The Star Reach Companion by TwoMorrows Publishing

The complete history of the influential 1970s independent comic

COMPANION

by Richard Arndt

table of contents Chapter One: The Star*Reach Influence

Chapter two: What Came Before

Chapter THREE: An Interview with Mike Friedrich

Chapter FOUR: The Star*Reach Checklist

Chapter FIVE: The Stars of Star*Reach

Chapter SIX: The Independents During Star*Reach’s Run

Chapter SEVEN: Star*Reach During Its Run

Chapter SEVEN: The Collapse

APPENDIX: The Early Independents Checklist

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THE COMICS: Stories from Star*Reach

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A Tale of Sword and Sorcery (Ed Hicks/Walter Simonson)

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Marginal Incident: The Prelude (Steve Leialoha)

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Vignette: A Soft and Gentle Rain (Michael T. Gilbert)

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Starbuck (Howard Chaykin)

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Encounter at the Crazy Cat Saloon (Michael T. Gilbert)

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I’m God! (Dave Sim/Fabio Gasbarri)

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Siegfried and the Dragon (P. Craig Russell)

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Foreword

remember when I was a young comics writer in my late teens and early twenties, watching older artists in their fifties and sixties answering questions put to them by young fans. The artists were frequently quite uncomfortable because they hadn’t paid much attention at the time and they had a hard time remembering details. Fortunately for me, now that it’s my turn for people to be fascinated about my old comics work, I had paid attention. Thus it’s a great pleasure to be part of Richard Arndt’s labor of love, the Star*Reach Companion, that you’re now holding. The extended discussion Richard and I had a few years ago, reprinted here, covers most of the historical issues about the Star*Reach publications period, so I won’t repeat those now. But I would like to put in an extra word or three about the value in following your enthusiasms. I knew very little about publishing at the age of 23 when I realized that the existing publishers at the time were not taking full advantage of both the enthusiasm of the new young artists and the enthusiasm of the older comics fans who were then beginning to cluster around comics speciality stores. It was my enthusiasm that propelled the steep learning curve I experienced as I launched and fitfully sustained a publishing business. Eventually that lack of knowledge tripped me up, but not until I’d gotten 30 interesting comics into the world, and the experience I gained enabled me to launch into the next phases of my comics career.

The second value that was important was treating my personal and professional relationships as ones of mutual respect and honor. It was those kinds of relationships that enabled me to find established contributors at the beginning of Star*Reach. I attempted to be as transparent as possible to artists, distributors, and production facilities about what was going on at the time (when I was inaccurate it was because I let my enthusiasm outweigh some countervailing realities). At the end of the publishing run, as cash was disappearing too fast, it was the strength of my relationships with my contributors, printer, and color separators that enabled me to get the last handful of issues published before I closed the doors. Even then, after publication ceased, I made sure to pay everyone in full, though that took a couple of years to accomplish. I’m convinced those actions enabled me to receive industry cooperation when I later tried out new enthusiasms, like producing comics industry trade shows (which failed); a comic convention, WonderCon (which succeeded); and most especially an agency for artists, which sustained me for 20 years. Richard Arndt has produced a treasure trove of facts, flavored with an insightful critical perspective. I hope you enjoy reading this book as much as I did in publishing the comics themselves.

Star*Reach is a trademark of Mike Friedrich

— Mike Friedrich

Chapter Two What came before

s mentioned in Chapter One, Friedrich called Star*Reach a “ground-level” comic. By that he meant that it wasn’t a mainstream comic, coming from the big companies in the (above-ground) skyscrapers on Madison Avenue, nor was it part of the underground comix movement which was flourishing at the time Star*Reach launched its first issue. It was in between the two. Far more liberal and mature regarding violence, sex, story genres, and politics than the four-color superhero comics that ruled the likes of Marvel and DC, but not as counter-culture, sexually explicit, or as excessive in its approach as the likes of Zap, Bizarre Sex, Skull, or Slow Death comix. Of course, Friedrich’s Star*Reach didn’t spring up out of nowhere. There were any number of earlier magazines that pointed the way as well as numerous trends in the comics industry itself that influenced, supported, and helped create the possibility of Star*Reach’s birth and success. The first and probably most important was EC artist Wally Wood’s witzend magazine. Begun in 1966, Wood’s title published 13 issues between 1966 and 1985, although the bulk of them appeared between 1966 and 1971. Wood intended his comic magazine to be a showcase for writers and artists, and as such, made a point of refraining from actual editorial interference. He published the stories as is and regardless of genre, which often made it appear, especially in the earliest issues, that the magazine had no firm editorial hand at all. witzend (always in lower case) originated from an idea by Dan Adkins, at the time Wood’s assistant, who intended to self-publish a comic magazine named Outlet. This became a Wood effort called initially Etcetera but changed to witzend shortly before the first issue appeared when Wood discovered another magazine with the Etcetera title. The first issue appeared in the summer of 1966 and featured unpublished stories from the 1950s, poetry, gag strips rejected by Mad magazine, the first half of an interesting SF/horror story featuring a character called Animan

by Wood himself (Animan probably couldn’t have been published in mainstream comics at that time due to the restriction of the Comic Code, which forbid the use of a werewolf and frowned about stories dealing with human genetic experiments à la Dr. Moreau), and finally a really superb science-fiction story entitled “Sinner,” written and illustrated by Archie Goodwin. Wood acted as the publisher and editor for the first four issues, publishing significant early work by Art Spielgelman and Roger Brand as well as important and interesting work

(above left and previous page) Some of the original ads for the title that became witzend. (above right) witzend’s first issue. all characters © their respective owners.

from Steve Ditko—the first Mr. A stories appeared in witzend—Gray Morrow, and Wood himself. With the fifth issue, Wood sold the title to Bill Pearson for the sum of one dollar, with the proviso that Pearson publish all the stories that Wood had already accepted for the title and continue the magazine though at least issue #8, since Wood had sold some subscriptions promising at least that many issues. Pearson, in turn, published some of the most interesting stories of the era, including Vaughn Bodé’s deeply moving (and very violent) “Colbalt 60”; the exceptional pairing of Edgar Allan Poe and Frank Frazetta on “The City by the Sea,” using an old comic strip tryout by Frazetta to frame Poe’s 19th century poem; and additional fine work by the likes of Jeff Jones, Bernie Wrightson, Mike Zeck, Nicola Cuti, Grass Green, Howard Chaykin, Alex Toth, Pearson himself, and many others. Another interesting title was the 1970 effort Abyss, co-published by Jeff Jones, Bruce Jones (no relation), Bernie Wrightson, and Michael Kaluta along with major (uncredited) editorial help from Mary Skrenes. Abyss was probably a reaction

to the cancelation of the mainstream black-and-white title Web of Horror, for which all four men had been major contributors and which Wrightson and Bruce Jones had hoped to take over as co-editors before it went belly-up. Abyss’ only issue featured mostly straight sciencefiction stories, although Wrightson’s tales were horror. All the stories were done in a style that would not have been allowed in mainstream comics due to Comic Code restrictions, and were mostly in a genre—science fiction—that the mainstream comics had deemed non-commercial years earlier. While no story stands out in particular, all of them were decently written, and the artwork was quite strong, making a very attractive magazine. Then there were the efforts of the bar-mitzvah boys—Robert Gerstenhaber (now Gerson) and Adam Malin. The two teenagers were friends and lived across the street from each other. Both were greatly interested in comics and heavily influenced by the fan-published comics history titles that had appeared in the 1960s, such as Alter Ego, which dealt with comics in general, and Squa Tront and Spa Fon, both of which focused 9

Venture (1972–76) Venture, which was co-edited by future pros Frank Cirroco and Brent Anderson, had some excellent stories. I particularly liked Anderson’s humor strip “Grimmley’s Tales,” but there were several interesting SF and fantasy tales as well, particularly in the later issues. A number of these would be reprinted in Myron Fass’s Heavy Metal knockoff, Gasm, in the late 1970s. Although much of the best work was done by Cirroco and Anderson, good early work also appeared from Gary Winnick and Steve Leialoha.

High Adventure (1973)

New Paltz Comix (1973–84) New Paltz Comix, edited by future Star*Reach contributor Michael Gilbert, had quite a number of excellent stories, including several that were reprinted in Star*Reach. Many of the best stories were done by Gilbert, but it also provided debuts from the extremely interesting Jeff Bonivert, as well as strong work from Raoul Vezina, Larry Todd, Tim Boxell, and Brian Buniak. The best issues, by far, are #2 and #3.

High Adventure, which came from Denis Kitchen’s Kitchen Sink Press and focused, naturally enough, on adventure tales, has early interesting work from Mark Evanier and Robert Kline as well as an interesting art team-up of Steve Leialoha and John Pound.

All of these titles featured high-quality material, especially from the artists now known as the “Young Turks,” described as such, at least in part, because they were the first new (and young!) artists to appear in comics since the 1940s to early 1950s. It should be noted that these “Young Turks” were huge fans of the comic books, something that may not have been true for the Depression Era and post-war artists for whom the newspaper comic strips were the height of narrative achievement. The “Young Turks” could be said to include Bernie Wrightson, Jeff Jones, Michael Kaluta, Barry Windsor-Smith, Bruce Jones, Ralph Reese, Rich Buckler, Jim Starlin, Steve Leialoha, Howard Chaykin, Kenneth Smith, Ed Davis, Walt Simonson, Mike Vosburg, Steve Harper, Steve Hickman, P. Craig Russell, Al Milgrom, and Michael Gilbert among others. Their appearances as artists in the fanzines, prozines, and mainstream titles of the period were, and still are, highly prized among collectors.

Chapter Three An interview with Mike Friedrich

RICHARD ARNDT: I’m speaking with Mike Friedrich, Star*Reach’s publisher and editor as well as a talent agent and a Silver Age writer for DC and Marvel. Can you tell us a little about your early days in the comics field? MIKE FRIEDRICH: Sure, I became a comic fan in high school and started writing letters to the various editors. I got a bunch of them published, mostly in DC comics. This would have been in the mid-1960s. A great many of them appeared in the comics that Julius Schwartz edited—Flash, Green Lantern, Justice League, Batman. When I turned 18, just before I graduated from high school, I was able to sell DC some comic scripts. I spent my college years working in New York writing scripts in the summer and out here in California the rest of the year while going to school. I continued writing for DC, and later Marvel, until the mid-1970s. In 1972 I began to think about the small press. There were a lot of underground and small press comics being published here in the Bay area where I live, and that kind of inspired me to think about publishing artists’ work that I knew from Marvel and DC. That eventually led in 1974 to the first issue of Star*Reach. I was the publisher, editor, marketing director, swept the floor, etc., of that until 1979. In 1980 I had to fold that tent, and I went to Marvel Comics and launched their direct sales department. Out of that came setting up Diamond Comic Distributors. That’s one of the things I did during that period. After a couple of years of that, I returned to California, and for 20-something years I ran a management company for artists—primarily comics but in television as well. That’s the broad stroke overview. I became a comic pro largely through making a connection to Julie Schwartz, writing him letters, and, eventually, he started writing back. I was growing up rapidly during this time, maturing as a comic reader—going from, “I like these comics. I don’t like these other comics,” to, “I like or don’t like these comics because of this reason or that reason.” Then the third step of, “You know, it would be better if you did this… or that,” and finally, “You know, I could do it better.” [laughs] That’s kind of what led me to start to write.

Friedrich’s debut at DC, writing Batman. How great is that? Batman and all related characters ™ and © DC Comics

RA: Did you find DC, in particularly Julie Schwartz, receptive to that approach? MF: Well, yes, he very much was. There were a lot of historical factors going on during this period that I was completely unaware of at the time. DC had been the king of the hill for a long time. But by the mid-1960s they were not very sure that they were going to have much of a future. 15

Another early Friedrich effort teamed him with Neal Adams, reintroducing Wildcat! Spectre, Wildcat ™ and © DC Comics

Marvel had come along and was doing much better with much fewer titles. There was a sense within DC itself that they had become stale. They got worried that the kinds of stories they were telling weren’t as current and interesting. There was this whole counter-culture [thing happening], with baby boomer kids growing up. Times were changing and the older editors at DC really felt lost. They particularly did not feel that the current people they had, who had been working for them for 15 or 20 years, were up to the challenge that Marvel presented or for the new audience that was out there. They didn’t know where to go next. Comics were traditionally never an attractive field to work in as a career. Now all of a sudden there were these comic fans who, hey!, wanted to become comic people. They wanted to be writers. They wanted to be artists. I was lucky enough to be in the first wave of that. I landed on the beach early [laughs] and was able to get a little bit of a foothold there at a much earlier age than people after me were able to do. It was probably the last time an 18-year-old writer was hired by DC or Marvel. RA: Jim Shooter may have had you beat in age. I think he was around 15 or 16 when he sold his first script for the “Legion of Superheroes.” 16

MF: Yeah, he was. That’s my point. A couple of years later than this and a teenaged writer wouldn’t have been able to get in. There was only a narrow window of time that I was fortunate to slip through, along with Gerry Conway, Cary Bates, Len Wein, and Marv Wolfman. RA: I do recall an interview in which Neal Adams mentioned that, in 1967, he was the first new artist that DC had hired in probably ten or 15 years, since about 1954. MF: Well, that was certainly true, meaning the first new artist. Jim Shooter and Cary Bates were writing for DC before Neal was drawing for them. DC had not brought in a new artist in a long, long time. Of course, in the 1950s, the whole field had shrunk dramatically. So when there was any sort of revival, at either

DC or Marvel, who they hired first were people that they used to work with before the collapse. They would bring people back into the field. Pretty soon, Marvel was facing the same problem as DC. By the early 1970s, Marvel had no old people to bring back anymore, so the doors began to open to new people. They needed fresh blood as well and began to draw on the fan talent as it evolved. RA: I noticed, and it seemed a rather curious thing at the time that, while Marvel had been very much the trendsetter during the 1960s, the new artists and writers seemed to have an easier time finding a home at DC than at Marvel. Marvel seemed very resistant to the idea of new blood. MF: Right. A company has a certain way of doing things, especially if they enjoy a certain amount of success. If it worked, why mess with a formula that was succeeding? Through the 1960s, Stan Lee basically brought back people that he’d worked with during the Atlas days and even earlier, back to the 1940s. Almost every artist that we think of as a Marvel artist during the 1960s and well into the 1970s had personal and professional dealings with Stan going way, way back. I wrote Iron Man in the early 1970s for about four years, and George Tuska drew it. George was probably [looking] towards the end of his career, but he’d started with Stan during World War II! That was just the kind of guy that Marvel hired. It literally took an entire generation of people retiring in the field before Marvel moved to get new people in. RA: Part of the need for new artists could also be due to that massive expansion of their titles from 1972–75. But at that point, they were also picking up a lot of artists from DC, like Bob Brown and Jim Mooney. MF: Yeah, well, by then DC had brought the talent in. DC was not able to control their collapse until well into the 1970s, so the pay rates for DC stayed kind of static, and Marvel, certainly by the mid-1970s, came to be the better place to work in terms of making money and having fun. It wasn’t until Jeanette Kahn came in and turned things around that DC got to be more interesting again. Even then, it took five or six years to take root. RA: One thing I’ve noticed about your stories, for both DC and Marvel, was that they tended to be concerned with contemporary social issues more than most other writers of the time. In previous DC stories, the stories all seem to be centered in a world based on the small-town values and life of Superman’s fictional hometown, Smallville. Even stories set in Gotham or Metropolis didn’t appear to be particularly urban. Small fictional towns like Smallville, or Archie Comics’ Riverdale, often seemed to be stuck in a time period where nothing happening in the stories seemed to reflect what was actually going on in the real world. I think yours were the first stories—at least at DC—to blatantly put characters into situations that were actually talked about in the news. Of course, a lot of those “relevant”stories today can seem to be pretty heavy handed in their approach, regardless of who was involved in the writing or art. MF: It’s very embarrassing to look back at that stuff. [laughs] DC just didn’t know how to deal with what Marvel was doing in the 1960s. Stan was acting like he was this hip guy. He came across

DC’s social concerns crop up in the pages of Justice League of America with Friedrich’s hip new approach. Justice League and all related characters ™ and © DC Comics

• …The Birth of Death! [Jim Starlin] 8p [reprinted from Star*Reach #1 (Apr. 1974)] • Death Building [Jim Starlin/Jim Starlin and Al Milgrom] 7p [reprinted from Star*Reach #1 (Apr. 1974)] • The Origin of God! [Jim Starlin] 1p [reprinted from Star*Reach #1 (Apr. 1974)] • Cosmix [Dave Sim] 4p [reprinted from Imagine #4 (Nov. 1978)]

Steve Leialoha and Alex Niño] 8p [reprinted from Quack! #3 (Apr. 1977)]

• The Star*Reach Checklist, part 4 [?] 1p [on inside back cover]

• Divine Wind [Gene Day] 6p [reprinted from Star*Reach #9 (June 1977)]

• Star*Reach Covers [Ken Steacy, Frank Brunner, Marshall Rogers, Frank Cirocco, P. Craig Russell] 1p [on back cover—covers from Star*Reach #9–11, Imagine #1–3]

• The Star*Reach Checklist, part 3 [?] 1p [on inside back cover] • Star*Reach Covers [Jeff Jones, Barry Windsor-Smith, P. Craig Russell, Steve Leialoha, Michael Gilbert, Ted Richards] 1p [on back cover—covers from Star*Reach #6–7 and Quack! #4–6]

• Flightmare [Neal Adams/ Frank Cirocco] 10p [reprinted from Imagine #1 (Apr. 1978)] • The Star*Reach Checklist [?] 1p [on inside back cover]

• I’m God! [Dave Sim/Fabio Gasbarri] 8p [reprinted from Star*Reach #7 (Jan. 1977)] • The Star*Reach Checklist, part 5 [?] 1p [on inside back cover] • Star*Reach Covers [Frank Brunner, Steve Leialoha, Ken Steacy, Steve Ditko, Michael Gilbert, and Stephen Konz] 1p [on back cover—covers from Star*Reach #12–16 and Imagine #4–6]

• Star*Reach Revisited [Mike Friedrich] 1p [text article, frontis] • Stephanie Starr [Mike Friedrich/Dick Giordano] 20p [reprinted from Star*Reach #2 (Apr. 1975); art reworked to remove most of the nudity]

6. cover: P. Craig Russell (Aug. 1984)

• Newton, the Rabbit Wonder! [Sergio Aragonés/Steve Leialoha] 10p [reprinted from Quack! #2 (Jan. 1977)]

3. cover: P. Craig Russell (May 1984) • Star*Reach Revisited [Mike Friedrich] 1p [text article, frontis] • The Avatar and the Chimera [P. Craig Russell] 16p [reprinted from Imagine #2–3 (June and Aug. 1978)] • [Newton, the] Rabbit Wonder Meets the Barbarbian Bunny [Steve Leialoha/ 60

• Gideon Faust, Warlock at Large [Len Wein/Howard Chaykin] 12p [reprinted from Star*Reach #5 (July 1976)]

• Ersatz [Lee Marrs] 2p [reprinted from Imagine #3 (Aug. 1978)]

2. cover: Dick Giordano (Apr. 1984)

• Star*Reach covers [Frank Brunner, Howard Chaykin, Steve Leialoha, Dave Sim] 1p [on back cover—covers from Star*Reach #3–5 and Quack! #1–3]

• Star*Reach Revisited [Mike Friedrich] 1p [text article, frontis]

• The Summoning [Paul Levitz/ Steve Ditko] 8p [reprinted from Imagine #4 (Nov. 1978)]

• Star*Reach Covers [Howard Chaykin, Jim Starlin, Neal Adams, Lee Marrs] 1p [on back cover—covers from both printings of Star*Reach #1, Star*Reach #2, and Pudge, Girl Blimp #1–3]

• The Star*Reach Checklist, part 2 [?] 1p [on inside back cover]

5. cover: Howard Chaykin (July 1984)

4. cover: Frank Brunner (June 1984) • Star*Reach Revisited [Mike Friedrich] 1p [text article, frontis] • Duckaneer [Frank Brunner/Frank Brunner & Steve Leialoha] 11p [reprinted from Quack! #1 (July 1976)] • 3) Skywalker [Mike Vosburg and Steve Englehart/Mike Vosburg] 11p [reprinted from Star*Reach #7 (Jan. 1977)] • Free Ways [Lee Marrs] 8p [reprinted from Heavy Metal #Vol. 3, #4 (Aug. 1977)]

• Star*Reach Revisited [Mike Friedrich] 1p [text article, frontis] • Parsifal [Patrick Mason/P. Craig Russell] 31p [from the opera by Richard Wagner, reprinted from Star*Reach #8 (Apr. 1977), Star*Reach #10 (Sept. 1977), and Parsifal #nn (May 1978) • Addendum [P. Craig Russell] 1p [text article, reprinted from Parsifal #nn (May 1978)] • The Star*Reach Checklist, part 6 [?] 1p [on inside back cover] • Star*Reach Covers [Dean Motter and Ken Steacy, Jeff Bonivert, Lee Marrs, Frank Brunner, Howard Chaykin, P. Craig Russell] 1p [on back cover— covers from Star*Reach #16–18, Star*Reach’s Greatest Hits, Cody Starbuck #nn, and Parsifal #nn]

Chapter Five

The Stars of Star*Reach

An Interview with lee marrs Lee Marrs’ career began as an assistant for Golden Age artist Tex Blaisdell. She became one of the founding female members of the underground comix movement of the early 1970s and was one of the few artists who moved freely between underground and mainstream work. Besides her Star*Reach material, she did humorous strips for both DC’s Plop! and Marvel’s Crazy. She also wrote stories for Wonder Woman, Batman, Zatanna, “The Viking Prince,” Indiana Jones, and individual stories for DC’s Weird Mystery Tales and House of Secrets.

had all kinds of different ideas and had gotten to know— through Alternative Feature Services—a number of the underground comic people, including Gilbert Sheldon, who did the Fabulous Furry Freak Brothers. I brought him a lot of the work I had done and asked, “What do you suggest?” His advice was to come up with a character, or a set of characters, about whom you could do lots and lots of stories. That was the way to really get into this field. Not to do a bunch of different stories with different characters in different genres, but to develop a character and keep going with that. I came up with a storyline featuring a central character: a teenybopper intellectual who was an outsider—very Mad magazine existentialist. But once I started working on it, penciling that character, she became someone else. She became the

RICHARD ARNDT: Welcome! To start off, what led to your underground strip, “Pudge, Girl Blimp”? LEE MARRS: When I moved out to California, I was working as a television graphic artist. The television studios were having cutbacks, and, within a month of moving out here, I was laid off along with a couple of other people who had just been hired. I was doing a variety of art jobs and ran into a couple of guys who wanted to start an alternative features service for college newspapers and community newspapers. So one of the things we did, in addition to my doing cartoons and illustrations, was that we started running cartoon strips and comic pages in the papers. That got me aware of underground comics, which I had never heard of on the East Coast. I saw people doing their very own stories, developing their very own characters and keeping the rights to them. The idea that there was no money in these kinds of Lee Marrs has a drink in this jam piece of self-illustrations by the creators of Wimmen’s Comix. strips was not clear yet. [laughs] So I © respective owners

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