCode?Roy: I think it was late ’65, early ’66, afew months after I got there. Mrs. Trulockwas offered a subscription to any issue ofMarvel she wanted when she left, and shechose Thor, because she liked the lan-guage. [laughter] There had been thatjudge in the ’50s, then there was Mrs.Trulock, and then Darvin for many years.Len and I would fight on the phone, but Ididn’t deal with him too often. I rememberhaving a few weird conversations about

changes in Conan, but it was usually pretty civilized. I think I respect-ed him more than some of the other old-line people did, and I thinkhe sensed that I didn’t have the ingrown hostility toward him. You’dthink, being younger, maybe I would have, but I didn’t. I wasbrought up with respect for my elders, and I didn’t automaticallythink that, just because he was working for the Code, he had to bean idiot.CBA: Were you champing at the bit for liberalization of the Code?


Above: The whole blamed Marvelbullpen pose for a Rolling Stonecamera in 1971, the same yearhorror returned to the comicshouse. Can you name all theinmates? Give it a go and we’llgive you a Yo-Prize if you’re cor-rect! Photo by D.E. Leach. ©1971Straight Arrow Publications.

Left inset: Our Man Stan, chiefarchitect of the horror revival atMarvel. This pic is from an uniden-tified British fanzine which fea-tured a Stan Lee interview inthe ’70s. Courtesy of Jerry K. Boyd.©2001 the respective copyrightholder.

Conducted by Jon B. CookeTranscribed by Jon B. Knutson

Marv Wolfman has been—especially since his astounding 60+ issuerun on Tomb of Dracula—considered one of the best writers in thecomics field. Marv has also had acclaimed tenures on The New TeenTitans, Superman, Crisis on Infinite Earths, and numerous other titles.This interview was conducted via phone during two sessions—on the19th and 26th of January, 2001. The writer copyedited the transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Last time we’d left off—in your CBA #5interview—you’d taken on a teacher’s position after leaving DC?Marv Wolfman: Yes and no. I was doing some writing for DC,but that was sporadic and freelance. Meanwhile, I had been studyingart as a major, and education as a minor to become a teacher, so Iwas teaching while writing for Skywald, and just one or two thingsfor DC, but not really a lot.CBA: What did you do at Skywald?Marv: Lots of horror stories.CBA: Who were you dealing with?Marv: Sol Brodsky, the “Sky” of Skywald.CBA: What did you think of the books, generally?Marv: Not as good as the Warren books. The paper was cheaper,the books were a lot cheaper. However, I wrote the type of stories I

wanted, and when I wasn’t doing the standardstories, I did a fairly strong demon-typeseries with Rich Buckler about gods anddevils.

CBA: Rich mentioned that to me.It was quite an ambitious….Marv: It would’ve been evenbigger if we had continued. Also Idid a pretty dreadful thing withErnie Colón called “The LoveWitch,” and many other storiesas well.

CBA: Did you work full-script at the time, or

was it “Marvel-style”?Marv: Itwas all full-script.CBA:With Rich,did you co-plot thesethings?Marv:No. I believeI submittedthe script toSol and Richwas assigned,but it’s possibleRich and I camein together. Idon’t have thememory of that.

CBA: I read a quote in Les Daniels’ history of Marvel that youdon’t like horror. Is that so?Marv: No, I liked horror, I published a horror fanzine called Storiesof Suspense.What I was not a big fan of was horror movies. I have avery graphic mind, and they actually terrified me. It took a long time,many years, before I could see a horror film.CBA: You mean even the Universal pictures?Marv: Oh, no, I’m not talking silly monster films, I’m talking aboutmore intense horror films.CBA: The ones that were coming to the fore in the ’60s.Marv: Yeah. By the way, what did Rich say about the angels anddemons story? I don’t remember the situation much at all. I assumedI wrote it full-script, because I was writing everything full script. Didhe remember otherwise?CBA: No, he remembered it as being ambitious and said he wasdisappointed that you guys didn’t finally resolve the story.Marv: I was a big fan of… [laughs] it sounds pretentious, but ofMilton’s Paradise Lost, and wanted to do a comic version—not ofthat story, but of the type of material or storyline that it dealt with,only in my own way. A dream project of mine would be to do acomic book version of Paradise Lost.CBA: Are you saying that you’d like to return to it some day?Marv: Very much, I just don’t think anyone would be interested.[laughter]CBA: Have to be a labor of love!Marv: Exactly. For me and the artist.CBA: Did you seek out Skywald specifically as a market? Why notWarren, for instance?Marv: I think Sol Brodsky may have asked me to work for them,because I had done some of the mystery books at Marvel, Tower ofShadows, Chamber of Darkness….CBA: Doug Moench told me after only having a few stories pub-lished by Warren, Sol called him up and asked if he wanted to comeover and be an assistant editor at Skywald, move from Chicago toNew York on virtue of just a couple of stories. Doug was slightlytaken aback by that, was startled, to be asked to write Hell-Rider, ofall things.Marv: That would’ve been the way Sol operated.CBA: You were an editor at Warren for about six months?Marv: Warren thinks I was there shorter, I believe I was thereslightly longer. I think I was there not quite a year, but eight monthsor so. The only reason my memory is such that I remember Roy ask-ing me to come to Marvel twice. I had turned him down once after Ihad been at Warren for several months, because I was happy atWarren, and then he asked me several months later to come again toMarvel, and at this point, I was ready to, or interested, and it tookabout a month or two after that to actually get there. So, I think Iwas there about eight months.CBA: What was your experience at Warren? How would you char-acterize it?Marv: Pretty good. I liked Jim, always have. He let me alone, I wasjust about to do some interesting stuff with the books, and when Ileft, they never got done, although I had set them up to try to breakthe formula, which was five or six unrelated horror stories, unrelated.I was going to be doing, and had commissioned, for instance, an all-vampire issue, and an all-werewolf issue, telling the stories of thevampire from the very first vampire to the very last one. That’s theone I was originally going to put Blade into.CBA: Not only themes, but concepts?

Wolfman by DayMarv on Tomb of Dracula and the Marvel b-&-w mags

CBA Interview

Below: Recent studio portrait ofMarv Wolfman. Courtesy of Marv.

Opposite page: This Gene Colan-penciled and Tom Palmer-inkedDracula image appeared in anissue of FOOM. Courtesy of Tom Palmer. ©2001 Marvel

Characters, Inc.


EDITOR'S NOTE:Marv Wolfman and Ye Ed agreed

that the pending litigationbetween the writer and Marvel

Comics over the ownership of theWolfman-created character Blade

(featured in a recent WesleySnipes film) would not be a topicfor this interview. CBA suggeststhose interested to follow TheComics Journal’s news editorMichael “Scoop” Dean’s fine

reporting on the case in that mag.

Marv: And all the authors I contacted—I’m sure Doug was one of them—had a time peri-od that they were going to do a story in, and most of the stories were done before I left, oras I left, but they were never published in order. My feeling was that I knew Marvel wascoming into the field, and Marvel’s strength was series, and I felt that the anthology,although very strong, did not compel you to return issue to issue. I was trying to come upwith concepts that would make you want to read the entire book and make you look for-ward to something a little bit different. The books had already been around for ten years orso, so you try to do different things, and that was one of them. [At this point, the talk veersoff to an in-depth discussion of Marv’s eight-month or so stint as an editor for WarrenPublications, which will appear in the upcoming TwoMorrows’ book, The WarrenCompanion.]CBA: Marvel was offering you better money than what Warren was giving you?Marv: Oh, tremendously.CBA: Who called you?Marv: Roy. I had known Roy for years, through the fan circles and also professionally. He’sthe one who brought me into Tower of Shadows, Captain Marvel, and whatever else I didat Marvel, Kid Colt Outlaw, or some book like that. Roy had asked me because they neededsomebody, and I turned it down, and then a couple of months later, he asked again at theRutland Halloween Parade, that’s why I know exactly when this happened. After Halloween,we’d all taken a large bus back from Rutland to New York—we had taken the bus up, aswell—and Roy asked me on the way back, so it had to be November 2 when he asked me. Isaid I’d think about it, thought about it for a week or a little bit more than that, called himback, but Roy was going through some personal situations, and we didn’t even connect foranother week or two after that. Once we worked out the details, I gave a month’s notice toJim.CBA: Was this just before they came into the black-&-white horror line?Marv: Before. I knew I was coming in to essentially be the editor of them. Although I waslisted as assistant editor, I knew I’d be the editor in name very quickly after that.CBA: So that was part of the deal going over. Was Jim cognizant of the fact that youwere going over to work on the black-&-whites?Marv: Yeah.CBA: Did Jim give you a strong reaction?Marv: He was not pleased with that, but financially, I couldn’t afford to stay. I had tomove to New York, as I was living on Long Island, from where I’d been a teacher. It was atwo-hour commute each way, so I had to move into the city. It was suddenly much moreexpensive to move. It was okay to commute at the salary Jim was paying me for three daysa week. But suddenly, that three-days-a-week salary could not pay for everything I needed,and he couldn’t increase it financially for five days a week, so I really had to go over toMarvel. Otherwise, I enjoyed working up there, and there was a lot of freedom.CBA: Did you have favorite contributors you were working with at Warren?Marv: Well, the best ones I took with me to Marvel. In some ways, Doug Moench was afavorite. You could call Doug, and he’d do a story on almost anything, and it will come ininstantly. He was fast, he was good. Marty Pasko, I believe did some. I really don’t remem-ber too many more.CBA: Did you bring Don McGregor over?Marv: I believe Roy brought him over.CBA: All of a sudden, Marvel decided that they’re going to go into Jim Warren’s play-ground with the black-&-white horror books.Marv: Well, I think you have to go back a little bit to remember that they had doneSavage Tales #1 a couple of years before that. Marvel wanted to get into the b-&-w field,and I think that’s because Jim proved it was successful. But Marvel primarily did it on theirterms, which was for the most part lead series, characters. The books didn’t have unrelatedmystery stories. Warren was far closer to EC, but Marvel always put characters into theirhorror books.CBA: Roy tells the anecdote that one morning, Stan walked in and said, “We’re going todo two black-&-white horror books,” and the next morning he said, “We’re going to dothree,” and then four, and Roy was suddenly dumped with this enormous load of books todo, and he obviously hired you to come in….Marv: …and dumped it on me! [laughter]CBA: Was that daunting? What was your first day at work like?Marv: Well, I started before the books got started, so my first day of work was proofread-ing color comics. There was a lot of work before everything started moving, and it startedfairly slowly. So, I don’t have a memory of the day the horror books started, I just rememberslowly moving over to them. Dracula Lives! and Tales of the Zombie, Monsters Unleashedand Vampire Tales all started at once, and the requirement was that there be a certain num-ber of original pages, a certain number of reprints, and some text pages. Within a fewmonths after that, then the books started to have all original material, and we introducedother books as well: Deadly Hands of Kung Fu and all the others. That’s when things startedgoing insane. At one point, I noticed I was handling the entire line by myself—except forConan, of course, which Roy handled—and counted the number of original pages in eachissue, because I wasn’t paying a lot of attention as I was working so hard, and discoveredthat I was producing, by myself as an editor, more pages than the entire color line! [laugh-


ter] All original pages! We were having 50-some-odd pages an issue,and at that point the comics had 17. So, I realized that was why Iwas tired all the time. We managed to bring in an assistant at thatpoint. But for several months, I was producing the line by myself,including Crazy magazine, which was 52 pages of all-new materialwhere I was not allowed to use any Marvel staffers. That had to bedone outside of Marvel. I could use some of the artists and some ofthe writers, but nobody on staff. It had to have its own department,it had to be completely separate from everything else. I don’t knowwhy.CBA: No idea why?Marv: I had no idea why I couldn’t use anybody else. It was a dif-ferent production department, done outside Marvel completely. Ittook a while before they let me use any artists outside of MarieSeverin, who drew comedy so wonderfully. That’s why if you look,virtually all the artists in Crazy were people you may never haveheard of, or from other fields. I realized at some point—and I’m notquite sure how—that editorial cartoonists, who are brilliant artists,have nothing to do three-quarters of the day, until the editorial deci-sion is made as to what they need to draw for the next day’s paper.Then, suddenly, it’s a flurry of action, so these people are usually sit-ting around for a long, long time. I actually had Pulitzer Prize-winningeditorial cartoonists doing stories for me, because it was extra moneyfor them, and they got to draw—which they loved—and they hadplenty of time to do it. Among them were Dick Wright and Vance

Rodewalt.CBA: You know, the book felt kind of Marvel, but it wasn’t kindof Marvel. Didn’t you introduce that moose character?Marv: Myron? I’d found Bob Foster through a small comic he didcalled Myron Moose. [laughter] I fell in love with it, and called him.He was shocked that anyone had ever seen the thing. I asked him ifhe’d do more moose stuff for us, and I think I came up with the ideaof “History of Moosekind.” [laughter] I could be wrong, but I think Idid. He was going to put Myron in it, but I said, “No, don’t putMyron in, I want an original.” So, Bob did that incredible job, andbrought in a lot of Disney artists as well with him.CBA: That series really was a history that was developed, issueafter issue, and it was densely-packed, just hilarious satire!Marv: It was incredible satire, and the reason it worked was thatBob used real history as the basis, and altered it into this moosething. Bob was one of those artists and writers who… I don’t quiteknow why, but I just look at his stuff and break out laughing, [laugh-ter] it was just so ludicrous and funny and satiric and smart that itwas surprising. I had never seen anything like that. I desperatelywanted to do a comedy magazine that was different from Cracked,which is what Stan wanted. He didn’t want Mad, because as he said,we couldn’t afford to do Mad; he wanted Cracked. I kept saying,“You know, you don’t have to pay a lot for cleverness, you just haveto find the right talent.” Where I could, I found the people whocould do it.CBA: Was it difficult to maintain the schedule of doing all thesebooks?Marv: Crazy was the hardest, because that one I did by myself. Wealso had a very low budget, so I had to keep figuring out ways tosave money. One of the ways was, I had my ex-wife take a photo ofan old radio—one photo—and I would write three or four pagesusing this radio, each page was self-contained, six panels on thepage, nothing changed, just that same radio, and you’d have to

read the copy… it was a radio show! [laughter] And it would be con-tinued three or four times per issue, every issue. Because as editor, Ididn’t pay myself, and we only paid once for the photo. I managedto get four pages free, which I could then use to pay the artists andwriters on the rest of the book a little bit more, to slowly get the ratesup to the Marvel level.CBA: Marvel was in the same building as National Lampoon. Didyou ever encounter freelancers working for them, and were able toget them to work for you?Marv: No. The strange thing was, one of the pieces I wrote, and infact won a Shazam! award for, was originally intended for theLampoon.CBA: What was that?Marv: That was “Kaspar the Dead Baby.” [laughter] Before theLampoon started, I submitted an idea called “The Dead Baby, theWitch and the Very Fat Duck.” They were interested in it. I wasgonna come back but never did. The rest is history, [laughter] andthat story got done in Crazy.CBA: Did you ever go downstairs to visit the National Lampoonoffices?Marv: Just that one time.CBA: I think it was Marie who told me it was amazing how muchfun it was at Marvel, and then you go over to the National Lampoon,and it would be so quiet, so reserved… [laughs]Marv: Marie, of course, worked at that building longer than I had.Within a few months of my coming to Marvel, we shifted buildings,so I just never did visit National Lampoon much.CBA: You were able to do a lot of fumetti, which was also popularin Lampoon.Marv: That was also to keep the prices down. I love fumettis. I didthem again at Disney Adventures magazine. I love them from thedays of Harvey Kurtzman’s Help! magazine that I had read as a kid,and wanted to do them in Crazy. We did a number of them, originalssuch as the one you keep printing Dick Giordano’s photo from,[laughter] which is one of my favorites.CBA: Did you take the pictures?Marv: No, my ex-wife did. We then got a deal with Art Buchwald,and we adapted some of his columns into photo stories, and we alsoworked with Jean Shepherd.


Above: The splash page to Ye Ed’sfavorite Marvel b-&-w story. ByMarv Wolfman and Neal Adams

from Dracula Lives! #2. Why hasn’tthis story ever been reprinted?Below: Bob Foster’s hilarious

“History of Moosekind” featureran in a zillion issues of Crazy.

Appropriately, here’s Bob’s versionof “The Moose of Darkness.”©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Conducted by Tom FieldTranscribed by Jon B. Knutson

This interview, conducted in Gene Colan’s Vermont home onFebruary 18, 2001, focuses strictly on the artist’s career at Marvel inthe 1970s. Gene’s wife, Adrienne, makes some very welcome com-ments throughout our talk. For more on Colan’s early years and hisbeginnings at Marvel in the 1960s, please refer to the highly infor-mative and entertaining interview conducted by Roy Thomas in AlterEgo #6. —Tom Field

Comic Book Artist: About the time 1970 hits, you’re draw-ing Daredevil, Captain America, maybe the occasional Sub-Marinerand some of the mystery/romance stories in the anthologies. You’vebeen at Marvel for nearly five years, and your career is going alongsmoothly. Then all of a sudden Jack Kirby leaves Marvel and goes toDC. What do you remember about that time? Was there a bit of ashake-up?Gene Colan: No, I wasn’t aware of it. I was in my own world.[All I thought about was] what am I going to do, and how am Igoing to do it.CBA: Now, you had a good working relationship with Stan Lee.But even before Jack left, Stan started to pull back from scripting.Suddenly, you weren’t working with Stan exclusively; you wereworking with Roy Thomas, Gerry Conway and other writers. Howdid your working relationships change?

Gene: I tried to give the writers whatever they hadwritten down. If there was something I wasn’t sureof, I’d give them a call, try to get them to tell mewhat they were looking for, and I would try veryhard to give them what they had written on thepage. I much preferred to work with Stan,because he left everything up to me! When Iworked with Stan, he’d give me a sentence ortwo, and he’d say, “Now, turn that into an 18-page story.” So I had to break it down. I never

wrote it out. John Romita would, verymeticulously, I think, do little thumb-

nail sketches, and try to get thething to pace

right. I

would do it all in my head, and sometimes I’d get into trouble thatway.CBA: Now, when you started working with fuller plots, did thataffect your enjoyment of the material you were working on?Gene: The [newer] writers wanted a lot of control, I thought.They tried to tell the artist—depending on the writer, some of themwere a little more controlling than others—how to go about settingup a scene, what the composition would be. I resented it. I’m theartist, he’s the writer! “You write the story. I’ll do the work—I’ll dothe visuals—but stop telling me what to do!”CBA: Did you express yourself to them, or suffer in silence?Gene: Usually suffered in silence.CBA: So, let’s talk about Tomb of Dracula. How did you hear thatMarvel was going to do this project?Gene: I must’ve heard about it from one of the editors up there atthe time, or Stan himself, and I know I had a talk with Stan about it.I said, “Stan, I’d literally beg for this.” He asked, “Why?” And I said,“Because I know it’s something I’d love to do.”CBA: What was it that appealed to you?Gene: The atmospheric backgrounds that would be necessary torender the evil, the scariness of it all….CBA: At that point, you didn’t know who was going to write it?Gene: I had no idea who was going to write it, but Stan had thecontrol, and I wanted to be the artist on the project. They had othermonster books at the time—they were giving tests to several ofthem—and I asked Stan [for Dracula], and he said, “Okay, fine,” andI let it go. I figured he said all right, so I can get it—all right! But thenhe changed his mind without me knowing it, and who was going toget it but Bill Everett? I called Stan up and said, “Stan, that’s notwhat you told me!” He said, “Well, Bill had it long before I told youthat you could do it, and I promised it to him.” I knew he was dou-ble-talking me—I just knew it—so I sat down right away, and Iworked out a whole page of Dracula’s character study, and all differ-ent poses in a montage. I wish I had that page today.Adrienne Colan: I hate to be a buttinsky, but… what hap-pened was, Gene was devastated, but took it as, “That’s it,” becauseStan was so final about it. But this was around the time the firstGodfather movie came out, and there was this big story goingaround the industry how Marlon Brando saw himself as theGodfather, but the studios didn’t. And Brando being Brando, youwouldn’t think he’d go in and put himself through auditioning, butthey said he stuffed cotton in his cheeks and came in [to the studio]as the Godfather, and he got the part, in spite of the fact that theindustry didn’t see him in that role at all. So, I suggested to Gene todo a montage, because I knew Gene had this vision [of Dracula], andhe was like loaded for bear! He didn’t want to! He thought, “Whyshould I? I’m not getting paid!” I said, “Listen, it’s good enough forBrando! What th’?…”Gene: That’s how it happened. I sent [the tryout] to Stan, and thenext day he called and said, “You got it!” That was it!CBA: At that point, did you know if you were going to be drawinga comic book, or was it thought it might be a black-&-white maga-zine?Gene: It was a comic book—one of the monster books they wereadding to the list.CBA: Now, you told me earlier how traumatized you were as a kidby seeing the original Frankenstein movie. That inspired your life-long fascination with horror. Why not go after Marvel’s Frankensteincomic book instead?

Below: The Dean with his belovedcanines, basking in the rays at his

Vermont home. Ye ed has thepleasure of doing a drive-by atGene’s abode this past February.Thanks for the hospitality, Mr.Colan! Courtesy of the artist.

The Colan MystiqueHis name is Eugene, and the talk is about Tomb of Dracula

CBA Interview


Gene: It wasn’t offered! They never mentioned it. Just Dracula.CBA: Would you have been interested?Gene: Oh, sure! I would’ve done that, too.CBA: Would you have been more interested than in Tomb ofDracula?Gene: No, I think Dracula had the edge. First of all, I had a partic-ular actor in mind [for Dracula] that had never played the part, andthat was Jack Palance. I figured, “Oh, if there’s anyone who can playthat role, it would’ve been him!”CBA: What did you see Jack Palance in that made you think that?Gene: Well, I had seen him do Jekyll and Hyde for television, andright there and then I knew that Jack Palance would do the perfectDracula. He had that cadaverous look, a serpentine look on hisface…. And he did play that role, eventually, on television. So, I tookhim on as a character, and [when drawing Dracula] I’d sit before thetelevision screen with the Polaroid camera, and whenever there’d bea still image of him on the screen, I’d photograph it in different posi-tions, so I could use him. That’s how [the Palance look] came about.Dracula never turned out really looking like him—somewhat like him.Maybe I didn’t catch the actual essence of him in the beginning…but I think as the years went by—and that’s when you really begin todevelop a character; you get much, much better at it—it began toevolve into Jack Palance.CBA: Now, to take on Tomb of Dracula you had to give upDaredevil, the book with which you were most associated. Was thata tough choice for you?Gene: No, I had been doing that for a very long time, and I wasrunning out of ideas. The idea was to choreograph his acrobatics, andit was getting too much the same all the time.CBA: Was there any fear that you were giving up the security of asuper-hero for the risk of a horror title?

Gene: No, I didn’t care about that. Actually, I learned later that allthe other horror books they were turning out failed. The only onethat did hang on, and stayed on, that they wanted to stay on, wasthe Dracula series. And once I knew that, that it was a hot item, andthat I was doing something right, that was reward enough to contin-ue with it.CBA: So, the assignment is yours. Do you recall how the first storycame to you? Did the writer, Gerry Conway, give you a long plot orscript?Gene: I remember talking about [the story]. It was just a writtenscript, like I’d been doing, and I followed it.CBA: Do you have any memories about how you approached thatfirst story?Gene: Well, I inked the first one. After that, I just don’t remember.Just so many adventures came along.CBA: Why did you ink that one issue? At that point, you hadn’treally inked any of your work at Marvel.Gene: No, but I wanted to try it out. I thought, “Who knows,maybe I’ll stay with it, maybe I won’t.” But it was too much pressureto get the work out, and I’m slow.CBA: You’re never really comfortable inking, are you?Gene: No. It took me a while to get into it. It was bad enough tojust get it down right in pencil, let alone then go on and ink it.CBA: Now, when you first created Dracula, he had a goatee. Youkept it for two issues, and then it was gone. What happened?Gene: I must’ve forgotten about it.CBA: You forgot it for 68 issues?!Gene: Yeah, must’ve been! I just left the little mustache; that’s it. Ididn’t like the goatee. It was something I didn’t think he looked goodin. Too typical.CBA: How about the inkers on Dracula? You did that first one

Above: CBA contributor GregHuneryager writes: “It was smallsize, on one [board]. It corre-sponds exactly to a spread—Ibelieve in Tomb of Dracula #29—with the same placement of bal-loons so I just assumed it was amisplaced piece and Palmer inkedusing xeroxes. Its size is due toMarvel's short-lived policy of hav-ing the artists do a two-pagespread on [one board] and onlypay them for that one page[though it was enlarged to a double-page spread for printing]but when I showed it to MarvWolfman last year in San Diego,he said this spread exists in pencilform because Palmer hated howthe art looked when printed thesame size so he would lightboxand blow up these spreads to theirstandard size. Another obliquemystery solved!” Thanks, Greg!Art ©2001 Gene Colan. Tomb ofDracula ©2001 Marvel Characters,Inc.


Conducted by Jon B. CookeTranscribed by Jon B. Knutson

Herb Trimpe, along with Flo Steinberg and Marie Severin, is easilyone of my favorite people in comics. Because, like those two delight-ful women who shared time with Herb in the ’60s Marvel Bullpen,he is simply a very real person. No pretense, checked ego, self-defac-ing about his own work, and—overall—a solid grasp on the realitiesof the comics industry. This interview—revealing a perhaps too-opin-ionated interviewer—was conducted by telephone on January 28,2001, and was copy-edited by Herb.

Comic Book Artist: I was looking through a comic bookindex and came across reference to Alex and Mike Trimpe. Are theyrelated?Herb: Alex is my son, Mike is my brother.CBA: Your brother helped you with an “Ant-Man” strip in MarvelFeature?Herb: Yes, he inked it. He inked a couple of books for me, actually.CBA: That Marvel Feature was a nice job!Herb: He was a good inker! I know! He actually tried to get work afew years ago, but I think I had already left comics, and he was hav-ing a tough time down in Charlottesville, Virginia. He’s a graphicartist, and was having a helluva time getting work. He tried comicsagain, but they weren’t interested at all, but he is a pretty solid inker! CBA: Yeah! That’s one of my favorite jobs that you did.Herb: I loved that “Ant-Man” stuff. I like the whole idea of it. Icould draw that now, I think.CBA: It was a beautiful homage to Kirby’s Marvel work, I thought,from the splash page with his hand outstretched....Herb: Yep, I remember that, yep.CBA: I’m just surprised it was your brother! That was a real nice

job, it’s just too bad they didn’t hire him more!Herb: My son Alec did some really good layouts for meon RoboCop and Fantastic Four Unlimited.CBA: What does he do now?Herb: He works for a temp agency in Kingston, NewYork, and he’s a musician. He writes all his stuff, and him

and my daughter have a bandcalled Badger. They’re lookingfor a bass player right now totry to flesh things out. Mydaughter Sarah plays violin,and he’s working on the

keyboards and MPC-2000, though heplays just aboutanything: Guitar,keyboard, hewas all-statetrombone inhigh school.They’re trying,they’re goingfor it.[laughter]Theyhave a

different sound, it’s not exactly mainstream. (Check it out:www.mp3.com/badger)CBA: Your career, at least your personality....Herb: Checkered career!CBA: Checkered career, is bookended by two major articles thatappeared in major magazines. First there was the Rolling Stone arti-cle that featured your Hulk drawing as a cover in 1972. And, just lastyear, the New York Times Education supplement had a memoir byyou on leaving comics and starting a new career as educator at age60. Do you know what became of one-time Marvel secretary RobinGreen who wrote the Rolling Stone article?Herb: I guess I do... do you?CBA: Yeah.Herb: You do! In fact, it’s really, really, weird... that’s an amazingstory! I’ve a friend, Alan, I hung around with—he actually graduatedin my brother’s class in high school, but I met him via aviation, weboth had airplanes—and we got to talking one day, just about a yearago, and somehow, the name Robin Green came up. He, throughanother friend, became acquainted with her, and I said, “I knowRobin Green!” and we went through the whole thing. He said sheworked for Marvel, and I said, “Yeah, I know her quite well.” But Ididn’t know she was involved in The Sopranos TV show and othertelevision stuff. I had no idea because we don’t have cable any more.[For the record, Robin Green, who succeeded Flo Steinberg asMarvel’s secretary in the late ’60s, wrote a revealing article forRolling Stone on the Bullpen (which showcased Herb Trimpe, amongothers), and is now a producer and writer for the award-winningHBO TV series, The Sopranos.—JBC]CBA: So you haven’t seen The Sopranos?Herb: No, I haven’t seen it.CBA: I don’t get HBO, but they just came out with the first seasonon video, and I saw the episodes she wrote, and they are some ofthe best television I’ve ever seen in my life! Just extraordinary writ-ing.Herb: I’m just amazed, and then I saw a picture of her inNewsweek or something, it was a group shot of the whole cast andthe writers and all that, she was standing in the back row. I wrote hera note—I got her address from my friend Alan up there—and shewrote back and said they’re in New York on occasion, and we oughtto come down and get together sometime. Yeah, it was very, veryinteresting, the whole thing. [laughs]CBA: So she was a secretary at Marvel Comics?Herb: Yeah, like Stan’s gal Friday. She was a bullpen assistant, andshe replaced Flo. She didn’t work there that long, maybe six monthsto a year, maybe not even that. We got along very well. She wasreally great. Tall, skinny... I don’t know how she looks now.CBA: Where are you from, originally?Herb: Peekskill, New York.CBA: I lived there for a time, when I was 11.Herb: You’re kidding! No kidding! My mother still lives there.CBA: Furnace Brook Drive.Herb: Yeah, I know where that is, exactly. I used to have romanticinterludes up that way. I remember it as a sixth grader.CBA: That’s where I smoked my first cigarette. [laughter] Were youinterested in comic books as a kid?Herb: Yes, especially comic strips. Comic strips were the thing. Ididn’t buy too many comic books. I had a couple of cousins and Iwould go to their houses, one of whom lived near the junior highschool in Peekskill. I used to eat lunch there, and my cousin and I

Inset background image: Son of Satan and Phantom Eaglenotwithstanding, most informedreaders know that Herb Trimpe’strademark character is good ol’Greenskin. Detail of back cover

Trimpe illustration from The Rampaging Hulk Marvel

Treasury Edition. ©2001 MarvelCharacters, Inc.

The Incredible HerbTrimpe (rhymes with “blimpie”) on his Marvel bullpen days

CBA Interview

Below: From left to right, it’sAmelia Trimpe and her parents,Linda Fite and Herb, in a recentphoto. Courtesy of Herb Trimpe.


ing the stat camera?Herb: No, he was

doing drawing and paste-ups,setting the books up. SolBrodsky hired me. He’s the

one I took mywork to. Johnsaid, “Give Sol acall and come onin, bring yourstuff.” I said, “Idon’t have anystuff, the last stuffI did was in art

school!” So Sol said,“Bring it in, justbring it in,” so I did.I had some prettygood inking, so theygave me some

Western stuff to do,Kid Colt or somethingelse.CBA: Immediately?

Herb: Yeah, prettymuch.CBA: Was DickAyers or WernerRoth the pencileryou inked?Herb: Yeah,Werner Roth wasone. I think I did

some Dick Ayers. I mostly did Werner Roth. He was a really beautifulpenciler, I thought. It was clean stuff, and easy to ink, you know?CBA: Did you ever meet him?Herb: No, I never did. I don’t think I did. I think Joe Maneely hadjust died a year or two earlier when I went in there, and he was stillone of the talked about guys in the office, in terms of his great facili-ty with the comic book medium.CBA: Actually, Joe died in 1958, and they were still talking abouthim in 1966? Wow!Herb: Yeah, he was like Marie Severin, because they did the samekind of stuff, sort of that EC look, real adventure, highly researched,accurate stuff? The Black Knight stuff is great! Marie said his pencilswere almost non-existent, they were like rough, lightly-done layouts,with no features on the faces... it was just like ovals and sticks andstuff, and he inked from that. He drew when he inked. That’s whenhe did the work, in the inking!CBA: What was Sol Brodsky like?

Herb: I liked Sol. Sol was okay. He was the last of a breed, I cantell you. Like from the publishing world, you know what I

mean? He knew comics, but he could’ve worked in anypublishing position that needed to put books together

and get them to a printer on time. He was a can-do kind of guy. He knew when somethingwas screwed up, and he would say so, youknow what I mean? He’d say, “This needs

to be fixed.” He represented the kind of qualityin publications that you just don’t see anymore,except maybe in The New York Times, where theyreally care if something’s spelled right or not.I tell you, Jon, that bullpen in those years?That was the best job in the world. I mean, it wastremendous, I’m not kidding you. It was just so

much fun.CBA: What made it so?Herb: It was the people. It was theMarvel Comics universe realizingitself during those years, you know?And egos were not in play, theyreally weren’t. There were people

who had really been around the block a couple of times, you know,and they weren’t fools. They really weren’t vying for some sort of“top dog” position in terms of creativity. It was just a fun thing, andit was varied. There were some great people in there: Marie, John.Oh, it was just very fun. It was small, there weren’t that many peo-ple. Tony Mortellero, who was one of the production people, wasjust a lot of fun. Now, in those days, John Romita was working thereevery day, too. He didn’t work freelance at home, he was in thebullpen. He was drawing Spider-Man, but he was in the bullpen, inthe same way I began drawing The Hulk working in the bullpen. Thefirst couple of books I did right on staff until one day, I complained toStan about concentration, and he said, “Well, why don’t you just gohome and work?” So I did. I just started to take days off, go home,come in a day or so a week and hang around and work there. It wasjust total freedom! [laughs] It was just unbelievable. And we knew it!It wasn’t one of those deals where you look back in 20 years, andsay, “Gee, wasn’t that great?” We knew it was great at the time.CBA: One of my favorite anecdotes about the Marvel bullpen in1968 was Barry Windsor-Smith telling me that he remembers chillsgoing up and down his spine when, spontaneously, the wholebullpen would start singing “Hey Jude.”Herb: Oh, my God, I remember that!CBA: Yeah, he just remembers standing there, and everyone justjoining in.Herb: I couldn’t wait to get to work, you know what I mean?Unlike now at the high school. [laughter] I pray for snow days now. CBA: You can argue that ten years later at Marvel, there was a lotof jockeying for position, with Stan pretty much out the door inCalifornia, Roy had resigned, not wanting to deal with it anymore,and there was a rotating, revolving door for editors and stuff likethat. But back in the late ’60s, do you think it was recognition thatthis was Stan’s ballgame, Stan built this company to what it was?Herb: I think there’s no doubt. But Jack Kirby also. Jack was “it,”you know what I mean?CBA: Did you see him a lot?Herb: He came in occasionally, yeah, I met him. I met him on anumber of occasions. He came in on a couple of occasions and he’dwork, do some things that needed changes, and chomp on his cigar,and we’d watch him! One time he penciled a cover, I don’t know if itwas for Thor or Fantastic Four or what it was, but he just knockedthis thing out in about an hour, and we were all in the bullpen, andwe’d get up and watch him and talk, and it was great.CBA: Did you revere him at the time?Herb: Yeah! Oh, Kirby... you know, when I went there—and I’msure when everybody else went there—that was Stan’s basic rolemodel, he recognized that everybody drew differently, but in termsof the storytelling, “Look at Jack, take a look at this, this is what Iwant.” That was basically it. Everybody was judged by the standardof Jack Kirby, I think.CBA: Would it would be off the mark to say you would seem tobe heavily influenced by Jack?Herb: I was. I wanted to draw like Jack Davis. If I’m left to myown devices, I tend to draw kind of cartoony, like that kind of thing,a lot of wrinkles. Jack Davis was my idol up to the point where Istarted working at Marvel. But that really went out the windowwhen I began to draw there, it was just not a thing they wanted tosee. [laughs] So, I had to do all this kind of bogus re-inventing. Itwas not... I didn’t really care one way or the other, I didn’t have areal style anyway. CBA: Were you specifically instructed to draw like Jack?Herb: No, not in so many words.CBA: But you were instructed to follow the storytelling tech-niques?Herb: If you want to know how to tell a story, look at Jack’s work.So, you look at Jack’s work—which you do anyway, it’s all great—and you know, there are stories with his original artwork that every-one’s dazzled over. And you wanted to do it! It was cool, so every-body wanted to draw cool! Well, I did. You can see it everywhere.Buscema, he had his own style, but you can see from panel to panel,it’s the Jack influence in the layouts and the storytelling, it’s reallyself-evident, I think.CBA: So the first work you did was in Westerns, do you remember


Above: Bob Layton & Co.’s fanzineContemporary Pictorial Literature

occasionally featured special centerfold guest stars. Here’s HerbTrimpe’s submission. Courtesy ofBob & CPL/Gang Productions.Below: One of Herb’s favorite stories was the Harlan Ellison-

plotted and Roy Thomas-scriptedstory featuring Jarella in The Incredible Hulk #140.

©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc.

So

n o

f S

ata

n

Po

rtfolio

byRuss

Heath


Though most avid Heath collectors know full well that Russcontributed mightily to Marvel in

its earlier 1950s incarnation as AtlasComics—on innumerable Western,war, and horror tales—it may comeas a surprise to afficionados thatthe artist spent some quality timeat 575 Madison Avenue in the

1970s. Dracula Lives #13 includesa lush and gorgeously rendered

portfolio of vampire portraits; Ka-Zar #12 contains a full-length tale;and Savage Tales #10 and 11 bothare graced with the Heath touch.

But his ’70s tour de force at Marvelwas Russ’s Son of Satan #8 job,“…Dance with the Devil, My

Red-Eyed Son,” as written by BillMantlo. Sans word balloons andcaptions, here are six pages of

that superb—if forgotten—story.Courtesy of the artist. Son of Satan

©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc.


Gary Friedrich‘s writing credit appeared in hundreds of Marvelcomics from the mid-’60s to late-’70s, from Sgt. Fury to CaptainBritain, but very little is known about the man, who perhaps mostnotably scribed an exquisite adaptation of Frankenstein in the com-pany’s glory days of horror. But, with the help of Roy Thomas, wetracked Gary down who graciously gave us a startlingly honest andinformative interview via telephone on January 25, 2001. The sub-ject also copyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Where are you from, Gary?Gary Friedrich: I’m originally from Jackson, Missouri, same asRoy Thomas.CBA: And what year were you born?Gary: 1943.CBA: Did you meet Roy at a young age?Gary: I met Roy when I went to work at a movie theater inJackson when I was in seventh grade. I was 13 or something likethat. Roy is about four years older than me.CBA: You met him at the movie theater?Gary: Yeah, he was already working there when I started. Wepopped corn, drew soda, ushered and that kind of stuff.CBA: Did you guys enjoy movies together?Gary: Oh, yeah. Roy and I had a number of things in common, pri-marily movies and popular music. Then he got me turned on tocomics again. I had read them when I was a kid but slacked off forfour or five years. The super-hero revival at DC was just gettingunderway and Roy got me back into the comics.CBA: As a young kid, were you an avid comic reader?Gary: Yeah, I loved comics. Anything and everything. You name it,I loved it. I liked all the super-hero stuff: Superman, Batman andCaptain Marvel, in particular. I liked the funny stuff too. I really lovedThe Fox and the Crow.CBA: Were you disappointed when Captain Marvel was cancelled?Gary: To tell you the truth, I don’t remember. Probably around thattime, I was beginning to stop reading the comics and so I didn’t reallynotice that much. There was to be a period there of a few yearswhere I didn’t read any comics.CBA: Did you miss the ECs when they were coming out?Gary: Not entirely. But I didn’t really get to read a lot of ECs untilafter they’d stopped publishing and I got to New York and beganreading some issues Roy was picking up. Len Brown had a lot ofthem and I read those with him.CBA: Were you exposed to Mad comics at all?Gary: Yeah, absolutely. I loved them.CBA: Roy got you back into comics? Gary: Yeah. There was a drugstore up the street from the theaterand he’d take a break, go up to the drug store, pick up some comicsand bring them back. He’d read one and pass it on to me. Roy waskind of my idol, you know. He was four years older and anything hedid was good for me. So he was going to read comics? Well, I readcomics, too. But I quickly found that I really enjoyed them again. CBA: Do you recall when Roy started Alter-Ego with Jerry Bails?Gary: Oh, sure. I was involved in doing some legwork on a few ofthe early issues Roy did in Jackson, running stuff to the printer andstuff like that. I recruited the second Joy Holiday—PaulineCopeman—for him. [Joy Holiday was a costumed mascot for thefanzine The Comicollector.] Pauline was a friend of mine when Royand Linda had broken up and he needed a new girl to portray JoyHoliday so I talked Pauline into doing it for him.CBA: Did you start getting interested in writing, too?Gary: I was interested in writing. Of course, I was still in highschool when this was going on. When Roy started Alter-Ego, he wasin college and I was nearing the end of high school, and then Roypretty much turned me on to writing and I was writing a lot of stuffin high school. I edited the school newspaper and got in trouble forwriting a pro-comic book editorial when I was a senior. We had thisold maid English teacher who was just outrageously straight-laced

Groovy Gary & the Marvel YearsFriedrich on the highs & lows working at the House of Ideas

CBA Interview

74 COMIC BOOK ARTIST 12 March 2001

Below: Perhaps writer GaryFriedrich’s high point at Marvelwas his collaboration with artist

Mike Ploog on their adaptation ofMary Shelley’s famous novel for

The Monster of Frankenstein comicbook. Courtesy of anonymous,here’s a Ploog pencil page from

#6. ©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc.

and conservative and Roy had been her prize pupil. When she stirredup all this trouble about this editorial, I went to her and we werehaving a rather heated discussion. At some point, I pulled a copy of aJustice League of America Roy had a letter in and I asked her if sheremembered Roy Thomas. And she said, “Well, certainly. He was oneof my best students,” yadda-yadda-yadda. Then I flipped open theletter with his name on it and her face—! [laughs] It shut her up for alittle bit. CBA: [laughs] Did Roy have a good reputation in high school?Gary: Oh, very much so. Much more so than me. I was kind of ahell raiser, but Roy had a nice, well-earned reputation.CBA: Did you have an interest in drawing at all?Gary: No. No artistic ability whatsoever. CBA: Did Roy became a school teacher while you were still inhigh school?Gary: Yes. He taught in Sullivan, Missouri, up near St. Louis for ayear or two and then he taught in Arnold where, strangely enough, Ilive now, for a couple of years before he came to New York.CBA: Did Roy have aspirations to become a comics writer?Gary: Yeah, very much so. He was so wrapped up in the comics, itbecame difficult to get him to talk about anything else. [laughs] I’dget aggravated with him from time to time. I’d try to turn on theradio and listen to some music and he’s gonna turn it off and start offon talking about the next Green Lantern! [laughs] He had the bug alot worse than I did.CBA: [laughs] So were you equally into Elvis and ’50s rock ’n’ rollas he was?Gary: Oh, absolutely, especially Elvis. We also liked Swing music alot, were both huge Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald fans and webecame Bobby Darin fans when Bobby’s Swing stuff came out.CBA: You were also an avid record collector?Gary: Absolutely.CBA: Did you start getting contact with comics fans throughoutthe country?Gary: No, I never really bought into the fandom thing. I wasn’tnearly as interested as Roy. I enjoyed reading the comics and thatwas about as far as it went. I was glad to help Roy out if there wereany little things I could do and in terms of running errands, that’s themost I ever did with Alter Ego. I was always happy to do that as afriend but I wasn’t really interested.CBA: So the thrill of seeing your name in print—kind of an egotis-tical thing—never necessarily bit you?Gary: Well, I had the same thing with doing the school newspaper.I liked seeing my name in print. You bet. [laughs] Still do.CBA: [laughs] Do you remember when Roy got the call from DCComics?Gary: Yeah. I guess that he was still in Arnold or maybe wrappingup what would be his last year of teaching up there at the time. Hegot the call and there was no question about him going. I, of course,hated to see him leave.CBA: Did you consider, at the time, that, “Hey, if he establisheshimself in New York, maybe that’s my chance”?Gary: You know, I don’t think I really did, but within a fewmonths, that changed. At that time I was the youngest newspapereditor in the state of Missouri. Just through circumstance, I’d gottena job in early ’64 as a reporter for the local newspaper in Jackson. Ascircumstances warranted, the editor quit and went back to KansasCity, the owner was in an accident and there was nobody there torun the damn paper. [laughs] And I’m there, 21 years old and don’tknow squat but I wound up running this newspaper for about a year.The previous summer, Roy and a girlfriend had gone to Mexicoand he’d written a series of stories for my newspaper about their tripto Mexico. [laughs] He and another friend of ours from Jackson gotin trouble with the school board for some politically-slanted lettersthey had written to my newspaper about the 1964 PresidentialElection. I got into a kind of mudslinging act with the son of a localmerchant. The merchant apparently called the school board in Arnoldand he sent some clippings along. Roy and Bud got called in andtold to cease and desist the political letter writing campaign. [laughs]Roy and I had a lot of fun. CBA: [laughs] I never saw Roy as a rabble-rouser, exactly.Gary: Well, he wasn’t much. Just in this particular case, this kid

was such a despicable little ass andRoy and Bud just couldn’t resist rip-ping him to shreds. CBA: [laughs] Was the kid asupporter of Barry Goldwater?Gary: Absolutely. [laughs] Itwas fun while it lasted.CBA: Did you go to collegefor Journalism?Gary: No.CBA: Did you go to college?Gary: No. I got out of highschool and worked in a musicstore in Cape Girardeau forabout three years.CBA: You garneredenough clippings from yourhigh school newspaper, tomake an impression onthe editor?Gary: Well, I got tiredof the music store andwent looking for a job.This new guy fromKansas City hadbought out the twoweekly papers inJackson and turnedthem into a singletwice-weekly news-paper with the ideathat he’d eventu-ally turn it into adaily. I just stopped by there onthe off-chance that he’d need some help, and I wasjust in the right place at the right time. The editor was a young manfrom Kansas City named Tom Stites who’s gone on to quite a careerworking for all the major newspapers in the country. He taught meenough to be able to run that newspaper when he left. I got myeducation from him.CBA: Was it a good experience?Gary: Oh, it was wonderful, yeah.CBA: Did you enjoy it?Gary: Yeah, for the most part. There werebad things. Number one, I was workingabout 80 hours a week for $50, [laughs]and that wasn’t good. I finally got araise to about $75, I think, but basical-ly, I wrote, edited, and laid out theentire newspaper. I was the wholeeditorial staff without any help. Itwas driving me crazy.CBA: Did you even composethe type?Gary: Well, in those days, wewere still hot type. We still hadLinotype machines.CBA: You didn’t have to oper-ate that, did you?Gary: No, no.[laughs] Inevereven

Above: Courtesy of Roy Thomas,the splash page to The Sentinels'first adventure (in Charlton’sThunderbolt #54), drawn by SamGrainger and written by Gary

Friedrich. ©2001 therespective copyrightholder. Left: Justabout the onlyphoto wecould find ofGary, thisfrom Psycho#12.Courtesy ofPabloMarcos.



Who knew that Don Perlin’s career reached back to the late-’40swhen he arrived like a bolt from the blue at Marvel in the early1970s? Well, the artist’s work incomics stretches a ways back andwe’re delighted to include this inter-view with Don in this special Marvelhorror issue. Don was interviewed byphone on January 18, 2001, and hecopyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: Where andwhen were you born, Don?Don Perlin: Hoo-hoo! [laughs]New York, in 1929. August 27, 1929.CBA: You were at the perfect age forgrowing up with comic books. Wereyou introduced to them at a youngage?Don: I loved comics when I was akid. Ever since I can remember, I usedto read comic books.CBA: Were you interested in thenewspaper strips?Don: Oh, yes. All the time. That wasone of the things that I loved. Amongmy favorites were Milt Caniff’s Terryand the Pirates and Steve Canyon. Ienjoyed Hal Foster’s Prince Valiant and

Burne Hogarth’s Tarzan.CBA: The good adventure stuff.

Don: Yeah. I liked to read the funny stuff, too, andI can draw “bigfoot.” I’ve done some Scooby

Doo, panel gags, and I’ve gone from one endof the spectrum to the other. But I like theadventure stuff the most. CBA: Did you start drawing at a youngage?Don: Oh, yes. I did my first muralwhen I was six years old. I was sup-posed to go into Kindergarten andcame down with scarlet fever. In thosedays, the city Board of Health wouldcome down and quarantine you. Iwas in my bedroom for 30 days. Icouldn’t do anything and I drew pic-tures on the walls with crayons. I don’tremember what I drew, but I do recall theday the guy came and took the quaran-tine off. I had my favorite food thatday: Frankfurters—still my favorite tothis day. [laughs] CBA: Was it a nice neighbor-hood?

Don: It was a rural part ofBrooklyn that wasn’t built upmuch at that point. It was

called Canarsie and it was famous for two things they always talkedabout in the movies at that time: Mosquitoes and the garbage dump.During World War II, we used to go into the dump with a wagon—you know, one of those little red Radio Flyers—and a BB gun toshoot the rats. We would pick up all the metal and the rubber we

could find for scrap drives. It was recy-cled into weapons for the war. CBA: Were you a collector of comicbooks?Don: Well, not a collector in today’ssense. Kids used to trade them. Youknow, you’d read it, then somebodyelse would read theirs and you’d tradecomics and re-read them until they fellapart.CBA: Did you have favorite charac-ters?Don: My favorite was Batman. Ialways liked the wisecracks Batman andRobin used to make between each otherwhen they were fighting with the badguys.CBA: Were you known in gradeschool as an artist?Don: I had this fifth grade teacherthat would give out Christmas presentsto all the kids in her class. At Christmas,she bought all the girls little handker-chiefs and all the boys some kind ofnickel yo-yo, or something. She gaveme a book on how to draw cartoonswhich was different than everybody else

got.CBA: Did you use the book and learn from it?Don: I can still remember the book. Yeah, I learned from that book.CBA: When you were a kid, what were your aspirations? What didyou want to do when you grew up?Don: I wanted to be a cartoonist.CBA: Who were your cartoonist idols?Don: Burne Hogarth was my idol. When I was in high school,about 14 years old, and Hogarth had put an ad in some of the highschool papers, announcing that he was going to hold a class onSaturday morning for people interested in cartooning. A friend ofmine showed me the ad and I presented it to my dad. He calledHogarth and enrolled me in the class. We went to Hogarth’s apart-ment, which was on Central Park West. He looked at my work andsaid, “Fine.” He took me in the class and eventually I met AlWilliamson there (who was also a student), who was I guess about ayear or two my junior. We became friends so after class I’d go over toAl’s house. He, at that point, lived in Manhattan which was nearerthe school. Hogarth always represented class, to me, in his personand in his art. He was my favorite. He was the one I met when I wasyoung. I hadn’t met any of the others until later on in life.CBA: He had a reputation for being highly critical. Was he tough?Don: Well, I don’t know whether he was tough. He would sit downand spend time working with you. I remember one time I was work-ing on a comic strip panel and there was a picture, a difficult angle ofthese two guys shaking hands. Hogarth sat down and he wouldn’tget up until he had it worked out well. He was a stickler. He was a

CBA Interview

Perlin’s WisdomDon Perlin on his fifty years as a comic book artist

Right inset: When Don Perlinworked with old Marvel cohort

Jim Shooter at Valiant Comics inrecent years, this classy portrait

was produced. 1994 photo by PhilMarino. ©2001 the photographer.

Below: This werewolf drawing byDon was inked by Joe Rubinstein.

©2001 Perlin & Rubinstein.


good artist and wanted you to achieve as much as you could. Atremendous lecturer, he was very interesting. When he started doinglectures in school, he used overhead projectors. He would draw andyou could watch it on the screen. The room was jam-packed.CBA: Had he left the Tarzan strip at that point?Don: He was doing Tarzan when he told us he was going to quitand do Drago, a strip about a gaucho.CBA: How long did you stay?Don: Oh, a couple of years. When the school started expandingand I could no longer afford to go, I had to drop out.CBA: It was a four-year program?Don: There was no program. The school was actually Hogarth. Hehad rented a loft and worked with you on an individual basis. He hadabout anywhere from six to eight students. Then he got hooked upwith something called the Stevenson School. When that happened, Idropped out and didn’t go back until later when it became theCartoonists and Illustrators School.CBA: How much time would Burne individually spend with you?Don: Well, you’d get there at nine, from nine to twelve, and he’dspend a little bit of time with each person. Then, maybe, he wouldstop and show everybody something. He’d bring in the Sunday origi-nals he did on a weekly basis, he’d bring in these Tarzan pages and,you know, they were quite a sight to see.CBA: Was anyone, that you know of, assisting Burne at the timeon a strip?Don: When I went to C&I, Ross Andru was there at that time and Ithink he may have worked on Burne’s material. It may have beensomebody else again, I don’t know.CBA: Did you meet Ross?Don: Yes, I knew Ross then. He worked with Mike Esposito. I knewMike. We renewed our friendship when I was working up at Marvel.He inked a couple of things I did.CBA: What kind of guy was Ross?Don: Ross was a nice guy, a quiet, intelligent fellow.CBA: He’s kind of a mystery, you know? He was apparently theshy one and Esposito the outgoing one. At the time, was there achoice for you between being a syndicated cartoonist and a comicbook artist? Did you want to be a syndicated cartoonist?Don: I went to comic books because, at that point, it seemed morepractical. It would be easier to get into.CBA: Not as hard to sell as a syndicated strip, you mean?Don: Yes. There were many different publishers at that time. Somewere kind of shady like Fox Features Syndicate. They did a lot ofcrime comics, didn’t pay well, and didn’t pay on time. Eventually,they went bankrupt and a lot of the cartoonists were caught holdingthe bag; they lost some money on that. I remember they had someeditors who would take a dollar a page kickback.CBA: Did you have to suffer through that?Don: Well, I didn’t suffer too much because I was a pain in the ass.[laughs] I would do a job and they’d say, “You get paid in 60 days.”When 60 days came around, they expected me to start yelling formy money, I started yelling before that, like when 30 days came. Sowhen 60 came, I usually got paid. That saved me. I lost about $150on the deal when Fox went bankrupt, though there were some wholost a couple of thousand dollars.CBA: [laughs] Did it look like a crooked business to you?Don: What, the whole comic book business? No, no. Just this Foxcompany. I met a lot of nice, decent people in there. Some peculiarfolk, but nice, decent people.CBA: Do you recall when you first started working there?Don: The first job I ever had was at Fox. It was some crime story. Ipenciled it and got Pete Morisi to ink it. I knew Pete because he wasgoing to the same school and we both had the same instructor, areally great guy named Lee Ames. He worked for Charlie Biro andBob Wood, and he did book illustrations. Lee put Pete and I in touch.CBA: Pete was moonlighting at the time or was this before hejoined the New York City police force?Don: It was way before he joined the force.CBA: Did you hang out with any frequency with Al Williamson?Don: That’s when we were younger. When I left the school, I did-n’t see him again for a while.CBA: What other cartoonists did you encounter while at Fox?

Don: I met Jack Abel there. In the early-’50s. I had this rented stu-dio, a one-room thing down near Cooper Union. It was an old build-ing, built in the Civil War and the room cost me $35 a month, whichI couldn’t afford. So I took in a couple of guys, Pete Morisi and SyBarry.CBA: Sy Barry? Dan Barry’s brother?Don: Yes, and he had an assistant. (I don’t remember his name,though his first name was Sam.) Then I rented a space to a guy bythe name of Al Gordon. We kept that place until 1953. In that year, Iwas drafted. I went into the Army and they gave upthe studio. CBA: After Fox went bankrupt, what work didyou do?Don: I got a job with Jerry Iger, working on staff.He had been a partner of Will Eisner, they split, andIger had his own staff. We produced material forFiction House. He hired me to erase pages, fill inblacks, draw the lines around panels, you know….CBA: Who was running the studio at the time?Was Jerry there all the time?Don: Jerry had the studio upstairs in this two-storybuilding. I think it was up on 53rd Street. He had apartner, a woman named Ruth Roche, and he hadone of the more experienced guys act as manager.

Above: This superb Perlin pencil &ink cover image looks suspiciouslylike an unused piece intended forWerewolf By Night, but itappeared in the 1976 Seuling Consouvenir book. ©2001 Don Perlin.


Below: Don in the Army, 1954.Courtesy of the artist.

Below: An issue of Haunt ofHorror, edited by Tony Isabella,contained this photograph of thewriter/editor with exotic dancerAngelique Trouvere, then darling

of New York cons. Tony says,“She made these incredible

costumes and had the attitudeand body to wear them. She’s

wearing a Satana costume here.Great costume. Strikingly beauti-ful woman.” Courtesy of Tony.©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Conducted by Jon B. Knutson

I first encountered Tony’s writing in his heyday at Marvel in the ’70s.I particularly remembered his story in Giant-Size Creatures #1, fea-turing the Werewolf by Night and transforming Greer Nelson, a.k.a.The Cat, into Tigra the Were-Woman. Little did I know then thatover 20 years later, thanks to several e-mail exchanges, that I’d beinterviewing him on his career at Marvel and elsewhere! “TheWorld’s Longest Tony Isabella Interview” was originally conductedvia telephone, but when I got ready to transcribe the five (!) tapesfrom the two-day phone call, I discovered my tape recorder didn’tget anything! Tony was gracious beyond belief when he agreed to re-do the interview via e-mail. Some portions of this have previouslyseen print in The Comics Buyers’ Guide, in Tony’s column there, aswell as on his Web page, Tony’s Online Tips!<www.wfcomics.com/tony>. Parts two and three will be appearingin Alter Ego and Comicology. —JBK

Jon B. Knutson: Let’s begin with the first question that seemsto come up in all CBA interviews: Where were you born?Tony Isabella: In Cleveland, Ohio, on December 22, 1951.Jon: Do you remember how old you were when you first saw andread a comic book, and do you recall what it might have been?Tony: I learned to read from comic books when I was four. Mymother used to bring home three-for-a-quarter bags of IW reprints,mostly of the funny animal variety. The earliest comics I can remem-ber would be an issue of Fighting American, which I probably gotfrom an uncle, an issue of IW’s Red Mask featuring the Presto Kid,and an issue of Superman or Action Comics. Unfortunately, I can’tpin it down more exactly than that.

Jon: What were some of yourfavorite comics as a kid?Tony: Superman. Spooky theTuff Little Ghost, which wasprobably the first comics Ibought for myself. Batman.Challengers of the Unknown.Cosmo the Merry Martian. Ibought lots of DC Comics as akid, mostly those with giant andnot-too-scary monsters on thecovers. I really got into theMarvel super-heroes around1963 or so.Jon: What else did you read,aside from comics?Tony: The Hardy Boys. IsaacAsimov’s Lucky Starr series. Andall of the science fiction I couldget my hands on. I had an argu-ment with an elementary schoollibrarian who didn’t want me totake out a book called UnderThe Harvest Moon. I thought ithad to be a science-fiction book;I mean, it had “moon” in thetitle, right? But it was actually aromance novel. I still shudderwhen I think of reading that

one.Jon: What were some of the other things you enjoyed as a kid? Forexample, I know you’re a big fan of Japanese monster movies, likeGodzilla. Did that start when you were a kid?Tony: I think the first giant monster movie I saw was Gorgo. Ourchurch used to show movies on Saturday afternoons. Then I saw KingKong vs. Godzilla on a big screen and I was hooked. After that, Inever missed a chance to see a giant monster film at the movie the-ater or on TV. I was fortunate in that the local TV stations ran a lot ofthem and ran them often.I was also into baseball. I collected baseball cards and played inthe Little League. I still love the game, but I’d rather watch my kidsplay than watch the Cleveland Indians. I just can’t get past the cruelcaricature that is Chief Wahoo anymore.Jon: When you were a kid, did you create your own comic charac-ters, and create homemade comics with them?Tony: Of course, especially after I met Terry Fairbanks and MikeHudak at Frank’s Model Shop. Frank’s was about a 30-minute bikeride from my house, but he had a pretty good selection of old comicbooks in addition to the model stuff.I couldn’t draw, so I ended up writing all the scripts for our ownbimonthly comic book: Marvel Madhouse. My creations include LightWave, a Russian super-hero, and Johnny Bravo, a non-super-poweredadventurer. We even teamed-up our heroes in something called “TheM.A.R.V.E.L. Squad.” I forget what the name stood for.We used to send Marvel Madhouse to Stan Lee and get thesefriendly letters back from Flo Steinberg, Roy Thomas, and even Stanhimself. That was an enormous thrill for us.Jon: When did you first think about a career working in comicbooks? Were you thinking about writing then, or drawing, or both?Tony: The day I read Fantastic Four Annual #1, perhaps the great-est comic book ever published. Although I’d seen the occasional cred-its here and there in my comics reading, this was when it hit me thatpeople got paid for making comic books… and I knew that I wantedto be one of them someday. Having no artistic ability to speak of, myinterest was always in writing comics.Jon: Did you have an interest in writing something other thancomics?Tony: Yes, but my passion was for writing comic books. If I could-n’t make the grade as a comic book writer, I figured I would settle forbeing a world-famous reporter or science-fiction novelist. And, ifthose didn’t work out, I could write for television. I definitely hadsome unique priorities going for me.Jon: I understand you did some fanzine work before you startedworking for comics. In an interview I transcribed, someone men-tioned a Creeper story you worked on with someone that’s neverseen print, for example. Do you recall which fanzines you workedon, and what kind of stuff you did for them?Tony: I wrote for every fanzine that would have me: Concussion,Fantastic Fanzine, Yancy Street Gazette, Minotaur, and dozens more.I wrote opinion and review columns, prose fiction, comic-book scripts,and weird little comedy pieces starring myself and other contributorsto Concussion. I even won an award as best fan writer of 1971 or so,the year before I broke into comics professionally.As for the Creeper story, that came about because I really lovedthe character and wanted his adventures to continue after his bookwas cancelled. So I wrote DC publisher Carmine Infantino and askedif I could publish a Creeper fan magazine featuring new stories of thecharacter. Much to my surprise, he said yes. I wrote a 26-page story

Tony’s Terrors (and Tigra, Too!)The writer/editor’s tenure in the Haunted House of Ideas

CBA Interview


EDITOR'S NOTE:Ye ed profusely apologizes to

interviewer Jon B. Knutson andsubject Tony Isabella for the severeediting done to their interview butspace constraints dictated the cuts.

that picked up after the last issue of the actual Beware The Creepercomic book. It was supposed to be drawn by a fan artist by the nameof Klaus Janson—I wonder if he ever amounted to anything—but henever turned in even a single page of artwork. As this was about thesame time I was working my way out of college and starting to workfor the Cleveland Plain Dealer, I was too busy to pursue the projectfurther.There was supposed to be a second series in the magazine aswell. It was called “The Yank in London” and was basically the storyof a young writer—not unlike myself—having great adventures witha beautiful Brit who was not unlike Emma Peel. Dave Cockrum—there was a lot of talent in the fanzines of the late 1960s—was goingto be the artist, but I never even started writing the first script. Ifmemory serves me correctly, I was involved in my first seriousromance about that time, which sort of negated the need for me toget “lucky” in my fiction.Jon: What’s your educational background? Were you originallyprogressing towards a different career than comics?Tony: I was a National Honors Society student at St. Edward HighSchool in Lakewood, Ohio, and then went to John Carroll Universityfor a little under a year. The latter wasn’t a good fit. I didn’t care forthe Jesuits, the jocks, the ROTC, or what laughingly passed for thecampus radicals. I did have some fun writing for the college newspa-per and radio station… and I did have a brief but wonderful affairwith one of my teachers… but college was just not where I wantedto be.I’d intended to major in Journalism anyway, so when I left col-lege, I applied for a job at the Cleveland Plain Dealer. I was hired asa copy boy and figured I’d work my way up. Well, that didn’t workout either. Even though I did do some writing for the newspaper,sometimes ghosting articles for “real” reporters, I never got morethan a copy boy’s paycheck. To my mind, I was under-appreciatedand underpaid. Between that and my growing realization that thePlain Dealer was a pretty crappy newspaper—it did pretty muchwhatever the local robber barons and politicians commanded of it—Iwas more than ready to make a new plan.Jon: How did you break in to comics?Tony: I’d been corresponding with some of my favorite comics andeditors of the time: Murray Boltinoff, Steve Englehart, Dick Giordano,and Roy Thomas. When the Plain Dealer went on strike and ourpicket lines was subsequently attacked by mounted policemen—sentto the scene by the publisher’s good friend, then-Mayor Ralph Perk—I was knocked to the ground in the ensuing panic. When I saw ahoof come down on the ground less than a foot from my face, I fig-ured it was time to end my Plain Dealer career.I phoned Roy that night and asked him if there were any jobsopen at Marvel. Stan Lee and Sol Brodsky needed an assistant editorto work on Marvel’s new British weeklies. The qualifications for thejob were meager: They needed someone who could proofread andwrite well enough to do letters pages and other editorial material…and who knew the characters and the stories.Jon: When did you move from Ohio to New York?Tony: October of 1972.

Jon: What was Marvel like when you started? Who did you dealwith on a regular basis, and what were they like?Tony: Marvel’s offices were only about a third of the floor theywere on when I started working there. There was a reception area,behind which was Nancy Murphy and the film/photostats library.There was a semi-large production room wherein worked JohnVerpoorten, John Romita, Mike Esposito, Frank Giacoia, MorrieKuramoto, Tony Mortelarro, Dave Hunt, Marie Severin, and probablysome folks I’ve forgotten were there. Across the hall from that was avery small office wherein lurked Marv Wolfman andDon McGregor. (I did some time in that office aswell.) Behind them was Stu Schwartzberg andhis stat machine. Also across from Marv andDon were the offices of Roy Thomasand Stan Lee. Stan had the large cor-ner office; I think Carla Joseph, hissecretary, was in there, too. She mar-ried Gerry Conway a year or two later.There was a bean counter whohad an office around the corner fromStan, but I can’t remember his name.Martin Goodman and the men’s mag-azines were on another floor. At theend of all this was an office shared bySol Brodsky, George Roussos, PabloMarcos, sometimes Rich Buckler, some-times another production worker, andmyself. Thinking back on it, it’s amazinghow many comic books and magazinescame out of offices that were lessthan half the size of my presenthouse.I dealt with Stan (on the Britishbook covers and Monster Madness),Sol and Pablo (on the British books andblack-&-white magazines), Roy (onthe magazines and some comicsstuff), and the production depart-ment (on all of the above).Jon: According to the text piecein Astonishing Tales #22, youbegan at Marvel assisting SolBrodsky on Marvel’s Britishweeklies around Halloween1972. What exactly did youdo with those books?Tony: I forget what mytitle was, but I designed thecovers with whoever wasdoing the covers at vari-ous times (Jim Starlin,Rich Buckler, DickAyers, and

Above: The Mirthful One’s at itagain! Here’s a Marie Severin car-toon depicting Titanic Tonyamongst his Marvel editor peersfrom an issue of a b-&-w mag.Courtesy of Tony Isabella. ©2001Marvel Characters, Inc.

Below: Apparently Tony’s creation,Tigra the Were-Woman has quite aloyal following! This Will

Meugniot drawing—purported-ly drawn when the artist wasassigned to Tigra’s short-lived Marvel Chillersseries—is courtesy of

Tigra fanatic AndyIhnatko. ©2001MarvelCharacters, Inc.


Conducted by Jon B. CookeTranslated by Gisella Marcos

A few years back, my esteemed publisher attended MegaCon inFlorida and was approached by a humble, sweet-natured artist bythe name of Pablo Marcos, the selfsame contributor to Marvel’sGreat Age of Horror. Well, needless to say, after John gave me thecontact info, I was determined to find a way to fit the unforgettabledelineator of Simon Garth—a.k.a. The Zombie—in Steve Gerber’sunforgettable stories in Tales of The Zombie, and we are delighted toinclude the following interview. The South American-born artist—whose command of English is much better than he admits—asked todo a written Q&A (which was translated from Spanish by Pablo’sdaughter Gisella, and slightly edited by myself). Pablo—with thehelp of wife Myriam—also sent us a huge pile of artwork, much of itoriginal, and we apologize for only being able to include a tiny frac-tion here (but look for Pablo’s work in our upcoming Atlas/Seaboard,Heavy Metal, and Warren celebrations!). CBA profusely thanksPablo, Myriam, Gisella, and last-second contributor Steve Gerber.

Comic Book Artist: When and where were you born?Pablo Marcos: I was born in Peru on March 31, 1937 in thesmall town of Laran in the province of Chincha Alta, 180 kilometersfrom the capital of Lima. When I was five-years-old, my family—myfather Pablo Marcos and my mother Maria Ortega—moved to Lima.At that time, there were only four children: Gloria, Berta, myself andManuel. A couple of years later my brothers Alfredo and Oswaldowere born. My father worked as a gasoline truck driver and also acab driver. We were very poor and after World War II all the coun-tries had been economically affected and Peru was no exception.CBA: Did you develop an early interest in art? When did you startdrawing?Pablo: I went to public school until high school, BartolomeHerrera. There were lots of classmates with artistic talent around meat this school. I recall during this time there was a famous mural artistwho painted the yards of the school for years. These were al fresco

paintings of Inca designs. During this time, I met a teacher who gaveclasses in comic book art named Juan Rivera Saavedra. He was veryinvolved in comics and magazines. Through him, I began to meetother Peruvian artists.Here’s a story about my schooling I must tell: I had classes suchas anatomy, zoology, botany, and geography. The teachers in thoseclasses knew that I liked to draw and they would request that myregular teachers “loan” my services to them, and I would drawposters for their classes. Since there were 14 classes in all, I woulddraw, for example, the digestive system in many different ways andwould learn about anatomy because I did so many sketches. The

same was true withmaps and animals.Unbeknownst to meat the time, thishelped me a greatdeal as I later drewmuch of this frommemory.CBA: Were youattracted to comicsstrips or comic booksat a young age?Favorite titles andcharacters?Pablo: My friendand a teacher, JuanRivera, would giveme comics as I likedthem so much. Mostof these were fromArgentina, Chile, Italy,

and some from the United States. The comics from Argentina weresuch as El Tony, Misterix and Rico Tipo. The most popular from Chilewas El Peneca. I admired the work of Alberto Breccia very much aswell as Hugo Pratt, Jose Luis Salinas and from Chile, Arturo DelCastillo. Another comic I liked was Corrieri del Picolo from Italy.Comics from the U.S. that I liked were Donald Duck, and the news-paper strip Mandrake. Another great character was Tarzan byHogarth. Others I recall were Jose Luis Salinas’ Cisco Kid, AlexRaymond’s Flash Gordon and Secret Agent X-9, Al Capp’s Li’l Abner,Harold Foster’s Prince Valiant, Vincent T. Hamlin’s Alley Oop, ChesterGould’s Dick Tracy, Fred Harmon’s Red Ryder, Milton Caniff’s Terryand the Pirates, and Joe Shuster’s Superman.CBA: What artists had the strongest impression in your youth?Pablo: Arturo del Castillo, Alberto Breccia and Burne Hogarth,especially, were the artists that made the biggest impression on myyouth.CBA: Did you have formal art training?Pablo: Unfortunately, art school was too expensive and I was notlucky enough to attend any formal schooling.CBA: What was the state of the comics industry in your nativecountry?Pablo: During that time in Peru, there were comics circulating fromlocal artists such as Hernan Bartra, Juan Osorio and Javier Flores DelAguila. Their styles were totally local. Similarly, there was a magazinewhich was very popular called Tacu-Tacu. This publication joined thework of a lot of artists which were cartoonists and caricaturists. Ingeneral, comic book production was very small. Most of what was

Pablo’s Amazing JourneyFrom Peru to Florida, “Zombie” artist Pablo Marcos speaks

CBA Interview

Inset right: Drawing by 15-year-old Pablo Marcos

(1952), courtesy of the artist

Opposite page inset: Pablo andhis wife Myriam in the

mountains of Columbia (1990).Courtesy of Pablo.

Opposite page right: PerhapsPablo’s most fondly-recalledwork is his series (with writerSteve Gerber) in Tales of the

Zombie. Courtesy of the artist,here is a detail from one of hispages. Steve Gerber, at the very

last minute, generously contributed the testimonial. Art©2001 Marvel Characters, Inc.


Below: Two Pablos and a babynamed Pablo make three PabloMarcoses! A picture of, fromleft: The artist, grandson, and

son taken in New York in 2000photo. Courtesy of Pablo, Sr.

there came from overseas.CBA: How did you come to be involved in drawing comic art?Pablo: When I was still in school, at the age of 13, a friend ofmine, Juan Rivera, introduced me to well known Peruvian caricaturistJulio Fairle, and Julio told me he had not been able to find a substi-tute caricaturist as he was going on a month’s vacation. He looked atmy caricature work and told me that my style was very different andif I would attempt to imitate his approach. I did a couple of piecesand he liked what he saw. So I worked at that magazine company fora month. When he returned, he said that no one had noticed thechange in style. We stayed friends and about a month later heshowed up at my home and told me there was a newspaper that wasjust opening up. I arrived at the office and the director took me on asa political caricaturist. I stayed there for a couple of years while finish-ing my schooling and then I went on to the university majoring ineconomics. In my parents’ opinion, economics was a more lucrativeprofession and being an artist was not. At that time, I was alreadymarried to Norma Martinez and we had my oldest daughter, Judith. Igraduated and worked for a political magazine named Rochabus, andafter that I worked for another political magazine called ZombaConuto. In 1960, a newspaper came out called Expreso. The editor ofthe paper—who had been my best man at my wedding—called meto work on the paper. I did some comic work and also some seriousillustrations such as police events, airplane accidents, hurricanes,earthquakes, etc.In December of 1963, my daughter, Gisella was born. It wasduring this time that they named the new evening paper edition ofExpreso called Extrcl. It was there where I did the first comic strip ofJames Bond, Agent 007, based on Ian Fleming’s spy character. I alsodid a daily strip called Benito Puma (a local police adventure). I wasnever able to work as an economist as I was making good money asan artist. I was making in a month what I would as an economist inan entire year. I worked on those two strips for three years. Afterthat, I began working on the weekly supplement of Expreso calledEstampa. I was nowworking as an illustra-tor exclusively and nolonger as a cartoonistor caricaturist.During this timeI had an experiencewhich resulted insomething very diffi-cult to erase from mymemory. ThePeruvian court hadsentenced a rapist todeath by firing squadin a jail located on asmall island. CarlosSanchez, the editor atthe time, asked me togo with him to coverthe event as therewere no camerasallowed. I went withhim and a couple of other reporters. It was 2:00 A.M. and I was askedto wait in a room until we were called to witness the execution. Thiswas the first time that I would see a human being die. There were sixsoldiers and only one of the guns had a bullet which killed the con-vict. After the rapist was executed, I felt a dryness in my throat andwanted desperately to get out of the jail and off the island and forgetwhat I had just seen, but I was never able to. From there I wentdirectly to the paper and drew what I had just witnessed.During this time I covered significant world events such as theSeven-Day War, the capture and death of the famous guerrilla leaderChe Guevara, and two big earthquakes; one in Peru and the other inItaly. I also did a lot of illustrations of our national sport, soccer.My third daughter, Norma, was born on December 29,1966. In1967, I traveled to Mexico on vacation and took some samples of mywork and, with Marino Sagastegul, I went to the Editorial Novoro.

There I met the director and they offered me a job as an artist. Ireturned to Peru and quit my job which I had for severalyears. My son, Pablo, was born on December 19, 1967,and in 1968 I returned to Mexico alone and beganworking at Novoro on the series Legends ofAmerica. I subsequently created a series calledHata Yoga which I continued doing untilNovember 1970. My wife, Norma and my fourchildren joined me in Mexico in 1968.CBA: Can you describe your experiencesworking in American comics?Pablo: In 1970, I arrived in New Jersey andmy situation was not very good. I did notspeak English, had no job, and had a wife andfour children. I knew New York was only anhour away so I began doing some illustrations topresent to any company who would see them. In themeantime, my wife took on a job in a clothing factory. Shesaid all she wanted to do was make sure there was enoughmoney for food. I finished a project and took it to the editorof Warren, Billy Graham. He gave me an assignment and I wenthome and proudly told my wife to quit her job because I hadgotten work. She told me that until she saw thecash, she was not quitting. The job I was givenwas due in one month and I finished it in oneweek. I do not recall if this was ever pub-lished. That day the editor told me to go toa company called Skywald which was pub-lishing a couple of black-&-white comicmagazines.At Skywald, I met Israel Waldman,the owner of the company and an incredi-ble human being. To my fortune, he spokeSpanish. The director of the company wasSol Brodsky. I worked with him for a longtime. Even when I later went to work at DCand Marvel, I never stopped contributing toSkywald. When Mr. Waldman died a few yearslater, the company changed.Sol Brodsky changed jobs and went back hisposition at Marvel Comics. He asked me if Iwanted to go work with him. I asked Mr.Waldman and his response was: “Go. Skywaldis your home. You can come back and workwith me whenever you want.”I began working at Marvel steadilyand Sol Brodsky wanted to help me withmy immigration status. He also introducedme to a great Peruvian artist, Boris Vallejo.Boris has since guided me professionally,and overall helped me with the language.He has been one of the people who hasalways unselfishly given me a hand.In the early-1970s I worked as SolBrodsky’s assistant. He along with Stan Leeproduced some weekly comics for the Britishmarket in which Norma and I did the color andZip-A-Tone work. I did some covers and illustra-tions for such comics as Captain Britain, Planetof the Apes, Hulk, Dracula, etc. Since I wentto Marvel every day, I met a lot of the artistsand writers.CBA: Did you work for the overseas mar-ket while also freelancing in the U.S.?Pablo: I worked for Italy in 1980 on acomic book called Lanclostory: Tremila DollariPer Ebenezer Cross Western Story. In 1982, Iworked for an editorial magazine, Ejea, in whichI created a series called Dragon. I did the first fiveseries and I had to stop doing it as it was 32pages weekly and I could not concentrate on mywork for the U.S. That series lasted for 15 years.


Horror isn't justabout supernatural

entities and extremeviolence. It has a

sensual component.Absent that compo-

nent, the terror of theunknown and the

harm done to charac-ters' bodies and

minds are about asemotionally affecting

as a video game.Pablo's work on

series like TTaalleess oofftthhee ZZoommbbiiee exempli-

fies this principle.The characters, eventhe Zombie himself,

are unmistakablyhuman. Their faces

are real. Their bodiesare real. Their sexual-

ity is real. Their vulnerabilities are

real. For that reason,when horror invades

their lives, itbecomes more than

just an extravaganzaof splattered bloodand special effects.The terror becomesalmost palpable, apart of the reader's

life as well as thecharacters'.

—STEVE GERBERApril 11, 2001

#13: MARVEL HORROR1970s Marvel Horror focus, from Son of Satan to Ghost Rider!Interviews with ROY THOMAS, MARV WOLFMAN, GENECOLAN, TOM PALMER, HERB TRIMPE, GARY FRIEDRICH,DON PERLIN, TONY ISABELLA, and PABLOS MARCOS, plus aPortfolio Section featuring RUSS HEATH, MIKE PLOOG, DONPERLIN, PABLO MARCOS, FRED HEMBECK’S DATELINE, andmore! New GENE COLAN cover!

(112-page magazine) SOLD OUT(Digital Edition) $3.95

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comic book artist #13

Documents

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gene colanand tom palmer

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happyhappy joyjoy

comics code

lover of comics

marvel horrorshow