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MAGIC ISSUE: DR. STRANGE ( ZATANNA g ELEMENTALS ? AMETHYST K DR. FATE > PETER PAN with BRUNNER O COLAN K SIMONSON O SMITH ( and a tribute to MARSHALL ROGERS

Volume 1, Number 24 October 2007 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, and Today!

The Ultimate Comics Experience!

EDITOR Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich J. Fowlks COVER ARTIST Michael Golden

BACK SEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2

COVER DESIGNER Robert Clark CIRCULATION DIRECTOR Bob Brodsky, Cookiesoup Periodical Distribution, LLC

FLASHBACK: Orb of Nabu: The 1970s Revival of Dr. Fate . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .17 Walter Simonson, Gerry Conway, Martin Pasko, and Keith Giffen discuss the return of the helmeted JSAer BEYOND CAPES: Paradise Tossed: The Reign and Fall of Amethyst . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .23 A radiant retrospective of the Princess of Gemworld, with creative gems Ernie Colón, Dan Mishkin, and Gary Cohn

SPECIAL THANKS

Dan Johnson Stephen Kanzee Jim Kingman Mike Leeke Justin Leiter Paul Levitz Bruce MacIntosh Andy Mangels Marvel Comics Yoram Matzkin Don McGregor Bob McLeod Allen Milgrom Dan Mishkin Brian K. Morris Floyd Norman Kevin Nowlan Martin Pasko George Pérez John Petty Carl Potts Roland Reedy Rose Rummel-Eury Alex Segura Walter Simonson John SmallwoodGarcia Paul Smith Anthony Snyder Roger Stern Tom Stewart Roy Thomas Steven Tice Timothy Truman Gerry Turnbull Matt Wagner Mark Waid Len Wein John Wells Bill Williams Demetrios Williams Renee Witterstaetter

TRIBUTE: Marshall Rogers: A Look Back . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .30 Friends and collaborators Steve Englehart and Don McGregor remember the much-missed Batman and Coyote artist FLASHBACK: The Magical Art of Marshall Rogers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .34 Steve Englehart, Terry Austin, and Roger Stern recall the late artist’s supernatural series, including Doctor Strange INTERVIEW: He’s a Magic Man: Frank Brunner’s Doctor Strange . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .39 A chat with the illustrator who pitted the Sorcerer Supreme against “God,” with never-before-published art DOCTOR STRANGE ART GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .45 Six sizzling pinups by Michael Golden, Frank Brunner, Carl Potts, John Byrne, Kevin Nowlan, and Paul Smith PRO2PRO: Dr. Strange’s Artists Supreme: Gene Colan and Paul Smith . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .51 Magical artists from two generations compare notes on Marvel’s Master of the Mystic Arts INTERVIEW: The Strange World of Cary Bates’ Jonathan Lord . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .58 The Superman and Flash writer looks back at his offbeat series Silverblade, with art by Gene Colan GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Peter Pan and Wendy . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .61 An examination of Andy Mangels and Craig Hamilton’s unpublished series featuring the forever-young adventurer FLASHBACK: Zatanna . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .67 We bend over backwards for the sexy sorceress in this enchanting history, with art by George Pérez, Gray Morrow, Dick Giordano, and others FLASHBACK BONUS: Conjura . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74 A look at Zatanna’s little-known “sister,” with rarely seen Joe Kubert art BACKSTAGE PASS: Hats Off to CAPS . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .75 Co-founded by legendary MAD cartoonist Sergio Aragonés, the Comic Art Professional Society celebrates a magical 30th anniversary FLASHBACK: The Elementals: Working Toward Oblivion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .79 The ups and downs of Bill Willingham’s supernatural super-team, with recollections from Mike Leeke, Bill Williams, and BI’s own Michael Eury BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .86 Reader feedback on issue #22 FREE Preview of Rough Stuff #6 . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .88 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. E-mail: euryman@msn.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $36 Standard US, $54 First Class US, $66 Canada, $72 Surface International, $96 Airmail International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Michael Golden. Dr. Strange TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2007 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

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PROOFREADER Eric Nolen-Weathington

Ceasar Alvarez The Ancient One Sergio Aragonés Roger Ash Michael Aushenker Terry Austin Cary Bates Spencer Beck Al Bigley Malcolm Bourne Frank Brunner Rick Bryant Aaron Bushey John Byrne Dewey Cassell Rich Cirillo Gary Cohn Gene Colan Ernie Colón Gerry Conway Ray Cuthbert Rich Donnelly Steve Donnelly Michael Dunne Steve Englehart Mark Evanier Tom Field Russ Garwood Keith Giffen Dick Giordano Michael Golden Scott Green Robert Greenberger George Hagenauer Craig Hamilton Allan Harvey Heritage Comics Auctions Richard Howell Don Hudson Adam Hughes Christopher Irving Robert Jewell

INTERVIEW: Golden’s Oldies . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .3 An exclusive interview with artist Michael Golden, exploring BACK ISSUE’s favorite Golden back issues

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Bill Mantlo’s brother and caretaker Michael, was released in June—and it’s a must-have for every BACK ISSUE reader! It’s packed with lushly illustrated looks at Bill’s series—fondly remembered comics from the BI era—including “Sons of the Tiger,” Spectacular Spider-Man, Human Fly, Man from Atlantis, Incredible Hulk, and Rom: Spaceknight. There are anecdotes from Mantlo’s collaborators, never-before-published photos, rarities such as script pages, and a color section featuring previously unpublished stories by Bill Mantlo. It costs a mere $7.50 U.S., and proceeds from the publication go directly to Bill’s medical care. For more information, visit www.sleepinggiantcreations.com. Another summer 2007 release of interest to BI readers is P.I.C.toons Studios’ Nihilist-Man and His Amazing Friends #1, a collection of short stories teaming up the titular titan with a handful of heroes including BI faves E-Man and Nova Kane. Contributors include Joe Staton, Nick Cuti, and comics artist and occasional BACK ISSUE contributor Al Nickerson. Lots of fun for only $3.50. And those drop-deadgorgeous EC Archives continue to be released by Gemstone Publishing. While their 1950s’ stories predate BACK ISSUE’s 1970s/1980s realm, these high-quality reprints of some of comics’ most graphic and influential tales should be read by every self-respecting comics aficionado. Tales from the Crypt volume 2 © 2007 P.I.C.toons. Characters © 2007 saw print in late July, and their respective copyright holders. Two-Fisted Tales volume 2 should hit the stores about the same time as this edition of BI. In closing, an apology to our pal Ron Frenz for the omission of his name in last issue’s “Special Thanks” masthead. Enough from me … let the magic begin!

Every little thing he does is magic. Michael Golden, that is. The one-time artist of Man-Bat, The Micronauts, Batman, The ’Nam, and our cover star Doctor Strange is, bar none, the most requested artist interview we’ve had among BACK ISSUE and TwoMorrows readers. This issue’s chat with Michael, conducted by yours truly, was long in coming, but we hope you enjoy it (I know I sure did!). Mr. Golden is only part of this issue’s magical contents. Fans of Dr. Strange (you’ll excuse us for flip-flopping between “Dr.” and “Doctor,” but so has Marvel over the years…) will no doubt be thrilled to see an exclusive interview with Frank Brunner, the artist who redefined the character in the early 1970s; a “Pro2Pro” dialogue between two of Doc’s artists, Gene Colan and Paul Smith; and a look at the Dr. Strange (and other magical) art of the late, and much-missed, Marshall Rogers (plus a tribute to Marshall as well). Gerry Turnbull earns this issue’s BACK ISSUE Badge of Honor— Gerry, perhaps the foremost collector of Dr. Strange art, contributed many of his commissioned illustrations to this issue. You’ll find those illos in the “Pro2Pro” and in a special Dr. Strange art gallery. Mr. Turnbull’s enthusiasm and astounding art contributions are sincerely appreciated. Thanks, Gerry! You’ll note that this issue’s theme isn’t “Dr. Strange,” but instead “magic.” We’ve conjured up a handful of ’70s/’80s magic-based comics and characters for a second—or, for some readers, a first—look, and we’re happy to present to you Dr. Fate, Zatanna, Amethyst, and Silverblade, plus the second super-hero title I edited early in my career, The Elementals. Topping off the issue are a photo-packed “Backstage Pass” visit to the Comic Art Professional Society, and a “Greatest Stories Never Told” spotlight on Peter Pan and Wendy, the late-1980s adaptation by Andy Mangels and Craig Hamilton that woefully never made it into print. Three issues back, I mentioned that David Yurkovich of Less Than Heroes fame was producing, through his Sleeping Giant Comics, a 72-page, black-and-white, magazine-sized book examining the career of former Marvel writer Bill Mantlo (whose many credits include The Micronauts, as noted in this issue’s Michael Golden interview). In case you came in late, Bill Mantlo’s career was cut short in 1992 by an accident; he’s been in a coma since. Yurkovich’s book, Mantlo: A Life in Comics, which was co-written by

Michael Eury

condu cted April 1, 2007 and transc ribed by Brian K. Morris

Three decades ago, Michael Golden rode into town. On a motorcycle, no less, packing little more than a pencil. The nomadic artist has since perfected a habit of popping up all over the place: You might find him fluttering the Gotham rooftops, hopping through the cosmos in The Righteous Indignation, hiding out in the Microverse, or slogging toward Saigon. In whichever universe you first discovered Michael Golden, that universe undoubtedly took on a life of its own. At the 2007 Emerald City ComiCon in Seattle, Washington, Michael Golden kindly interrupted his sketching to pull up a chair with me and look, up close and personal, at a handful of his earliest comics. —Michael Eury MICHAEL EURY: Let’s start with The Micronauts. I understand that you weren’t the first choice as artist on the book, that George Pérez was supposed to be the Micronauts artist. Do you know anything about this? MICHAEL GOLDEN: No, that’s the first I’ve ever heard of that, but George is a great artist. EURY: So you never saw any Pérez Micronauts art floating around? GOLDEN: No. Bob Hall’s is the only artwork I ever saw. EURY: Bob Hall had done some art for Micronauts? GOLDEN: Right. It was just presentation art that he had done—big splashes of the characters running around, and explosions, and that sort of thing. EURY: So he did this art as a presentation for Marvel to get the Micronauts license from Mego, not necessarily as a tryout to become the artist for the title. GOLDEN: I don’t think he was ever in line for the art, because ultimately he was the editor for the first couple of issues. EURY: I’ve uncovered some photocopies of your Micronauts pencils, and I’d like to get your reaction to them. [gesturing toward art photocopies]. These pages are from issue #8. GOLDEN: Yeah, this is eight. Seven was my Man-Thing issue, I think. So with eight, I finally just gave up and shifted over to making my work look even more like the Kirby stuff for that run.

Michael Golden at War! Golden’s realistic-yet-cartoony art made Marvel Comics’ The ’Nam a surprise hit. This photocopy of the original cover art to issue #1 (Dec. 1986) was contributed by one-time Marvel artist Don Hudson (check out Don’s blog at Comiculture.com). © 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Beginnings: misc. Batman stories (late 1977)

Milestones: Man-Bat and Batman in Batman Family / miscellaneous Batman stories / Mister Miracle / The Micronauts / Bucky O’Hare / Star Wars #38 / Marvel Fanfare / Dr. Strange #55 / The ’Nam / G. I. Joe Yearbook / introduction of the X-Men Rogue in Avengers Annual #10 / Spartan X4 / Birds of Prey / Manga Bucky O’Hare / Michael Golden Monsters poster book / numerous covers on titles including Detective Comics, Nightwing, Ocean, Heroes for Hire, Iron Man, and Midnighter

Works in Progress: Modern Masters vol. 12: Michael Golden (TwoMorrows) / Excess: The Art of Michael Golden—Comics’ Inimitable Storyteller and How He Does It (Vanguard) / Heroes and Villains sketchbook (Image/Eva Ink) / Creator Chronicles DVD (Woodcrest Productions/ Eva Ink) / Modern Masters in the Studio with Michael Golden DVD (TwoMorrows)

Cyberspace: www.evaink.com

michael golden Photo by Rich Fowlks.

EURY: Was that under editorial direction? Were they not happy with your art? GOLDEN: The directive I got at that time when working for them was, “Do it like Kirby.” Now, that’s a quote. They wanted the Kirby feel. Then it was from issue five to issue eight when I just gave up [chuckles] and just basically started doing a Kirby riff. They were pleased as punch with this. I got no more complaints, no more grief, although I would have liked to have given it a different look myself, although, of course, I do respect Kirby. EURY: We look at your ’70s art now—you and a few other artists who started around the same time, like Marshall Rogers—and you were doing things a little differently. From the readers’ and the fans’ perspective, that was very cool, very exciting. But I’ll bet the corporate side of Marvel and DC was much slower to come around to that kind of thinking, to accept a different style. GOLDEN: Yeah, definitely. At that point in time, when you went to DC, it was, “Do it like Neal Adams.” And like I said, at Marvel, it was, “Do it like Kirby.” [chuckles] Now, the problem was that they were hiring guys like me and Marshall Rogers, and Walt Simonson and Frank Miller … well, Bill Sienkiewicz was doing Neal at that time … and they were hiring guys whose portfolios already had a unique flavor and feel to it, and they were trying to bend us to their molds of these other artists. And I don’t know about any of the other

Microanuts TM & © Mego Corporation.

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guys, but what I ended up finding out is that I could use some elements from these various artists with my own vision of things and still keep the unique flavor that I felt my work had at the time. That may have just been some sort of like rationalization in my mind, but ultimately, everybody was happy with the artwork. But I also had to use that material. I mean, I’m not a draftsman anywhere near the par of Neal Adams, now or especially back then. And yet, when I was obliged to use elements of his style and his artwork in my own, I felt it obviously helped. As much as I may have griped and moaned and bitched about it at the time, looking back on it now, I can only say that it added immensely to my understanding of not only my own artwork and the style that I’ve developed over a period of time, but how I did it as well. It’s the whole mentality around it. Now I can do a pretty decent riff of both Neal and Jack Kirby when I need to. [laughter] And laughing at it, there’ve been moments when I’ve needed to do it and it’s helped a lot. Even then, I've tried to keep my own style in the process. EURY: So you were directed to draw Batman like Neal Adams. Did that extend to specific artist direction, like working from Neal Adams-drawn Batman model sheets? GOLDEN: No, no. I think the expectation and, ultimately, the supposition then was much as it is now: They assume you’re a comic-book fan. It’s like, “Why else would you be doing this unless you’re a comic-book reader?” So it’s like I was handicapped right off the bat [chuckles]. So I had to go find this work and learn how to do it, because I wasn’t a student of the comic-book art form at that time. My only familiarity with [comics] was with the Jack Kirby stuff—I was a store manager in Florida and would see his work on the stands. The people who were trying to steer me going toward comic books were all connected to DC, so they were all saying, “You need to look at Neal Adams’ artwork and do it like this.” I don’t think they actually understood that you’ve got to have basic drawing skills to be able to do Neal Adams. So I had to learn all of this stuff after I was in the industry. For me, the learning curve had to be immediate so that I could pull it off and still get work. EURY: Without that fan-based inspiration, what led you to draw comics for a living? GOLDEN: Well, it’s actually a long story…. I mean, I’ve always been sort of a storyteller. You know, in little kid talk, I was—well, I was a yarn spinner. [laughter] EURY: You mean, a B.S.’er? GOLDEN: Yeah, a B.S.’er, whatever. But I had been doing artwork, or a reasonable facsimile thereof, since I was a kid. I liked to draw, I guess, but although I don’t really define it as drawing—it’s just that I sort of had a natural inclination to design, let’s say, as opposed to drawing, because even to this day, I don’t really consider myself much of a draftsman. But during my teenage years, this sort of manifested itself in the sense that I would use artwork to barter things. [chuckles] There was a period of time in my late teens where I was traveling around the country. EURY: On a motorcycle? GOLDEN: Yes, yes, yes. You remember that story. Yes, several motorcycles, as a matter of fact, seeing as how one of them didn’t quite make it. [laughter] [Editor’s note: In a pre-interview chat, Michael Golden told Michael Eury about his “Easy Rider” youth—and a spectacular crash from which he was lucky to have survived.] This was back in the hippie days … we’d all sit around in the park, and I would do a drawing and I’d trade it for food, sustenance, and gas for my motorcycles, or a place to sleep, whatever. That sort of turned into

doing [art for] skateboards and surfboards. You’re old enough to remember the van craze, I guess. EURY: [singing] “I made love in my Chevy van.” [laughs] There was even a song. GOLDEN: Yeah. And I started doing vans, and storefronts, billboards, murals, that sort of thing. [chuckles] Eventually I started getting paid for it, as opposed to just bartering it for something else. And so it eventually turned into a commercial enterprise. And one day, I was doing work for a guy who wasn’t really connected to the comic-book industry, but had “friends of friends of friends,” that sort of thing. And I was doing what he defined as a “comic book” or a “cartoon” art style. It was a very contoured line, very little rendering. I was doing store illustrations from The Lord of the Rings and stuff like that. He was looking at it and was going, “Ah, that’s very comic-bookish.” Okay, because it was very expressive, or whatever. And he started pushing, at one point, that he knew people in the comic-book industry and that I should be doing this. And for a period of, like, two years, I just ignored it. And then one day, I had another friend of a friend who just up and handed me a plane ticket—there’s a little more to that story [Eury laughs]—but basically, they just handed me a plane ticket and said, “Go, see what you can do.” I’d already talked to some people about [going to] New York and they had said, “Well, if you’re working for DC, you do Neal Adams.” So I like did a couple of samples of ripping off Neal Adams’ stuff and mostly, it was just my own storytelling that I did. EURY: Did you actually work at Neal Adams’ Continuity studio? GOLDEN: No, I never worked at Continuity. I’ve done work with Continuity and for Continuity, but I’ve never worked at Continuity. EURY: Did you ever sleep on the Continuity floor? GOLDEN: Not that I remember. [laughs] EURY: Dick Giordano told me that in the ’70s, a lot of people crashed there. GOLDEN: I wasn’t one of them. [Eury laughs] But I went up to New York, went into DC one day, and got a Batman story right off the bat. It was a Batman story that I don’t remember. EURY: For editor Julie Schwartz? GOLDEN: Yeah. I went in and talked to Vinnie Colletta. He was the art director at the time, and then he turned right around and walked me down to Julie Schwartz’s office. And Julie immediately gave me a Batman story. I was doing the Batman story in motels, since I was moving and in transit, back and forth, for that three months. And [right after that] I remember doing a House of Secrets pinup intro page [for issue #148, Oct.–Nov. 1977] with the little fat character, whatever his name was. EURY: Abel. GOLDEN: Okay. So there was a friend of somebody I was staying with over in Brooklyn Heights who basically had a large closet that they’d set up a cot in, and that’s where I did that pinup, in that little closet….

EURY: But you don’t want me to title this interview “Michael Golden Came Out of the Closet and Walked into Comics.” [laughs] GOLDEN: [mock pained] No, because that would definitely give the wrong idea, especially if we’re talking about Brooklyn Heights at this point. [laughter] But the next day, the next morning, I went over to Continuity and met Neal Adams and the guys at Continuity. That afternoon, I went over to Marvel and met Marie Severin … I’m pretty sure she was the art director. But anyway, Marvel gave me a little eight-page story that day and it ran like five years later. They finally published it. Over the next two days, I sat in that little closet and did that story. [Eury laughs] Yeah, it’s all coming back to me…. They wouldn’t let me into the office to turn it in. EURY: Why wouldn’t they let you into Marvel? GOLDEN: Because Marie wasn’t there that day, so there was nobody there to let me in. And so I turned it in at the front desk.

Microanuts TM & © Mego Corporation.

Toys Will Be Toys In Micronauts #2 (Feb. 1979), the tiny titans made their way to Earth. By Bill Mantlo/ Michael Golden/Josef Rubinstein. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Comics Aucitons. Microanuts TM & © Mego Corporation.

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More Golden Oldies From the collection of Don Hudson, three Marvel covers showcasing the artistic wizardry of Michael Golden: (top) Marvel Fanfare #47 (Nov. 1989), and (bottom) Excalibur #69 (Sept. 1993) and Nomad #19 (Nov. 1993). © 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Allan Harvey

It’s the helmet. That golden, face-obscuring headgear distinguishes Doctor Fate from the competition. It’s what people remember most about him. “I’ve always been a fan of Dr. Fate,” says Gerry Conway, “probably because I think his mask is cool.” Keith Giffen agrees: “That helmet’s one of my all-time favorite hero headpieces.” Created in 1940 by Gardner Fox and Hal Sherman, Dr. Fate was a founding member of the Justice Society of America and starred in his own series for a time, in More Fun Comics #55–98 [reprinted in 2007 in The Golden Age Dr. Fate Archives vol. 1]. However, by 1944 he was gone; the gleam of his golden helmet a dim, yet fond memory. While the Silver Age had seen revivals of the Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, and the others, poor, old Dr. Fate was left on the shelf. While most of the JSA membership was reimagined as the Justice League of America, there was no Dr. Fate analogue. Editor Julie Schwartz was a fan of science fiction, and magic got short shrift in his comics. Eventually, of course, the original JSA was revived for annual team-ups with the JLA, and Fate was always along for the ride, but he was never given a solo outing. His appearances outside the group dynamic consisted of team-ups with Hourman in 1965 [in Showcase #55 and 56] and Superman in 1971 [in World’s Finest Comics #208]. Indeed, so ill defined was the good Doctor, that in the WFC story DC couldn’t seem to decide whether his alter ego, Kent Nelson, was an archaeologist or “one of the nation’s top surgeons.”

FROM CONWAY’S CORNER In 1975, Gerry Conway, newly installed as an editor at DC, decided to change this state of affairs by putting together a proposal for a revival of Dr. Fate. But where to put the story? “First Issue Special was a brainstorm of [DC publisher] Carmine Infantino,” explains Conway. “Because the first issue of any given comic always seemed to sell better than the subsequent issues, Carmine thought that a comic made up solely of first issues would be a

The Fickle Finger of Fate From the collection of Aaron Bushey comes this 1981 Dr. Fate commission by Walter Simonson. Those of you reading this issue in the downloadable PDF format can enjoy this amazing piece with Steve Oliff’s colors. © 2007 DC Comics.

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“Mike Barr, who was editing the Flash at the time, offered [the job] to me as an assignment. I was kinda on ‘former asshole freelancer’ probation, and this was a chance to start showing I could function as a pro.” What made this series so eye-popping was the use of color-holds. This is a process where color is applied to a panel without a black outline to contain it. Giffen went on to use the technique extensively in his fondly remembered run on the Legion of Super-Heroes. “I was trying to make full use of whatever tools were available. All I had to do was indicate a color-hold by drawing in non-reproducing blue pencil. The inker [Larry Mahlstedt] would then ink on a vellum overlay. It was a much bigger pain for him than for me.” Though initially not keen to revisit old ground, Pasko had agreed to come on board thanks to welcome financial changes at DC. “By the time they offered me the backup, a royalty program had been introduced and I said to myself, ‘What the hell,’ because [writing] eight-pagers was not tough to do on a moonlighting

basis after I got home from the animation studio. And, unlike a full book at that point, I could afford not having to worry about how it would sell.” And working with Keith Giffen? “In terms of the comfort level, very much like working with Walt,” Pasko says, “because I had already known Keith for about six or seven years. It was similar also in that Keith was already taking more control over story (though not with me), and it would be only a matter of time before he’d be off and running on a writing career of his own. Again, my intuition about the artist’s trajectory was correct and, though I’d kill to work with Keith today—just as I would with Walt, and Howard Chaykin—by now all those guys know from vast experience that the easier, faster paycheck for them is to write it and let someone else slave over the drawing board. “The art was gorgeous, of course, even if it didn’t print as well as we might’ve wanted. Our reach exceeded our grasp. Keith was very good at using the new tool of color-holds to visualize the magic effects more imaginatively, and he rose to the occasion of delivering the set pieces with maximum impact. But Larry Mahlstedt’s exquisite inking was undone by the crude plastic plates [then used in the printing process]. The color-holds were not helped by Sparta’s separations, which tended to go badly off-register. But this stuff comes off as crude only when you view it in hindsight. It’s impossible to imagine today, but the reader accepted this kind of thing as state-of-the-art back in those pre-Ronald’s, pre-digital direct-to-press days. “The only frustration in those Fate backups in Flash was that the limited page count left us only enough room for the Menace from Antiquity part of the format I’d developed. The stuff that was much more interesting to me—the Kent-Inza relationship and the “triangle”— kept having to be cut.” A change in editors put an end to the backup series, and Fate sank once more into relative obscurity. Post-Crisis, Fate was reborn as a major player in the DC Universe, starting with a four-issue limited series by Keith Giffen and J. M. DeMatteis, which led into a regular series for the master mage, written by DeMatteis. Though it didn’t sell hugely, it was popular enough to spawn several follow-up series throughout the ’90s and beyond. So, in summation, while that initial solitary appearance in a lowly title like First Issue Special may have seemed like a shaky start, we can see in hindsight that it actually provided a rock-solid foundation for the rebirth of a character that still has much potential. Let’s leave the last words to Martin Pasko: “I’ll remain forever grateful to Walt for that sweet collaboration; I learned much from him, and his beautiful art allowed people to read writing that I was very proud of, who probably would not have bothered had the book been drawn by a lesser artist. I owe Walt and Gerry all of whatever credibility I earned as a comics writer at that point in my career.” ALLAN HARVEY is a London-based writer and artist. He maintains Gorilla Daze, a blog that appreciates wacky comics. It can be found at: www.thefifthbranch.com/gorilladaze.

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Jim Kingman

In The Dictionary of Imaginary Places by Alberto Manguel and Gianni Guadalupi, there is a space between “Gem of Truth Island” and “Geneliabin” where an entry for “Gemworld” should be placed, for the Gemworld is a wondrous home of magic as splendid as the landscapes of Narnia, Wonderland, Oz, and MiddleEarth. It’s not a land easily stumbled upon, however, as its history, recounted in the pages of Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, has been relegated to white storage boxes in comic-book shops, personal comic-book collections, antique-shop shelves, and the tops of flea-market tables. And the adventures of Amethyst, once the stuff of fairy tales and epic fantasy, is now a practically forgotten account of paradise tossed. The chronicles of Amethyst spanned three comic-book series published by DC Comics during the 1980s. The first, Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, was a 12-issue maxiseries that ran from February 1983 to January 1984. The second series, again entitled Amethyst, Princess of Gemworld, was an ongoing title published from late 1984 through the spring of 1986, and was preceded by an Amethyst Annual released in 1984 and concluded with an Amethyst Special. The third and final series, Amethyst, was a four-issue miniseries published in late 1987. Amethyst, as set forth in Amethyst #1, was in “our” reality young Amy Winston, living with her parents, Herb and Marion, in the town of Hudson, New York. On her 13th birthday, Amy was mysteriously given an amethyst, then kidnapped by an ogre and taken to another dimension known as Gemworld. There she immediately transformed into a 20-year-old, both physically and mentally. After being rescued from certain doom at the hands of the villainous Dark Opal, the self-imposed despotic ruler of Gemworld, Amy soon learned that she was the heir to the decaying Amethyst kingdom, and that she had been taken to Earth as an infant years before to escape Dark Opal’s villainous clutches. But even though Amy’s adventures as Amethyst began with this opening sequence, we are still slightly ahead of the princess’ true beginnings.

CHANGING THE CHANGELING The concept of Amethyst began in our reality of the late 1970s in the creative minds of writers Dan Mishkin and Gary Cohn, friends since the eighth grade. Originally Amethyst was called the Changeling, but when Marv Wolfman and George Pérez revived the Teen Titans in 1980 and changed Beast Boy’s name to Changeling, Mishkin and Cohn’s character needed a new moniker. After some thought, “Amethyst” was agreed upon, and this sparked the expansion of the concept to incorporate other gems as character and place names. Amethyst’s development remained on the writing duo’s mental back burners as they sold their first story to DC, a three-page short for Time Warp; were assigned the “OMAC” feature in the back of The Warlord; picked up “I … Vampire” in House of Mystery; and even squeezed in solo stints, with Mishkin writing Wonder Woman and Cohn scripting a new series, “The Barren Earth,” for the back of The Warlord. When editor Dave Manak requested an ongoing series for Ghosts, Mishkin and Cohn proposed Amethyst. Manak thought it was so good that he encouraged them to develop it into its own series. Soon after the Amethyst proposal was brought before then-editorial director Dick Giordano and publisher Jenette Kahn, the project was green-lighted. Mishkin and Cohn wanted Ernie Colón to illustrate the series, as both admired his work on Atlas Comics’ short-lived Grim Ghost series published in 1975. Colón, however, was editor of several DC books at that time, but high praise from Cohn and Mishkin convinced him to pencil

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Marshall Rogers: A Look Back

When Marshall Rogers passed away during the weekend of March 23, 2007 at the age of 57, he left behind a varied and impressive body of work. Marshall broke into comics in the late ’70s. “I admired Marshall because he didn’t immediately get accepted into the industry,” says artist and editor Al Milgrom. “He kept bringing up samples and getting rejected. In those days, a lot of the guys broke in at 20, 21. He kept knocking on the doors and bringing back new and improved samples until he finally got in. I think he was 27 before he actually started getting work.” That dedication led to him drawing a two-part “Daughters of the Dragon” story in Marvel’s Deadly Hands of Kung Fu #32 and 33 (Jan. and Feb. 1977), with writer Chris Claremont. It also led to his first work with inker Terry Austin. Austin recalls that their first project together was a backup story in Detective Comics #466 (Dec. 1976), featuring Green Arrow against a new villain called the Calculator [Editor’s note: See BACK ISSUE #12 for a Calculator history], followed by a second backup featuring Hawkman. These backups led to a book-length story in issue #468. “I think Jim Aparo was supposed to do it,” says Austin. “Something happened to Aparo, and they gave it to us. “We got a lot of flak for it from folks up at DC. I remember being screamed at by one guy in particular. Marshall got called into this guy’s office first, and he was livid. He basically thought that we were going to bring the company down because we had done this terrible thing to poor Batman,” Austin laughs. “I remember Marshall stumbling out of the office white-faced after being screamed at for about half an hour. Then it was my turn. I walked into the office and the guy looked at me and said, ‘There’s nothing you can do to save this. Get out!’ He was so tired from screaming at Marshall that I got a pass that day. “Later, I was up at DC and Paul Levitz told me that the Batman we had done had gotten a lot of response. We were going to be the new team on the book. I ran back to Continuity [Associates studio] to tell Marshall.” Marshall’s run on Detective with writer Steve Englehart and inker Terry Austin became his best known work. He often returned to Batman during his career, including a Batman newspaper strip (1989), Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #132–136 in 2000, and even a Batman parody in Marvel’s Howard the Duck Magazine #8 (Nov. 1980). Coinciding with his Detective Comics run, Marshall also illustrated a four-issue run on Mister Miracle. In the early ’80s, Marshall began a long association with Eclipse Comics. His first work for them was the one-shot Detectives, Inc.: A Remembrance of Threatening Green (May 1980), with Don McGregor. This murder mystery was intended for adults and the characters’ sexuality played a large part in the story. “Marshall never flinched when it came to sexuality in the book, straight or gay, he illustrated it honestly and daringly,” remembers McGregor.

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Roger Ash

“I couldn’t know, then, how lucky I was on another front, because Marshall had such a background in architecture, but I wanted the New York boroughs to be an integral part of the series,” McGregor continues. “If you want to see Manhattan and environs in the 1980s, just look at Marshall’s renderings of the Weather Castle in Central Park, or a housing tract in Queens, or 42nd Street.” Other work for Eclipse included such stories as the “Coyote” series in Eclipse, The Magazine and the title Scorpio Rose, both written by Steve Englehart. “Slab” in Eclipse, The Magazine #1 (May 1981) introduced Marshall’s creation, Klonsbon the Foozle, an odd bird-like creature. The Foozle eventually joined forces with Cap’n Quick, a young boy with magic shoes, in the pages of Eclipse Monthly and three issues of their own series, Cap’n Quick & a Foozle (1984). The series was an odd romp that featured space pirates, rat businessmen, a sleazy salesman, flying gloves, and more. There was also an unpublished Foozle story. Englehart and Rogers had planned to work on a series called SunDancer, which was based on what Englehart had planned to do with Star-Lord at Marvel. A man from Earth would visit each planet in our solar system, having adventures that would make him into an incredible being. “I wrote a 60-page script of SunDancer on Mercury and the Foozle was in that,” says Englehart. “But nothing ever came of it.” Marshall worked on other projects during the ’80s, including Marvel’s Doctor Strange, G. I. Joe, and Silver Surfer, and an adaptation of Harlan Ellison’s script for Demon with a Glass Hand for DC. He left comics to work on other projects for most of the ’90s, but returned in the 2000s with such books as Green Lantern: Evil’s Might (2002) and Batman: Dark Detective (2005), the latter of which being a new story reuniting the creative team of Englehart, Rogers, and Austin. At the time of his death, Marshall was working on Batman: Dark Detective III. “I wrote all six scripts,” says Steve Englehart. “He had done most of the artwork on the first issue. DC told me that they do not plan to go ahead with it. I think that’s too bad for a couple of reasons. “One is Marshall was really into the Batman. He wouldn’t have been happy about the book not coming out. Secondly, it’s a good story, if I may say. Thirdly, this goes under that section of cosmic weirdness, when I wrote the first one back in the ’70s, the final page of the final story ends by saying, ‘He is gone.’ I was deliberately referring to me as well as Batman because I was leaving comics—I thought—and the country—I knew. In this third Dark Detective, by total happenstance, it ends with the words ‘He is gone.’ This time, it seems to mean something that it didn’t mean a few weeks ago.”

MARSHALL ROGERS ART GALLERY (left) Marshall Rogers’ late-1970s run on Detective Comics was so popular that the artist was hired to produce a Batman portfolio in 1981, published by S. Q. Productions. Scan courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions. (below) Rogers teamed with writer Max Allan Collins on the Batman newspaper strip, revived in 1989 during the Dark Knight’s moviespawned wave of popularity. Original art from the Nov. 8, 1989 daily, signed by the artist and writer and courtesy of George Hagenauer. © 2007 DC Comics.

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Marshall Rogers made a name for himself in comics with his landmark run on DC’s Detective Comics with writer Steve Englehart and inker Terry Austin in the late ’70s. That was followed by the adult urban mystery graphic novel from Eclipse, Detectives Inc.: A Remembrance of Threatening Green, with writer Don McGregor. By the early ’80s, Marshall changed his focus from the darkened streets and alleyways for a place very different, but just as dangerous. He moved into mystical realms. His first venture into stories of magic began with writer Steve Englehart. Their Batman stories were very successful, so “DC was trying to find things that they could do with us,” recalls Englehart. “I forget the complete specifics of it, but they said, do this one issue fill-in for Madame Xanadu. So that’s what we did.” To capitalize on the Englehart/Rogers team, according to Englehart, the story was moved from a fill-in issue to a special issue and Madame Xanadu #1 (1981) was a reality. In the story, Madame Xanadu first stops a junkie named Joseph Greene from robbing her home then assists him in getting help at a nearby clinic. The next morning, a lady named Laura Grant arrives. Her aunt used to practice witchcraft and Laura found a strange and powerful book among her possessions. Using her Tarot deck, Madame Xanadu predicts the book will only bring disaster and asks her to leave it. She refuses. Laura and Joseph meet and are smitten with each other, but the book begins to corrupt them. In the end, they are saved with help from Madame Xanadu. DC did not want this to be the end of Madame Xanadu. Englehart says DC approached him about doing two more issues so they could turn it into a three-issue miniseries. “I said, ‘It was a complete story. There isn’t any more to it.’ The editor I was dealing with said, ‘Well, I will pay you more than your going rate if you’ll do this.’ At the end of the day, I am a freelancer, so I said okay. I came up with a way to turn this into two more parts and then wrote it.” 3 4

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MADAME XANADU AND SCORPIO ROSE

Roger Ash

(right) Rogers was famous for panel-packed pages that remarkably, to the artist’s credit, never seemed crowded, like this one from DC’s Madame Xanadu one-shot. From the collection of Yoram Matzkin. Madame Xanadu © 2007 DC Comics.

When Englehart went to turn the scripts in, he learned that the editor didn’t have the authority to offer him that much money, so he would not be paid what he was promised. He took the two scripts, along with a Superman/Creeper script he had written for DC Comics Presents, and left. “Marshall was good friends with the Mullaney brothers, Dean and Jan, who were just getting their company, Eclipse, off the ground,” Englehart recalls. “They wanted to do comics. They said, ‘We will pay you the rate that DC promised you if you’ll do the stories for us.’ Marshall said, ‘Let me take the Superman and Creeper story and see what I can do to turn that into something, and you go see what you can do with Madame Xanadu.’ Marshall then did a story where the Creeper turned into the Foozle, a character that he’d had in mind for a long time [‘Slab’ in Eclipse, The Magazine #1]. Meanwhile, I turned Madame Xanadu into Scorpio Rose. I created the complete history of Scorpio Rose and worked out all the details of an actual, freestanding character. It was a weird combination of circumstances, but that’s how Marshall ended up with the Foozle and I ended up with Scorpio Rose.” In addition to the lead story, Marshall also illustrated a Doctor Orient backup strip. The story was written by Frank Lauria and featured the psychic detective from his novels. While Englehart created the story, the look of Scorpio Rose was Marshall’s. “If I did anything, I might have asked for her hair color, and I’m not even sure I did that,” says Englehart. “Certainly, the whole leotard thing was Marshall. He had a thing for leotards. In Batman: Dark Detective III that he was going to do before he died, we had a vampire in it and he put her in a leotard, which was an odd choice for a vampire, I thought.” The story involved a young-looking gypsy woman who was being attacked by servants of a mysterious master who wants the “Book of Fleshe”

(far left) A 1981 promotional piece by Marshall Rogers for the Eclipse Comics series he co-created with Steve Englehart, Scorpio Rose. Courtesy of Yoram Matzkin. (left) Another Rogers-illustrated gem from the Yoram Matzkin collection: the original cover art to Scorpio Rose #1. Scorpio Rose © Steve Englehart and Marshall Rogers.

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“Once I hit on the idea of having Doc flying around in his astral form, I realized that we could actually integrate him into pre-existing scenes from FF #19 without Reed, Sue, Ben, and Johnny ever being aware of his presence. And it all came together—especially after Marshall and Terry sort of ‘re-fried’ Kirby’s cover with Astral-Doc added to the scene.” A subplot to these issues involved Clea being contacted by people from her own realm. Dormammu has disappeared and his sister, Umar, is in power, but weak. They ask Clea to return and lead a revolt against Umar. The final two pages reveal her decision to leave in a heartbreakingly written and drawn scene. “As I recall, our readers were really caught up by the ending, and pretty much taken by surprise,” says Stern. “No one had expected Clea to leave Doc. And while a few people expected them to get back together within a few issues, most understood Clea’s reasoning, and many agreed with it … as painful as it might have been for her and Stephen. “It sounds as though we’re talking about the breakup of two old friends of ours, doesn’t it?”

A crossover, 20 years removed: page 11 of Doctor Strange #53 (June 1982), retrofitting Doc into the Lee/Kirby opus originally told in Fantastic Four #19 (Oct. 1963). Special thanks to Terry Austin for the art photocopy. © 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Looking back on the run, Stern says, “Marshall brought both reality and surreality to the series, and kept the balance pretty well. “I wanted to set some of the stories in a very real New York City—at least, as real as the city can be in a Marvel Comic—to show the contrast between the real world and the weird extra-dimensional realms that someone like Dr. Strange has to keep track of. And with Marshall’s background in architecture, it worked out perfectly. “There was a real verisimilitude to Marshall’s and Terry’s art. The scenes on Earth looked like they took place in modern-day New York … or WWII London … or 15th-century Spain … or ancient Egypt. And the other dimensions looked as weird and unearthly as anything Steve Ditko had ever imagined.” Al Milgrom adds, “As I recall, they did a certain amount of experimentation with color overlays, which was not groundbreaking, but certainly it was not something that was done a lot in those days. Nowadays with the computer coloring and separations, you can do very elaborate stuff like that. In those days, it was fairly unusual and very eye-catching.” This experimentation drove Roger Stern crazy. “Marshall would occasionally draw Doc’s astral form as a color-hold—all in blue, with no black lines at all. And in those days, that was not an easy thing to accomplish: Color-hold images would actually be drawn on a separate page, which the printers would later composite with the rest of the art. At least, that’s what they were supposed to do. But back then, you couldn’t depend on the printers keeping all the color-holds together. When I was the editor of X-Men, we had an annual where an entire background of the cover—with warriors pouring out of a dimensional warp—was never printed. And on one of my issues of Amazing Spider-Man, the story’s title was supposed to be held in color, and they left that off! “So, whenever Marshall delivered a story with lots of color-holds, I could feel my stomach acids churning. I felt sure that the printers were going to lose some of those color-hold pages, and there’d be an issue with a word balloon going to empty space. As it turned out, we were very lucky and they all printed. But I went through a lot of antacids.” Sales did rise over the six-issue run, but not as much as hoped, according to Milgrom. “I think it probably boosted sales by 15,000 or 20,000 copies a month, which put it out of danger of being cancelled.” Terry Austin recalls that they were promised a collection of the stories if they stayed on for at least six issues. “Unfortunately, that hasn’t happened yet. It would be nice if Marvel would collect it now in remembrance of Marshall.” Marshall would eventually draw one more Dr. Strange story, in Marvel Fanfare #5 (Nov. 1982), with writer Chris Claremont and inker P. Craig Russell. The story features Dr. Strange battling a sorcerer named Nicodemus who wants to siphon Dr. Strange’s power into himself, kill him, and take over with his newfound power. Marshall Rogers’ foray into realms of magic lasted only ten issues, but they are filled with fantastic realms and the imaginative page layouts that were a hallmark of his style. It also showed that he was equally adept at drawing the streets of Gotham as he was at drawing Nightmare’s dream dimension. While these stories may not be as well known as his work on Batman, they are an excellent addition to his opus.

Dan Johnson

In the early to mid-1970s, Frank Brunner, along with writer Steve Englehart, helped redefine Marvel’s Sorcerer Supreme. Under their direction, Dr. Strange was taken to whole new daring levels, and they created one of the company’s most famous storylines, where Dr. Strange met his maker … literally. In May 2007, BACK ISSUE was able to sit down with Brunner, and we got the inside story on his time drawing Dr. Strange. —Dan Johnson DAN JOHNSON: How did you come to work on Dr. Strange? FRANK BRUNNER: I had done a tryout page of Dr. Strange back in 1969, and I sent a copy to Marvel. Later, when Roy Thomas became editor, he gave me several short horror stories to see what I could do. Then, when Dr. Strange was trying out in Marvel Premiere, Roy offered the book to me. The rest is comic-book history! JOHNSON: Since you used Dr. Strange as the subject of your tryout, I take it then that you were a fan of the character right from the start. BRUNNER: I always felt I was destined to draw Dr. Strange! JOHNSON: You’ve always worked on books that weren’t the typical super-hero fare, but was there every any talk about you taking over one of the other Marvel characters before Doctor Strange? BRUNNER: A book like Doctor Strange may not be a top title, but when an artist works on, say, Spider-Man or Captain America, he gives up his freedom and integrity for more money and popularity. With Doctor © 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc. Strange, I could get away with a lot more, and my work was not being scrutinized by the higher-ups!

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PAUL SMITH An astounding commissioned pinup by the celebrated mid-’80s Doctor Strange artist— who’s interviewed beginning on the next page! From the Gerry Turnbull collection. © 2007 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Dan Johnson

cond ucte d May 16, 2007

When it comes to impressive magic acts in comics, the character of Dr. Strange has always had the ability to thrill his reading audience and leave them cheering. Like all good magicians, though, Dr. Strange needs the help of his trusty assistants, in this case the writers and artists who crafted his adventures. Of the men who have drawn the exploits of this character, two of the most talented are Gene Colan and Paul Smith. Recently BACK ISSUE brought these two together to discuss Dr. Strange, as well as their love for making the impossible seem all too easy. —Dan Johnson DAN JOHNSON: First of all, let me thank both of you gentleman for sitting down with me today for this edition of BACK ISSUE. The theme of this issue is “magic,” and when it comes to comic books, you can’t talk about sorcery without discussing Dr. Strange. PAUL SMITH: I’ll buy that! JOHNSON: Indeed, Dr. Strange’s creation was a change of pace from the various science-based heroes Marvel Comics had created previously. After all, the Fantastic Four, the Hulk, Spider-Man, and even the X-Men were rooted in science in some form or another. Dr. Strange, though, really opened up a whole new territory for the company, and I think he brought in a whole new group of readers who really were into the fantasy elements of the series. To begin, I wanted to find out how each of you came to work on this character. GENE COLAN: I don’t remember how I got [the assignment to draw Doctor Strange]. It was just something that had been offered to me by Stan Lee. But I enjoyed it. Working on Doctor Strange took me to another level. JOHNSON: Gene, one of the things Dr. Strange fans loved about your time on the book was that you brought a terrific gothic feel to the character. COLAN: That was sort of how I pictured the series, but sometimes these things have an unconscious way [of unfolding]. The gothic feel was something that just kind of crept in, but evidently I was thinking of putting Dr. Strange into that form and it worked out very well. The series could have been set in a regular place, but Greenwich Village was written in the script as being the place where Dr. Strange lived, and there was a description, too, of the kind of house he lived in. [The house] itself was kind of crazy-looking, but it belonged in the Village. SMITH: Dr. Strange’s house was one of those great “bigger on the inside than it is on the outside” [places].

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GENE COLAN DR. STRANGE CHECKLIST

Beginnings: Wings Comics for Fiction House in 1944

Milestones: Journey into Mystery / Kid Colt, Outlaw / Creepy / Eerie / The Avengers / Silver Surfer / Iron Man / Sub-Mariner / Captain Marvel / Captain America / Dr. Strange / Daredevil / Tomb of Dracula / Howard the Duck / Phantom Zone / Wonder Woman / “Ragamuffins” in Eclipse Monthly / “Batman” in Detective Comics / Night Force / Nathaniel Dusk, Private Investigator / Jemm: Son of Saturn / Silverblade / Rob Zombie's Spookshow Spectacular / Hellboy: Weird Tales

Work in Progress: Retired, but taking requests for commissions through his official website

Cyberspace: www.genecolan.com

Beginnings: Pinups in King Conan #7 (1981) and “Daredevil” story in Marvel Fanfare #1 (1982)

Milestones: Various animation projects including films with Ralph Bakshi / Marvel Fanfare / Doctor Strange / Uncanny X-Men / Nexus / X-Factor / The Golden Age / Leave it to Chance / Iron Man / Spider-Man/Human Torch / Kitty Pryde: Shadow and Flame

Work in Progress: On sabbatical and plotting his next move, but taking commission requests

Key: cp (cover pencils); c (cover art); l/o (layouts); p (interior pencils); i (interior inks) Doctor Strange vol. 1 #172 (Sept. 1968): cp, p #173 (Oct. 1968): p #174 (Nov. 1968): cp, p #175 (Dec. 1968): cp, p #176 (Jan. 1969): cp, p #178 (Mar. 1969): cp, p #180 (May 1969): cp, p #181 (July 1969): cp, p #182 (Sept, 1969): cp, p #183 (Nov. 1969): cp, p Doctor Strange vol. 2 #6 (Feb. 1975): p #7 (Apr. 1975): p #8 (June 1975): p #9 (Aug. 1975): p #10 (Oct. 1975): cp, p #11 (Dec. 1975): cp, p #12 (Feb. 1976): cp, p #13 (Apr. 1976): cp, p #14 (May 1976): cp, p #15 (June 1976): cp, p #16 (July 1976): cp, p #17 (Aug. 1976): cp, p #18 (Sept. 1976): cp, p #19 (Oct. 1976): cp #21 (Feb. 1977): cp #23 (June 1977): cp #27 (Feb. 1978): cp #35 (June 1979): cp #36 (Aug. 1979): cp, p #37 (Oct. 1979): p #38 (Dec. 1979): p #39 (Feb. 1980): p #40 (Apr. 1980): p #41 (June 1980): p #42 (Aug. 1980): p #43 (Oct. 1980): p #44 (Dec. 1980): p #45 (Feb. 1981): p #47 (June 1981): p Dr. Strange, Sorcerer Supreme vol. 3 #19 (July 1990): c, p

Cyberspace: trhgallery.com

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PAUL SMITH DR. STRANGE CHECKLIST Doctor Strange vol. 2 #54 (Aug. 1982): p for 5.5 pages #56 (Dec. 1982): c, p #65 (June 1984): c, p #66 (Aug. 1984): c, p, i #68 (Dec. 1984): c, p #69 (Feb. 1985): p, i #71 (June 1985): c, p, i #72 (Aug. 1985): p, i #73 (Oct. 1985): l/o

COLAN: Yeah. I showed some of the actual architecture from the Village, some of the older buildings, and I mixed it in with my own view of the rest of it. You get a chance to make things up as you go along, so some of [Dr. Strange’s Greenwich Village] is real and some of it is not. JOHNSON: Paul, how did you come to work on Doctor Strange? SMITH: I had just gotten to Marvel, and had a couple of things in Marvel Fanfare, but I was in California at the time and I just showed up on Marvel’s doorstep and walked out with Doctor Strange. JOHNSON: Now, this was after your initial tryout a few years before, right? I remember you telling me about that and the sign you got that indicated where you would eventually end up. SMITH: That was with the Frank Brunner Doctor Strange pages. In 1975, my late brother, Willie, was graduating from the Kingsport Academy out on Long Island, and so the whole family went out for his graduation. Now, I was full of myself, and barely out of high school, and I took my portfolio with me and I was going to get a job at Marvel Comics. I never got through the front door, but a nice lady by the name of Irene Vartanoff came out to talk to me and she gave me a number of Frank Brunner pages to ink, which I did, and I did not get a job. JOHNSON: Even if you didn’t walk away with a job with Marvel then, there is still a sense of what was destined to be with you being given Doctor Strange pages to ink. In speaking with Frank Brunner, I get the sense that he knew he was going to eventually draw the character. It seems the fates had a similar sign in store for you. SMITH: I don’t know if that was official Marvel policy or just Irene’s idea. I know Frank seemed to be surprised [when he found out I had been given those pages as a tryout]. Irene may have just thought that we were both young, so maybe Frank’s work would be a better match for me. I don’t know why she would make a decision on my art—she hadn’t even seen it at this point. I don’t know if it was predestination or not, but it is a funny story. It will get that Twilight Zone theme song gong through your head. JOHNSON: So, when did you get a job with Marvel Comics? SMITH: Every time I tried to get a job at Marvel, I got turned away! Finally, I am sitting at home one day, minding my own business and watching the fish tank, when Christy Marx calls me and says, “Marvel Comics wants you to work for them”! COLAN: That’s terrific! SMITH: I’m thinking, “How the heck do they even know I am alive?” It turned out Christy had gone to New York to get a job as a writer, and at the end of every one of her interviews, she said, “If you have another minute, could you take a look at this,” and she showed them a small portfolio of my work that she had taken to New York with her, unbeknownst to me. COLAN: And they went for it. SMITH: They didn’t all go for it, except for Al Milgrom. Al was the only guy who liked the portfolio, but he said there was no story work [in my samples] and he needed to see story work. Al asked me if I would do up three or four story pages. I told him that time was money, and I was working as a professional artist out in California, so I asked if I could do a story on spec. That way if he liked it, he could use it and he wouldn’t have to throw it out and have me start over again. So my first Marvel story ended up being a Daredevil story [for Marvel Fanfare #1 (Mar. 1982)]. So, Gene, we not only have Doctor Strange in common, we also have Daredevil, Iron Man, and Howard the Duck.

JOHNSON: Initially, Paul, you stayed with the book for just a couple of months and then you left to work on X-Men. Of course, you did return to the character eventually. SMITH: Yes, I did wind up on X-Men, which I left originally to go do Green Lantern, but DC reneged on me and Steve Grant. So I ended up coming back to Marvel and picked up Doctor Strange again. [When I first worked on Doctor Strange,] it was so early in my career, I was mainly just trying to learn how to draw and tell a story at that point. Of course, I was so heavily influenced by Ditko, I don’t know if I ever brought anything original to the series like Gene did. JOHNSON: I wanted to get your thoughts about Steve Ditko’s “Dr. Strange” and Marie Severin’s work on the series after he left. COLAN: I knew Marie well, but I didn’t know Steve Ditko at all. I never met him. I’ve seen his work on the book and it was very unusual, but I tried not to be influenced by his work. The only artist I was ever influenced by early, early on in my career was Milton Caniff. Other than that, there wasn’t any other particular artist I was influenced by, but I must have borrowed an awful lot of stuff like technique and style even. Style is like handwriting, you can’t hide it no matter what you think. Style can be spotted by people who pay attention to art. JOHNSON: I always thought you and Paul both had pretty distinctive styles, myself. Gene, if you were borrowing from anyone, you certainly added your own spin to it and made it your own. COLAN: Well, thank you. SMITH: Before I get to my answer, I wanted to ask Gene a question, if I could… Since you mentioned Caniff, which was so close to what my guess was going to be since you said you were only influenced by one artist, I was going to say it was Noel Sickels. COLAN: I think they both worked together. SMITH: They were similar, but you are more into Terry and the Pirates. COLAN: I didn’t know about Sickles at that time … that was in the 1930s. I didn’t know about Sickels until one day during the war, I came upon Air Life Magazine, and a series of black-and-white illustrations— SMITH: Those were the ones I’m talking about!

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in the monster and B-movie genres. STEWART: What was your working relationship with Gene Colan? BATES: I had never met Gene Colan prior to this project, [but] we hit it off right away. I have fond memories during the run of the book of dropping by the apartment he and his wife had in Manhattan (which happened to be across the street from the famous Dakota building).” STEWART: How did the series fare, sales wise? Were there ever plans for a follow-up? BATES: Although Silverblade was always intended as a 12-issue maxiseries, sales of the initial run weren’t high enough to merit an immediate follow-up. Being totally removed from the DCU may have hurt its commercial chances, as well as the fact that it didn’t really fit into any defined genre. It had super-heroic elements but it wasn’t a super-hero book in the conventional sense. And even though Dracula and other movie monsters were included in Jonathan Lord’s repertoire, it was a far cry from a genuine horror book like Tomb of Dracula.

Movie Magic Page 9 of Cary Bates’ Silverblade #3 (Nov. 1987), also the issue from which the opening and previous pages hail. Art by Gene Colan and Steve Mitchell. Original art scans courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions. © 2007 DC Comics.

STEWART: This was one of the last series you worked on for DC, and I believe the only one you created for them. What was the impetus to leave DC and comics behind? (We could sure use you back, but there ya go.) BATES: In late 1988, I signed on to be one of the story editors on the Viacom Superboy TV series that Alexander and Ilya Salkind had begun filming in Orlando that fall. Initially it was only supposed to be a “leave of absence,” but after the second season of Superboy wrapped, the Salkinds gave me (and the other Superboy story-editor Mark Jones) the assignment of writing the screenplay of what was supposed to have been Superman V. After the first draft was completed, I became the “on set” writer for the Christopher Columbus film the Salkinds were prepping for production, and I got to travel to all the locations and work with Columbus director John Glen (yes, the same John Glen from the Bond films). After the Columbus film wrapped I went back to Superman, writing yet another draft of the screenplay. Unfortunately, the following year the Salkinds ended up selling all the Superman rights back to Warners. By this time I had been out of comics for three years, so when I left Orlando in ’94 I headed to California and began a new phase in my career, writing principally for animation. STEWART: There have been recent references to Silverblade in some of the DC comics (signs in the background advertising Silverblade 2, and one promoting Silverblade Returns). He still has a few fans. Have you heard any rumors of a real return? BATES: I haven’t heard anything to that effect … and I’d like to think I’d be the first one to know. STEWART: Some 20 years after Silverblade, how do you view the series now? What do you like and what might you change? BATES: If I were doing it all over again, I’d probably divide the 12 issues into three four-issue story arcs (maybe with an underlying ongoing subplot connecting them), which would have made it easier to attract new readers. But taking a look at it again years later makes it clear that movie lore, especially the so-called “Golden Age” of Hollywood, has a rich mythology all its own that has been left largely untapped by comics. The Silverblade concept was a start but it barely scratched the surface. Who knows, one of these days I may decide to revisit the genre. If you like mystic stories involving monsters, Atlantis, Native Americans, a ghost that’s a cross between Georges Reeves and Sanders, and the haunt of old Hollywood, check out the back-issue bins in the shops and at conventions for Silverblade. You can probably find a set of them cheap (and #1 has a Gene Colan fullcolor poster!). Sit down, read, and enjoy the strange world of Jonathan Lord. Thanks to Cary Bates, with whose kind patience I conducted this interview via e-mail in June 2007.

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The Boy Who Would Never Grow Up Craig Hamilton's Peter Pan and Wendy cover painting. All art in this article is courtesy of Andy Mangels. All art copyright to the respective artists.

Dewey Cassell

“Second to the right and then straight on till morning.” If you have children, or were once one yourself, you are likely to recognize this line from the Disney animated film, Peter Pan. However, the credit for writing the memorable dialogue does not lie with Walt and company. It was Scottish playwright and novelist Sir James Matthew Barrie who penned the phrase in his original story, from which the animated film was derived. Barrie reportedly based the play Peter Pan, first performed in England in 1904, and its subsequent novelization in 1911 on his own childhood, as well as his relationship with the children of Arthur and Sylvia Llewelyn Davies. When Barrie’s older brother David died in a skating accident at the age of 13, their mother became inconsolable and was perpetually haunted and obsessed by the memory of her dead son—the boy who would never grow up—to the exclusion of James. As an adult, Barrie was married for a time, but never had any children of his own. While walking his dog in Kensington Gardens one day in 1897, he met four-year-old George Davies and his brother John (along with their nanny) and they became fast friends. In the years that followed, Barrie would often visit with the Davies family, telling the children, including younger brothers Peter, Michael, and Nicholas, stories about fairies and pirates and fantasy islands. Fly forward several decades to 1987 and writer Andy Mangels. Ever since he was a child, Andy Mangels wanted to work in the comic-book field. In high school and college, he studied art. He got a twoyear art degree and was in his third year of college when he realized that he was better at, and preferred, writing to drawing. Mangels quit college at the end of his third year and began making a name for himself writing for publications about comics such as Amazing Heroes and Comics Interview. Working for the magazines gave Mangels an opportunity to meet various creative people in the industry. In late 1987, he approached Eclipse Comics editor Fred Burke about doing a miniseries based on Peter Pan. Why Peter Pan? Mangels explains the appeal: “I wanted to do Peter Pan, or, as it was called, Peter Pan and Wendy, because it had been one of my favorite books as a child, and continued to be as an adult. Peter Pan is not just the children’s fantasy that Disney put on film, M a g i c

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(top) A segment with Peter Pan flying for the Darling children from Peter Pan and Wendy page 25, by Craig Hamilton and Rick Bryant. (bottom) The unused and unpublished Michael Kaluta cover that was at one time intended for the first issue of Peter Pan and Wendy. All art copyright to the respective artists.

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Sincere thanks to Andy Mangels (www.andymangels.com) and Rick Bryant for the interviews. Andy also provided the graphics for the article. Thanks, too, to Steven Tice for transcribing the interview with Andy. Craig Hamilton declined to be interviewed because he is writing a book about his experience with Peter Pan. DEWEY CASSELL is a frequent contributor to BACK ISSUE as well as author of the book The Art of George Tuska, available from TwoMorrows Publishing. The rumor that he had a crush on Tinker Bell as a youngster is unfounded.

Photo by DMichael Eury.

fracture between Craig and Rick about working on the project in the future. Craig said that he would no longer work with Rick and he wanted all of the pages re-inked.” But the favored nations contract created a problem. “You couldn’t fire somebody from the project without firing all three of us,” says Mangels. “So Tundra was in a sticky situation. They had one creator who was saying that they would no longer choose to work with another creator, they had six missing pages that were valued at $35,000, and they had a project that they had now invested a significant amount of money in, and after four years, they still had nothing to show for it and no clue when it would be published, because at that point Craig got tremendously depressed and essentially stopped work on the project. Although he did continue to do some more work, he refused to turn anything in until we resolved the issue.” By this time, the editorial reigns of the project at Tundra had been taken over by Mark Martin. Mark was not a fan of Peter Pan and Wendy. In a letter dated October 22, 1992, Martin indicated he thought “this project isn’t worth the trouble.” He placed the project on hold until something could be figured out. Bryant adds, “I got a message that Tundra was coming down. They took me out to lunch, and they took the pages back with them and I never heard from them again.” Craig Hamilton contacted Paul Jenkins, another editor at Tundra, and worked out a schedule in which he would be finishing the first half of book two by January 1993. He had four pages finished and four more laid out, but he wanted Nathan Massengill to take over the inking. However, no other inker was ever engaged, and on January 14, 1993, the project was officially canceled by Tundra. When Kitchen Sink later acquired Tundra’s assets, there was a brief, but unsuccessful, attempt to revive the project. In the end, all three books were written, the first book and at least four pages of the second were penciled, and 22 pages were inked. The lettering, which was done on vellum to be pasted up on the artwork, had been completed through page 21. None of the pages were colored. Tundra had abandoned the idea of having guest artists do the covers, so Hamilton had drawn the cover for the first book, but there was another version of the cover for the first book already completed by Michael Kaluta (from when the project was at Eclipse). All of the creators went on to other successes, but Mangels is understandably melancholy about the fate of Peter Pan and Wendy. “It could have been one of the most breakthrough comic projects ever published,” Mangels laments. “The artwork was certainly museum quality. It would literally have been our life’s work. It’s one of the biggest regrets of my life that this project never happened.” Ironically, when asked if he wished they had chosen a different artist, Mangels had this to say: “Knowing what was produced and having seen the artwork, any other artist would be held up to that in a probably not-favorable light. It’s kind of like saying, ‘Well, couldn’t another sculptor have done Michelangelo’s David?’ Yes, they could, and in fact there were lots of sculptors doing these things. But it wouldn’t have been the same as Michelangelo’s David. Although there are many artists who could do a beautiful job with Peter Pan and Wendy, it would be hard for people not to say, ‘Yeah, but it’s not the Craig Hamilton one.’”

John Wells

As far as Gardner Fox was concerned, Zatanna’s story was over. She’d rescued her father and there was nothing more to tell. For readers whose collections stopped at the end of 1969, Zatanna never appeared again. But Fox had left his audience wanting more, and a whole generation of teenage male comics readers desperately wanted an encore. Zatanna, for those who came in late, was a magician—a real one—who could make pretty much anything happen as long as she spoke her commands backwards, not unlike her father Zatara, no slouch in the magic department himself. Holding forth in 185 comics stories between 1938 (Action Comics #1) and 1951 (World’s Finest Comics #51), Zatara had been created by Fred Guardineer and primarily scripted by Gardner Fox from 1939 to 1944. Zatanna may not have been the first Silver Age chip off the old block— that honor belongs to Scribbly, Jr. in Sugar and Spike #30—but she was the first to have legs. Very nice ones, too, sheathed in fishnet stockings and high heels that accompanied a top hat, tails, and vest that mirrored her father’s look. Beyond the visuals—initially supplied by Murphy Anderson in Hawkman #4 (Oct.–Nov. 1964)—was a brilliantly innovative ploy that carried the young heroine through four separate Julius Schwartz-edited/Gardner Fox-written comic-book titles—plus a retroactive fifth—in an unfolding search to find her missing father that climaxed in 1966’s Justice League of America #51 with Zatara’s rescue from the elemental sorceress Allura. With a unique multi-title story and a charismatic heroine, one might have expected an early follow-up. Whether it was something as simple as Fox feeling more kinship to Zatara himself— who he guest-starred with the Elongated Man in Detective Comics #379 (Sept. 1968)—or something more, Zatanna’s next performance seemed to be a disappearing act.

Super-Hero or Performer…? …who cares, so long as she’s drawn by George Pérez! A big “knaht uoy” (read it backwards!) to Robert Jewell for contributing this wonderful commission. Zatanna TM & © 2007 DC Comics.

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John Wells

Zatanna’s most amazing transformation of the 1970s is also her least known. In 1977, she became an African-American magician named Conjura! This particular magic trick began with Science Research Associates (SRA), an elementary/secondary education firm that was founded in 1938 and purchased by IBM in 1964. In the mid-1970s, SRA contracted with Warner Educational Services to reprint DC Comics stories in a series of 32-page magazine-size comic books as part of a teaching kit intended to spur students’ reading skills. The collective 16 issues were Super A #1–4 and Super B #1–4 (1977) and Super AA #1–4 and Super BB #1–4 (1978). Beyond simplified dialogue, the reprints balanced the mostly white, mostly male DC lineup with far greater ethnic and gender diversity. The oftenextensive art revisions were performed by students of the Joe Kubert School and polished by Kubert himself. For every Superman or Batman story, there was another featuring the Hispanic hero El Dragón (reworked from Robin and Superman tales), Asian-American teens Tak and Jeri (originally Binky and Cookie), or … Conjura. 7 4

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Conjura was, in fact, featured on the cover of Super AA #1, its interior reprint converted from the Zatanna tale first seen in Supergirl #2. Clad in a yellow burnoose and cape, the new lady magician also wore a magenta vest over a puffy-sleeved jumpsuit. A large gold eagle medallion hung from her neck. Jeff Sloane got a makeover, too, becoming a mustachioed black man named Biff Rogers. This episode and the next in Super B #1 (reprinting Supergirl #1’s “Castle in the Clouds”) hewed closely to the original Zatanna stories, right down the reverse-magic. In the 1978 follow-ups, though, the templates were from 1970–1971’s Wonder Woman #190 and 195. And Diana Prince didn’t have her traditional super-powers during that period—let alone magical ones. Radical revisions were called for, and they served to distinguish Conjura from Zatanna. It was one thing for Diana to be stuck in an other-dimensional dungeon, but quite another for a character who should have been able to magically escape. So Super AA #4’s story established that there was only a finite reservoir of magical power to draw on. When it ran out, Conjura had to wait for the energy to replenish itself. In the meantime, her gold medallion served as a kind of portable Spidey-sense, glowing at the onset of danger. Zatanna had only time-traveled twice in her own short-lived strip, but both episodes were reworked into Conjura episodes. Super AA #4 revealed that Conjura used such “time tunnels” regularly. In Wonder Woman #195, the detail that a haunted inn had appeared and vanished over the years was revealed in the epilogue. In Super BB #3’s retooling, Conjura discovered that fact herself using a “time window.” Conjura was fated to be lost to time herself, saved from obscurity only by the fact that she and the other multi-cultural SRA characters were also used in Warner Educational Service’s mass-market Super Dictionary, published in 1978. Between that and the SRA comics, Conjura helped countless kids improve their reading skills, and that’s a magic trick anyone can be proud of. Thanks to Stephen Kanzee for providing copies of the Super A, etc. comics.

The Comic Art Professional Society Celebrates Its 30th Anniversary as the Industry’s Best Kept Secret

Author Aushenker’s first official CAPS membership card.

Michael Aushenker

The year was 1993. I had read a Los Angeles Times article about a cartoonist club that met monthly in a rented Burbank office space. I had never heard of the Comic Art Professional Society (CAPS). Fresh out of college, my only professional cartooning credits were one issue of a failed Caliber Press series (Bound & Gagged) and a humor comics gig in Heavy Metal. Undaunted, I hopped the hill and checked it out. One of the best decisions I’ve ever made. At my first meeting, no less than my childhood hero, MAD magazine legend Sergio Aragonés—who co-founded CAPS with his Groo the Wanderer writer Mark Evanier and the late Don Rico—took a liking to my comics and personally sponsored me into the organization. Like J. J. Evans, it’s been good times ever since.

(1) A rare 1983 shot of CAPS’ in-house photojournalist, David Folkman (second from right), the driving force illustrating CAPS’ monthly newsletters, standing with a strapping Sergio Aragonés at the 1983 CAPS banquet tribute to Arthur Lake. (2) Ed McGean with Clarence

“Ducky” Nash, 1984. (3) Over the years, the

monthly newsletter has been creatively crafted via the volunteer efforts of Floyd Norman (pictured), David Folkman, and the dearly departed Ed McGean. (4) Longtime member David Folkman, who chronicles CAPS’ happenings for its monthly newsletter. (5) Each year, artist Tone Rodriguez (Violent Messiahs, U.T.F.), aka “T. Ro,” here at the Feb. 2007 meeting, leads the charge to get CAPS artists drawing tribute

pages for the San Diego Comic-Con souvenir book. (6) Rafael Navarro (Sonambulo), Sergio Aragonés, and Michael Aushenker ham it up while Jim Wheelock thinks quick and pretends not to know them. (7) Rabbitobsessed cartoonists/ol’ chums Scott Shaw! (Captain Carrot) and Stan Sakai (Usagi Yojimbo) pose inside Big Kid Toys in Van Nuys, site of the Feb. 2007 CAPS meeting. M a g i c

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(below) Detail from Bill Willingham’s cover art to the 1988 Comico trade paperback The Elementals: The Natural Order. Elementals TM & © Comico.

In 1984, Elementals #1, edited by Diana Schutz, hit the direct-sales market. The initial story arc began with the team’s capture and year-long (in comic time) confinement. During the tale, the reader learned Mr. Saker’s origin: Torn from “the gates of the Promised Land” two millennia ago by a demon-sired “prophet,” Saker was left an immortal battery of mystic energies. Honing his dark talents, he built an army not only of soldiers, but of scientists and paranormals—also called “the Supernature”—all in constant training on Nacht Island, near the Bermuda Triangle, in preparation for the day when Saker would become the world’s savior. “Through me,” he claimed, “[humanity] shall have access to the Universe. If my plan is not the world’s true destiny, let the world prove it by defeating me.” Saker had grown so powerful that the Natural Order could no longer ignore him and took direct action—and as mythology demonstrates, “direct action” from the gods usually means getting mortals to do their dirty work for them. Dividing their collective power among the four elemental foundations of existence—Aqua the Serpent, Terra the Beast, Aier the Eagle, and Ignis the Angel—they bequeathed this power to four mortals with only one thing in common: each of them died on the same day, their bodies never to be discovered. L.A.P.D. homicide detective Jeanette Crane was resurrected with the ability to generate and withstand intense amounts of heat and flame. Vietnam veteran and Coast Guard helicopter pilot Jeff Murphy could fly at unbelievable speeds, using the winds themselves as his weapon. The son of a prominent archeologist, 14-year-old Tommy Czuchra could transform into a mighty stone giant. And Becky Golden could breathe, control, and even become water. Together, they became Morningstar, Vortex, Monolith, and Fathom—the Elementals. Although the Elementals appeared to be human (except for Fathom’s sea-green skin color and webbed fingers), prolonged contact stirred an unease in most humans, “a wrongness . . . as if they were still a little bit dead.” Interpersonal contact with most humans ended badly, so the quartet spent most of their time in mundane activities, as if sleepwalking through existence until they heard action’s call. Living near Seattle, Washington, the team trained in their new abilities monitored by Porter Scott, an agent of the Federal Intelligence Security Headquarters; Becky’s father David; and the estate’s caretaker, Lawrence Catrajel, who seemed unaffected by the unease that repelled most humans. 8 0

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Writer/artist Willingham’s stories didn’t shy from shining the spotlight on televangelistic hypocrisy, transgenderism, the rewards and penalties of celebrity, contemplated suicide, and other issues that would still resonate with today’s reader. Team members fought over both moral and business matters and they sometimes worked for the public good, not just because it was the right thing to do, but for the publicity. Death became a very real component in the characters’ lives, sometimes discussed not as something to be avoided, but as an expeditious way to stop an un-imprisonable enemy. Not every good deed met with success nor every evil act met with punishment. But by issue #23 (Mar. 1988), Willingham lost interest in the series and stepped away from his creation, leaving it to writer Jack Herman, who had worked as intermittent scripter since issue #4, and artists Jill Thompson and Keith Wilson, who guided the first volume to its final issue, #29 (Sept. 1988). However, what father could stay away from his child? [Editor’s note: Despite numerous contact attempts, BACK ISSUE could not reach Bill Willingham to procure an interview for this article. We hope to schedule an interview with Mr. Willingham in the future, at which time we will afford the original run of Elementals a closer inspection.]

A SECOND VOLUME, A SECOND CHANCE While the first volume of The Elementals wound down, Michael Eury’s comics career began as assistant to Diana Schutz. By the spring of ’88, Eury became a full editor and one of his responsibilities was The Elementals. Why? “Other than her childhood love of Supergirl, Diana has limited interest in super-heroes, so since I was a super-hero fan, it made sense that I inherit Elementals,” Eury explains. Why did Willingham return to the book? Eury says, “My vague recollection is that in volume 2 [Willingham] was reenergized by being able to singlehandedly chart the series’ direction as its writer, with other artists handling the interiors. Being a neophyte editor, I really had no say in the book’s direction— especially since it was a creator-owned book, in an era where certain creators were gaining clout and control over their material.” For the artwork, Comico’s publishers turned to an old friend who made a name for himself in the emerging field of anime adaptations. To lay the educational foundation for a career in comic-book illustrations, Mike Leeke attended what is now known as the Philadelphia University of Art, where he made the acquaintance of Gerry Giovinco, Bill Cuccinatta, and Matt Wagner, three of Comico’s co-founders, who were putting out a school newspaper that was—no surprise—90% comics. After Comico got off the ground, they needed pencilers for its expanding range of Robotech titles, and Leeke received his first professional comics assignment: “They’d seen my work over the years and knew that I was heavily influenced by Japanese animation. I immediately said yes and quit school the next day.” Leeke penciled Robotech: The Macross Saga’s covers starting with #3 and the interiors three issues later. For each issue, he viewed an episode of the cartoon, selecting which scenes would go into the story before turning it over to scripter Jack Herman. Soon, a rush inking job on the title was needed just as Giovinco discovered Mike Chen at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art. Leeke remembers seeing Chen’s first inks: “I was in the office and they

(right) The Elementals’ coming-out party, as chronicled in Amazing Heroes #53 in 1984. Courtesy of Rich Cirillo. (below) A 1987 convention sketch of Elementals hottie Morningstar, penciled by Bill Willingham and inked by Keith “Kez” Wilson. From the collection of Roland Reedy. Elementals TM & © Comico. Amazing Heroes TM & © Fantagraphics.

showed me what was coming in. I freaked out. I was in love with his inks from the moment I saw them.” From there, “the Two Mikes” became a highly praised team. However, sales eventually necessitated the Robotech books’ retirement just as the Elementals assignment opened up. Having become good friends with Willingham, Leeke says, “I guess Bill pitched my name as one of the people he would like on the book if I was available.” Now Leeke could draw in his more natural dramatic style. As for Willingham’s scripts, Leeke remembers, “I didn’t have to make up anything” as he did for Robotech. From specific instructions (down to the camera angles) to even the reference material for the backdrops (or where to find it), Willingham’s scripts had it all, which Leeke found refreshing. Part of keeping the stories fresh for Leeke involved not knowing future events. “Each time I got a script, I would always get on the phone immediately and beg [Willingham] to tell me what’s going to happen next. And he would say, ‘You’ll have to wait until the next issue.’” Willingham’s relocation of the team to Philadelphia took advantage of Leeke’s familiarity with the city. “One of the things that Bill started when he was drawing the book was, he had the Elementals placed in the real world. That meant having real places, real items, real food stuff, real restaurants, real celebrities show up in the book. He wanted me to continue that, so that meant I had to go out and get a lot of photo reference, which was fun.” Before the advent of the Internet, a script set in Seattle required Leeke to visit his local library for visual references. But with the Philly setting, Leeke could grab his camera and snap away at what were often exact addresses. How did Leeke find working with Eury? “I wish I could say something negative about Michael, but he was really great to work with. He was patient with me and I appreciate him for that.” Eury returns Leeke’s props, saying the penciler “was a very good storyteller whose quality work might have taken a back seat to Bill’s controversial story material. It’s to Mike’s credit that he

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Back Issue #24