Why Don’t You Do More Comics?
I’d love to sit around holding court, winding about how goddamned smart I am about comics. But it sounds douchey. I don’t go to conventions, I stay out of the offices and I’ve chosen not to ‘blog,’ ’til now. I’ll explain some things from my perspective, mostly based on direct experiences, not just opinion (but some of that, too). I’m also doing a couple of interviews, the first since ’82.
In spite of my best and lengthy efforts to stay out of the bizz of the business, my work has some attention over time and more lately. This has made it and myself a topic. My absence from the scene has allowed certain unsavory quarters to run free about my work, character and reputation. This business is too small for anyone to get away with it for long and I’ve heard a lot of funny stuff about myself over the years. So you’re reading this.
I quit the corporate comic mill for good some 10 years ago, ’02 when my Avengers mini-series was shit-canned (more on that some other time). I hadn’t seriously sought work there for some 5 years before that. I’d quit before when I worked in film, TV and Animation. I try again occasionally because I love the medium and I should’ve never done anything else. This is to finally let the company men know that when they see me at a con once in a while (and any time in the last 10-15 years) I’m not there to lick their ankles for work they don’t plan to give out. So they shouldn’t start breathing heavy because they think I might.
I was blacklisted in ’83 at Marvel by Jim Shooter, Ed.I.Chief, before I ever got to NY for the big try at pro work. He held up the printer’s proof of Doctor Strange I’d done (#54, I believe) at an editorial meeting and said, “This is what a Marvel comic should not look like.” When an editor related this to me I mentally high-fived myself. Then he told me it meant I probably wouldn’t get any more work at Marvel. I was stunned. When I asked for an explanation he said that “people don’t like it sometimes when you draw well.” He added that it was Shooter’s warning to the staff that he would bounce their books (making them late, cardinal sin and complete misery) if they did. And to a person they never have.
The exceptions were Larry Hama and Jim Owsley. Larry’s books were mostly well outside the surging and precious superhero line, so I could work there. I met Ows’ when he was Larry’s asst. editor. When he later became full editor I did get a job out of his office. Interesting note: a writer recently told me that he’d heard the story of the same editorial meeting when I was blacklisted, from Owsley, not too long ago. So the story’s around from others. Most of what you will read here is general knowledge among pros. I feel safe in speaking plainly.
Anything I was handed outside of Larry’s office was sweepings or odd-jobs that no one else was available for. There were some guys doing stuff wilder than mine but these were political, most ususally because they were screwing some one on staff or screwing some one closely related to staff, connecting coke deals, etc. Then there were the superhero guys. Squadrons of them trotting out the superhero version of that period every month.
The Hero Gulag
You superhero guys’ll have to take an aspirin to read much of this. I love superheros and regret that I never really got to set my hands on them. I admire and even study some of your superhero work. But Paul Pope, Mike Allred and Toby Cypress would’ve been just like Marc Beachum and myself back in the ’80s going forward. They’ve been forced on the Pig Two by genuine market forces. The miopic, singular pursuance of slicker and slicker super-dudes has overwhelmed American comics and abandoned the potential of the medium by marginalizing a lot of guys like me. You guys do alright otherwise so you’ll have to take a little scrutiny and commentary here.
Most of the artists I talk to are not interested in anything so abstract and distant as the ‘medium.’ They’re interested, even obsessed with many of the sources and aspects of the comics that inform and enrich and fascinate and motivate me. But their interest is motivated by the (correct) aspiration to be a badass and the (not-so-correct) aspiration to get the big money. The inspired studies that are legacy to this work only interest them as they can shoe-horn them into their superhero work without regard for what other ideas and stories those previous works could inspire. And it’s murdered the potential of American comics, etc. etc. for a while, anyway.
In the ’80s, Shooter, Defalco and others maintained sternly that there was no House Style at Marvel. Laughable to anyone working then, or since. Brett Blevins was on contract during this time and noted that the advisory went from, “Do more comics like this,” to, “Do more comics like this — or else.” The inevitable evolutionof the real market has forced them to make concessions, like Vertigo but the form (and content) has moved on without Marvel and DC, along with the rest of world comics. I don’t care what kind of touch screen you’re drawing on. These companies are still 10 years behind in method and 60 years late for content.
I’ve never been one of those. Any work is about being paid but I’ve never taken a job just for money. Years before he blacklisted my work (and the work of others) Shooter offered me (however turse, and dismissively) the chance to sell-out. Plainly he said, “Maybe this belongs hanging on a wall in a museum someplace but it’s not a Marvel comic.” It could almost be regarded as friendly advice except that neither meeting was friendly.
Gary Groth opined in the Journal during this time that, “Comics is eating it’s own young.” I never thought that would include me. I believed that good work would will out. It did, in a way. I’m not the best guy doing this in any sense but I take some solace from well outside of the empty, moribund orgy of self-celebrity of corporate comics. I made something world class. I did it simply by hard work and study and nevery leaving my guns. I did it without a reliable editor, without the support and promotion of a company (just the opposite) and without any real connection to any of their characters. The work won. I’m right and they were wrong, in spite of the money. If that’s your only motivation, we have nothing in common and you’re reading the wrong blog.
I was at a con some years ago (completely by accident) among a group after the show. On these subjects one of them said, “But at least you get to be a famous artist.” I said, “Really?” He said, “Yeah.” I replied, “Well, spread that around will ya, it might do me some good.” No one in the group laughed.
Some in the companies hate that, too. The worst cases of ‘Pencil Envy’ are on staff at Marvel and DC from people who have never and will never draw a comic book (aside from occasional vanity projects they arrange for themselves; without deadlines, I might add). That’s why they’re on staff.
Let me explain something here: Marvel and DC haven’t made a comic book in over 50 years. There’re drawing tables in the offices but only for post production and touch ups. Comics are done by people working at home or in their personal studios. Marvel and DC are comic book job-brokers. They only broker jobs and company checks for people who make comic books.
The individuals there are painfully aware of this. Half of your job in working for Marvel/DC is to mollify that pain by constantly assuring the staffers that you’re grateful and that they are an indispensible part of the creation of the project. Not the funding, the creation. It’s like Billy Goats Gruff, except that the Billy Goats only had to stroke and gift the Troll once. In entertainment (the bastard child, comics is finally a part of the broader mess) there’s no other end of the bridge and the Troll keeps demanding.
Paul Pope wrote recently of how disappointing it is to reach the middle of several issues of a project, find a gaping hole in the plot and the editor can’t address it because he didn’t read the scripts. The monkey business in those offices.
I’ll say a lot more about this, with examples, later.
In the ’90s I was blacklisted at DC. The reasons for this were never explained to me and it doesn’t matter these years later because the 2 guys made it stick. In fact I didn’t know it for some years because I was doing other work. One of the guys who enforces it (yes, it persists) actually encouraged me for years to do something there. Meanwhile, he was killing me in the offices. He talked other editors out of using my work while telling me the opposite. I was pitching, calling, emailing, sending new work I was doing, for years.
Some one else up at DC finally cleared the deck with me after some time. He was in this guy’s office when an editor stuck his head in to say he was putting me on a mini-series. This was in early ’02. This guy objected and went on in full exercize and with alacrity and invective to club me like a baby seal. My informant said he didn’t want to get between us but he knew I was busting my ass to get comic work again but I should look somewhere else because this is what’s happening here. Well.
I didn’t make a scene or start my own campaign. I did what I always did. I went away. When I returned to NY for a year and a half in ’02-3 I never went to DC for work, only a couple of times with a friend who had appointments. I did run into the guy in NY one day though. Funny story that but for another time.
I’ve never started a quarrel and I’ve never perpetuated one. I’ve stayed out of the part of the business that isn’t the business to avoid all of that, apparently to no avail. If some one doesn’t like me or my work I just don’t deal with them after I’m aware of it. My advice to anyone else in business is what Leonard Starr told me, “Don’t listen to me. The guy was bad for me. If the guy’s good for you then stick with him.”
These stories are annoying to no one more than me. I had all of this dealt with years ago. In doing these interviews and this blog I’ve revisited some of its distastfulness and actually put some of it in new perspective, a better one now that I have some successful years under my belt.
But the stories are necessary. Without a few particulars some of my comments (often emphatic and repeated) will be construed as kavetching. I can assure the reader that these are bare and very sketchy recountings and only the tip of the icky iceberg. After all, I was never really ‘in’ the business and I’ve been out of it for years. In the decades before that, I was around only infrequently. I could tell more of them (and will, a few) but there are volumes out there by other artists and writers. Maybe some of them will feel free to talk.
There’s almost nothing ‘professional’ about the way this business is run. It’s a poop-throwing monkey house.
