Back Issue #11 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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An in-depth look at Mar vel’s

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r Rare Rare art art by by Buscema Buscema ARTHUR SUYDAM SUYDAM Interview Interview r Gods and ARTHUR u Windsor-Smith Windsor-Smith x x Adams Adams > > Kane Kane u Warriors!

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A plea from the publisher of this fine digital periodical: TwoMorrows, we’re on the Honor System with our Digital Editions. We don’t add Digital Rights Management features to them to stop piracy; they’re clunky and cumbersome, and make readers jump through hoops to view content they’ve paid for. And studies show such features don’t do much to stop piracy anyway. So we don’t include DRM in our downloads.

However, this is COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, which is NOT INTENDED FOR FREE DOWNLOADING ANYWHERE. If you paid the modest fee we charge to download it at our website, you have our sincere thanks. Your support allows us to keep producing magazines like this one. If instead you downloaded it for free from some other website or torrent, please know that it was absolutely 100% DONE WITHOUT OUR CONSENT. Our website is the only source to legitimately download any TwoMorrows publications. If you found this at another site, it was an ILLEGAL POSTING OF OUR COPYRIGHTED MATERIAL, and your download is illegal as well. If that’s the case, here’s what I hope you’ll do: GO AHEAD AND READ THIS DIGITAL ISSUE, AND SEE WHAT YOU THINK. If you enjoy it enough to keep it, please DO THE RIGHT THING and go to our site and purchase a legal download of this issue, or purchase the print edition at our website (which entitles you to the Digital Edition for free) or at your local comic book shop. Otherwise, please delete it from your computer, since it hasn’t been paid for. And please DON’T KEEP DOWNLOADING OUR MATERIAL ILLEGALLY, for free. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, support our company by paying for the material we produce. We’re not some giant corporation with deep pockets, and can absorb these losses. We’re a small company—literally a “mom and pop” shop—with dozens of hard working freelance creators, slaving away day and night and on weekends, to make a pretty minimal amount of income for all this hard work. All of our editors and authors, and comic shop owners, rely on income from this publication to continue producing more like it. Every sale we lose to an illegal download hurts, and jeopardizes our future. Please don’t rob us of the small amount of compensation we receive. Doing so helps ensure there won’t be any future products like this to download. And please don’t post this copyrighted material anywhere, or share it with anyone else. Remember: TwoMorrows publications should only be downloaded at

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TwoMorrows.Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics. (& LEGO! ) TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327 • E-mail: twomorrow@aol.com • www.twomorrows.com

Barbarians, beasts, and legendary heroes abound in our

The Ultimate Comics Experience!

GODS AND WARRIORS

Volume 1, Number 11 August 2005 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, and Today! EDITOR Michael Eury

issue!

PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Robert Clark

PRO2PRO: SERGIO ARAGONÉS AND MARK EVANIER ON GROO .............................................2 The MADmen chat about comics’ dimmest barbarian, with rare art by Aragonés

ART ASSISTANT Rich J. Fowlks PROOFREADERS John Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington COVER ARTISTS John Buscema and Joe Jusko SPECIAL THANKS Neal Adams Tom Taggart Sergio Aragonés Joel Thingvall Manual Auad Roy Thomas Terry Austin Len Wein Daniel Best Renee Jerry Boyd Witterstaetter Mike Burkey Marv Wolfman Scott Burnley Kurt Busiek Jay Caldwell Gerry Conway Jon B. Cooke Don Corn Scott Dutton John Eury Mark Evanier Brian Friedman Dick Giordano Grand Comic-Book Database David Hamilton Heritage Comics Jeff Jatras Dan Johnson Terry Jones Joe Jusko Dave Karlen Nick Katridis Mark. B. Kirschner Michel Maillot Don Mangus Bob McLeod Steve Morger Brian K. Morris Richard Pini Wendy Pini John Romita, Sr. Josef Rubinstein Rose Rummel-Eury Tom Stewart Arthur Suydam

PRO2PRO BONUS: THE WIZ ...................................................................................................................................12 DC’s unpublished adaptation of the 1978 Michael Jackson movie, with Dan Spiegle art ROUGH STUFF: GODS AND WARRIORS PENCIL ART GALLERY ............................................14 Glorious graphite by Boring, J. Buscema, García-López, Heck, Kirby, Moebius, Pérez, Rude, M. Severin, Willingham, Wilshire, and Windsor-Smith OFF MY CHEST: SUPERMAN VS. SPIDER-MAN .............................................................................................26 Journalist Daniel Best uncovers the original crossover’s secret artist, interviewing a host of comics luminaries GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: KING ARTHUR ............................................................................33 Unpublished for three decades, Nestor Redondo’s awe-inspiring artwork on the highly anticipated epic that never saw print FLASHBACK: BRIAN BOLLAND’S 1980s BRITISH ANNUALS .....................................................42 A look at rarely seen Bolland covers to U.K. publications BEYOND CAPES: CONAN THE LONG-RUNNING ................................................................................45 Behind the scenes of Marvel’s Conan the Barbarian, with art and/or commentary by Barry Windsor-Smith, Roy Thomas, John Buscema, Gil Kane, Joe Jusko, Neal Adams, and Kurt Busiek FANTASY ART GALLERY ..............................................................................................................................................66 Spellbinding illos by Bill Sienkiewicz, Joe Kubert, Jeff Jones, Wendy Pini, Mike Ploog and Alex Niño, and other talents INTERVIEW: ARTHUR SUYDAM ...........................................................................................................................74 Heavy Metal, Epic Illustrated, Cholly and Flytrap, and Mudwogs, then and now, with the award-winning artist BACK TALK ..............................................................................................................................................................................86 Reader feedback on issue #9

BACK ISSUE™ is published bimonthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor, 5060A Foothills Dr., Lake Oswego, OR 97034. Email: euryman@msn.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $30 Standard US, $48 First Class US, $60 Canada, $66 Surface International, $90 Airmail International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Conan the Barbarian TM & © 2005 Conan Properties International, LLC. Superman and Mister Miracle TM & © 2005 DC Comics. King Arthur and the Knights of the Round Table © 1975 DC Comics. Groo the Wanderer TM & © 2005 Sergio Aragonés. Spider-Man TM & © 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2005 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

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Groo 2K Sergio Aragonés’ Groo and Ruferto in a 2000 commission shared with us by Brian Friedman.

conducted January 26, 2005

interview

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ado about

DAN JOHNSON: Sergio, tell us about Groo’s history. As I understand it, the character is close to 30 years old, correct? SERGIO ARAGONÉS: We first published Groo in 1983, but the character was in existence long before then. I created the character in the early 1970s, but [for a long time], Groo was just a character on paper. I didn’t want to publish Groo unless I could retain the rights to him. MARK EVANIER: Now I get to my purpose in life: correcting Sergio. [Groo] was first published in 1981. ARAGONÉS: Yes, in Destroyer Duck #1 [from Eclipse Comics]. JOHNSON: As I understand it, Mark, you became aware

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of Groo when you saw some of the original sketches, right? EVANIER: I saw those a couple of houses ago. Sergio had this beautiful house up in the hills, and we were up there one day and he said, “Let me show you something.” He pulled out these wonderful drawings, many of which were on the stationary of the Laugh-In television show [the second version, in 1977], which had been filmed recently, and they were all these barbarian characters and this one in particular named Groo. I asked Sergio, “Why Groo?” He said, “I believe that name means nothing anywhere in any language.”

JOHNSON: What did you think when you first saw this character? EVANIER: I thought it was a neat idea. I’m always a huge fan of anything Sergio did. ARAGONÉS: The problem was, Dan, we couldn’t do anything with it. The publishing houses were against sharing the copyrights [with the creators]. EVANIER: At that point, you had a lot of double talk about ownership and copyrights. In this period of comics, companies were starting to realize that they couldn’t get new characters with the way they were doing business, but nobody had the guts to actually change things. When Sergio had talked to publishers about doing Groo, they said, “Oh, yes, you can keep the rights, but of course we’ll have to own everything.” There was actually one person who told Sergio that it was illegal for an individual to own a copyright, so it would have to be in the name of the corporation. ARAGONÉS: Another told me it would be over his dead body when the day came that I could own the copyrights. EVANIER: Sergio was one of the few people that was actively working in comics who finally said, “No, I don’t believe that you’re being honest with me. I will not give you my work on those terms.” He not only wouldn’t give people Groo, he stopped working altogether on mainstream comics. JOHNSON: That is incredible. Sergio, I remember the one-pagers you used to do for DC’s horror comics. Those were always terrific. So Groo is why you stopped doing those? ARAGONÉS: Yes, that was the main reason. DC didn’t want me to own the rights to my work, so I stopped working for them. I was writing stories for House of Secrets and House of Mystery, and one-pagers for the war books. [I was doing] all kinds of stuff, but I stopped. EVANIER: He even stopped right in the middle of a project we were doing together.

We were doing for DC an adaptation of The Wiz, the film that starred Diana Ross and Michael Jackson [see the “Pro2Pro Bonus” following this interview]. I was writing it, and I was on page 32, I think, and suddenly Sergio had a falling out with [the company] over the concept of creators’ rights. Actually, I think when Sergio left, I was almost finished with the project. It went to another artist, but DC never printed it. I didn’t work for DC for a while after that. JOHNSON: Sergio, I had always thought that you got out of comics because of your work with MAD and your television work. I didn’t know this stemmed from Groo. EVANIER: A normal person would have not had time to work in television and MAD, but you’re talking to Sergio Aragonés. He’s probably done several pages while we’ve had this conversation already. And he’s done my carpeting. He’s amazing. JOHNSON: Tell us how the character finally did see print. As you said, the first Groo appearance was in Steve Gerber’s Destroyer Duck. EVANIER: Well, Steve Gerber was locked in a legal battle with Marvel Comics over Howard the Duck and everybody was rallying to Steve’s support, first of all because of the position [on creator’s rights] and also they didn’t believe that someone should lose a lawsuit because they have less money than the people they are up against. At that moment, that was the particular strategy of Marvel’s lawyers, for which they were sanctioned in court and admonished because they were trying to drive up Steve’s legal bills with meaningless procedure in the hopes he would have to drop the case. The judge fined them for doing this, but Steve still couldn’t cover his legal fees. So Dean Mullaney [of Eclipse Comics], who was trying to get his first comics going, suggested doing a benefit comic. I somehow volunteered to assemble it and Jack Kirby offered to draw the lead story. We needed a back-up series, and the first person I went to was Sergio. I told him about the project, and before I was halfway finished telling him about it, he went to his drawer of series that had not been published and told me, “Take anything you want. If it’s not right, I’ll draw something special.” I said, “This is the per-

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Groo’s Girl Trouble The cover art to DC Comics Resents #16 (1989), a Wonder Woman/Groo team-up. No, we made that up— it’s actually a convention sketch commissioned from Sergio Aragonés by Joel Thingvall (check out Joel’s Wonder Woman art gallery at www. wonderthing.com). Groo © 2005 Sergio Aragonés. Wonder Woman © 2005 DC Comics.

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beginning. If there is a secret to this, please share it. Maybe the rest of the industry will pick up on it. EVANIER: One of the reasons people go from title to title these days is they have no particular vested interest in the titles. If they owned them, like Erik Larsen owns The Savage Dragon, they have a reason to stay and nurture the title. ARAGONÉS: Like Stan. EVANIER: Right. Stan Sakai’s Usagi Yojimbo is his character, it’s his baby. He has a personal stake in the continuation of that character with a plot he has created and a story he wants to do. If someone comes up to you tomorrow and says, “Hey, would you like to write Thor?,” it’s not your character, it will never be your character, and you can only put so much of yourself into the book. You might do it, and you might do a fine job of it out of a love of the past comics— ARAGONÉS: Or out of professionalism— EVANIER: —or out of professionalism, but it’s like babysitting. You never put the same effort into babysitting as you do raising your own children. JOHNSON: You mentioned how Gordon Kent came on board. How about Tom Luth and Stan Sakai? How did they join Groo? EVANIER: Gordon Kent was, and still is, a very hard-working fellow in animation. He’s an old friend of mine, and I’ve worked with him on a number of animated television shows, and Gordon is not a professional colorist. When [working on Groo] got to be too much for him, Sergio chimed in, “Let’s get Tom Luth.” ARAGONÉS: We were all members of CAPS [The Comic Art Preservation Society]. EVANIER: Yes, we had this [Los Angeles-based] cartoon-

Canine Loyalty “Who else would have stuck around with a barbarian like that?” says Sergio of Groo’s pooch Ruferto, who was never intended to last more than a story or two.

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ist society called CAPS that [Sergio and I] helped co-found, and Tom was a member. Sergio got the idea of having Stan Sakai letter Groo. We were talking about his other work, and Stan seemed like the perfect person. One of the reasons, I should point out that we manage to consistently meet our deadlines, is Stan and Tom are so dedicated. We have handed them some really impossible assignments over the years, and they manage to turn them around overnight. JOHNSON: In reading over the history of the series, it seems like one of the big concerns that people had with the series is the fact that Groo is a comical book. I have heard that there were people in the industry who were fans of Groo, but who thought it would never sell because it was trying to be funny. ARAGONÉS: When we were selling to the direct-sales market and general distribution, the comic sold roughly around 80,000 copies. Half of that was in the direct sales market, and the other half was in the regular newsstand sales. When the companies went into direct sales, they raised the price of the comic, and they made it on better paper, so our sales went up. At the same time, we were making the same amount of money. Well, I was anyway. Mark wasn’t making any money. This was also the beginning of the collector’s market, and the comic-book shops had to buy all these exorbitant amount of comics from the big companies. There were special covers and all kinds of material sold, and smaller guys suffered. Shop owners

It’s Wanderer Time!

a one-plot effort. Sergio has run into people who go, “I was going to read Groo, b u t I hear it only has one joke in it.” Yet people have read 8,000 issues of The Hulk with one plot. They didn’t understand irony or sarcasm. JOHNSON: While we’re on the topic of running jokes, I have to ask about cheese dip. Where did it come from? EVANIER: In one early Groo story, there was a scene where Sergio indicated that Groo is going to look for some sort of food. We had already decided we weren’t going to really do any anachronisms, so I started wondering what kind of silly food would have existed in this era. Cheese was always a primal staple of human subsistence, but cheese in itself is not funny. So I thought there must have been something that passed for cheese dip back then. If there was cheese, people must have been dipping something in it. So I put in cheese dip and I thought it was a one-panel throwaway. One of the fascinating things about writing something like Groo is that you come up with something at the 11th second, and then months later everybody at a convention is commenting on it over and over again and throwing your own line back at you. [You have to stop and say,] “So, oh . . . I guess that was brilliant.” We had people asking us about cheese dip, laughing about cheese dip and everyone is describing the comic as being about “this barbarian who likes cheese dip.” We would go to parties and people would bring out tons of cheese dip, thinking that they were being funny. Of course, nobody likes cheese dip, especially us. People were actually sending us packets of cheese dip. One of the stupider things we did in the comic was that we made the next running gag about mulch. I wrote about mulch and then people started sending us whole bags of fertilizer.

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said, “[Fans] may buy Groo and all these other smaller comics, but we can not lose our clientele that buys all these new comics that are coming out [and flooding the market place].” Their budget, which for comicbook shops is limited, had to go for buying these absurd collectibles materials. The fill of the regular, small comic always gets dwindled to almost nothing. The humor comic is one of the ones that suffers first. I don’t know why, but for collectors the true meaning of comics is just super-heroes. EVANIER: I don’t think the [comic-book] audience knows what to do when they see a joke. They don’t know they’re supposed to laugh at it. JOHNSON: Well, there are a lot of Howard and Burroughs fans who take the sword-and-sorcery material very seriously. They don’t respond well to jokes being poked at the genre. Myself, I always thought funny is funny. Groo is definitely a funny comic book, but could the fact that the book is a b o u t a b a r b a r i a n b e w h a t some folks don’t like? ARAGONÉS: Don’t forget, our readership that enters into Groo is generic. It’s everybody [not just fantasy fans]. It just happens that Groo enters that field of sword and sorcery. Groo was not a satire of Conan, it was a humor comic book in the same vein that Conan was. We never took any of Conan’s stories and satirized them. JOHNSON: Oh, no, I understand that. I just meant that there are some folks who love this type of material and they can’t have it not being taken seriously. ARAGONÉS: Well, if they like a good story, and if they like funny drawings, then Groo supplies both. It’s a comic that Mark and I love to do. It’s a comic that we do for ourselves. EVANIER: There’s certainly no money in it. ARAGONÉS: Not really. EVANIER: For some of us at least. That’s the other thing, some people don’t get jokes. I say silly things in the book about how I don’t get paid or Sergio doesn’t speak English, and people take that seriously. ARAGONÉS: Mark put in one of the letter pages that Groo was a one-joke comic book, and people to this day don’t buy Groo because they think it has only the one joke. EVANIER: I meant it’s a one-joke comic book in the same sense that every super-hero comic, collectively, is

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MARIE S EV ERIN • CAPTAIN MARVEL

n amilto H ” e bon “Ham ends) d i v a fri by D (and

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WAY N E B O R I N G • C A P T A I N M A R V E L

The Kree warrior Mar-vell, by Marie Severin (opposite page). There’s a curious set of circumstances revolving around this rejected version of the cover to Captain Marvel #10 (Feb. 1969—oops, this doesn’t really fall between this magazine’s stated ’70s/ ’80s realm, but what the “heck”—who, by the way, drew the inside story [Don Heck, that is]). I suppose Stan the Man felt this cover gave too much away (the growing-old “eon ray,” revealed on pg. 5, no less!), so a second Severin cover was done (see inset), inked by the late, great John Verpoorten. The pencil pieces on this page represent Wayne “Superman” Boring’s earliest work on the post-Roy Thomas/Gil Kane/Dan Adkins new version of the cosmic Captain, which have never seen print on this planet . . . before. Oh, yeah!

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guest editorial by daniel best Gods and Warriors Nearly 30 years

Superman vs. Spider-Man The Secret Artist Revealed

after its publication, Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man (1976) remains the super-hero crossover of all time.

Editor’s Note: In researching his forthcoming biography of artist team supreme Ross Andru and Mike Esposito, journalist and teacher Daniel Best discovered a mystery that, quite frankly, I initially didn’t realize was a mystery—Andru was not the only penciler on the legendary first crossover between the premier super-heroes of DC and Marvel Comics. In an impressive display of journalism, Best traipses through a web of creators to reveal the full story of this historic comic-book event, and he’d like to get that . . . off his chest. —M.E.

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When the legend becomes fact, print the legend. The above quote was all well and good for John Ford; however, at times the legend becomes the truth and the discovery of the actual facts becomes all the more harder. After all, memory is a tenuous thing at best. In early 2004, Mike Esposito and I were talking about the Andru and Esposito book that I was in the process of preparing. We’d spent a considerable amount of time talking about various aspects of the pair’s career and the artists that Mike had worked with over the years. As is the norm whenever Mike and myself speak, a lot of the conversation was taken up by subjects other than comic books, and it was during one of those conversations that Mike made an offhand comment about the Superman vs. The Amazing Spider-Man treasury edition that saw the light in of day in 1976. Mike’s comments were about how his art partner, Ross Andru, had made the book into something more than a comic book, and into an experience that was almost cinematic. To me that was an opening to discuss the book and I started by asking if Mike had ever been considered as an inker for the project, considering his history with both Ross and Marvel and DC (at the time very few artists had worked on both Superman and SpiderMan—Ross Andru and Mike Esposito were amongst them). Little did I know that I was about to open a can of worms that’d take nearly a year to close. Mike instantly came back with the following: “I was supposed to ink the first Superman/Spider-Man crossover. However, I got into a big argument with Marv Wolfman, who was the editor at Marvel at the time. They kept changing editors; Roy Thomas was the editor at one stage, then Marv, then Len Wein. I got a call from Sol Harrison at DC and he said, ‘Mike, we want to team you and Ross up together. We’re going to do a crossover with Spider-Man and Superman and since you guys were known as Andru and Esposito up here we figure it’d be perfect for you guys to do it.’ And it was all set to go, and then Marv Wolfman, and I’m not doing this verbatim, I’m paraphrasing what happened, he called them up and said, ‘You can’t have both guys.’ “It was like they were trading ball players from one team to another. He said, ‘You can have Ross but you can’t have Mike, or you can have Mike but you can’t

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have Ross. You can’t have both of them.’ So Sol Harrison called me up and he was very apologetic because he really enjoyed the idea of having the two guys from years ago coming together on the project. He said, ‘It looks like you’re not going to do it. I’m sorry, Mike. It looks like Dick Giordano is going to be put on it.’” So far, so good? Well, no. For the record, and before we go any further, Mike only has good words to say about Dick: “Dick Giordano did a good job. It’s a very nice book.” However, this is only the start of the legend/fact part of the story. I then contacted Marv Wolfman and included a copy of Mike’s comments for clarification as the journalist inside of me knows that in order to get all the facts, you have to at least ask anyone and everyone that’s being mentioned in your story. If they tell you to take a hike, well at least you’ve asked, so they can’t then come back at you. So I emailed Marv. I’ve never met Marv, but I have emailed him more than once and he’s always been a good guy to me. He’s been friendly, courteous, and more than helpful, which is why I was taken aback slightly when this reply came in, only a few hours after my email left. Marv’s reply read as follows: “Mike’s quote from Sol is wrong. I was on the Marvel black-andwhite books at the time, not the color comics. I had absolutely nothing to do with deciding who was on the Superman/Spider-Man book.

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PASS THE MUSTARD, PLEASE This is how Neal Adams redrew the Superman vs. the Amazing Spider-Man treasury edition: “Dick was given the job to ink Ross on the book,” says Adams. “When I looked at the first pages I realized Ross had rushed some of the work and Dick, himself, had a lot of pressure deadline-wise. I thought, ‘How many times would Supes go up against Spidey? How many shots will this project get?’ One! “I knew the strengths and weaknesses of the two artists. I asked Dick if I could tighten up the cover for him in preparation for inking. He said, ‘Long as you don’t, basically, change it.’ I said, ‘Never, I’ll just sorta ink it with a pencil.’ It worked out nicely. “Then we agreed to ask Ross if I could, because I had more experience with Superman, tighten up the Superman figures in the book. Ross was delighted. Dick and I were delighted. I took great effort to keep the Ross Andru look and quality while I added a bit of anatomy here and there, chiselled a face a bit, and basically inked with a pencil, after which Dick inked with ink. I don’t think you could find a collaboration the likes of this one, anywhere. I was the mustard on a ham and swiss. “The method I used? “I ran a kneaded eraser over each Superman figure, which lightened the pencil. Then I penciled new lines over the old and filled in areas that were unfinished, I located the roughed in ‘S’ symbol and solid-ed up the anatomy. I knew Ross Andru’s style, so I kept it Ross as best I could, and Dick blended it with his inks . . . but if you look real close. . . . “Ross came up and visited me at the studio after that and we became quite friendly.” 4 MYSTERY SOLVED!!! Neal didn’t redraw it as much as he embellished the pencil art—which is why anyone who’s seen the penciled pages will swear that nothing was erased—because, technically, nothing was erased. This is why Neal Adams is an artistic genius: because the man can find a solution in any given situation. Next on the list was John Romita. As part of writing the book about Andru and Esposito I found myself on the phone with John late one night, just talking about Ross and Mike as artists and people. In the middle of the conversation, without any prompting John came out with the following: “I think the greatest thing Ross did was the Spider-Man vs. Superman crossover. I have told many people at many conventions that I don’t know of anybody I know who could have done a better job on a huge project like that. It’s high profile, you’re out there exposed, and he did the best job I’ve ever seen on such a big project. That’s one of my favorite books of all time. I did work with him on that book because I was the consultant for Marvel and Stan sort of insisted

1 Len Wein; September 2004 2 Josef Rubenstein; September 2004 3 Mark Evanier; Gene Colan Yahoo List; January 2005 4 Neal Adams; January 2005 5 AI with John Romita; February 2005

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that every once in a while I’d have to touch up a Mary Jane Watson face, or a Peter Parker face. You might find a couple of my faces sticking out like a sore thumb in that book.” 5 With the art team finally now in place, perhaps the revised credits for the book should now read: Written by Gerry Conway, penciled by Ross Andru with assists by Neal Adams and John Romita, inked by Dick Giordano with assists by Terry Austin and Josef Rubenstein. In any era, those are credits that’d leave any serious comicbook fan in awe. But will it? Unlikely. It leaves us with a landmark book, one that is fondly remembered by all that have read it for the first time—who can go past that incredible double page spread of Supes and Spidey shaking hands? Who’d dare to?? When you’re talking iconic images in comic books, that ranks up there with all of them. The meeting of the two main companies of the day, the first proper super-hero crossover (not counting the Rutland crossovers, and The Wizard of Oz), and the book that blazed a trail that’s still being followed. And it was so darn big!!!

Daniel Best, longtime reader of comics, hails from Adelaide, South Australia. He maintains a website where he interviews creators, teaches Comic Books As Pop Culture at the Adelaide WEA, and when not being woken up in the dead of night by his gray cat, is the author of an upcoming biography of Ross Andru and Mike Esposito.

KING ARTHUR and the Knights of the Round Table:

Passed Into Legend

Redondo, the Art King Magical page 3 of Nestor Redondo’s unpublished masterpiece. All King Arthur

Morris Brian K. g by Gerry

-checkin (with fact d Manuel Auad) n a y a Conw

Chances are that if Arthur Pendragon truly existed, he probably didn’t look like Richard Burton, Richard Harris, or even Graham Chapman. Maybe the tales of he and his knights are an amalgam of folk tales embellished through centuries of retelling, but we may have no way of ever knowing. However, like Beowulf, The Iliad, and The Odyssey, the tales that remain comprise a classic story of sword and sorcery to say nothing of romance, intrigue, and betrayal. G o d s

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Redondo’s water-

Gerry Conway broke into comics writing for the

of MGM’s Wonderful Wizard of Oz by Roy Thomas,

colored front

DC Comics horror books when he was only 15 and

John Buscema, and Tony DeZuniga and Superman

and back covers

soon moved over to Marvel. By the time he left in

vs. the Amazing Spider-Man (written by Conway).

to the Arthurian adaptation (we lament that our black-and-white format doesn’t allow their color

1975, he had written many of Marvel’s top titles

As Conway recalls, DC actively sought new projects

such as Fantastic Four, Amazing Spider-Man, Thor,

to fill these oversized books. “I’m not sure if it was

Daredevil, and Tomb of Dracula while still in his

[editor] Joe Orlando who suggested it to me or whether

early twenties. Conway jumped to DC to write and

I suggested it to him, but we talked of doing an

edit existing titles such as Kamandi and Tarzan,

adaptation of Le Morte d’Arthur.” Originally published

revive books like Blackhawk and All-Star Comics, as

publication).

Steel, Man-Bat, The Secret Society of Super-Villains, and many more.

Redondo ably

For many years, DC experimented with different

succeeded Bernie

formats for their comics including reprint volumes

Wrightson as the artist

of 80 and 100 pages as well as the “tabloid” size of

on Swamp Thing, as

magazine.1 These oversized (10" by 13 3⁄4") comics

seen in this panel from

began as showcases for reprints from DC’s library and

page 18 of issue #13.

eventually moved into presenting original material,

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such as the first DC/Marvel crossovers: an adaptation

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in 1485, Thomas Malory detailed the life story of

and lavishly detailed scenery, Redondo’s longtime

Arthur Pendragon, from his ascent from squire to

friend, Manuel Auad, shared the opinion of Redondo’s

kinghood, his eventual creation of Camelot, the

fans. “Yeah, he was good. He was extremely good.

gathering of the Knights of the Round Table, and

As far as I’m concerned, there were a lot of good

their various quests. The saga culminated with Arthur’s

Filipino artists. But to me, he was just several notches

eventual betrayal and death. These stories became

above most of them.” Auad found a number of artists

the basis for various stage plays, movies, and novels,

who embraced Redondo as an influence, including

and it’s become the foundation of how contemporary

Dave (Rocketeer) Stevens.

society views the legend of Camelot as well as

Seeing Stevens at a San Diego Comic-Con, Auad

Swordplay, courtesy

approached him and said, “By the way, are you

of Gerry Conway

“It wasn’t intended as a series,” Conway continues.

familiar with Redondo’s work?” The excited

and Nestor Redondo.

“It was a four-part adaptation of Malory’s stories. We

response was, “He’s my idol! He’s my idol.” With a

medieval living.

would have ended with the death of Arthur. It would have ended just as thematically. You have to take the arc of Arthur’s story from youth though adult through Lady of the Lake through Excalibur to Camelot to his death. That would have been the plan, I think.” Joe Orlando was a fan of Howard Pyle’s (1853–1911) illustrations from the 1903 edition of Malory’s book, according to Conway. Looking for someone to give that look of authenticity to the series, Orlando turned to Nestor Redondo to illustrate the proposed fourissue series. Redondo was part of the initial wave of Filipino artists whose work began showing up in American comics in the early ’70s. In addition to numerous mystery stories, the shortlived Rima, the Jungle Girl (a comics version of the novel Green Mansions by William Henry Hudson), and a lavish rendering of the Old Testament in DC’s Limited Collectors Edition #C-36 over Joe Kubert’s layouts, Redondo succeeded Berni Wrightson as illustrator on the original Swamp Thing series. Renowned in both the Philippines and in America for his smooth line work

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to robots: His Superman is more akin to his work on Marshal Law, as you might expect! It’s not just the covers that make these Annuals so special. Amongst the reprinted U.S. strips are many text stories with illustrations by some fabulous Brits including Talbot, Arthur Ransom, Barry Kitson, and the hugely underrated Garry Leach (check out his stint on Global Frequency). And I haven’t even mentioned the writers. In the 1986 Superman Annual you will find “Osgood Peabody’s Big Green Dream Machine” by Grant Morrison, with illos by Barry Kitson, while the writer also put together that same year’s Batman tale “The Stalking” (illustrated by Leach). Alan Moore, of course, contributed several text stories: “Protected Species” (Super-Heroes Annual 1984) and “I Was Superman’s Double” (in the 1985 Superman Annual). Both these stories are available as a free download from the Moore Store: www.4 colorheroes.com 1980s’ British Annuals are a real treasure trove for these who can seek them out!

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“The Comics b y Tom art Savant” Stew Editor’s note: Artwork for this feature was contributed by Michael Arnold, Terry Austin, John Eury, David Hamilton, Heritage Comics, Joe Jusko, Michel Maillot, Bob McLeod, and Jim Warden, to whom BACK ISSUE extends its gratitude and a frothy pint of mead.

“Why we didn’t just create an entirely new character, I don’t know. . .” In the late ’60s, DC Comics, as a whole, must have sat down and sighed. After releasing a spate of innovative titles (almost all of which had been cancelled within two years) and luring an influx of new talent (Neal Adams, Denny O’Neil, Dick Giordano), and even the go-go checks (!), nothing had worked. Like the nerd with the new haircut, DC had somehow failed to be cool, and didn’t seem to understand why. It was now 1969, and Marvel Comics, in what would have been unthinkable only ten years before, was about to leave DC in its dust, ready to take over the top spot from DC. Marvel had the drive, the talent, and some of the hippest characters in comics (I mean, really, Superman seemed like someone’s dad trying to be cool at your birthday party), and they had the college crowd with them. That new base could be a demanding bunch of cusses. Roy Thomas, Marvel writer and fan turned pro

Blacklight Barbarian

who wrote Conan, man and boy, for over 30 years should

Remember those garishly groovy blacklight

know. Roy?

posters of the 1970s? Here’s a Conan poster,

“About that time, 1969 I think, we were getting letters

amazingly illustrated by Barry (Windsor-) Smith.

asking us to do a Conan comic. Well, I’d read a couple of the books, with the Frazetta covers, I knew who he was.”

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The first Howard story adapted to the comics was not a Conan story, but one Howard set originally in ancient Ireland: “The Grey God Passes.” Here’s Roy: “De Camp had made a practice, in the books, of adapting non-Conan stories and making Conans out of them. He did that in Tales of Conan. I thought de Camp had a good idea there, so I suggested to Glen that I be allowed to do the same thing in the comics.” A system was worked out where, if Thomas wanted to adapt a certain Conan story, Marvel would pay a sum of money, “a pittance of filthy lucre,” Roy calls it, and Roy would write his adaptation and send it across the pond to Barry Smith. The first instance of this wasn’t a Conan story, but it was too good a story to pass up. The result was “Twilight of the Grim Grey God” in issue #3, one of the best of the first

later revised by de Camp to include the sto-

These Conan character

ries he added. This is a real fan thing to do,

studies (shared with

like putting all the Star Trek episodes in order

us by Bob McLeod)

of Stardate . . . I know, please, send no lists.)

show why John Buscema

Roy decided he would. “These days they’ve

was Stan Lee and Roy

packed the timeline so tight, if Conan stubbed

Thomas’ first—but

his toe you’d have to write a story about it.”

originally unattainable

How would Conan be aged? “I decided that

—choice to draw

each year of the comic would be a year in

Conan the Barbarian.

Conan’s life”—start with him young, in his teens, then progress to the first story in the de

Camp chronology, “The Tower of the Elephant.” Marvel’s Conan #1 would not be an adaptation, but would serve to introduce the character and let both artist and writer get the feel of him, then they would hit the ground running with the first Howard story. Maybe.

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few issues, and a showcase for the developing art of

Elephant”) and #6 (“Devil-

Barry Smith.

Wings over Shadizar,” an

Young Mr. Smith was gaining confidence. His art was

original story by Roy) as the

maturing and starting to become more nuanced, refined

best comic-book stories of

(even though this was a comic about a brutal man living

1971. Sales on #1 were

by his wits in a brutal time), quiet, and also decorative, his

good, and there was talk

art taking on an art nouveau look. And he was getting

of adapting other Howard

slower. Conan #4, the first Howard Conan story that Roy and

characters into Marvel

Barry would adapt, showed a great leap forward in Barry’s

comic books—until the

art. The Kirbyisms were disappearing, being absorbed into

later sales reports started

the emerging style. Shadows and mood started to play a

to come in. The early sales

more important part on the page. Barry wasn’t there yet,

reports were like exit polls,

but the artist he would become in just a few issues was

with the numbers starting

emerging. Conan would become the book that Barry Smith

high on #1, then dropping

would be known for (even after adding the “Windsor-”),

with each issue. Conan al-

the one where he found the style he would continue to

most ended his journey

refine in the years to come.

before he’d barely started.

At this point, Thomas and Smith were still working in the dark, Conan #1 not having hit the stands. When it did, Conan sold out! Sort of. Conan #1 held several distinctions. First, it was the first appearance of Conan in a comic

(Above) An early

book; second, it is looked upon as the first “Bronze Age”

Conan illo by Barry

comic, a herald of a new comics age (sounds important);

Windsor-Smith, inked

and third, was one of the first comics to fall victim to

by Rich Buckler.

in the ’70s. Conan was bought by the case by dealers who then sat on them, some not even bothering to save them, but put them out almost instantly at a markup over cover price. Some dealers got their cases from the “return” market. Newsstand vendors (and comic-store dealers) signed what was called “affidavit returns,” so instead of sending back the whole book, they would send back the covers, or just the logo, claiming the rest of the book was destroyed. Sometimes they returned just the affidavit, the covers somehow getting lost in the mail. This system was . . . much abused. The mafia even got involved in the funny-

Barry Windsor-Smith

book-selling business, calling stores and offering them

will always be number

the Conans (you wonder why the Overstreet Price Guide

one in our book!

bulk, by the case. They didn’t say where they got them. They musta fell off a truck.

Leave it to the comics wizard Stan Lee to figure out the problem:

“Too Many Animals”

“Too many animals.”

Thomas and Smith continued to work away at Conan,

Sword and sorcery being “not his thing,” Stan didn’t

adapting the Howard stories when it fit into the timeline,

read the issues, but like the old comics editor he was, he

advancing Conan a month in age each issue. The Academy

scrutinized each cover. Stan pointed out that each issue

of Comic Book Artists nominated Conan #4 (“Tower of the

since #1 had Conan facing some monster or giant animal,

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special feature

Captions by

Michael Eu

Here’s a secret: We’d originally planned a Sandman “Pro2Pro” between Neil Gaiman and Karen Berger for this issue, but Neil’s busy schedule delayed it to a future, undetermined ish. But this mesmerizing Morpheus sketch—commissioned from Bill

Writer Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith collaborated on the barbarian tale “The Sword and the Sorcerers,” featuring Starr the Slayer, for Marvel’s Chamber of Darkness #4 (Apr. 1970)—published six months before Conan the Barbarian #1. It was reprinted in Conan #16. Original art scan courtesy of Jeff Jatras. © 2005 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Our friends at Heritage Comics recently auctioned some remarkable items from the collection of Elfquest creators Richard and Wendy Pini, and we’re honored to share two of them with you here: an undated Blackmark illo by Gil Kane (left) and a 1980 Tor sketch (below) by Joe Kubert. Lastly, another Heritage gem: Tarzan by Jeff Jones (inset). Blackmark © 2005 Gil Kane estate. Tor © 2005 Joe Kubert. Tarzan © 2005 ERB, Inc.

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Suydam’s “When Giants Walk the Earth,” the 2005 Spectrum Magazine Gold Medal winner. Unless otherwise noted, all artwork accompanying this interview appears courtesy of the artist and Renee Witterstaetter.

conducted on March 10, 2005

Arthur Suydam, a protégé of EC legend Joe Orlando (among others), is an artist’s artist who

interview

by Dan Johnson

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has chosen to avoid the mainstream for most of his extensive career. Although he describes himself as someone who has always been on the fringe of the comics industry, Suydam has nonetheless won over a number of mainstream readers with his work on such series as Heavy Metal’s Mudwogs, Epic Illustrated’s Cholly and Flytrap, and a collection of cuttingedge short stories. If you haven’t heard Suydam’s name mentioned in a while, you may not be alone. His absence from the comics scene is, oddly enough, intentional, the result of his hard work and singular devotion to his art. Over the years, many of the projects that Suydam has worked on have, for a variety of reasons, not made it to fruition. They are now emerging, ready to be unveiled to his eager fans. Suydam is finding the spotlight as he begins new chapters for some of his most famous creations—Mudwogs is back in Heavy Metal, while Cholly and Flytrap have a new home at Image. He has released a series of new The Art of the Barbarian books that tie in very well with the theme of this edition of BACK ISSUE —Dan Johnson

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DAN JOHNSON: Let’s discuss your new book: What can you tell us about The Art of the Barbarian?

Beginnings:

ARTHUR SUYDAM: I am quite proud of Art of the Barbarian.

Short stories for Joe Orlando at DC Comics (1980s)

I put a lot of work into it, and there were many hurdles

Milestones:

along the way. It started off as a sketch book, and ended

Heavy Metal / Mudwogs / Cholly and Flytrap / The Art of the Barbarian: Conan, Tarzan, Death Dealer / 2005 Spectrum Magazine Gold Medal winner for artistic excellence

up more as a fine art book. Currently it is softcover, but there are plans to do an expanded hardcover later on, which will truly make it an art book. It has more than 200 illustrations

Works in Progress:

in it already, with eight pull-out plates printed on archival

Cholly and Flytrap (Image Comics) / Mudwogs monthly in Heavy Metal / as-yet-untitled creator-owned barbarian story / The Alien Encounters Poster Book / The Femme Fatale Art of Arthur Suydam (Eva Ink and Image Comics) / Bedtime Stories for the Incarcerated (Last Gasp) / giclees from Heroic Fine Art / The Fantastic Art of Arthur Suydam (Vanguard Productions) / The Art of the Barbarian 2006 Calendar

paper. It features a lot of the barbarian art I have been working on over the years, and most of it is new material. The book contains some sepia studies from a Conan figurine set that I worked on a few years ago, as well as unpublished artwork from a barbarian book, my own, that I will publish later this year with Eva Ink. Additionally, I did some artwork on the Death Dealer, a barbarian character I illustrated a

Cyberspace:

few years back. That job was colored by computer. Now

www.evaink.com

readers for the first time can see what the artwork looked like before it got lost in the coloring. The Art of the Barbarian book also features work from Tarzan and other Conan artwork. I’ve been asked by the publisher to do a second one, The Art of the Barbarian Book Two. I hear Roy Thomas might be involved with that. I don’t know, it remains to be seen.

2003 Conan

JOHNSON: As I understand

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