Edited by John Morrow & Jon B. Cooke
THE WORLD OF TWOMORROWS Edited by John Morrow & Jon B. Cooke John & Pamela Morrow Founders & Publishers Design & Production by Jon B. Cooke • Proofreading & Micromanagement by John Morrow Transcribing by Rose Rummel-Eury “Treasure” Cover Art & Colors by Tom McWeeney This Book is Dedicated with Appreciation to The Loyal TwoMorrows Readership Special Thanks to Danny Epperson, Cory Sedlmeier, & Adam Cadwell and to all who helped TwoMorrows along the way, though are not represented in this book ©2020 TwoMorrows Publishing Copyrights & Trademarks
Ant-Man, Avengers, Bucky, Captain Maerica, Captain Mar-Vell, Darkhawk, Dr. Doom, Fantstic Four, Galactus, Green Goblin, Hulk, Human Torch, Ikaris, Iron Man, Mr. Fantastic, New Mutants, Red Skull, Sentinels, Silver Surer, Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Thing, Thor, Toro, Vision, Watcher, Wolverine TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. / Aquaman, Atom, Batman, Big Barda, Blackhawk, Blue Beetle, Darkseid, Demon, Flash, Green Lantern, Hawkman, Infinity Man, Justice League of America, Justice Society of America, Kamandi, Kliklak, Legion of Super-Heroes, Mary Marvel, Mr. Miracle, Nemesis, Orion, Shazam, Superman, Swamp Thing, Wonder Woman TM & © DC Comics. / Alter Ego character TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas / Battle of the Planets TM & © Tatsunoko Production Co., Ltd. / Captain Action TM & © Captain Action Enterprises, LLC / Captain Victory, Galaxy Green TM & © the Jack Kirby estate / Fighting American TM & © the Joe Simon and Jack Kirby Estates / Prime8, Tekeli-li! TM & © Jon B. Cooke / Skyman TM & © Dark Horse Comics, Inc. / Star*Reach TM & © Mike Friedrich / T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents TM & © Radiant Assets, LLC / Thunderbirds TM & © ITC Entertainment Group Limited / Vampirella TM & © Dynamic Forces, Inc. / Comics Buyer’s Guide TM & © Krause Publications. / Hand of Fire TM & © Charles Hatfield. / Woodplay catalog TM & © Woodplay Inc. / CaptiveAire logo © CaptiveAire. / Xal-Kor TM & © Grass Green. / Mr. Monster TM & © Michael T. Gilbert. / Comicology TM & © Brain Saner Lamken. / Archie characters and MLJ super-heroes TM & © Archie Comics. / Snoopy, The Phantom TM & © King Features. / Savage Dragon TM & © Erik Larsen. / From the Tomb TM & © Peter Normanton. All pictured publications are © TwoMorrows Publishing, a division of TwoMorrows Inc. The characters shown on each cover are © their respective owners, as indicated on the original publications. We have attempted to properly credit photographs included in the book, but even if photo credits are unknown, all images are © the respective owners. Please inform of us omissions, and additional credits will be included in any updated editions of this book. Alter Ego TM & © Roy & Dann Thomas / Back Issue, RetroFan TM & © Michael Eury & TwoMorrows Publishing / BrickJournal TM & © BrickJournal Media, LLC & TwoMorrows Publishing / Comic Book Artist TM & © Jon B. Cooke / Comic Book Creator TM & © TwoMorrows Publishing & Jon B. Cooke / Draw! TM & © Action Planet, Inc. & TwoMorrows Publishing / American Comic Book Chronicles, Modern Masters, Rough Stuff, Jack Kirby Collector TM & © TwoMorrows Publishing / Write Now! TM & © Danny Fingeroth & TwoMorrows Publishing.
TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING
10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, North Carolina 27614 USA www.twomorrows.com • email: twomorrow@aol.com First Printing • January 2020 • Printed in China Softcover ISBN-13: 978-1-60549-092-2 Hardcover ISBN-13: 978-1-60549-093-9
TABLE OF CONTENTS
Editors’ Prefaces................................................................................................................. 6 Introduction by Mark Evanier: “The Morrow ‘Kids’: Too Good Not to Like”.......................... 7 Foreword by Alex Ross: “In Praise of John Morrow”............................................................. 9 Ladies First: Pam Morrow, The Brightest of Two Morrows.................................................. 10 1994: John Morrow’s The Kirby Collector: To Honor the King............................................ 14 1998: Jon B. Cooke’s ‘Kirby Collector for the Other Guys’: Comic Book Artist..................... 54 1999: The Alter Ego Trip of Rascally Roy Thomas................................................................ 84 2000: Jim Amash: “If You Worked in Comics, You Deserve to be Remembered”..............124 2001: The Companion Books—Glen Cadigan’s Five Years of Yesterday..............................138 2001: The Fever Dreams of George Khoury......................................................................142 2001: Mike Manley and the Art of Making Draw! Magazine............................................148 2002: Danny Fingeroth: The (Not So) Secret Origin of Write Now!...................................168 2003: Mark Voger’s Monster Mash and More Pop Culture Fun........................................172 2003: Michael Eury on the Origin of Euryman and the Birth of Back Issue......................178 2003: Eric Nolen-Weathington and His Masterful Time with Modern Masters.................193 2006: Bob McLeod Gets Into the Rough Stuff..................................................................208 2008: Joe Meno on Building his BrickJournal.................................................................215 2009: Pierre Comtois’ Marvel Books: Through the Decades at the House of Ideas...........218 2012: American Comic Book Chronicles: Creating Chronicles with Keith Dallas..............223 2013: Jon B. Cooke’s CBA (Sort of) Returns: Comic Book Creator.....................................233 2018: Michael Eury on RetroFan: The Crazy, Cool Stuff We Grew Up With........................242 TwoMorrows Bibliography: 1994–2019.......................................................................246 Afterword by Paul Levitz: “The Deep Dive of TwoMorrows”..............................................251 Postscript by Jon B. Cooke: “My Yesterdays Today… and TwoMorrows”...........................252 Epilogue by John Morrow: “It All Comes Back to Jack… and Family”..............................254
LADIES FIRST
Pamela Morrow
Co-Publisher, Morrow #1 Born: 1964 Residence: Raleigh, North Carolina Vocation: Graphic designer Seminal Comic Book: Are you kidding? (But I did read Watchmen and Maus) Below: In 1995, not long after The Jack Kirby Collector launched, Pam trained for and placed third in a bodybuilding competition. You can see why John never talks smack to her, unless it’s about the across-the-state bicycle ride they took, as she recounts here. Yes, that’s “Incredible Hulk” Lou Ferrigno with our own “Little Barda” a week later at Chicago Comic-Con.
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The Brightest of Two Morrows Jon B. Cooke: So, how’d you and John get together to begin with? [laughter] Pamela Morrow: Wink, wink. Is this equivalent to, “What on earth do you see in this guy?” [laughter] I met John in the ’80s, at Auburn University, where we were both studying art. He hung out with a guy I thought was kinda cute and who seemed like someone I would like to get to know better, so he was actually my “in” to getting to this other guy. As fate would have it, I got to know John better instead. The more time I spent with him, the less appealing the other guy came to be. What struck me most was his sense of humor; he was always making me laugh. John was easy-going, very down-to-earth, not pretentious like so many other guys I had known, and was someone who could always find the bright side in any situation. We both ended up attending a Christmas party where John convinced me to let him drive me home. His car was supposedly just down the street. As it turned out, the car was over a mile away, at his apartment, and by the time we walked there in the freezing cold, I could have walked home myself to my own apartment! JBC: Well, John’s version is that he’d had a couple of drinks, and since he doesn’t drink very often, he wasn’t thinking that clearly. Pam: That’s probably true. We laughed a lot along
that cold and blustery hike as he kept trying to convince me the car was just around the next corner. We did finally arrive and he did drive me to my apartment. I invited him in and while we thawed and continued to laugh, it did reach a point I thought he would never leave! Finally, we said good night and decided to meet for lunch the following day at an old Auburn haunt, James Brown’s Family Restaurant, a buffet-style set-up in an old converted funeral home. (Yep, you read that right.) They had great food! Had comedian Bill Engvall been there, he would have definitely said to me, “… and here’s yer sign.” [laughter] We were pretty much an item from that point on and the rest is history. I couldn’t meet a better guy. He’s an amazing dad, a great husband, with a moral character that can’t be matched. And he still makes me laugh. JBC: Did his comic book hobby give you any pause about dating him? Pam: I didn’t think much about the comic book hobby. It was more of an “Isn’t that sweet… ” reaction. Not knowing the impact it would have on my life, kept me from running away screaming, I guess. He also sold some of those comic books to help us buy our first house, so what’s not to love about comic books?! JBC: In your early advertising days, where did you envision you’d end up in your careers? Pam: Wow, I’m not sure I thought that far ahead. I did think it would always be advertising. I never could have imagined publishing centered around comic books. I had hoped God would continue to bless us with work, which always seemed to just fall out of the sky. We never lacked for business. I feel our work was creative and of excellent quality, and we were recommended constantly by word-ofmouth. Work would start to thin out and before we could really begin to be concerned, a big project would come our way. I do have a theory: When you take care of the world, the world takes care of you. Back to my hubby being a great guy, he has always given in many ways to those less fortunate or just down on their luck, and it has always come back to our family a hundredfold. It has never failed. I recommend anyone try it. It’s a cosmic boomerang of comic book proportions!
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JBC: Do you still cringe at how far the quality of typography has declined due to computers? Pam: Yes, that was a hard one for me. In the old days, we ordered type from the typesetter and pasted it to mechanical boards. I came from an advertising agency that had us cut apart type letter-by-letter with an X-Acto knife—and not just large headline type, but tiny body copy as well. We had to make sure it was visually balanced black-to-white, and the spacing was just-so. When that went by the wayside and computers took over and letter spacing was extra horrendous, I thought the world was coming to an end! All this type with letter spacing you could “drive a truck through”—how would I fix it?! Once I got off my high horse and realized I could actually kern letters on the computer much faster than by hand with an X-Acto, I calmed down. There was something special about crafting that old type to perfection by hand, though, that never really translated to the computer. JBC: What do you remember about when he first told you he wanted to do a newsletter about Kirby? Pam: Again, “Isn’t that sweet… ” comes to mind. [laughter] I had no idea how that little newsletter would change our world. Honestly, my biggest concern at the time was that it be a quality piece, even if it was just a little commemorative newsletter to a handful of Kirby fans. John wanted to fold it in thirds with a postage stamp on it and send it through the mail unprotected, to get ripped and run over by the postman! How could I allow this?! JBC: What would he do without you? [laughter] Pam: I convinced him to get better quality copies instead of using our rinky-dink office copier, leave it flat, and mail them in 9" x 12" envelopes (because the one thing I did know about comic book geeks is they like their stuff in pristine condition!). We could even make the envelopes cute and copy art on the outside! Does anybody still have one of those awesome envelopes?
Pam Morrow: The Brightest of Two Morrows
JBC: You’d probably be surprised how many readers kept those. Even the one John cluelessly sent out with a Nazi super-villain on it, swastika and all. The letters you must’ve gotten over that one… Pam: And so it began. The newsletter got longer and more in-depth and finally became a printed piece going from 8½" x 11" black-&-white, to partial color, to tabloid-size, and finally full-color. It amazes me to this day that there is never a lack of art or information to fill up each issue. Jack Kirby’s body of work is astounding. It’s a mystery how a Kirby Collector comes together—things just seem to come out of nowhere in a kismet kind of way. Jack seems to have his hand on every issue. JBC: What do you remember most about that first summer after you had just started the Kirby Collector? In 1995, you went to San Diego, but also to the Dallas Fantasy Fair, and Chicago Comic-Con… Pam: Comic book conventions, oh my! That was a first for me! I did not know what in the world I had stepped into. Who were these grown people dressed up like Halloween in July? 25 years later, I am still taken aback by a lot of things I see at Comic-Con. When friends ask me to describe it, I am often at a loss for words. I have met many famous comic book artists and writers and inkers at conventions over the years. They have all been so nice and gracious. JBC: On your envelope stuffing nights for each
Above: January 16, 1987, will live in infamy, as the day a beautiful young woman unknowingly committed to a life of comic-cons, fanboys, and looking daily at John’s muy macho facial hair.
APPROVED BY THE KIRBY ESTATE This is the publication Kirby fans have been waiting for! The Jack Kirby Collector is a new 16-page publication by and for collectors of the artistry of the King! It features news of upcoming Kirby projects, reviews of Jack’s work, personal recollections, and plenty of great Kirby art (including rare and unpublished work)! And it’s produced entirely by Kirby fans! Celebrate the career of the King of comics, Jack Kirby! Send $2.50 to: TwoMorrows, 502 St. Mary’s St., Raleigh, NC 27605.
Above: This first ad for The Jack Kirby Collector ran in an August 1994 issue of Comics Buyer’s Guide. Pam had no idea the effect it would have on her life. Inset left: A major numbskull move was for TwoMorrows to thoughtlessly feature the Nazi swastika symbol emblazoned on the Red Skull on an early mailing envelope. Readers complained it looked to their postman like they were receiving neo-Nazi literature in the mail!
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1994: THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR
The Kirby Collector : To Honor the King John Morrow
One Morrow’s Early Daze
Jon B. Cooke: Dude, where are you from? John Morrow: Montgomery, Alabama. I haven’t been back much since I graduated from Auburn University. It was a great school experience, though I can’t say I particularly miss Alabama. My mom Born: 1962 still lives there and my dad did until he died a few Residence: years ago. As time goes by, you don’t go back as Raleigh, often. I have two older brothers, Bob and Paul, in North Carolina Atlanta and a younger sister, Janet, in Birmingham. Vocation: Publisher, My deep South roots are very strong, which might TwoMorrows Publishing explain why I never heard of The New Gods before Favorite Creator: I saw an ad in The Comics Buyers’ Guide. Duh! JBC: Is anybody else in your family creative? Seminal Comic Book: John: My mom is a musician—I guess I got that Kamandi #12 from her. From ninth grade on, I was convinced I John’s lifelong appreciawas going to be a band director. I went to music tion of comic book creator school for two years and realized, “Wow, I can Jack Kirby leads him to make this pitiful amount of money doing someproduce a modest Kirby thing else, and not have the hassles of being fanzine in 1994—and, in a band director.” So I switched majors halfway turn, inadvertently starts a through college, and transferred to Auburn and publishing enterprise. got my art degree. I met my wife Pam—she was recruited right out of college by a large ad agency Right inset: Poster promoting here in North Carolina. The Jack Kirby Collector, given to Pam graduated a quarter before I did, so I folretailers in 1995, and printed at lowed her here to North Carolina. She helped me the same time as TJKC #6— another financial risk that, early get my foot in the door at the big agency where on, paid off for TwoMorrows. she was working, and I started picking up freelance illustration and design work with them, and our advertising career took off from there. We both hated working for agencies because the pay was horrible and the treatment was usually bad, but it was an amazing learning experience. Auburn got their first Apple computers the quarter after I graduated, so our school training was all conventional graphic design and advertising skills. I didn’t know a computer from a telephone back then, and I remember picking up one of my first jobs as a freelance designer for an art director who was out on his own, and had an early Macintosh computer: A Mac SE/30. He said, “You’ve gotta see The Jack Kirby this thing!” It had a tiny black-&-white eight-inch Collector screen, not even grayscale, right? He said, “Look First Issue: 9/7/1994 what this can do!” He showed me how you clicked Editor, The Jack Kirby Collector, Morrow #2
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little dots and you could create perfectly smooth line-art drawings. Back in those days, we had French curves and Rapidograph pens for doing that by hand. When you tried to draw a precision black line-art logo for somebody, it was painstaking and always frustrating for me. To see what he did on that computer… it was very primitive by today’s standards, but I thought, “This has potential.” JBC: These were Bézier curves? Vector art? John: Yes, probably Adobe Illustrator version 1.0. I could immediately see how this could be a great time-saver. I had no clue it would evolve into what we have today—it’s become our whole lives. Every time I went in there to pick up a job from him, he’d show me a new thing he could do with it, and I remember coming back and talking to Pam about it. Pam hated cutting Rubylith and Amberlith to make color separations. They had grunts at the big agencies who would do that for you, but I had to do it myself as a freelancer. So when I saw this
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on the computer, I thought, “This has potential to eliminate the need to cut that film.” We used to drop off mechanical boards at the local camera shop to be shot. You’d have to drive over there, leave the artboards, pick them up a day or two later after they had time to shoot them; it was a long process. That was when modems first came into play. What were they, 1200 baud or some incredibly slow thing? I thought, “Wouldn’t it be cool if one day, I could drop off the art there and they could send it back to me through the telephone like a fax?” I didn’t yet make the connection that one day I’d be sending it both directions, or that I would be able to scan it myself, like I do now. Computers changed what we do, and now we can’t live without them. But in those pre-computer days, Pam taught me how to hand-kern typeset galleys. You glue it down on a mechanical board and with an X-Acto knife and T-square, you cut a
little trench below and above each line, and then you cut out the whitespace between letters where the typesetter didn’t bump them tight enough, and slide it over in the trench. Spacing the letters more evenly visually makes a better-looking, more professional headline. But that ad agency she worked for took it to the next step. They hand-kerned the tiny body copy when they’d get it back from the typesetter; their mechanical boards had hundreds of X-Acto knife cuts on a single newspaper ad, because they would go through and hand-kern every single letter of the body copy, not just the headline. It was insane, but Pam taught me how to visually look for poorly kerned type. She is a super-detail person. That was eye-opening for me.
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I wouldn’t have lasted in their production department, though—I was much more suited for freelance work. I remember going in for my first freelance job at her agency; I’m right out of school. The art director says, “We need this billboard illustration done; can you do this?” I was doing airbrush at the time and I said, “Sure, no problem.” It was to be a winter scarf that flowed across the whole billboard, with parts of it hanging off the ends, and it had a Piedmont Airlines logo on the scarf. So I stayed up all night working on this illustration. When I brought it in the next morning, he said, “This is perfect, exactly what we want.” I’m thinking, “Great, I’m gonna get paid!” He saw me sort of just standing there and said, “Okay, send me an invoice and I’ll get it processed.” I said, “Huh? A what? What’s an invoice?” The guy thankfully took sympathy on me and sat me down, and said, “This is how it works.” They didn’t teach us the practical business end in art school—they just taught us the art end! So he said, “This is what an invoice looks like, and you submit it to me, and you get your money in 30 days.” “Thirty days?! We have to pay rent next week; what are we going to do for the next 30 days?” But I started getting the hang of it; understanding how it works, reading a lot of books about how the whole advertising industry works for freelancers. So Pam worked full-time for her agency and I worked freelance, and, after two years of that, I was doing most of my freelance work for one small agency that couldn’t afford me anymore. I was doing so much work for them, that it was cheaper for them to hire a full-time person to do what I was doing, but they gave me first dibs on the job. I was stuck: “Well, if
Above: Long before comics, John got hooked on pinball. Here he is, seven years old, with his first machine, at Christmas. Today he owns a commercial one and used his knowledge of the game to write an intro for DC’s In The Days of the Mob collection of Kirby stories. Below: College graduation from Auburn University led Pam Morrow to a large advertising agency.
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John Morrow: The Jack Kirby Collector
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1999: ALTER EGO
The Alter Ego Trip of Rascally Roy Thomas Roy the Boy
Comics. That was the comic that got me started, Jon B. Cooke: Roy, was it comics first as far as pub- as much as anything, but the individual comics, Editor, Alter Ego too, got me interested. My second favorite comic lications/ periodicals go that caught your interest? would have been Flash Comics, because it had The Did you like magazines, in general? Born: 1940 Roy Thomas: Of course. I was probably four-and-a- Flash, Hawkman, Johnny Thunder, and later The Residence: half or something like that (and I was involved with Atom. Within the next year, I encountered Captain St. Matthews, things other than comics) when my parents—most- Marvel and that crew and the Marvel books and, South Carolina to a lesser extent, most of the super-heroes. I just ly my mother—bought me Little Golden Books. I Vocation: Freelance didn’t have enough dimes. My parents didn’t have remember one called A Day in the Jungle, around Writer/Author/Editor much money and probably shouldn’t have bought that same time, with animals (including a black Favorite Comics Creator: me as many comics as they did, but thank heaven panther, and I loved black panthers) going around Stan Lee they did! looking for somebody in the jungle. There were Seminal Comic Book: JBC: I remember talking to Jerry Bails about this a couple like that which I read over and over until All-Star Comics #25 and I’ve always been fascinated with your obsesI memorized them. My mother also read them to Roy Thomas was a foundme. They helped me learn to read, too. (And thank sion with the Justice Society of America. It was ing member of comics obvious to me as a reader back in the ’70s and heavens they taught me to read upper and lower fandom in the 1960s, and ’80s, especially with your All-Star Squadron and case letters; the comics were only good for the his Alter Ego fanzine was even prior to that. I wonder, and tell me if this is upper case letters.) But, I don’t know what else I a pioneer of its time in read except the Little Golden Books. There weren’t true: Is it that you saw a shared universe with these documenting comics hischaracters, and that was the epiphany so many as many children’s books back in the early ’40s. tory. In 1965, he became people had with Marvel Comics in the ’60s? JBC: What was the seminal comic book that got Stan Lee’s right-hand man Roy: I specifically remember telling someone— you going? Was it All-Star Comics #4? and a key writer at Marvel and I don’t recall if it was a neighbor or my little Comics, eventually serving Roy: All-Star #4? Hey, how old do you think I am, as editor-in-chief. But, as Jon?! That was 1941! [laughter] No, the first All-Star sister (she would have been only one or two at the retirement from his pro time)—maybe somebody who saw one of the comI would’ve seen could have been #24, but was career beckons, he returns ics, and I remember having to explain, at the age probably #25, the first one I definitely remember. to his first love, and of five or under, that what I liked was that all the JBC: Was that the one that launched you into relaunches Alter Ego at characters were together. That’s a little four-yearfandom? TwoMorrows in 1999. old’s version of a shared universe. Then The Marvel Roy: It launched me into reading comics as a Family appealed to me, as they were a somewhat kid, but I know that by the time I saw All-Star, I’d shared universe. They had their separate series; already seen a couple of comics with Wonder they got together, even if they were so much alike. Woman, Green Lantern, and a couple of the other I always wanted that to happen with the Marvel characters. It wasn’t like that was my first comic and right from the start, I saw this comic with seven characters, but I don’t know if I ever saw the two All Winners Squad issues [All Winners Comics #19, characters… but what blew my mind about it was I had seen these characters in separate stories and Fall 1946, and #21 Winter ’46–47], as you’d think I’d remember them, because I was five or six when here they were all together and I didn’t see that they came out. So, yes, it was that shared universe; anywhere else in comics I was buying, and unforthat’s what appealed to me. tunately when I went looking, I didn’t find it again By the time Marvel proper started [in 1961], DC either. They didn’t do that with the Timely Comics, already had a shared universe, as Superman and except for a couple of issues that I may not have Batman had been together for years in World’s even seen. There was The Marvel Family, but they Finest Comics, and Julie Schwartz had been doing were pretty much the same character, just multithat for years. He had Flash and Green Lantern Alter Ego plied. First Issue: 7/1/1999 cross over by that time already. There just wasn’t anything quite like All-Star
Roy Thomas
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Fantastic Four #1 came out in August of 1961. By that time, I think there had already been two Flash stories with Green Lantern. That became the shared universe for me, too. It was really the DC shared universe first and then the Marvel; it’s just that the Marvel passed up the other one. At DC, it became very clear, very quickly, that only the Julie Schwartz universe and that Superman/ Batman thing were together, and the rest of DC comics seemed very compartmentalized. Even the ridiculousness of Superman and Batman being minimized and sometimes appearing minimalized on the Justice League covers was kind of crazy. Within about a year, Stan was doing it right. He was having the characters in the same universe. This was way beyond even All-Star. JBC: If you had an issue of All-Flash Comics and an issue of Flash Comics, you’d choose Flash because you were getting a bargain because it had more characters in it? Roy: Oh, yes. All-Flash would have been further down the list. My favorite character, based mostly on visuals more than stories, though I liked the stories too… was Hawkman, who appeared in Flash Comics, but not in All-Flash or anything else. I liked Green Lantern, too, probably more than the Flash. But I liked all those characters in varying degrees. JBC: So, have you thought about it? You came out with four volumes of All-Star Companions… is it sentimental? Is it the stuff has substance? What is it? Roy: It’s based on several things, I think. One is partly sentimental. I’m interested in the history of comics, but I’m aware of the fact that All-Star isn’t automatically one of the best comics out there in terms of quality. At times, it had better than average art. After all, in the height of it, when I was reading at five, six, seven years old, it had Carmine Infantino, Joe Kubert, Lee Elias, Irwin Hasen,
1999 Roy Thomas: Alter Ego
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Alexander Toth, all working on it. I could tell that it had better art than many comics I was reading. When I did All-Star Companion, I suppose it was largely out of sentiment. But an old Overstreet Comic Book Price Guide talked about All-Star #3 as being up there with the very top breakthrough titles by bringing in that kind of shared universe in the same way as the Human Torch/Sub-Mariner stories were doing around the same time. I felt it was a title with history and lineage—from All-Star Comics through the Julie Schwartz revival in Earth-Two and through my own work and so forth—and that’s the first 50 years between 1940–90 (from then on, I totally lose interest; I see it having almost no connection anymore to the old comics). JBC: If you could only pick one comic artist, would it be Joe Kubert? Roy: It’s always been Joe Kubert because of a combination of his Hawkman from the ’40s, even more than the ’60s—even though I like them both—and then his Tor in 1950, which I think was his best work. It would probably be Kubert, but when I look at it, I have to realize, too, that right up there with him, even if I didn’t know it always, was Kirby. From the time I was at least about six or
Left: Roy and wife Dann, the night before their wedding in 1981. Below: Roy holds an original copy of Alter Ego Vol.1, #1, at the “Golden Age of Fanzines” panel at the 2011 Comic-Con International: San Diego. Panel participants included moderator Bill Schelly, Jean Bails, Roy Thomas, Richard Kyle (behind Roy in the photo), Paul Levitz, Pat Lupoff, Richard Lupoff, and Maggie Thompson.
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2000: ALTER EGO
If You Worked in Comics, You Deserve to be Remembered Jim Amash
Interviewer, Associate Editor of Alter Ego Born: 1960 Residence: Greensboro, North Carolina Vocation: Comic book artist Favorite Creator: Jack Kirby Seminal Comic Book: Too many to choose from! A major component of TwoMorrows’ version of Alter Ego is its relentless search for the life stories of creators from comics’ past. Few have done more to find and celebrate those unsung heroes than interviewer Jim Amash.
Below: TwoMorrows books Jim has co-authored—just a few of hopefully many more to come!
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The Acme Years
Eric Nolen-Weathington: How did you first hear about TwoMorrows? The Kirby Collector? Jim Amash: I met John back in ’86, when I was working at Acme Comics [the Greensboro, North Carolina comic book store] and we had Jack Kirby as a guest at our convention. John found out about it a couple of months or so after it happened and was really upset. I remember when he came in, and he was asking about Kirby. He was so sorry he’d missed it. It was killing him, you know? He drove all the way from Raleigh to Greensboro, just to hear about the convention, so I thought, “Well, that guy likes Kirby.” [laughter] ENW: That’s about an hour and 45-minute drive. Jim: Right! That was the first time I met John, but the first time I heard about The Jack Kirby Collector was from Bob Millikin, who used to work for Acme Comics after I left and became a comic book artist. He heard that there was a Kirby Collector magazine that was going to come out, and I think I got John’s phone number and called him, and John was surprised that I remembered him. I didn’t remember him by name, but we had talked when he came in the shop, so I remembered him. And because he knew I was a big Kirby fan, he gave me a comp copy, and then gave me comp copies after that! Of course, I was thrilled about it. And I contributed to the magazine some over the years. I contributed some photographs, a few Kirby pencil pieces that nobody had seen. Well, one had been seen in the
Jack Kirby Masterworks, an unused splash of Black Panther. I wrote a couple of small articles and I did interviews with John Severin, Mike Royer, and Joe Sinnott, all about inking Kirby. I may have done one more, but it’s hard to remember after all this time. ENW: Was that the first time you ever interviewed someone, or had you done interviews at the shows you ran? Jim: I’d interviewed people at the shows. And then I’d interviewed a few people in the APA [Amateur Press Association ’zine] that I was in. I’d interviewed Alex Toth, too. Alex was the first formal (even if it was kind of informal) interview I ever did. We talked every single night, sometimes more than once, and we talked about interesting stuff, I felt, and he felt that too, otherwise he wouldn’t have talked to me. [laughs] He was not always a patient man, you know. [laughter] Anyway, I wanted to do an interview, and also kind of have a record of our calls, but the problem with that was Alex got really uptight about it, and I wasn’t getting the kind of answers that I had hoped to get. But I did get an interview out of it, and then later I called him and filled in a few things. That was the first interview I conducted that was not done at a convention. ENW: And when was that? Jim: That would have been about 1990. I published it in the APA a year or two later, and then Jon Cooke reprinted it in Comic Book Artist. ENW: And, just for context, at what point did you start working professionally as an inker?
The World of TwoMorrows
Jim: Nineteen ninety-two. ENW: Okay, so you were talking to guys before you even broke in to the industry. Jim: Well, Acme Comics put on a convention every year, so I got to know a lot of people through the years. You know me: I’m a guy that’s easy to talk with, so I’d go to a couple of other conventions and meet people and talk with them, and before I knew it, I knew people! [laughter] I wasn’t trying to make connections to get into comics by knowing all these people. In fact, none of the people I met at conventions got me into comic books. They helped me, because I would send my work out, and Alex Toth would criticize my work, and very gently—certainly a lot more gently than he criticized other people. I accused him, “Alex, I think you’re kind of soft on me because you like me.” His thundering answer was, “Like hell I am!” [laughter] “I’m not cutting you any slack! I just think you’re better than you think you are. At least you’re doing honest work. You’re not trying to be showy; you’re trying to tell a story.” There were other people: Gray Morrow, Pat Boyette, Steranko, Dan Barry. I could spend some time on how Dan Barry taught me things about figure drawing and stuff like that. He was very important for me to understand some things: composition. I have a bachelor’s and a master’s degree in fine arts, so I had an easier time breaking into comics because I had an art background, and I was doing fine art before I was doing comic books. And I had a couple of cartoons published in Amazing Heroes way back, sometime in the ’80s. ENW: I didn’t know that! Jim: I forgot about that myself. [laughter] Tom Heintjes, a buddy of mine, had gone to work for Fantagraphics and became editor of The Comics Journal. One day he just said, “You ought to submit a couple of cartoons to Amazing Heroes.” I did and they were accepted. I remember one of them was an editorial about how Marvel had treated Kirby by not wanting to return his artwork, and making him sign that long form. I knew Jack, and I certainly was going to do something about that, and I did what little one man who’s not in the business could do, which is complain. [laughter] I always told my customers about it. Years before I got into comics, I’d tell people what I believed about the Lee and Kirby creation process, and that Jack was, at the very least, the co-creator, which sometimes Stan would say that, and often he didn’t. And when he gave a deposition in the Kirby Family v. Disney lawsuit, Stan claimed he created everything, which was not true.
Jim Amash: Interviewer Extraordinaire
ENW: No. [laughter] Jim: Anyway, I became, not a frequent contributor, but I contributed some to the Kirby Collector, and I actually got to know John.
Above: A recent HeroesCon (Charlotte, North Carolina) encounter between Roy Thomas and Jim. Photo by Heidi Amash.
Working With Roy
ENW: When did you first encounter Roy Thomas? Jim: I believe I met Roy in ’93. Somebody was putting on a small show in Charlotte and knew what a Roy Thomas fan I was, and thought it’d be cool to sit us next to each other, which really was great. We had a great time. Immediately started talking—two big talkers at the same time. [laughter] Nobody else got a word in. I got to ask him some questions, informally, of stuff I was interested in, and he asked a little about me, and that’s how Roy and I got to be friends, I mean literally from that moment on! And then, of course, later Roy started doing Alter Ego on the flip-side of Comic Book Artist, and then A/E became a magazine on its own again after many years of lying dormant. I didn’t contribute to the earliest issues, because there was something about Roy that I didn’t realize. I was talking to Bill Schelly at the San Diego convention about him, and he said, “You’ve got to understand something with Roy: unless Roy knows that you know a lot about something, the best way, if you want to do something for Roy, is to approach Roy.” I’d been waiting for Roy to approach me, but I guess he was so busy, because he was still doing comic books, running the farm, running the magazine—you know, having a real life. [laughter] I’m sure I wasn’t on his radar when it came to the early issues, so I took Bill’s advice and called Roy, who said, “What do you have in mind?” I said, “There are two guys that really need to be interviewed. One is Vince Fago, because he was the main [Timely] editor when Stan Lee was in
Below: 2011’s Alter Ego: Centennial (a.k.a. Alter Ego #100) featured the first extensive interview with Jim about his work documenting comics history.
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2001: DRAW!
The Art of Making Draw! Magazine A Sketchy Start
Mike: Yes, Dave is a musician and my brother Marc has dabbled in everything from music to photograJon B. Cooke: What’s your middle name, Mike? Editor, Draw! phy. My family is very creative. Mike Manley: Cole, like Nat King Cole. JBC: What was the subject of your father’s photogJBC: Where are you from? Born: 1961 raphy? What made him outstanding? Mike: I’m from Detroit, Michigan; grew up and Residence: lived there until I was 13. Then I moved to Ann Ar- Mike: He did a lot of landscapes and human interUpper Darby, bor, Michigan. I lived there until I moved to Philly in est. He has boxes of photos of us as kids—whatevPennsylvania the summer of 1984. I’ve been out east since then. er struck his interest, but he’s taken tons and tons Vocation: Comics, of great landscape photos. One award he won was JBC: Did you have creative people in your family? animation, and for a dog looking in a window or a door, waiting for Mike: Yes. Actually, my grandfather was what you newspaper strip artist would now call a “display letterer.” He was a com- his master to return. I remember that as a kid. Favorite Creator: mercial artist. Back in the day before computers did JBC: The subject of your mom’s paintings? Jack Kirby Mike: I remember her doing pen-&-inks and I everything, he used to do the hand lettering, like Seminal Comic Book: in the supermarket… big signs. He worked all over remember still-lifes. The Kirby Jimmy Olsens JBC: What kind of upbringing did you have? Suband had several accounts: car dealerships, superFurthering TwoMorrows’ urban? How would you characterize it? markets. My mom was artistic. She used to draw trend of having its fan Mike: Middle/working class. and paint and my dad is a fantastic photographer. publications produced by There are definitely artistic inclinations in my family. JBC: What did your dad do? professionals, a new line Mike: Initially, he worked for the board of educaJBC: Is your father professional or amateur? of “how-to” publications tion and then for the post office. Originally, he was Mike: Amateur. I think he wanted to be a photostarts taking shape with a mailman and eventually inside as a clerk. journalist at one time, and he still takes a lot of the introduction of Draw! JBC: Your mom was a housewife? great photos. He has Instagram and Facebook magazine, edited by top Mike: Yeah, she was a housewife and a good mom; comics artist Mike Manley. accounts, and he’s won a lot of awards. she didn’t have a job outside the house until I was JBC: What’s your father’s name? in my mid-teens—pretty much like a lot of people Mike: Pierre. Mom’s first name is Nancy. who grew up in my generation. JBC: She was being creative when painting? Inset right: Mike Manley, set up in Mike: Yeah. I must have JBC: That’s when the latchkey generation began. Artist’s Alley, in 2005, to promote his own Action Planet self-publish- been early teens, when ing imprint, as well as his various I remember she was Draw!-related publications. taking art classes at a local community college for a while. Looking back, there were always a lot of reproductions of art on the wall at home. There was always art around. They’d take us to the art museums around Detroit. JBC: You have siblings? Mike: Yeah, two brothers. My middle brother is Dave and my youngDraw! est brother is Marc. First Issue: 3/1/2001 JBC: Are they creative?
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Mike: Yeah, in the ’70s and ’80s. JBC: Did you have newspapers in the house? Mike: Yes, the Detroit Free Press and, later on, the Ann Arbor News. JBC: The accompanying comic strips… did they impress you at all? Mike: Thinking back, yes. Probably more as a kid— Peanuts, Wizard of Id, and B.C.—those are what I remember. I remember looking at Steve Canyon, when Caniff was still doing it. I remember thinking the way he would draw mouths was a little weird, an odd style to me as a kid. Flash Gordon and Steve Roper and Mike Nomad—I remember those as a kid, but I got more into reading the strips probably from Scholastic. They’d have those reprint books in school. You could get these Charlie Brown reprint books. I think I saw that stuff more through there and I was probably into comics and stuff because my dad was into comics. He would tell us about the comics he read as a kid. He read The Spirit. I didn’t know any of that stuff at the time. He liked Popeye and The Phantom, which is ironic because that’s what I do now! He’s more excited about me doing The Phantom than maybe anything else. JBC: [Chuckles] What’s the first comic you remember? Mike: There are probably others I read before this, but there’s one I read that fascinated me. It
2001 Mike Manley: Draw!
2002
was a Superman, and on the cover there’s some guy made out of crystal laying in some kind of sarcophagus. I was trying to find it and eventually I found a copy online. That’s the first comic; I loved Superman as a kid. It was probably my favorite comic book, although I loved Batman, but I liked Superman the most. JBC: Were you exposed to the TV show at all? Mike: Yeah, I watched The Adventures of Superman, and like other kids growing up in the ’60s, I watched the Batman TV show. For us, a big thrill was we could go over on Sunday night to my grandparents’ house and watch their color TV. I remember the transformative experience of being able to see your favorite TV show in color! It was so shocking and dramatic! My favorite show was Lost in Space and I remember seeing an episode in color and seeing the robot’s claws were red. “His claws are red? That’s so awesome!” I was so used to seeing everything in black-&-white, so seeing in a whole other dimension was pretty cool. Like everybody, I loved Space Ghost and The Impossibles, and Frankenstein Jr. was one of my favorites. It’s pretty horrible to watch now and Space Ghost is pretty horrible, too! There were some nice drawings and some terrible drawings. The stories don’t
This page: Above is young Mike (circa 1971, in Detroit) honing his artistic skills, and meeting idol Jack Kirby at the 1983 San Diego Comic-Con. Below is The Phantom by Mike, a current assignment.
2003 149
2003: BACK ISSUE
The Origin of Euryman and the Birth of Back Issue Who He Is and How He Came to Be
out in the 1970s, studying their text pages and learning about comics history. I was born on September 28, 1957, in Concord, Editor, Back Issue In the tenth grade, I began cartooning, writing North Carolina. My parents were periodicals readBorn: 1957 and drawing my own gags, and comic books about ers: Dad, a baseball fan, loved my teachers, plus lampoons The Sporting News, and Mom Residence: of DC and Marvel characters. New Bern, adored movie and celebrity I’m sure I wasn’t the only kid North Carolina magazines. The newsstand was to come up with a “Green a weekly stop for our family, Vocation: Freelance Flashlight,” but since streakwhere I was drawn to the racks Writer/Author/Editor ing—running nude in public— of colorful “funnybooks.” Favorite Creator: was a fad back then, I might’ve I initially read comics based Dick Giordano been the only one drawing The upon familiar TV characters, Seminal Comic Book: Flash as “The Flesh” (luckily, but once the Adam West-starDetective Comics #350 his super-speed and my limited ring Batman premiered, on As Comic Book Artist ability kept his naughty parts a ABC, on January 12, 1966, moves to a different blur). But it was my homemade when I was barely eight, I was publisher, TwoMorrows super-hero comics that cultivatcaptivated. With Detective and needs a new title to reed a degree of fandom at ConBatman as my gateways, my place its top-seller on the cord High School, since they next discovery was The Brave schedule. Based on having starred my classmates as caped and the Bold, the Batman previously worked with crusaders. One kid with a long pro writer and editor team-up book which would neck who was nicknamed Michael Eury, John ultimately become my all-time Morrow knows he is a “Weasel” became Weaselman, favorite comic title and my perfect fit to edit the new with a stretching neck inspired introduction to many other DC periodical, Back Issue. by Elongated Man swipes. Another kid notorious characters. Fast-forward to September 1967 and for hurling spitwads became Wonder Wad. the premiere of the Spider-Man and Fantastic Four During my junior year, I started writing fan letters animated cartoons, on ABC, on Saturday mornto Murray Boltinoff, the editor of Brave and Bold. Right: Mickey Eury, age 8, ings. Those series’ respective comics became my was destined for greatness, welcome mat for reading Marvels. In January of 1974, I bought the brand-new B&B based on that steely look of #112, a 100-page issue teaming Batman and Mister By the time 1970 rolled around, I was entering determination on his face. Miracle. In its “B&B Mailbag” was printed my my teens and had “aged out” from the fold. That name, with my appeals for future Batman co-stars. didn’t last long. I was 13 and my baby brother, John, was five when Batman #232 [June 1971] was My first DC “credit”! I really wanted to work in the comics business, brought into our home. Whether Dad selected it for but since its hub, New York City, might just as soon us or little John pointed to its bright green cover have been another planet for a kid from small-town or I on a whim wanted another Batman fix, I don’t North Carolina, I chose my second love—music recall. This was the now-iconic Denny O’Neil/Neal (I was a trombonist)—as a career path. In the late Adams issue that introduced Ra’s al Ghul. Its blend 1970s, I obtained a bachelor of music education of intrigue and excitement and its photo-realistic degree at East Carolina University. Neal Adams artwork captivated me. I read the After college, I briefly taught middle and high cover off of it—and after a brief nap, my passion for school band—and hated it. I left my job and wafcomics was reawakened! fled for much of the 1980s, along the way workSoon I was reading many DCs and Marvels—and ing as a record store clerk, cable TV subscription Back Issue soon, some Charltons and Atlas/Seaboards. I also salesman, producer/talent/cameraman at a public First Issue: 11/19/2003 bought the various comics reprint books that came
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access station, and singing telegram messenger! At this time, I started to establish a fandom profile by joining APAs like Interlac and the newly minted CarolinAPA. Fantagraphics launched Amazing Heroes magazine around this time. In its earlier years, I had two “Silly Covers” cartoons published, one an issue of Superman with Red Kryptonite turning the Man of Steel into Slim Whitman, the other an issue of Marvel’s Dennis the Menace with Galactus summoning Mr. Wilson as his new herald. I was also writing a lot of letters to comics, mostly DCs, with many making it into print. In July of 1984, at Monkey Business Singing Telegrams, I met my wife-to-be, Rose. Less than two years later we became a couple, and in April 1986 we headed from Charlotte, North Carolina, toward the mecca of comics production, New York City. We had only $1,700 to our name, a crappy Chevy Chevette that couldn’t make it up a steep hill (heck, it could barely clear a speed-bump), and a U-Haul loaded with long boxes of comics. We couldn’t afford to live in New York, though, and ended up within striking distance, in the Wilmington, Delaware, area, near some college friends of mine who were in grad school at the University of Delaware. I worked part-time in a video store, did a little performing with a comedy troupe, and started to do some freelance writing for local newspapers, while continuing to produce ’zines for APAs. I also produced a newsletter for a local comic shop. One of my Interlac APA pals—Mark Waid—had recently become the editor of Amazing Heroes, and, in 1986, I submitted to him a review of Joel Eisner’s 20th anniversary book about the Batman TV show. Mark published my article and gave me more assignments. With Amazing Heroes, I wrote numerous preview articles, hero histories, and creator interviews, and began to make industry contacts.
’80s!) that appeared in #28 [July 1985]. Jim liked my sense of humor and offered me the chance to write scripts for “Peter Porker, the Spectacular Spider-Ham,” which was, by that post-Star Comics period, the back-up in Marvel Tales. I wrote a handful of Spider-Ham stories, including ones introducing the Punfisher (Charlie the Tuna meets the Punisher) and a Spider-Ham/Forbush Man team-up. Big fun! (I’d love to write Spider-Ham again…) Marvel Tales #205 [Nov. 1987] contained my first Spider-Ham story, a professional milestone. Jim Salicrup was a great encourager, and I’ll always be grateful to him for affording me my first pro credits. Since I was mostly paid for my Amazing Heroes work with Fantagraphics products (where I discovered the wizardry of E. C. Segar’s Popeye), the Marvel work, for which I signed work-for-hire vouchers, scored me my first freelance paychecks. Rose worked as a medical receptionist and I still kept my freelance video-store job, but money was tight and our big meal out each week was at a local pizza Joining the Ranks of the Pros buffet. I began to venture out to other publishers, Another score was an over-the-transom piece writing a few Underdog and Mighty Mouse: The I did for Marvel’s Jim Salicrup for Marvel Age New Adventures scripts for Spotlight Comics… but magazine, a spoof of coming attractions (such as an they went under and my work went unpublished X-Men/Michael Jackson crossover—hey, it was the (and uncompensated). I also remember pitching
Above: Michael and future wife Rose, up to monkey business in 1985. Coincidentally, that’s an un-inflated Superman mylar balloon on the background wall!
Below: A proud papa to the 2019 Eisner Award for “Best ComicsRelated Periodical/Journalism.”
2004 Michael Eury: Back Issue
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PETER NORMANTON: HE CAME IN FROM THE TOMB The expression “mighty oaks from small acorns grow” sits quite nicely with the accomplishments ascribed to the team at TwoMorrows. It’s one quarter of a century since the tentative first appearance of The Jack Kirby Collector, and in that quartercentury things have gone through an unusually remarkable change. Living across the pond, in England, TwoMorrows has been an invaluable lifeline for me, throwing light on so many of the comics I grew up with, and those that came long, long before. I wasn’t lucky enough to be around for those early days of The Kirby Collector—it had already reached its ninth issue when I took the plunge. It’s safe to say I was not disappointed. Far from it. The crowning moment was the interview with Joe Sinnott, an inker I had come to recognize as one of the greats, but I knew him equally as well as an artist on the horror comics of the early 1950’s. A few years later, thanks to his son Mark, I too would get to interview Joe. The appearance of the award-winning Comic Book Artist took many fans by surprise. It can have only been months, but in this short time this magazine set itself apart from its peers, going head over heals in its desire to celebrate over 50 years of talent in a series of
in-depth articles, each presented with page upon page of layouts destined to inspire a generation of comics-related magazines. Those on the outside may have seen CBA as a risky undertaking as it set forth, but it has shown itself to be one worth taking, for those 50 years of talent have increased to take on board 70 years of genius, and it looks as if this will continue to grow well into the future. With two successful titles to his credit, John had revealed an uncanny instinct for picking up on a project with
true potenPeter Normanton tial, then Editor providing a worthy Born: 1961 editor the Residence: means to do Rochdale, England something Vocation: very speRetired government cial. When finance officer the idea of Favorite Creator: resurrecting Stan Lee Alter Ego Seminal Comic Book: after a hiatus Nightmare #17 of over two decades was ventured, this time with Roy Thomas at the helm, it was soon obvious Two Morrows had yet another success on their hands. Alter Ego’s revival came as a flip book in the pages of CBA. Cautious this approach may have appeared, but it was a shrewd way of safeguarding the return of this well remembered fan publication from the heyday of the comic book fanzine. Almost 20 years later, Alter Ego is still with us and as strong as ever. I was astounded when John, courtesy of Roy Thomas, showed an interest in my amateur horror comics fan publication, From the Tomb. While From the Tomb had enjoyed success under John Anderson’s Soaring Penguin imprint as a fan publication, it was another thing altogether to turn it into a book published by a professional outfit. This was when I learned just how incredibly patient a man he is, and, believe me, I must have pushed that patience all the way. John remained calm, driving me on to new heights. The result was The Best of From the Tomb, which was followed five years later by It Crept From the Tomb, both of which I am immensely proud. Proud I may be, but I know I couldn’t have done it without the encouragement of John Morrow. So, a big thank you, John, and here’s to the next 25 years. Left: The delightfully ghoulish work of The Gurch adorned the covers of our two “Best of” From the Tomb collections. Inset top: Cover from the original From the Tomb fanzine.
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2008: BRICKJOURNAL
Joe Meno on Building His BrickJournal Joe Meno
Joe Meno: BrickJournal started as an online magazine, but my friendship with John came a bit before, when we both volunteered and worked for political campaigns. At the time (the early ’90s), I was between jobs in graphic design and did freelance work. I met with John and showed my portfolio. I didn’t get a job then, but I later got work elsewhere and became an art director. About a decade later, I started BrickJournal as an online magazine, where it got the attention of the LEGO® Group. During the initial issues, I met John to get a design review by him of the then-new publication. His reply was that the magazine looked good, and, as it so happens, he would consider publishing the magazine if I ever wanted to go to print media. The LEGO Group was interested in seeing it go to print too, and through a wonderful bit of timing, one year later, BrickJournal was launched as a print publication in 2008. Initially set as a quarterly, the mag soon became a bi-monthly, where it has been up to the present day. It’s been over a decade and 50 issues since BrickJournal’s print adventure began and, with that, dozens of LEGO builders have been showcased. The mission of BrickJournal hasn’t changed in all of this time—to inform and inspire LEGO builders, young and old. John has been a quiet guiding force all this time, nudging the magazine to where it needed to be, but never interfering with its mission. I think that’s because his passion for Jack Kirby is much like mine with LEGO, that things have gone so long and so well, and I am thankful for that! I’m proud to be a part of the TwoMorrows portfolio, and happy to say: Happy 25th Anniversary! John Morrow: When I first announced that TwoMorrows would be publishing a magazine for LEGO enthusiasts, it raised the eyebrows of more than a few of our comics-centric readers. What do those ubiquitous plastic bricks have to do with comics, after all? As it turns out, more than many people would’ve thought!
Joe Meno: BrickJournal
Editor, BrickJournal Born: 1965 Residence: Springfield, Virginia
Vocation: BrickJournal editor, graphic designer As TwoMorrows seeks more ways to cover broader pop culture, when the opportunity for a LEGO® magazine comes along, things just click!
Despite originating in Denmark, LEGO is probably as much a part of American pop culture as comic books. Nearly everyone who grew up reading comics likely got their hands on some LEGO bricks during childhood. But the idea of publishing a magazine about them never occurred to me ’til the fateful day, in 2007, when old friend Joe Meno called up out of the blue. I had no idea, at that point, that there was a sub-culture of adult builders out there, making spectacular creations out of what I’d always considered “just a toy.” I was in for a rude awakening… and a very speedy education! Before that fateful call, we had hit it off while working together as volunteers on a political campaign in the late 1980s, but had lost touch in the last few years. Joe told me he’d been doing a digital-only LEGO magazine for over a year, and was wanting to move from free digital issues to paid print ones. So it was fun to see how our mutual backgrounds in graphic design had taken us in similar directions—me with a Jack Kirby magazine, and Joe with one focused on his LEGO hobby. Joe wanted to know what was involved in self-publishing, so I took him out to lunch at my favorite Italian restaurant and let him pick my brain for a couple of hours about the realities of the publishing game. I concluded that meal with the offer that, if it ended up being more than he was ready to tackle himself, to let me know, and I’d investi-
Above: Brit LEGO builder Adam Cadwell constructed the ultimate TwoMorrows/BrickJournal mashup: a LEGO® Jack Kirby figure!
BrickJournal
First Issue: 2/28/2008
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