Back Issue #63 by TwoMorrows Publishing

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CBA’s Jon Cooke is back in April! Make ready for COMIC BOOK CREATOR, the new voice of the comics medium! TwoMorrows is proud to debut our newest magazine, COMIC BOOK CREATOR, devoted to the work and careers of the men and women who draw, write, edit, and publish comics, focusing always on the artists and not the artifacts, the creators and not the characters. Behind an ALEX ROSS cover painting, our frantic FIRST ISSUE features an investigation of the oft despicable treatment JACK KIRBY endured from the very business he helped establish. From being cheated out of royalties in the ’40s and bullied in the ’80s by the publisher he made great, to his estate’s current fight for equitable recognition against an entertainment monolith where his characters have generated billions of dollars, we present Kirby’s cautionary tale in the eternal struggle for creator’s rights. Plus, CBC #1 interviews artist ALEX ROSS and writer KURT BUSIEK, spotlights the last years of writer/artist FRANK ROBBINS, remembers comics historian LES DANIELS, sports a color gallery of WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, showcases a joint talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL on their unforgettable collaborations, as well as throws a whole kit’n’caboodle of other creator-centric items atcha! Join us for the start of a new era as TwoMorrows welcomes back former Comic Book Artist editor JON B. COOKE, who helms the all-new, allcolor COMIC BOOK CREATOR!

80 pages • $8.95 All-color • Quarterly Digital Edition: $3.95 COMING THIS JULY: COMIC BOOK CREATOR #2 (double-size Summer Special) Former COMIC BOOK ARTIST editor JON B. COOKE returns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured through FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, rememberreturns to TwoMorrows with his new magazine! #1 features: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY endured through FRANK ROBBINS spotlight, remembertures: An investigation of the treatment JACK KIRBY ing LES DANIELS, WILL EISNER’s Valentines to his beloved, a talk between NEAL ADAMS and DENNIS O’NEIL, new ALEX ROSS cover, and more! (84-page FULL-COLOR magazine) $17.95 (Digital Edition) $6.95 • Ships July 2013

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Volume 1, Number 63 April 2013 Celebrating the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, '90s, and Beyond!

Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond!

EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael “Paul” Eury PUBLISHER John “John” Morrow DESIGNER Rich “George” Fowlks COVER ARTISTS Ron Wilson and Dave Hunt COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael “Ringo” Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek

FLASHBACK: The Mighty World of Marvel UK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .2 How the Second Battle of Britain was Won! With a bounty of art unseen by most US readers

SPECIAL THANKS Peter Milligan Roger Ash Michael Aushenker Pat Mills Elizabeth Millsted Howard Bender Ian Millsted Jerry Boyd Pamela Mullin Mike Burkey Alan Murray Jarrod Buttery Kevin O’Neill Alan Davis Josh Palmano Jo Duffy Tim Quinn Mark Farmer Jim Salicrup Forbidden Planet (ForbiddenPlanet.com) Jason Shayer Dez Skinn Dave Gibbons Grand Comic-Book Dean Smith Tom Spurgeon Database Robert Greenberger Jim Starlin Herb Trimpe Dan Hogan Ray Wergan Heritage Comics Steve White Auctions James Kingman David Anthony Kraft VERY SPECIAL THANKS TO Nick Landau Rob Kirby Marvel Comics Brendan McCarthy Robert Menzies

FLASHBACK: The Launch of the “Titanic” Format . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .21 Marvel UK’s ambitious, and sometimes problematic, landscape comics

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BACKSTAGE PASS: Comic Book Beatles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .33 The Fab Four in four-color, including the George Pérez-drawn The Beatles Story BEYOND CAPES: Doctor Who: The Invasion of Time . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .37 The British TV show that crossed the pond and joined the Marvel lineup FLASHBACK: Warrior Magazine and the British Invasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .41 Many of your favorite writers and artists got their start in this anthology series OFF MY CHEST: Eyewitness to the British Invasion . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .47 Robert Greenberger’s observations of the British talent wave at DC Comics PRO2PRO: The Strange Worlds of Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy . . . . . . . . . . .54 Extraordinary collaborations from out-of-the-ordinary storytellers FLASHBACK: The Sword is Drawn!: Alan Davis’ Excalibur . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .59 The artist’s on again/off again relationship with the “cosmic comedy” X-Men spin-off FLASHBACK: This Magazine is Now Under Marshal Law! . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .66 Deflating and defeating fraggin’ superheroes, with Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill OFF MY CHEST: Travels with V (for Vendetta) . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71 A very personal look at the seminal Alan Moore/David Lloyd shocker BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .77 Letters on BI #57, the Jenette Kahn issue IN MEMORIAM: Joe Kubert . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .80 BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: euryman@gmail.com. Six-issue subscriptions: $60 Standard US, $85 Canada, $107 Surface International. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Ron Wilson and Dave Hunt. Fantastic Four, Spider-Man, Hulk, and related characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2013 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. British Invasion Issue

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Detail from the cover of Captain Britain #1 (Jan. 1985). Art by Alan Davis. TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc.

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INTERVIEW: “Jigsaw” Jim Starlin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .28 Exploring some of the superstar artist’s earliest—and rarest—covers and art

In the post–war years, Marvel Comics had gradually been building an international presence through the licensing of its strips to foreign publishers. Since 1951, various British companies had been making good use of this treasure trove, but it was all very scattershot. Suddenly, in the midst of a huge expansion in America in the early 1970s, Marvel suddenly put an end to this and began planning its own invasion with a line of comics created especially for the UK domestic market. The big puzzle has always been why they did this, and until very recently answers remained elusive. There was undoubtedly a financial gain to be had through advertising and the reach that publishing directly in the UK would grant Marvel, and with Marvel head editor Stan Lee being such an Anglophile, he would have been well aware that their stories didn’t require any major translation (bar the odd Anglicisation) to be intelligible to a British audience. But neither of those reasons alone seemed enough. There had to be more to it than that, and there was … although it’s taken me nearly two decades to finally uncover why the invasion happened!

Rob Kirby

WHY MARVEL INVADED BRITAIN I grew up with “British Marvel,” but this was a fan nickname and was never used officially. Throughout the 1970s they were Marvel Comics International, and from 1979 became Marvel Comics Ltd., complete with a new logo surrounded by the British flag. They didn’t use Marvel UK as a company logo until later in the 1980s. I’d eagerly clambered on board back in early 1976 after seeing Spider-Man’s origin story on television that previous summer. I eventually found a new-style copy of Super Spider-Man with the Superheroes and was hooked by it, so much so that I continue to buy the UK comics to this day; a perspective that then gave me an unusually complete overview when I decided to index the bulk of their output back in 1990. I’d become curious, you see, as to what hadn’t been published over here and wanted to purchase any missing US stories that caught my interest. It was a lot of fun, but it did seem a shame to have generated such a huge pile of notes just for a want list. With nothing at all about Marvel UK in print, and precious little about US Marvel back then, either, it wasn’t long before I decided to develop my initial work into a book. Obviously, I’ve only been able to touch on some of the topics that are covered in far more detail over many paragraphs, pages, and even chapters in my book From Cents to Pence – The Definitive Guide to Marvel’s British Comics (1951–2011), but it’s my hope that this feature will suitably whet your appetite and encourage you to explore the company further. Marvel had previously had some presence in Britain, and since 1951 various UK publishers from 2 • BACK ISSUE • British Invasion Issue

EIC in the UK (above) The Thing pitches for a six-pack of posters sold through Marvel UK titles. (inset) Then-Marvel editor-in-chief Jim Shooter visits the Marvel UK offices in 1987. (left to right) Wilf Prigmore, John Tomlinson, Richard Starkings, Spider-Woman (Wendy King), Dave Hine, Kev Hopgood, James Hill, Mike Collins, Jeff Anderson, Shooter, John Gatehouse, Tim Perkins, Stephen Baskerville, Ian Mennell, Simon Furman. Photo courtesy of Michael Aushenker. Thanks John Tomlinson for identifying the depicted parties. Special thanks to Steve White and Rob Kirby. © 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Strato to Thorpe and Porter, Len Miller, Alan Class, and latterly Odhams had all published various stories from the back catalogues of Atlas and Marvel. But apart from Odhams’ late-1960s line of Marvel-orientated “Power Comics,” this abundant source of strip material was merely treated as a cheap and cheerful reservoir for filling up the pages of a comic while keeping the costs of production and origination as low as possible. What is far less well known is that black-and-white hard-copy prints used by the publishers were being supplied by an American company called Transworld Feature Syndicate. Understandably, few people knew anything about how they operated, never mind how extensive their involvement with Marvel was as the catalyst igniting their eventual British explosion in 1972. And this mystery might have remained so had the name Raymond Wergan not leapt out at me from the pages of The Times newspaper one Saturday in 2011. I’d long ago exhausted the few leads I had in trying to locate a Ray Wergan who’s been involved with Transworld in London, so I quickly sent an email to the editor of their Feedback column, hoping they might pass a message on. When a new email marked Marvel UK popped up a few days later, I knew my hunch had been correct, and it heralded the start of a continuing correspondence!

IT’S A TRANSWORLD To begin with, there were actually two separate businesses sharing the Transworld name, along with a network of subsidiary offices spread across the world. Originally set up by Ida Landau in the late 1940s, by the early 1960s the New York-based Transworld Feature Syndicate Inc. was being run by her lawyer son Albert. Initially “handling comics, teenage magazine stories and pictures, as well as fiction illustrations for women’s magazines,” Wergan tells me that by the turn of the 1960s they were targeting the growing comics market too. “One of Al Landau’s clients was Martin Goodman

US EDITORS ON THE UK COMICS 1972–1974 – Jim Salicrup 1974 – Mark Hanerfield (for a matter of weeks helping Marvel out of a jam, and it’s thought that it was Mark who suggested converting the Killraven stories for the Planet of the Apes weekly to use) 1974–1976 – Duffy Vohland 1976 – David Warner 1976–1978 – Larry Lieber

US ASSOCIATE EDITORS ON THE UK COMICS 1972–1974 – Tony Isabella (preceded by one or two interns, and then by Steve Gerber, although none were ever credited in print) 1974 – Len Wein 1974 – Pete Iro 1974 – Scott Edelman 1975–1976 – Jay Boyar 1976 – Duffy Vohland 1976–1977 – Bob Budiansky 1977–1978 – Danny Fingeroth (who continued to have an involvement with the UK comics, after production shifted over completely to the UK under the aegis of Dez Skinn in late 1978, as their New York liaison man) British Invasion Issue

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UK’s “Big Three” with a Bigger Page Count (below) The Thing’s at it again, this time hawking the 1975 Marvel Annuals. (above) This logo, with the British flag, was adopted for Marvel Comics Ltd. in 1979. © 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.

of Magazine Management,” Ray reveals, “and throughout the late 1950s and early 1960s Transworld in New York handled the worldwide syndication of Goodman’s action and superhero comics.” By the turn of the 1960s, Wergan had become a respected sports journalist, and in 1961 he accepted a job as syndication manager on The Daily Express. Moving over into their massive New York office, it was during his time there that Ray became acquainted with Al Landau on his regular return visits from London, where he was now living whilst overseeing Transworld’s office there. By 1964 he “wanted to change the direction of both their London and European business,” Wergan recalls, “and also wanted to return home to New York.”

Learning that Life magazine needed an independent representative based in London, but one who had the backing of an established agency not already working in the news field, Wergan knew just with whom to speak and within weeks he was installed as the new manager of Transworld’s London offices in the heart of High Holborn. Working alongside Landau, Wergan helped sign up an impressive roster of new clients, such as the Saturday Evening Post and Elle. In 1968 Landau permanently returned home to New York. An opportunity later arose for Wergan to purchase the London office outright in 1971, “as part of company policy in making managers responsible for their own overheads, sales, and profits,” and as Transworld (UK) “the company became a permanent partner of Transworld in New York and remained the head of their European operations,” a remit somewhat stretched to include both South Africa and Australia, too.

AN UNSEEN MARVEL The other strand in the story had already been set in place back in 1968, when Martin Goodman accepted a $15M offer from Martin Ackerman’s recently formed conglomerate, the Perfect Film and Chemical Corporation (later renamed Cadence Industries), to purchase his entire Magazine Management business, including Marvel Comics itself. Thanks to Ackerman’s previous purchase of The Saturday Evening Post, Marvel’s comics were now being distributed by their Curtis Circulation Company (whose distinctive CCC logo would soon appear on their covers), thus allowing them to escape from their rather restrictive former arrangement with IND (as discussed in detail back in Alter Ego #49 and 59). Goodman ultimately failed to retain influence in the company even though he’d held on to responsibility for running various areas of his old business, and left Marvel for good in 1972. But although Chip Goodman remained involved as late as 1973, wiser heads had by now prevailed and in 1971, even before Goodman Senior’s departure, Stan Lee became both president and publisher at the behest of Perfect Film’s new president Sheldon Feinberg. This left Roy Thomas effectively taking over as editorin-chief (see Alter Ego #70), with Al Landau coming on board as president in 1973 after Lee opted out, feeling ill-suited to that role. Landau continued to run the Transworld Feature Syndicate during this period and understandably took a particular interest in pushing Marvel’s horizon beyond just publishing comics in the United States. As publisher, Lee was no longer writing for a now rapidly expanding range of comics, and suddenly had a rare opportunity to step back and take a fresh look at Marvel’s present activities. He was particularly unhappy with the way Marvel’s material was now appearing in Britain, and there’s no doubt that it

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deserved far better treatment than it was receiving. The gamechanger came when IPC (International Publishing Company) finally canceled its ailing second volume of TV21 in 1971, leaving the undated Alan Class digest comics as the only source of Marvel strips in Britain. Soon afterwards Marvel was approached by Marts Press, a “packaging house” run by ex-IPC man Leonard Matthews. They had previously worked on the second series of TV21, giving them some familiarity with Marvel’s characters. “Al Landau, Chip Goodman, and Stan Lee had talked about publishing in London,” Ray adds, “and it seemed to be on the way when they accepted that initiative from Leonard Matthews.” Their proposed comic was not that dissimilar to what Odhams had previously published (mixing together Marvel reprints with newly originated action/adventure fare), and an advert [that’s an advertisement, for you USA-types! –ed.] was duly placed in the trade press during the autumn of 1971. With a launch in February 1972 now confirmed, and “distribution, promotion, and a launch gift all in the works,” industrial action then threw an unexpected spanner in the works, as Ray Wergan well remembers. The printers told Matthews “that they would have electricity to print his first and third issues, but would be shut down on the day scheduled to print issue #2. The launch was called off and re-planned for autumn.” Sadly for Marts Press, that remount never happened, and with the country hurtling toward an ever-worsening period of industrial unrest, the project died a quiet death there and then … or so it seemed. But at least fans still had the promise of another Marvel-related annual of some description in their stockings courtesy of World Distributors that Christmas.

RESETTING THE WHEELS IN MOTION By the summer of 1972, Stan Lee’s thoughts were now greatly occupied by the failure of Marvel’s partnership with Marts Press to produce their planned comic, a costly investment Marvel was very keen to recoup. “Having spent time in New York with the layouts [for the dummy issue], Lee decided that he did not want his superheroes diluted by being mixed with the traditional British comic-strip characters that Matthews had been proposing,” Ray explains. “Nor did he want dull letterpress. Stan wanted better color from web-offset printing.” And so, with the Marts Press deal at an end, both “Landau and Lee returned to London in summer 1972 to decide how best to salvage their new publication.” A meeting was soon arranged at Transworld (UK)’s offices, with Wergan asked to sit in as a courtesy for Stan and Chip Goodman using his office space. It was quickly agreed that Magazine Management should invest in a new operation, but this time they would produce the comics themselves. And there was no time to waste. Having already invested a hefty £20,000 for some 50 reels of letterpress paper that now needed to be sold on, all they needed was a base and “someone to set up a printer, paper, distributor, TV launch, accounts, etc., and then to coordinate them as a publisher,” Wergan adds. That would all fall to him until somebody else was appointed. But things happened “so fast and so successfully,” Ray wryly notes, because that “in the meantime” ended up lasting some six years or so! With an already-active Bullpen, it made sense for Marvel to keep everything in-house, and so New York would produce the artwork and editorial before shipping them over to London. And there was no need to search for an editorial assistant over in London, because they already had one on the payroll, former Odhams’ employee Pippa M. Melling, who was based in the offices of Levy Gee (Transworld [UK]’s accountants). To get things rolling quickly, Marvel chose to register the company there, and for a while, also used their address for mail, even after relocating to Wergan’s own offices.

MEANWHILE, AT THE RECRUITING OFFICE… Producing weekly anthology comics was entirely different to creating monthly color comics. Marvel needed someone suitably skilled to oversee the day-to-day running of their new UK Bullpen, operating out of one tiny corner of the US Bullpen, and Lee had the perfect candidate in mind—Sol Brodsky. The problem was that Sol no longer worked for Marvel, having left a few years earlier to join Israel Waldman in setting up Skywald. Lee needn’t have worried, though—the challenge he was dangling in front of Brodsky was just too tempting to resist. Marvel had, of course, already dabbled with magazines such as The Spectacular Spider-Man and Comix Book, but Stan realized that he needed Sol’s experience to make a full-blown line of British and American magazine-sized comics possible. As part of a new strategy to develop Marvel’s image outside of the bounds of traditional comic books, Sol worked in tandem with Ivan Snyder to develop the licensing of Marvel characters in the face of growing demands from publishers all around the world. With overall responsibility for the new British line as well, by the end of the 1970s his workload had grown out of all proportion, with American black-and-white magazines, syndicated newspaper strips, trade paperbacks, newspaper insert comics, coloring books, and even calendars! Sol Brodsky in New York and Ray Wergan in London made a formidable team. Both were equally important to the success of this project, and both were highly experienced in their respective fields, but more importantly they had business skills that marked them out as the safest pair of hands to administer this untried new venture into the British marketplace. Brodsky possibly had the tougher task—he would have to form a new Bullpen from scratch. But with so many enthusiastic newcomers now knocking at Marvel’s door, he would certainly not be short of talented individuals to choose from. The first recruits were not long in arriving. Jim Salicrup joined Marvel in the summer of 1972 as a “gofer,” but once “Sol noticed how much was being spent on the messenger service,” Jim laughs, “he realized it would be cheaper if Marvel hired their own fulltime messenger.” It was then that Jim was recruited by Tony Isabella and Sol to become editor on the new British Invasion Issue

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The Office The Marvel UK Bullpen at work, circa late 1980s. Photo courtesy of Tim Quinn.

ATLANTIC CROSSING It was clear that the weekly format was struggling. Unlike other publishers, Marvel had successfully adopted a biweekly frequency as a way of easing new additions up to weekly status at a later date. This process would again apply to the introduction of this year’s only regular magazine-sized title, The Marvel Bumper Comic (#1 dated: October 1st, 1988), which only finally went weekly with #13. Aimed at a crossover audience of younger and slightly older readers, this 32-page glossy color comic returned to a more traditional anthology format featuring various unrelated strips, with new UK-originated material (the Real Ghostbusters, Doctor Who, and ThunderCats) sitting alongside US reprints (Popeye, Scooby-Doo, Defenders of the Earth, and Droids). Although Alf already possessed his own monthly color comic (#1 dated: May 1988), the furry alien troublemaker would also appear in most issues of The Marvel Bumper Comic. But besides seeing the reintroduction—briefly—of both the Hulk and Spider-Man in any British comic, The Marvel Bumper Comic also featured a new series of William Tell stories based on a partially European-funded TV series that the ITV network was about to screen. That William Tell only ran from #21–28 is less a reflection on its quality and more the result of ITV having a change of heart and burying the series in a late-night slot away from the gaze of the strip’s target audience. The Marvel Bumper Comic was a strange mix of material that never quite gelled, and it never seemed to know quite who its audience was, ending with #31. 1988 also saw a second assault on the American market. Action Force Monthly (#1 dated: June 1988)— full-color throughout, and this time American-comicbook-sized as well—would appear in America as G.I. Joe European Missions, reflecting the name difference between the toys on either side of the big pond. Other than that, it featured identical contents: a mixture of new strips and reprints from the weekly. The ten-issuelong Dragon’s Claws (#1 dated: July 1988), about a future Earth fight-game team, and Death’s Head (#1 dated: December 1988) both featured full-length original strips every issue. A longer-than-expected delay meant The Sleeze Brothers (#1 dated: August 1989) became a co-publication with Epic Comics. The sixissue miniseries reintroduced the Blues Brothersinspired bumbling PIs that had first been surfaced in the comic strip “Follow that Tardis” back in #147 of Doctor Who Magazine, and was later collected in a hard-to-find 1990 trade paperback The Sleeze Brothers Files.

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The bounty hunter Death’s Head (although best not to call him that to his face!) had previously been introduced in the British-produced Transformers strips, and was destined to play a pivotal role in an eventual explosion of similarly originated comics just two years later. By then Marvel UK had a much smaller range of titles aimed a teenagers—the nursery end of the market having long overtaken the market for boys comics—and with the surprise return of Paul Neary in 1991, and encouragement from Tom DeFalco, they embarked on a series of color comics aimed at American readers. Revolving around a reconstructed Death’s Head II and the sinister MysTech organization, soon so many titles were being released every month that the company almost got swallowed when the comics market imploded at the nadir of the speculator boom. By then, Marvel UK were being run through Figurine Panini, a sticker-book company (which Marvel had recently acquired) with a huge Pan-European distribution network not unlike Transworld’s back in the 1970s. When Marvel in the States resolved its own financial problems, escaping from Chapter 11 protection (unlike many companies), Panini was sold off and Marvel UK went with them.

THE MARVEL COLLECTOR’S EDITIONS At the end of 1990, Marvel UK finally achieved something that the US Bullpen of the 1970s had never managed—a comic featuring full-length reprints in every issue! With America now releasing more than 12 issues a year for many of their top titles, by publishing The Complete Spider-Man (#1 dated: December 5th, 1990) as a four-weekly US-format full-color comic, its 100 pages could then encompass one full strip from each of the four Spider-Man comics then in print and still remain many months behind America. The only downside was that a big leap forward in continuity had to be taken from Spidey’s last regular British appearance to find a convenient starting point for all the series, but it would also provide the template for the UK division’s continued survival. When The Complete Spider-Man wound down after 24 issues, it was immediately followed by another 40 issues of the magazine-sized The Exploits of Spider-Man (#1 dated: October 21st, 1992). When that 100-page monster ended, its immediate replacement, The Astonishing Spider-Man (#1 dated: November 15th, 1995), returned to US proportions, adding thick, laminated card covers to a slick 76-page full-color format. With weekly comics now almost extinct, this format stuck fast, and by the turn of the century Panini had slowly and patiently built Marvel UK’s most reliable US reprint line since 1976. These days, the majority of its comics now utilize this same “Marvel Collector’s Edition” format, with occasional 100-page specials included at no extra cost! And all this in addition to various other magazine format titles, Annuals, and not forgetting the evergreen Doctor Who Magazine, too. It would seem that Marvel’s invasion of Britain is far from over! ROB KIRBY has long been a collector of comic and other modern cultural artifacts (by which he means records, CDs and DVDs, kids!), and writes about such regularly in re:VOX—a journal of all things Ultravox related—as well previously cluttering up the pages of Record Collector and Comics International. You can find more from his blog (a-distant-beacon.blogspot.com), which contains links to various Facebook pages. Rob hopes to have completed production work on From Cents to Pence by the time this article sees print!

Robert Menzies

Art contributions and caprions provi ded by the author.

For most British children during the 1970s, an original US Marvel comic book was as rare as a quiet day in the life of Peter Parker. Thankfully, as Rob Kirby has explained in this issue’s previous article, Marvel UK produced a flotilla of weekly anthologies that reprinted Silver and Bronze Age classics from the Marvel Comics library. One of these titles was Spider-Man Comics Weekly (SMCW). Initially printed in the standard portrait format, with one page of SMCW equal to one page of an American monthly, SMCW remained that way until it adopted the distinctive landscape format in early 1976. This new orientation first involved rotating a UK comic book 90 degrees onto its side. Then, each page of art was reduced to roughly A5 size so that two pages would fit side-by-side onto one page of the new format. Previously, the pages of art in a British comic book were printed at a larger size than the American editions to accommodate the traditional magazine-sized pages of a British comic (8" x 11"/20.5 cm. x 28 cm.). Now, the reverse was the case, and the British art was now smaller. Effectively, for a 1p increase in price to 9p, the amount of reading had doubled without changing the number of pages. The identity of the person who first suggested the landscape format is a mystery, as is the reasoning behind its introduction,

although it was certainly discussed during the weekly transatlantic conferences between Marvel’s New York and London offices. It is distinctly possible that its introduction may have been influenced by the then-current economic situation. Britain was in the midst of a recession, and a bumper, value-for-money comic would have seemed more palatable to parents tightening the purse strings and to kids limited to one comic per week (like this writer). The grim financial backdrop was acknowledged in the comics themselves. In a Spidey letters page from May 29th, 1976, the editor said that reducing the weeklies from seven to six was “forced upon us by the present economic cloud that most of the world is passing through.” As it happened, the title that introduced this innovative format was not SMCW but an entirely new creation, The Titans. Shoehorned into the first issue of The Titans, released in October of 1975, were the Inhumans; Captain America; Nick Fury, Agent of S.H.I.E.L.D.; Sub-Mariner; and Captain Marvel. Even allowing for the fact that these stories were divided into episodes of six to eight pages, this was an incredible cast for one comic. Unsurprisingly, the new orientation soon became known as the “Titanic” format. British Invasion Issue

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You could be forgiven for thinking that the career of Jim Starlin has been thoroughly mined. He has, after all, been the subject of many articles, interviews [even in this magazine, most notably in BACK ISSUE #34 – ed.], and even a hefty autobiographical retrospective. Nevertheless, you’d be mistaken. Incredibly, there is one important area of his work history that has never been reprinted and has been almost completely forgotten about—even by Starlin himself. So, what was this art? In the 1970s, early in his career with Marvel, Starlin produced a series of covers and other art to be used exclusively in the pages of the newly launched British reprint comics: in total, 27 covers, one back-page poster, and a jigsaw puzzle (hence my reworking of the old nickname “Judo Jim Starlin” in the title). The only locations you will find any reproduction of this lost art are a few scattered websites dedicated to British comics. This omission from his work history is all the more remarkable when you consider that Starlin was at the vanguard of Marvel’s huge success in Britain. But let’s back up a little. To the astonishment of British fans, Jim Starlin visited both Scotland and England over the summer of 2012. He appeared first at the annual Glasgow Comic Convention, Saturday, June 30 and Sunday, July 1, 2012, before then attending the London Film & Comic Con, Friday, July 6 to Sunday, July 8. Mr. Starlin’s unexpected trip to the United Kingdom presented me with an ideal opportunity to speak to him about this forgotten art. – Robert Menzies ROBERT MENZIES: Thanks for agreeing to this interview, Jim, to discuss the little-known cover work that you did for the British market. JIM STARLIN: Glad to be here. MENZIES: I’d like to begin with some background information to set the scene. Your arrival at Marvel coincided with a huge expansion of Marvel titles and the arrival of a new generation of creators. It also coincided with an attempt by Marvel to break into the British market with a new title called The Mighty World of Marvel. The experience of a Marvel fan in America and his/her equivalent in the UK was very different at this time. At the start of the 1970s, the US editions of both Marvel and DC titles were very hard to find and there were no reprint titles. Basically, Marvel had little or no presence in most of Britain. However, in late 1972, Marvel launched The Mighty World of Marvel (MWOM) and distributed it throughout the UK. MWOM reprinted early Spider-Man, Hulk, and Fantastic Four stories. This was the gamechanger for Marvel in the UK. In much the same way that the success of the Fantastic Four’s comic led to the creation of Spider-Man, Hulk, X-Men, the Avengers, and so on, the success of The Mighty World of Marvel led to a number of other British titles and Marvel’s dominance of the UK superhero marketplace. All of those titles came from the success of MWOM. STARLIN: I was never really aware of that. MENZIES: Well, you are absolutely central to the whole success of Marvel in Britain because you were the first regular cover artist. John Buscema drew the cover to #1, and then you were the regular cover artist from #2 until 26. The first time readers of that era saw a Marvel image, it was probably your art they were seeing. 28 • BACK ISSUE • British Invasion Issue

Robert Menzies

Conducted on July 1, 2012 at the Glasgow Comic Con 2012 in the Macintosh Church, Glasgow. Art contributions and captions provided by the author.

Starlin Smash! This striking image for the cover of Marvel UK’s Mighty World of Marvel #160 (Oct. 25, 1975) has no relation to the issue’s reprinted tale that was taken from The Incredible Hulk #162 (Apr. 1973). Jim Starlin, on seeing this image among a selection of his cover (photo inset), says: “This is my favorite. Of those, that’s the one I like the best. It showed some actual drawing ability!” This art became quite familiar to British fans as a slightly altered version was used to advertise the UK annuals for Christmas 1976. Pencils by Starlin, inks by Al Milgrom. © 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.

MWOM #3 (Oct. 21, 1972) Art: Pencils by Starlin, inks by Joe Sinnott Starlin’s second cover for British Marvel had no connection to the internal art that reprinted parts two and three from The Amazing Spider-Man #1 (Mar. 1963). The original cover to ASM #1 was presented as an internal pinup. Note Spider-Man’s right hand. © 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.

STARLIN: I gotta tell you, these were just time-fillers for me. It may have changed things, but these were the things I did when I was waiting to get jobs I really wanted to do. I really wanted to do the interior stuff, I wanted to tell stories. These covers are the things you do to get to do what you really want. You know, I was waiting to get ahold of Iron Man, and I always figured I would become the permanent writer/artist on Iron Man. That was my ambition. MENZIES: That didn’t exactly work out… STARLIN: [laughs] No, I got fired from my second issue! Stan [Lee] hated it; he thought we made Iron Man look bad. But then Roy [Thomas] gave me Captain Marvel, so it all worked out in the end. MENZIES: I have with me all of your attributed British cover art. I consulted with Rob Kirby, an expert on British comics, and he was able to complete my list and provide me with scans for the few original issues I’m missing. I’m not sure if you’ve seen this artwork in a long time… STARLIN: Not since probably then, at the time. MENZIES: I suspected as much. It has never been mentioned in other articles or your hardback book. STARLIN: The weeklies, they would give us four or five [covers] to do at a time. MENZIES: Oh, right. STARLIN: Yeah, so they would say, “Hey, we need these things for this issue,” so I would lay it out. I would maybe, out of the five, pencil completely one of them, or two of them, and then I would farm the other ones out to [Allen] Milgrom, [Bill] DuBay, or Jimmy James. They were all available and the covers usually had to be done pretty quickly. MENZIES: I hadn’t realized that Milgrom was at Marvel that early. I thought there was a bigger gap between your arrival at Marvel and his. STARLIN: He was working as Murphy Anderson’s assistant [at DC] for a time when he first got there. MENZIES: Those other names I’ve never heard before… STARLIN: Bill DuBay tightened some of these covers up. He didn’t do muscles very well … and so he was just sort of faking it. [Jimmy James] did a couple of these [covers] but he never got much work [at Marvel]. I have a feeling [MWOM] #24 is his. [Editor’s note: Editor/writer/artist Bill DuBay (1948– 2010) is best known for his work at Warren Publishing. His other clients included Pacific Comics and Archie Comics’ superhero line, plus Marvel Productions Ltd. and other animation houses. Artist Jimmy Janes has a range of Marvel and DC credits. He is best known for his early-1980s’ work on Legion of Super-Heroes and will be included in BACK ISSUE #68, our Legion issue.] MENZIES: I really like the Hulk figure [on MWOM #24]. It’s strong and muscular. STARLIN: Yeah, well, the legs are a bit wrong. I mean, those muscles don’t really go there [pointing to Hulk’s right thigh]. I obviously sketched them in and [James] did it himself.

MWOM #4 (Oct. 28, 1972) Art: Starlin and Joe Sinnott Starlin’s bold reinterpretation of the cover to Amazing Spider-Man #1. The second story from that classic issue—“Spider-Man vs. the Chameleon” —is reprinted inside. © 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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STARLIN INTERVIEW BONUS: BODAVIA OR BUST

JIM STARLIN’S MARVEL UK ART Throughout the interview, Jim made comments on cover art credits, and I have used these to compile a revised list of his UK art: • The Mighty World of Marvel #2–12, 14–21, 24–26 (Oct. 14, 1972–Mar. 31, 1973), MWOM #44 (Aug. 4, 1973), and MWOM #160 (Oct. 25, 1975) • Spider-Man Comics Weekly #3, 4, 8 (Feb. 17–Mar. 24, 1973) • Back-page poster: MWOM #23 (Mar. 10, 1973) • Jigsaw puzzle: MWOM #33 (May 19, 1973) Note: The cover to MWOM #105 (Oct. 5, 1975) was also a Starlin cover. However, unlike the other covers it was not an original piece and was reprinted from Marvel Super-Heroes #47 (Nov. 1974). This art saw life again as a very faithful— and rather excellent—swipe by Gary Brodsky and Joe Sinnott that appeared on the cover of The Incredible Hulk’s UK Annual for 1978. (I recommend that you Google it and have a look yourself.)

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(left) This back-page poster drawn by Jim Starlin for Mighty World of Marvel #23 (Mar. 10, 1973) is unusual, as MWOM pinups were usually doctored covers from the US editions or pinups from the US annuals. At first glance, this just looks like a typical Hulk-fights-the-army scene. Certainly, this image does not refer to Hulk’s battle from that issue. (Ironically, despite his regular run-ins with the military, in the story from Tales to Astonish #70 reprinted in this issue, the Army is on the Hulk’s side as they are also trying to stop the Leader’s towering Humanoid.) However, let’s pause for a moment to recall Jim Starlin’s familiarity with the Marvel Universe and his usual attention to detail. There are two large clues here to direct us to the source material: the tank insignia and the geography. If we hop back a few issues to MWOM #20, we can read a story (taken from Tales to Astonish #67, with some alterations) where Greenskin is battling tanks with this insignia somewhere in the mountains of a fictional country called “Bodavia” (p.1). So the pinup is definitely linked to this earlier story. To confuse matters even further, the original US art that saw print in May 1965 had these tanks sporting a hammer-and-sickle symbol rather than a lightning bolt. Moreover, the recap text by Stan Lee identifies the location as an “Iron Curtain nation” (p.1) and “the land of the Soviets” (p.7) rather than the invented Bodavia. The British version neutered much of the political/ideological Cold War slant of Lee’s original script, generalizing phrases like “unsuspecting Reds” to “unsuspecting troops” (p.3) and “Commies” to “tyrants” (p.9). In fact, in the British reprints—as Starlin must have known— Bodavia was editor Tony Isabella’s recurring stand-in for Russia and China, an editorial change he made reluctantly after objections and appeals from the UK. (Tom Orzechowski was the letterer hired by Isabella to make these text changes; this was Tom’s first job for Marvel.) Later, Bodavia started to appear in US editions, also! If you have managed to successfully negotiate that tangled path of continuity, you are left pondering one final question: Why did Isabella commission a new cover? As you will recall, the printed cover to MWOM #20 shows Daredevil, the replacement for Spider-Man, who had left to headline his own comic book. By Starlin’s own admission, he was given “four or five” covers to do at a time. Therefore, it seems that the decision to launch a Spider-Man comic was taken after Starlin had been instructed to produce the cover to #20, necessitating a new cover by Starlin incorporating the Man without Fear. Rather than waste this extra art, Marvel used it as a pinup. Unfortunately, this art was originally intended to be a cover, so it did not fill an entire page. (Starlin had, of course, left space for the banner at the top and box art of other characters at the bottom.) To solve this empty space issue, someone added some text above the image and then, incongruously, inserted the answers to the previous week’s quiz page! Special thanks to the indispensable Rob Kirby; Tom Orzechowski; John Farman and Sha Nazir, event producers of the Glasgow Comic Convention 2012; the staff at the Mackintosh Church, Glasgow; and my long-suffering wife, Lesley, for taking me to the convention on Sunday morning before public transport came on! Thanks especially go to Jim Starlin for kindly making time during a busy weekend to patiently answer my 40-year-old questions. ROBERT MENZIES counts Jim Starlin’s original Warlock stories as his favorite comic books ever and couldn’t believe his luck when he heard that their legendary writer/artist was coming to his home city. He has his fingers crossed that one day Jim will return to Marvel to write more Thanos and Adam Warlock adventures.

Alan J. Porter

Fab Four Detail from Tom Palmer’s cover to Marvel Comics Super Special #4 (1978), The Beatles Story. Full cover shown above. Beatles TM & © Apple Corps Ltd.

In our world of comics, the most famous foursome is arguably the group made up of Reed, Susan, Johnny, and Ben. Yet there is another equally fantastic—or should I say, fab—foursome that has a long, if somewhat on-again, off-again relationship with sequential art, for John Lennon, Paul McCartney, George Harrison, and Ringo Starr are no strangers to the world of the four-color printed page. The connection between The Beatles and comics dates back to the group’s early days and has been an almost constant presence throughout the days of Beatlemania and on into their solo careers. Even before he started writing songs, the ten-year-old John Lennon’s creative outlet was producing hand-drawn comics, copying the style of the weekly tabloid style comics that dominated the British newsstands in the 1950s. While John’s “The Daily Howl” may have copied the style of the regular comics, his own particular sense of humor was already apparent in the spot illustrations and articles. When John discovered Elvis in 1956, he also made a connection with another lover of the comics medium, for Elvis was one of the earliest serious comic-book collectors, with a particular penchant for comics featuring Captain Marvel and his various spin-offs. In fact, Elvis’ trademark hairstyle was a copy of Captain Marvel, Jr. [Editor’s note: See BI #27 (“Comic Book Royalty”) for the Elvis/Captain Marvel, Jr. story.] But while Elvis was a self-proclaimed comics fan, none of The Beatles has ever publicly acknowledged any particular passion for the medium. Yet the clues are there, scattered through their songs and their movies.

COMICS IN THE BEATLES’ MUSIC AND MEDIA John’s love of absurd and irreverent comics surfaced during the filming of A Hard Day’s Night when it was John who suggested that the favorite reading material of their roadie, “Shakey” (played by John Junkin), should be MAD magazine. During the same movie, in the dressing room scene, Paul grabs a makeup artist’s sheet, drapes it over his shoulders, and does his own Captain Marvel impersonation, complete with a shout of “Shazam!,” the magic word that gave the Captain his powers. The good Captain also gets a mention in the lyrics of “The Continuing Saga of Bungalow Bill” from the White Album, the only fictional character to get a name-check in a Beatles song. The movie connection doesn’t stop with A Hard Day’s Night. In Help!, the music stand on Paul’s rising cinema organ is covered with DC Comics, mainly Superman and Jimmy Olsen issues from the quick glance you get. During John’s first appearance in the animated Yellow Submarine movie, he is surrounded by pop icons including comic-book characters the Phantom and Mandrake. John’s comic-book connection continued after his move to the US, when in 1975 he was contacted by Marvel Comics editor Roy Thomas about appearing in some of their books. Roy tells BACK ISSUE that he’d seen John and Yoko going into the building where Marvel was then housed, because National Lampoon British Invasion Issue

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Hello Goodbye Two interior pages from Marvel Comics Super Special #4: The Beatles Story. Script by David Anthony Kraft, art by George Pérez and Klaus Janson, and colors by Petra Goldberg. Beatles TM & © Apple Corps Ltd.

by copying Ringo’s technique and even buying an identical drum set. short months before its fantastic plot idea became chilling reality His devotion to the group went so far as to sneak into their hotel outside New York’s Dakota building, where Lennon was shot to death suite at the Sahara when they played in Las Vegas. on December 8, 1980. The spark for Bell’s comic’s story was the news that Paul had Bell laments, “Needless to say, that is an episode of Sue I wish I bought a ranch in Tucson, Arizona. Bell muses, “If Paul is going to be had back. Too dark, too prophetic, too sad. I couldn’t even read that spending time in Tucson, what if he ate at the Crossroads Drive-In and particular comic for years afterwards and even had a shortlived hung out at all the honkytonks I used to play at like the Embers, the fantasy of buying back all the issues and burning them. Like I said, Doll House, the Cedars, the Dunes, [and] the Long Branch?” I’m a huge fan of The Beatles, and for other fans of the group His character Honktonk Sue was “born in the weekly I’m sorry I have this story to be remembered by.” comic strip I wrote for the New Times Weekly, a Phoenix, Following John’s death there was a rush of various Arizona, alternative paper, where the strip ran from unauthorized “biography” and “tribute”–style comics 1978 to 1980. The strips were converted into four mainly produced by small independent publishers different comic books,” of which the meeting with The and distributed through music stores. Beatles was the third, Honkytonk Sue #3 (Aug. 1980). YESTERDAY AND TODAY As for the story itself, Bell “tried to imagine By the 1990s, a number of the mainstream comicwhat the most ridiculous scenario could possibly book writers started to acknowledge the influence be, and came up with the idea that someone, that The Beatles had had on them and various specifically a redneck anti-rock-and-roller, would incarnations of the group appeared in some of the want to kill a Beatle (yikes!). It seemed absurd at higher-quality prestige comics and graphic novels the time, but tragically naive in retrospect. being published by the mainstream creative houses “The issue was not very successful (or I should bob boze bell like Marvel and DC. From the young Beatles in say, is the least favorite of diehard Sue fans),” Bell Hamburg (DC’s Thrillkiller #1) to Sgt. Pepper–style continues,” probably because the people who loved robots (Kingdom Come #2), nearly every incarnation the world that Honkytonk Sue inhabited did not care for The Beatles. of The Beatles has been depicted in the pages of a comic. There has And the people who dug the Fab Four were not particularly turned on by honkytonk life. It was kind of the worst of both worlds for me. even been a band of Skrull Beatles! Beatles iconography has also become a fairly regular visual design I didn’t feel like it worked, at least not like I hoped it might.” element in recent years with many covers In fact, one of those dissatisfied readers was Paul McCartney. Bell relates how he managed to get a copy of his book in front invoking images inspired by various Beatles of Paul: “I knew a lawyer who was doing some legal work for the album covers, especially Sgt. Pepper’s and ‘Cute Beatle’ and he showed my Honkytonk Sue, featuring the Abbey Road. It seems that as long as there are comics Beatles in it, to Paul. I was so thrilled to have scored such a coup, creators who enjoy and are inspired by The until I talked to the lawyer and he said, ‘No, Paul didn’t like it, especially the part about trying to kill Ringo at a concert.’ Ouch! Beatles, their music, and their art, we will I never realized that this was a part of their lives even then. Only continue to see references and homages to later, when I read George Harrison’s book [I, Me, Mine], did I the Fab Four in the funnybook pages. understand that they dealt with death threats and all the insanity ALAN J. PORTER has been writing on various aspects of pop culture for over ten years, but somehow always of fame long before John Lennon’s shooting.” Timing was also conspiring against Bell’s story, as it appeared on seems to come back to the Beatles, Batman, and Bond. the newsstands and in the comic-book stores in mid-1980, just a few You can find out more at alanjporter.com. 36 • BACK ISSUE • British Invasion Issue

The British Invasion didn’t just refer to creators. Doctor Who, the longest-running science-fiction program in the world, debuted on British TV on November 23, 1963. Early attempts to broadcast the show in America failed, and it was not until some Tom Baker episodes were sold to PBS in 1978 that the show was screened widely. Marvel’s involvement commenced soon after...

CROSSING THE POND

Jarrod

In 1972 Marvel UK was formed to reprint US comics in a weekly black-and-white British format. Initial sales were strong, but the weekly distribution soon ate away at Marvel’s inventory (which was barely a decade old in the early ’70s). Sales and interest began to decline. Dez Skinn, publisher of Starburst magazine, was commissioned to write a report on the overall state of the UK comics market. Impressed with the report, Stan Lee asked Skinn to head Marvel UK. Amongst other initiatives, Skinn launched the phenomenally successful Hulk Comic, which was closer in tone to the TV show than the US comic series. This success provided clout when Skinn approached the BBC about a Doctor Who magazine. A lifelong fan of the cult British TV show, Skinn was Buttery eager to publish a weekly Doctor Who magazine, but the licence was held by someone else. Britain’s TV Comic had been publishing a weekly Doctor Who comic strip since 1964. However, when TV Comic’s licence expired in 1979, Skinn prepared a mock-up magazine and a proposal for the BBC. “I’d had a terrifically successful launch with Hulk Comic,” Skinn tells BACK ISSUE, “which got me on a national primetime BBC1 documentary, sandwiched in-between pieces on Walt Disney and Mary Quant. It was only a few days after transmission that I took the Doctor Who Weekly mock-up into their dave gibbons offices. Absurdly, the head man in licensing told me later he’d been a bit scared of me, having seen me on the TV, so he’d agreed to my ideas straight away. Madness.” Skinn contacted Dave Gibbons with a proposal: “Dez Skinn, whom I’d known for many years, called me up,” remembers Gibbons. “He’d had the quite brilliant idea to do a weekly Doctor Who magazine. It was going to be part features and part comic strip, having five pages of comics per week. He wanted his art director, Paul Neary, to pencil the stories and for me to ink them. That didn’t really appeal to me because it would only be about half a week’s work,

Hats Off to America! The Good Doctor arrives at the House of Ideas in Marvel Premiere #57 (Dec. 1980). Detail from the cover, with art by Walter Simonson. Doctor Who © BBC.

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PERILS OF THE POSTAL SYSTEM! soon and would love to pick up his artwork. I told him that Jim Salicrup, editor of Marvel’s American Doctor Who reprints, we had already shipped his artwork back to him, and he told kindly shares a 1980s horror story with BACK ISSUE: me he hadn’t received anything and asked how it was sent. “One of the things I remember most about Doctor Who is Yikes! I told Dave I would, uh, get back to him. that our UK office really didn’t have good materials from “I was panic-stricken. Hundreds of original Dave Gibbons which we could reproduce those comics. I believe they were pages were apparently lost! I tore the Marvel Bullpen apart simply sending us Photostat copies of the printed pages from looking for those pages. While I did manage to uncover Doctor Who Weekly. After the four-issue Marvel Premiere lots of other long-lost pages of original Marvel run, Marvel launched an ongoing Doctor Who artwork, I didn’t find any Doctor Who pages. “deluxe” comics series, printed on the white Dave had told me that he was getting about Baxter paper stock that was all the rage back $25 per page when he sold the artwork, so I then. After the first issue, I got a call from was going nuts trying to figure out how I Dave Gibbons. He was concerned about how could possibly pay him back for all those his artwork was being reproduced, and pages. I mean, he loaned them to me— agreed to loan me his original artwork to not Marvel. I was responsible, so I had to pay. reproduce from. A day or so later, Dave called back. This was it; “Now, the thing to understand here is I had to confess to him that I had lost the that at this point Dave was doing Marvel a hundreds of pages of original artwork that he favor by sending us that artwork—he was in jim salicrup so kindly loaned to me. Shaking, I took the no way obligated to do so. He was just telephone receiver and said, ‘Uh, hi, Dave…’ loaning us his artwork so that it could look its “But before I could utter another word, he said, ‘Good news, best in the American editions. So we made the best copies we Jim! The artwork finally arrived! I got it all safe and sound. could of every page, in those pre–digital days, and then You guys sent it the cheapest and slowest way possible, but it returned the artwork promptly to Mr. Gibbons. A month or so all made it.’ Whew!” later, I got a call from Dave, saying that he might be in NYC

THE ULTIMATE CRITIC

Gibbons’ Doctor Who Collected Cover to Doctor Who Dave Gibbons Treasury Edition #1, an oversized, color collection of Fourth Doctor tales by dashing Dave, released in 2012 by IDW. © BBC.

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Gibbons finally met Tom Baker at a convention just a few years ago. “It was great to finally meet Tom. I think he may have been vaguely aware that, some years ago, he was drawn in comics, and he was quite gracious to me … but I don’t think he had a clue who I was,” admits Gibbons. Baker has an official website and has been asked if he ever read “his” weekly comic strip adventures? Baker posted: “I never followed the comic strip at all—why should I? My life at the time was a complete comic strip and much funnier and crazier than the comic!” Doctor Who Weekly became Doctor Who Magazine, which continues to be published to this day. IDW publishes regular comics and the TV show is more popular than ever. Invasion successful. The author would like to express his sincere gratitude to Jo Duffy, Dave Gibbons, Pat Mills, Jim Salicrup, and Dez Skinn for their generous help with this article. Thanks also to Bob Budiansky, Louise Simonson, and John Wagner, who replied to queries but were unable to contribute. JARROD BUTTERY lives in Western Australia. He discovered Doctor Who before he discovered comics. To this day, he clearly remembers finding Marvel Premiere #57, combining his two childhood passions, and is pleased to have had the opportunity to write about both.

Ian Millsted

Of the comics creators in the vanguard of the British invasion of the mid-1980s, nearly all produced work within the pages of Warrior magazine. When the magazine was launched in early 1982, Barry WindsorSmith, Steve Parkhouse, and John Bolton (at Marvel Comics), Paul Neary (at Warren), and Brian Bolland (at DC) had managed to break into American comics. By the time of the magazines’ demise in 1985 they had been followed by the likes of Dave Gibbons, Alan Moore, David Lloyd, Steve Moore, Jim Baikie, Alan Davis, and Cam Kennedy. Whether Warrior was a more significant showcase for new talent than 2000 AD or the Marvel UK is impossible to say with certainty, especially as many creators worked for different companies simultaneously (for example, Alan Moore and Alan Davis worked on D.R. and Quinch for 2000 AD, Captain Britain for Marvel UK, and Marvelman for Warrior), but there is certainly some evidence to suggest that a credit in Warrior could lead to more lucrative work at Marvel or DC. Warrior was an anthology title in what would be described in the US industry as magazine format: i.e., 8.25" by 11.75" and black and white behind a full-color cover. Each issue dez skinn contained roughly five or six stories, mostly continuing serials but with occasional standalone strips. The anthology format was far and away the most common and popular format in British comics, and even as late as 1982 there were many weekly anthologies. The most successful tended to have a key spine character around which other strips would rotate. Examples included Judge Dredd in 2000 AD, Roy of the Rovers in the eponymously titled football (soccer)-themed weekly, and even The Four Marys in all but a handful of the 2249 issues of the girls’ comic Bunty.

“YOUR FIRST ISSUE IS ALWAYS THE WORST ISSUE” Warrior #1 (Mar. 1982) launched with Laser Eraser & Pressbutton as the cover feature but with Marvelman as the first story inside the magazine. At the time, Laser Eraser & Pressbutton was perhaps the more likely candidate to emerge as the spine feature with its darkhumor science fiction being closest to the type of strips that were popular in 2000 AD at the time, whereas Marvelman was a superhero feature which was a genre that had never taken off in British comics in the way they had in the US. Marvelman, however, created by

Warrior Summer Special 1982 Steve Dillon cover art depicting: (flying) Marvelman and Big Ben; (on foot, left to right) V, Caed (from “The Spiral Path”), Warpsmith, Raiko (not actually featured in Warrior until #18), Axel Pressbutton, and Myrta Mystralis. © 1982 Quality Communications and the characters’ respective copyright holders.

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Move Over, Monty Python (left) The irreverent “Bojeffries Saga”, spotlighted in Warrior #12 (Aug. 1983). Cover by Steve Parkhouse. (right) Mick Austin’s cover for the litigation-luring Marvelman Special #1 (1984). Special thanks to Ian Millsted for providing art for this article. © 1983 Quality Communications. Marvelman © Marvel Characters, Inc.

it relied on corner newsagents around the country displaying it on the correct shelf (whichever that would be, when it was unlike anything else out there!). But any publishing company run by figures-men would have killed it as soon as the final sales for issue #1 came in. I only canceled the 1982 Summer Special. But I had faith in comics as an under-developed medium, though, and I worried that if a title with such stellar contributors and ideas failed, nobody would try anything similar for the next ten years! So I felt I had a responsibility to keep it going, to get money from anywhere to keep it alive, just to convince the bigger players that they should have a go and try something similar. I’ve always considered myself a catalyst, and I guess that’s what I wanted Warrior to be, too!”

USA ECLIPSE There was one final appearance of Warrior many years later when Skinn used some completed but unpublished work as a flip book at the back of his comics-industry magazine Comics International in the form of Warrior Spring Special (Apr. 1996), where further episodes of The Liberators and Big Ben appeared. However, the ongoing legacy was to be found, in different forms, in the US comics industry. Not only did key series from Warrior find a place at American comics publishers, but many of the magazines writers and artists were increasingly working for the big American comic companies. This had always been envisaged by Skinn, as he recalls: “Dick Giordano, at DC Comics, was an old mate of mine. I used to joke that he and Joe Kubert, also doing an editorial stint at the time, used Warrior as a takeaway menu. They’d use it to take away all my best people! And it was kinda tough saying ‘no’ when they’d ask, because I didn’t want to hold anybody back, but it was an absolute pain finding equally talented replacements (who they’d only try to nick a few months later!). Such is the lot of the self-financed indie publisher. This was, of course, pre–Internet and almost pre–direct market, and certainly pre–graphic novels. But through being good mates with Jean-Pierre Dionnet in France (publisher of Metal Hurlant), I was well aware of the potential of album collections, as well as periodical syndication. So I grilled the writers to work in chunks which would adapt easily into both collections and foreign editions.” The first US edition came in the form of Miracleman #1 (Aug. 1985), which reprinted the first three installments of Marvelman, but with the character renamed in order to avoid the legal difficulties. By the sixth issue (Feb. 1986), the original stories were used up and new material was being produced. The series was a commercial and critical success for Eclipse Comics, with Neil Gaiman replacing Alan Moore as writer issue #17, before financial problems caused Eclipse 46 • BACK ISSUE • British Invasion Issue

to go out of business. Following that, legal problems have prevented the continuation of the character under either name in new stories. [Editor’s note: Marvelman—or Miracleman—has been previously covered in this magazine in BI #28, 34, and 46.] Eclipse also published a six-issue run of Laser Eraser & Pressbutton starting with Axel Pressbutton #1 (Nov. 1984). This was followed by a six-issue series of Laser Eraser & Pressbutton, with all-new stories by Steve Moore and art by Steve Dillon (#1), David Lloyd (#2), Jerry Paris and Garry Leach (#3), and Cam Kennedy (#5 and 6). V for Vendetta was reprinted by DC comics starting in September 1988. Issues #7 (Jan. 1989) to 10 (May 1989) contained new material to conclude the story. The collected edition has been in print since, and a film version, written and produced by the Wachowski brothers, was released in 2006. [Editor’s note: Writer Jim Kingman curls up with his V for Vendettas beginning on page 71 of this issue.] The Bojeffries Saga continued in another anthology comic A1, and a collection was released by Kitchen Sink in 1994, which now commands high prices on Amazon and elsewhere. Meanwhile, many of the creators from Warrior formed part of the British invasion of comics talent that had really started with Brian Bolland drawing the cover of Green Lantern #131 (Aug. 1980). Dave Gibbons debuted on Green Lantern with #161 (Aug. 1983). Steve Moore wrote Marvel Super Special #26 (Sept. 1983), adapting the film Octopussy for comics, but apart from the aforementioned Laser Eraser series, did not become a regular in American comics. His friend Alan Moore arrived with Swamp Thing #20 (Jan. 1984), sending out roots from which much of the later Vertigo line at DC Comics would be developed. Jim Baikie started at DC Comics with Vigilante #17 (May 1985), and Alan Davis took over the art on Batman and the Outsiders with #22 (June 1985). Other Warrior alumni Cam Kennedy, David Lloyd, Grant Morrison, John Ridgway, and John Stokes all followed. How influential was Warrior? Without it we might not have seen V for Vendetta or Miracleman, but I suspect most of the talent would eventually have been recognized through other work. Last word goes to Alan Davis: “In later years, various staff at DC and Marvel claimed to have been fans of numerous UK publications, but I suspect a degree of self-hype or flattery. If all the people who claimed to have bought Warrior when it was being published did, it would have been outselling X-Men.” With thanks to Dez Skinn, Alan Davis, and Elizabeth Millsted. Dez’s website is recommended: dezskinn.com. IAN MILLSTED is a teacher and writer based in Bristol, England.

Robert Greenberger

Ever since I read George Perry and Alan Aldridge’s The Penguin Book of Comics [first edition: 1967], I knew there were comic books produced overseas. I recognized they were produced at different sizes, released on varying frequencies, and aimed at various audiences. I was first introduced to the Philippine artists thanks to DC’s recruitment of “cheap” talent from the south. They populated DC’s 1970s war, Western, and mystery titles before seeping into the superheroic fare. At much the same time, and for the same reasons, Jim Warren also gave us the great Spanish artists as he added color sections to Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella. It was certainly eye-opening for a young reader to suddenly see all these different styles employed to tell stories. (It’s where I first discovered the incredible work of Esteban Maroto, whom I was honored to work with years later on The Atlantis Chronicles.) In time, I began to see some of the British weeklies, notably the first two months of Marvel’s entrée into the field in the early 1970s. They were reprints of the 1960s early Marvel Universe stories, but in keeping an eye on them, it also exposed me to some of England’s homegrown talent.

“SOME GUY NAMED BRIAN BOLLAND”

Bolland’s Spirit of ’76 Before he broke in across the pond at DC, Brian Bolland (in foreground of cover) riffed on JLA #1’s cover in this British Comicon 1976 convention booklet cover. Art courtesy of Dave Smith. JLA and related characters TM & © DC Comics. House of Hammer © Hammer Films. Conan © Conan Properties. Powerman © Bardon Press Features.

During the summer of 1980, before joining Starlog Press, I was working as a summer employee at DC Comics. Thanks to the keen-eyed staff there, I was made aware of 2000 AD, the great British weekly that featured all sorts of dystopic characters. I recall Jack C. Harris showing off a Tales of the Green Lantern Corps cover by some guy named Brian Bolland. He was apparently a Brit, and a huge GL fan. Joe Staton, then penciling the series, had met Brian and suggested he do some covers, so his work on Green Lantern #127 (Apr. 1980) was a harbinger of things to come. His cover work on the monthly led to the miniseries assignment, paving the way for a fresh influx of talent. As Bolland explained in Comics Interview #19 (Jan. 1985), he and Staton met at a UK convention and they agreed to swap assignments. Bolland took on the cover while Staton drew an installment of Blackhawk (not the Quality/DC hero) for 2000 AD. “I got a wonderful feeling of fannish delight from doing the DC characters with whom I’d grown up,” Bolland enthused with a sentiment that his brethren would repeat in interviews throughout the 1980s. The artist recounted how he had visited the DC offices for four consecutive summers in the hopes of getting work. During his first visit, he received a tour by Paul Levitz, who didn’t know who he was. His second visit went better since a few of the staff had seen Judge Dredd by then. The third summer was entirely different as he was wined and dined, wooed into working for them on what became Camelot 3000. “The year after that, I was appearing at conventions and having to promote Camelot 3000,” he said. Bolland recounted how he met writer/editor Len Wein at the World Science Fiction Convention, Seacon, in 1979, and even then there was talk of poaching the British talent for the American comics, but it took a while for that to become a reality. British Invasion Issue

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The first time I recall seeing a comic by Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy was in their anthology title from Eclipse, Strange Days #1 (Nov. 1984), which also included work by Brett Ewins. The book featured “Freakwave,” a post–apocalyptic story in which the Earth was mostly covered with water and a wandering surfer simply called the Drifter faced the maniacal Captain Roaring, and “Paradax!,” the story of a slacker who finds a miraculous superhero costume in the hollowed-out center of a book. Both stories were wildly different from each other both in tone and style, and were like nothing I had seen before. I was (and still am) deeply into 2 Tone-era ska and New Wave music, and they somehow managed to capture that sensibility on the printed page. I was hooked. From then on, I eagerly awaited any work they did together, from the two-issue Paradax! (1987) series at Vortex; to DC/Vertigo’s Shade the Changing Man (beginning in 1990), which featured Milligan’s writing and McCarthy cover art; to Skin (1992) from Tundra, the story a thalidomide skinhead in the UK; to their phantasmagorical Indian fantasy epic, Rogan Gosh (1994), which was printed in the US by DC/Vertigo. In July 2012, I had the pleasure of interviewing Milligan and McCarthy about their work together, including some stories that US readers may be unfamiliar with. – Roger Ash ROGER ASH: I believe your first work together was on “The Electric Hoax” (1978). How did you come to collaborate on that? PETER MILLIGAN: Brendan was working on the strip— for Sounds, I think—and he asked me to come on board. I think it was just about the first comic-book writing I’d done. I was experimenting with some words and images and was writing, but I didn’t really know how a comic strip worked. BRENDAN McCARTHY: I had sold a weekly strip to the music paper Sounds and it was taking me longer to write it than draw it… So I asked Pete to help out, and he quickly got into the flow and handled the writing very well. And as he was better at it than me, I thought it logical that he should become “the writer.” ASH: That’s a strip I don’t know very well. What was it about? MILLIGAN: Brendan, what was it about? How I saw it, on one level it was a metaphor for restless punk youth searching for meaning and discovering that actually there is no meaning. McCARTHY: It wasn’t about anything much, other than a wade through a miasma of punk characters and abstract postmodern smart-arsery. Our approach at that time was influenced by punk and glam and psychedelic music, rather than aping film clichés—which is why our stuff reads differently to the comics produced today.

Strange Days House Ad This Eclipse promo features two of Strange Days’ features: Paradax by Milligan and McCarthy and Johnny Nemo by Milligan and Brett Ewins. © 1984 Eclipse Comics. Characters © the respective copyright holders.

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Roger Ash

ASH: How did you move from that to being published by Pacific Comics? MILLIGAN: Brendan, did we contact them? McCARTHY: I turned up in their offices in San Diego, with an introduction from the late and great Dave Stevens, whom I met in L.A. on my first visit there. They said yes to “Freakwave” straight away. ASH: You did “Freakwave,” a post–apocalyptic surfing adventure, for Vanguard Illustrated #1–3 (Nov. 1983– Mar. 1984). That began as a film treatment. What made it good basis for a comic story, and how much did you change between the film treatment and the comics? MILLIGAN: Is that the way it was? Not sure if the comic didn’t come first. In any event, we did develop an amazing, large illustrated treatment. A work of art in itself, as I remember. McCARTHY: Yes, the “Freakwave” Vanguard comic three-parter came first, and then the Eclipse sequel came after the movie pitch treatment. ASH: “Freakwave” eventually continued in your own comic at Eclipse, Strange Days. How did that series come about? MILLIGAN: How I remember it, Brendan, [is that] you came back from living and working in Australia with your head full of images of surfing. McCARTHY: And the magnificent Mad Max 2. ASH: “Freakwave” kept the adventure but added allegorical overtones with the Drifter being revealed as the new messiah. Was that something that you had planned from the beginning? MILLIGAN: This is where “Freakwave” really took off and came into its own. The freedom and allegorical nature of the comic and story has a lot to do with how we were producing it. It was a bit like a little cottage industry. There’d be a rough script and then the art would be produced, which, of course, didn’t necessarily have a lot to do with the script. Then I would physically do the lettering. Often it was at this lettering stage that a lot of the writing was done, and this allowed me to riff off the art and to allow the narrative to be as free and wild as Brendan’s art was. I think I almost became addicted to tea, staying up late and writing/ lettering this thing. McCARTHY: Because we were both fine arts painting graduates, we were aware of many different working methods we could use. So this wasn’t a “writer dictates story” setup—which sometimes we would do if it suited us. The process of creating the comic had a lot of randomness thrown in. We were Brian Eno fans at the time, so anything accidental or leftfield was treasured. Brett Ewins had a big input, too, as we were all working on each other’s strips and throwing ideas about. We were more of a Beatles-type pop-art group setup… Tony Wright also drew a one-pager. ASH: Strange Days also introduced “Paradax!,” which is a fairly straight-ahead superhero story. What can you say about the development of this strip? MILLIGAN: I remember seeing Brendan’s initial sketches, in some pub or maybe his bedroom. McCARTHY: Alan Moore’s Marvelman, a “revisionist” superhero, had come out at the time, but I thought “Paradax!” was something more along the lines of what someone like us would be like, if we could be bothered to be superheroes. It was a statement about comics, and what they should be like. “Paradax!” was decidedly anti-nerd. ASH: “Paradax!” seems to me to be one of the early stories that showed how superheroes would develop and change in the ’80s. Do you agree?

Beginnings: Sometime Stories (1977)

Milestones: Comics: Judge Dredd / Strange Days /covers for Shade the Changing Man / Skin / Rogan Gosh / Swimini Purpose / Solo / Spider-Man: Fever Film and TV: Reboot / Coneheads / Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles / Lost in Space

Works in Progress: Comics: The Zaucer of Zilk (2000 AD/IDW) Film: Mad Max: Fury Road

Cyberspace: www.swiminipurpose.com

brendan mccarthy

Beginnings: 2000 AD (1984)

Milestones: Shade the Changing Man / Strange Days / Skin / Skreemer / Human Target / Greek Street / Rogan Gosh / X-Statix / X-Men

Works in Progress: Hellblazer / Red Lanterns / Stormwatch

Cyberspace: www.petermilligan.co.uk

peter milligan

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Milligan and McCarthy One-Shots (left) From Tundra UK, Skin #1. (right) From DC/Vertigo, Rogan Gosh #1 (1994). Autographed comics scans courtesy of Roger Ash, who contributed this article’s artwork. © Peter Milligan and Brendan McCarthy/TM & © DC Comics.

became very nervous and pulled it. One could talk a lot about the reasons why—how people are uncomfortable about the mix of sex and disability, how our hero just want to be a hooligan like his mates, and wishes he was able to masturbate. McCARTHY: Me, too. ASH: A thalidomide skinhead isn’t a typical protagonist. Where did Martin Atchitson’s story come from? [Interviewer’s note: Thalidomide was a drug that was prescribed as a sedative. It was supposedly safe for pregnant women. However, it caused horrible birth defects.] MILLIGAN: Brendan had the original idea. Of course, I like to think that it developed in the writing. We both did a lot of research; the story certainly grew in the making. McCARTHY: I invented the character and basic storyline, but Pete’s writing on that one blew me away. It’s his single best script, I think. Brilliant work. Kinell! ASH: How did Rogan Gosh end up at Vertigo? MILLIGAN: Christ, I forget. Brendan? McCARTHY: Probably Karen Berger asked us. Things were pretty buzzing in those frantic heydays of yore. At that stage, we were so “uber-hip” in comics we could have wiped our asses on the page, called it “Abstract Asswipe Comics,” printed it on dayglo paper with luminous inks, and walked away with a few hundred Eisner Awards. ASH: Rogan Gosh is very complex in how you tell the story. It could be read from any one of the main character’s points of view. How difficult was that to map out? MILLIGAN: It was difficult enough, but it was also a complete scream to work on. In some ways I felt we’d come full circle. Though I didn’t do the lettering, there were elements of the fluidity of “Freakwave” in Rogan Gosh. McCARTHY: Yes, Rogan Gosh was a good one. Some folks think it’s our best piece. It was certainly my longest work to that point. Generally, I prefer the shorter eight-page installment myself. I could never be bothered to read those 400-page graphic novels. I’m not too taken with complexity and self-conscious “literariness.” I prefer a Zen–like simplicity and brevity to things. Probably comes from having a Painter’s mentality. ASH: One of the major recurring themes in Rogan Gosh is food. Why?

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MILLIGAN: That is insane, I know. Rogan Gosh is a succulent Indian dish. I really liked the way this everyday name, ripped from a Curry House menu, undercut the spiritual elements in the book. And for the working-class white kid who gets to know Raju Dhawan, this is probably as close to Indian culture as he ever get. McCARTHY: I loved Pete writing parts of the strip in the style of an Indian restaurant menu, composed by someone whose grasp of English is a bit shaky and cloyingly over-descriptive. It cracked me up when I read those sequences after I got the scripts. A thousand times better than anything else ever written in comics, in my view. ASH: Looking back at your collaborations, all of them have an identity of their own. Each is written and drawn in a different style. Was that a conscious decision on your part? MILLIGAN: I don’t think it was a conscious decision. McCARTHY: Yes, for sure. Style is as important a component to the overall flavor of a piece as the subject matter, the characters, the plot, etc. Our work was always “stylish” in whatever style it was produced in. ASH: Any plans to work together again? MILLIGAN: No plans. But I can’t imagine we won’t. McCARTHY: You never know. Maybe something before we die. ASH: Any closing comments? MILLIGAN: Reading through these questions made me remember the times when we worked on these various projects. And I think it’s really exciting that these disparate, strange, and, I think, unique stories will soon be finding a home together. McCARTHY: A high-quality collection of the Best of Milligan & McCarthy could well be on the horizon. A special thank you to Pamela Mullin at DC Comics. This interview would not have been possible without her assistance. ROGER ASH lives in Cross Plains, Wisconsin, where he works for Westfield Comics and lives with his cat, Candy, and his growing collection of hats.

Alan Davis has been a driving force in the comicbook industry for over 30 years and his enriching presence has had a profound effect on Marvel Comics’ X-Universe. Davis’ entry into the US market was subtle, working quietly from within, and then ® taking off as the regular penciler for the X-Men spin-off title, Excalibur. That venture allowed him to integrate Marvel UK characters into the Marvel Universe proper, like Captain Britain and Meggan, along with his rogues’ gallery, the Crazy Gang, and Gatecrasher and the Technet.

DAVIS INVADES THE X-UNIVERSE Davis’ first North American work was on DC Jason Shayer Comics’ Batman and the Outsiders in 1985. From there, he moved on to Detective Comics where, after only six issues, internal politics forced him off the book in the middle of the Batman: Year Two storyline. He then took on assignments with Marvel Comics, testing their corporate waters drawing a couple of X-Universe annuals and a fill-in on Uncanny X-Men. New Mutants Annual #2 (Oct. 1986) was my first exposure to Alan Davis, and it blew me away. The fun aspect to Davis’ artwork was a refreshing change to the darker and grittier tones of the late 1980s. Davis’ fill-in art for Uncanny X-Men alan davis #213 (Jan. 1987), which was part of the “Mutant Massacre” crossover event, stood out in particular. His fluid and versatile art style was perfect for the quiet moments focusing on the lovely Betsy Braddock and then juxtaposed with the amazing fight sequences between Wolverine and Sabretooth. Davis’ art was so clean and smooth, and seemed to relax your eye as you took it all in. Despite having worked in British comics for years, having his work published in North America required some adjustments. “When I started at DC on Batman and the Outsiders,” says Alan Davis, “the instructions were to use less black and rendering. And to draw smaller noses on women. When I moved over to Marvel, the rule was black and rendering should only be on one plane. “The only element of what might be termed ‘culture clash’ was in the attitudes to sex and violence,” he continues. “In the 1980s, the British attitude to sex was more liberal than in America, while the reverse was true for violence. In an episode of Harry 20, for 2000 AD, I had to draw a guy being shot, then dragged away. He was facing the shooter when he went down, but as he was dragged away I showed a smoldering patch on his back. This was considered too violent and edited London Calling out. The women I drew at Marvel were edited on Meggan, Captain Britain, Phoenix, Shadowcat, and occasion—I never understood why—but the strangest edit concerned the character Joyboy. His Nightcrawler. Detail from the cover of Excalibur #1 (Oct. 1988). navel would always be removed. Nobody ever told Art by Alan Davis and Paul Neary. me not to draw the navel but, as far as I recall, it was always whited out.” © 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc. by

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The grim-and-gritty attitude of the 1980s exploded in comicdom’s lap and was … lapped up voraciously! Times and heroes had changed. Some movie critics who’d denounced Clint Eastwood’s Dirty Harry film reassessed the anti-hero and cheered him on in the ‘80s when he delivered magnum force to the vicious lowlifes he encountered on the screen. In the world of comics, the Punisher was Marvel’s guy. He meted out a final judgment and penalty to his foes. Frank Miller’s aging Batman used rubber bullets but a similar mindset toward criminals. Mighty Marvel had established the successful beginnings for its overseas market in the 1960s in England, but two decades later, British fans and creators were ready to turn a more cynical and detached eye to costumed demigods that appeared to be such models of perfection. Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill were two such creators, and their takes on masked, mysterious men and women would be unprecedented in the art form—simultaneously hilarious and unnerving, and all the while redefining grim-and-gritty.

HOW DO THINGS BECOME LAW? Pat Mills tells me, “I’ve never related to mainstream costumed superheroes, although I like other varieties such as those featured in the British TV series Misfits. They’re excellent! I believe there’s an American version in the works. I guess what doesn’t appeal to me is the way they’re usually so elitist either in their powers or their personal backgrounds or both. So Marshal Law is an antidote to this. “Kevin [O’Neill] had visualized a character that looked—to me—like a superhero hunter and that was something I felt supremely qualified to write, because of my negative views,” Mills continues. “I’m also fascinated by the concept of heroes, and I think the word is debased both in the news media and popular culture. This means we don’t respect genuine heroes, but think an Air Force pilot dropping bombs on civilians or a superhero blasting them with a laser beam is a hero. They’re both symbols of power, rather than true heroes.” Kevin O’Neill adds, “Marshal Law began as a name and rough costume design that I sent to Pat to see if he was interested in developing the idea for the new creator-owned line at Marvel—Epic Comics, run by the brilliant Archie Goodwin. We continued our sense of drama, satire, and black comedy on Marshal Law, but the mood of it was also affected by the then-recent Dark Knight Returns and Watchmen—reinventions of the superhero genre.” Marshal Law #1 (Oct. 1987) begins in the devastated ruins of San Francisco. The once-beautiful metropolis is delineated with few trees/shrubs or anything approaching a pleasant atmosphere. This futuristic hub is called San

Marvel Uni-versus Marshal Law demolishing the House of Ideas. Detail from the cover art of Amazing Heroes #182 (Aug. 1990), submitted by Jerry Boyd. Art by Kevin O’Neill. © 2013 Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill. Marvel icons © 2013 Marvel Characters, Inc.

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Jerry Boyd

Futuro, a sad result of a mega-quake caused by the tidal pull of the planets on the San Andreas Fault. Worse, a nearby nuclear power plant went off soon afterwards. Worse still (if you can believe that!), war broke out in South America and the US had decided to use super-scientific advantages by manufacturing superheroes to go in pat mills and fight it. This feat was manufactured through a unique process engineered by a Dr. Shocc (a strange little doctor with a “sinister East European accent”). Natural talents dormant in man were awakened … new ones could be “bred in.” However, some of these veterans returned home quite disturbed, with homicidal tendencies. And with their abilities and powers, San Futuro could be an extremely scary town to inhabit. Who keeps the law? Marshal Law is that man, a darkly clad cop, authorized by the city police commissioner to keep the anarchic gangs of super-doers in check. This our hero does with play with seemed very much part of our 2000 AD roots as well as contributing to the whole Metropolis/Gotham a passion. Mills explains the Marshal’s reason for being: “At first City fictional superhero geography of America. We just we were thinking in a Mad Max direction, but once looked at it with jaundiced post–WWII British eyes.” Along with Mad Max, there was another prominent we saw him as a superhero hunter, everything fell into place. Although there’s a strong element of satire in influence. Pat notes, “I think when Kevin and I were Law toward well-established popular-culture icons, it’s working on Judge Dredd … that gave us insights into actually a secondary element. The prime element is how a future cop could be portrayed.” Marshal Law usually a political or crime scandal using superheroes as had his world (of problem people) and was ready to a metaphor to make it particularly entertaining.” O’Neill dispense justice! sees the city of San Futuro this way: “I was fascinated THE KILLER ELITE! by the image of San Francisco from films and television. In the six-part miniseries that introduced Marshal Law As a kid, Steve McQueen in Bullitt with that brilliant (going from Oct. 1987–Apr. 1989), the wasteland hill-jumping chase hardwired into my mind the streets of San Futuro witnesses the terror of a sinister selfof San Francisco. It had Alcatraz! When Pat and I were loathing villain called the Sleepman. He’s killing doing research, we found the city’s roots as a Barbary young women dressed up as Celeste, the lovely/ Coast hellhole—also the great earthquake, San Andreas sexy companion to the Public Spirit, the most beloved Fault, seismic shifts … all gave us great material to of superheroes. His powers had been engineered develop our San Futuro besides the ruins of the old before the quake or war and his reputation was city of San Francisco, now overrun by gangs and the impeccable. An uncontrollable superhero is clearly dispossessed. Also, our creating our own fictional city to British Invasion Issue

Flashback (left) Pat (seated on right) talks to a fan at an English comics store in the 1980s. Photo courtesy of Pat Mills. (right) San Futuro is a dangerous place to be! This opening splash (from Marshal Law #1) of the ruined city speaks volumes about Law’s beat. © 2013 Pat Mills and Kevin O’Neill.

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Secret Tribunal (a group of young mutants) to track the alien and destroy it. Public Spirit, Jr. is as two-faced as his inspiration and a coward, to boot! Growing Boy gets past some puberty issues and Law and his fellows end the problem. (Make sure you don’t miss Transparent Lad and Abnormal Boy—too funny!)

MARSHAL’S TWO-IN-ONES A madman called the Commandment Killer brings Image Comics’ Savage Dragon into S.F. in The Savage Dragon/Marshal Law #1 and 2 (July and Aug. 1997). The Commandment Killer uses the Ten Commandments as rationale to wipe out heroes who transgress them. ML evolves, learns more about himself during this adventure, and sees that there is a hero out there … himself. The Mask/Marshal Law #1 and 2 (Feb. and Mar. 1998) came out from Dark Horse Comics. And in this twoparter, the Sleepman returned. With the powers of the Mask being used as experimentation, you can bet this one was crazier than the Jim Carrey film!

THEY MAKE THE LAW

…and the Law Won (left) A ring-bearing hero gets downed by ML in Super Babylon #2 (May 1992). Reproduced for us by Jerry Boyd. (right) Pat Mills (left) and Kevin O’Neill paused for this photo taken at an event in London in 2012. Thanks go out to Lisa Gerrard and Pat Mills for most of the photos and artwork accompanying this article.

transports them both to the infernal regions, where Pinhead decides to show ML the true nature of pain and suffering. Law discovers that Pinhead was once a heroic officer during WWI. The two debate the worth of phony heroes and true heroes. Pinhead releases Law and his lady to renew his earthly crusade, but Super Nova wants her man to give his career up after they’ve returned to S.F.—he can’t. Boy loses girl, but he does get to live again, and after a sojourn in hell, that’s a lot!

THE NEW TEEN CRETINS “I guess the sendup that gave me the most satisfaction was our League of Heroes in the Secret Tribunal two-parter,” O’Neill reveals. We had Public Spirit, Jr., Growing Boy, Super Sensitive Girl, and others. And we howled with laughter working with those characters. As a kid I simply hated the Legion of Super-Heroes—it had a dull quality about it that’s hard to quantify.” As a sendup, this was one of the men’s best! The League of Heroes, teen adventurers all, is orbiting the Earth as Secret Tribunal (1993–1994, Dark Horse) begins. An alien attacks and kills Luminous Lad and later, Super Sensitive Girl. Against his better judgment, Law leads the

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The quality of the ML stories stands tall because of the consistent brilliance of Mills and O’Neill, who share the dialogue and background details at times. Veterans of British strips like Ro-Busters, ABC Warrior, and Nemesis, they were polished professionals by the time most Americans found out how good they were when Marshal Law erupted. “When I created 2000 AD, I needed an art editor and Kevin was working for the same publishers,” Mills recalls. “I liked his portfolio and he joined 2000 AD.” O’Neill tells us, “Pat and I found out while working together on staff at 2000 AD that we shared a similar sense of the absurd and aptitude for black comedy.” Nowadays, Kevin’s been very busy with the League of Extraordinary Gentlemen and no ML tales are on the horizon. Pat reports, “There’s a DC Comics collection due out in the spring of 2013.” At one point there was even talk of a film! We’ll see… Whatever goes down, you can bet it’ll be fraggin’ awesome. Special thanks to Pat Mills and Lisa Gerrard for their help, Rob Kirby for contact information, and Josh Palmano and Kevin O’Neill for getting me comments under a punishing deadline with other projects. JERRY BOYD has written numerous articles for fanzines The Jack Kirby Collector, BACK ISSUE, Alter Ego, The Harveyville Fun Times!, and the Spooky Fearbook. He’s proud to have interviewed numerous professionals in the industry, as well, for those publications.

Jim Kingman

Rose Almond loved her husband, Derek. At his funeral, she reflected on their relationship. He had been an abusive partner, going so far as to point an unloaded gun at her head. As chief of the Finger, the secret police/ military branch of the Head, the ruling fascist government of Great Britain in the post–apocalyptic world of 1997, Derek had been under great pressure since the mysterious anarchist designated as Codename: V blew up the Houses of Parliament and executed members of his force. When Derek confronted V with the unloaded gun (which, in haste he had failed to load), V promptly killed him, leaving his wife a widow with no pension and in despair. At his funeral, she knew her life would have to change. Adam Susan loved his computer, Fate, but she cheated on him, and had been cheating on him for some time. Broken-hearted, he left their home, and went down to the streets of London to establish a more open relationship with the people he ruled. He was a proud fascist, and oppressed all forms of freedom, but now his love was gone, subverted by V and turned against him. As he sat in the back of his limousine, he pondered his life and his loss and decided it was time to be more accommodating to his people. It was time for a change. He reached his hand out to the masses. Rose Almond was waiting for him. She raised the loaded gun she had purchased and blew half of Susan’s head off. In the midst of great upheaval instigated by V, the fascist government had finally completely toppled. V for Vendetta is about change—change in the individual and change in society. Everyone and everything introduced in V for Vendetta changes during the course of the story, some for the better, some for the worse, some morally, some fatally. V, anarchist (selfproclaimed)/terrorist (proclaimed by the government), also changes at story’s end, but his true transformation comes well before the story’s beginning, and it is his vendetta that is the catalyst impacting all. “Dystopian” is a key word tossed around a lot in critical circles about V for Vendetta, and with good reason. The series is set in a late 1990s England rocked years earlier by near-nuclear holocaust where the populace now lead dehumanized and fearful lives ruled by Norsefire, the arrogant and fascist few. “Freedom” is a dirty word—just ask Susan, proud fascist; but freedom does live in the mind and cause of V, a man who knows that sustainment of freedom requires more than one individual encouraging anarchy behind a Guy Fawkes mask. It’s an idea that must take root, be nurtured, allowed to grow then blossom, and carry on. That is V’s purpose, but in the story’s first act he would undertake a more personal vendetta.

British Invasion Issue

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