Creator Conversations - Retro

In the time between January 2007 and June 2015, journalist Bryan Stroud had the opportunity to interview several members of the Old Guard of the comic book community. These are the people who worked in the bullpens, creating characters that are still loved today and crafting the visual style of graphic storytelling for generations to come. Some of these industry pros were happy to tell stories while others chose short, to-the-point answers - but all of them were generous with their time. Watch this page for weekly Wednesday updates.

February 06, 2019

An Interview With Ralph Reese - The One Year Affair Artist Talks Continuity

February 06, 2019/ Bryan Stroud

Written by Bryan Stroud

Larry Hama & Ralph Reese fooling around in a prop jet.

Ralph Reese (born May 19, 1949) is an American artist who has illustrated for books, magazines, trading cards, comic books and comic strips (including a year drawing the Flash Gordon strip for King Features). Prolific from the 1960s through the 1990s, he is best known for his contributions to DC’s horror titles and his collaboration with Byron Preiss on the comic strip One Year Affair (serialized in The National Lampoon from 1973 to 1975 and then collected into a 1976 book). Classic Comics Press has announced plans to release a new edition of One Year Affair near the end of 2019.

Understudy to Wally Wood, studio mate to Joe D'Esposito and yet another Continuity contributor, I proudly present Ralph Reese!

This interview originally took place over the phone on November 2, 2010.

A sci-fi painting done by Ralph Reese in 2010.

Bryan Stroud: How are you, Mr. Reese?

Ralph Reese: I see your e-mail has “Professor,” in it. Are you a Professor?

Stroud: No, it’s just an old nickname from grade school that I liked.

Reese: They called me that, too…in juvenile detention. (Laughter.) Because I was the only one there who could read.

Stroud: You remind me a little of Russ Heath.

Reese: I knew Russ when he used to hang out at Continuity. He helped Neal [Adams] out with storyboards and comps and other stuff. At that time he was divorced and in his 50’s and very much on the make. (Chuckle.) He cut a little bit of a funny figure. I mean guys in their 50’s should not wear leather pants.

Stroud: (Laughter.) Not at all. There is a time and place for these things.

What led you to Continuity Studios?

Creatures on the Loose (1971) #29, cover penciled by Gil Kane & inked by Ralph Reese.

Reese: I lived there in New York City and had been working in the field for some time and I guess I had met Neal at Phil Seuling’s convention and a couple of other cons here and there. I think at that time he and Stan Lee had just started the Academy of Comic Book Arts.

So I met Neal and once he started that place with Dick Giordano it was sort of an open door policy where all kinds of people would come and just hang out. He invited me to stop by and we struck up a fairly friendly relationship. I had been working at home at the time and was looking to find a studio space somewhere outside of my apartment. I thought that might be good for me in terms of having a little bit more discipline with my work habits.

Stroud: Makes sense.

Reese: If you’re just sitting around home it’s just too easy to sit around and smoke pot all day and never get anything done. Especially in those times. At any rate I started going down there and he offered me some work helping him out on the advertising work that he was doing because the main business was always storyboards and comps. That was really where he was making his money. Not so much in comic books.

Stroud: The commercial side was the cash cow, I guess.

Reese: Right. I welcomed the opportunity to learn something about that and thought it might be a better way of making some money. So I wound up coming down there and renting some desk space and becoming part of the crew there for a bunch of years. I guess I hung around for 4 or 5 years.

Stroud: Sounds like a pretty long run for the time.

Reese: I would say so, yes.

Stroud: It didn’t sound like there were any long-term leases.

One Year Later TPB (1976), written by Byron Preiss with art by Ralph Reese.

Reese: No. It was a very loose kind of thing. At that time Neal was less of a businessman than he became later and he was much more open and friendly to pretty much anybody in the comic book world. Continuity was the kind of place where anybody who came into the city from out of town to deliver some work could come over and hang out and we’d go down and have a few drinks. I met a lot of people there.

Stroud: Who sticks out in your mind?

Reese: There were, of course, a lot of regulars. But if Al Williamson, for example, happened to come down to the city to deliver some Star Wars art or something, he would drop by Continuity and hang out there for an hour or two.

Stroud: It had to be amazing. Some of your peers have mentioned “First Fridays” with Gray Morrow…

Reese: Well, Gray Morrow was more of a regular there. He would come in from New Jersey once or twice a week and he’d come and hang out at Continuity after he’d done his business at King Features. We’d go down to the Pig and Whistle and have a drink or two and he would hang out until the traffic died down before he drove back out.

It was kind of a gathering place for any comic artist who happened to be in town.

House of Secrets (1956) #85 pg13-14, written by Len Wein with art by Ralph Reese.

Stroud: I’m told it was centrally located to most of the usual destinations for commercial artists.

Reese: It was right there in Midtown and it was someplace to go when you were done with your business at the publishers and a place to hang out and see what was going on in the business with other people and catch up on gossip and maybe have a few laughs.

Stroud: How did you typically spend your time there? What I mean is mainly your own stuff or Crusty Bunker things or…

Reese: It was mostly my own work and as I mentioned helping Neal out with some of the storyboards and other projects that he was doing. At the time I was doing a fair amount of work on The National Lampoon and I was doing horror and a fair amount of other stuff for Marvel and what not. Mostly inking. We’re talking about a few years’ time, so different things came and went.

Stroud: Did you learn much from being with the other artists?

Reese: Not as much as I would have liked. The thing about Neal was that he was not a teacher. I had been a protégé of Wally Wood. I’d been Woody’s assistant for a number of years when I first came into the business. I worked with him on 74th Street. I started working for him when I was 16 years old.

Stroud: Oh, so you, [Joe] Rubinstein, [Alan] Kupperberg and Larry Hama all worked for Woody. I didn’t realize that.

Daredevil (1964) #88, cover penciled by Gil Kane & inked by Ralph Reese.

Reese: Well, I was there way before them. I was with him during the T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents period. Me and Adkins and Anthony Coleman.

Stroud: Wow. It must have been a lot of fun.

Reese: Anyway, Wood was a teacher. He enjoyed taking people under his wing and teaching them his methods and his approach. Everybody in the world has seen his “Twelve Comic Book Panels That Always Work.” That was him. He had a very systematic approach to what he did and he took a special interest in me, I think. He went out of his way to teach me how to do things.

Adams was not like that. He was more apt to tell you why your work sucked and why he was on a completely different level than you. He was a lot more apt to just put you down or make you feel small. So he wasn’t a teacher, but he was friendly in a personal way at that time. Later, as Continuity grew to be a real advertising business, I think he became more of just a boss. But at that time, he was still one of the guys. He would go to the First Fridays and smoke pot with us and he would hang out. He did have a tendency to build up his own ego at your expense, but he was helpful to me a number of times. He would recommend me to a few advertising people and helped me get a few jobs here and there.

He would cash people’s checks for them. For example if you got a check from Marvel and didn’t want to have to wait a week for it to clear the bank because you had to pay a telephone bill or something you could take it to him and he would give you a Continuity check that you could take down to the corner and cash. So he was a friend. He really was, at one time. It’s just that his megalomania got the better of him after a while, in my opinion.

In those early days when Dick was still his partner, he went out of his way to be friendly and helpful to pretty much everyone. If he met someone that impressed him as having real talent, he would try and help them.

Stroud: Do you know what led to Dick moving on?

Reese: I think Dick really wasn’t too keen on the advertising stuff. He was a comic book guy. I think he kind of dipped his fingers in it, but he really wanted to keep doing comics. He didn’t really want to become an advertising person. That’s where Continuity was headed.

Mars Attacks Vampirella - a 1995 painting by Ralph Reese.

Stroud: Did you get involved much in the piecemeal work at Continuity?

Reese: Well, I never got rich working for Neal, that’s for sure. He certainly didn’t overpay. He pretty much kept all the gravy for himself, but that’s business. He never did me wrong. I never felt more exploited by him than anybody else. (Chuckle.)

Stroud: When you think back to those times, do any memories spring up that were particularly fond or noteworthy?

Reese: Well, a lot of funny shit happened while I was there, but I’m not sure I’d want to see it published. (Laughter.)

Stroud: I understand.

Reese: I met some good people there like Ed Davis. All kinds of very talented people came through there. Bobby London, and of course Larry Hama and I were kind of partners for a while. Larry came down there more or less with me. We had been working together a year or two before that. We were friends in the High School of Art and Design. So we had been working together at my house, but when I started going down to Continuity, he came down there with me and eventually we wound up renting a little office down the hall there and sharing that for several years.

Of course Frank Miller spent some time there. Russ Heath. One of my good friends was Alcazar, a Spanish artist who was doing a fair amount of work doing stuff for Warren’s magazines and working around comics here and there.

House of Mystery (1951) #223, “Message From Beyond” written by Jack Oleck with art by Ralph Reese.

Stroud: There was certainly a long laundry list of folks who passed through there in those days.

Reese: As I mentioned before, Gray Morrow was a regular and Russ Heath was there for a couple of years.

Stroud: Bernie Wrightson came along too, didn’t he?

Reese: Once in a while. Not too much. Bernie and Kaluta and Jeff Jones kind of started their own thing with The Studio. They didn’t really come around that much. I’m not exactly sure why. I don’t think Jeff Jones ever came around. I was friendly with Jeff before because he used to host the First Friday gatherings for a number of years. Everybody used to go over to Jeff Jones’ apartment and Kaluta and Wrightson lived right down the hall from him in the same apartment building.

But Kaluta, Wrightson and Jones never came around too much. I’m not too sure why. Maybe too much conflict of egos or whatever.

Stroud: What were the hours like?

Reese: We put in a lot of all-nighters there [at Continuity]. Especially working on those advertising jobs, because it was always a short fuse deadline and it was always late because he always took on more than he could possibly get done, even though he was phenomenally quick. That was probably one of the more demoralizing things about working around him for me. He could do 10 pages in the time it took me to do one. (Laughter.) And of course they’d be better looking pages. It was like, “Why don’t I just kill myself?” It was rough from that standpoint. Some people just have a natural gift and some people really have to work at it and I’m more of the second kind. I always had to grind it out, where from him it just flowed.

Stroud: It can drive you crazy when you work so hard at something and for someone else it seems to just come in their sleep.

Reese: Well, especially if it’s something you’re depending on to make a life out of. The thing about Neal is that he’s a total workaholic. He never left that place. He never left his desk. It seemed like he never ate or slept. In the years that I worked there I could count on one hand the times he went out for a meal. He would drink that horrible coffee with that awful powdered creamer in it and eat Mallomars and that was his diet. He lived on that for years. He’d be in there every morning at eight o’clock or whatever and he’d leave at two in the morning or three in the morning, get three hours of sleep and then come back the next day and be raring to go. I don’t know how he survived or what powered him. (Chuckle.) He certainly was a phenomenon in that respect.

House of Mystery (2008) #13 pg2-3, art by Ralph Reese.

He just never left that desk. Even his family had to come see him at his desk.

Stroud: Just a machine. I understand Kris, his daughter, spent some time up there, too.

Reese: Oh, yeah. She became absorbed into the Continuity fabric and became an integral part of it after a while. Especially later when it became more of a real business and less of a place to hang out.

Stroud: Was your experience there a career builder?

Reese: Sure. I picked up a lot of stuff just by osmosis and I learned a good deal just working on stuff. I had known nothing about the advertising world, really and I got a pretty good foothold on what that was all about. These days I kind of regret that, actually. I wish I hadn’t wasted so much time doing advertising stuff.

Stroud: Really?

Reese: Well, because what do you have to show for it? Here I am, 62 years old and it’s not anything I can remember with any fondness or have something to show to people as something that I could be proud that I did. 90% of the time the work is lying on some shelf in some advertising agency. You’re doing a lot of shit that nobody will ever see outside of some focus group or the client the advertiser is trying to impress. So I mean, is that art? That's one thing that I think about Neal, is that he wasted his talent doing all that shit. Storyboards for mini-pads. (Laughter.) With his ability he could have done so much more, but I guess he wanted the money and that’s where it was. That’s where he went.

Iron Man (1968) #46, cover penciled by Gil Kane & inked by Ralph Reese.

Stroud: Are you still doing work today, Ralph?

Reese: I kind of got caught in the crash of ’95 and after nearly 30 years in the business, suddenly I just couldn’t get work. I couldn’t get work anywhere. The comic book business totally tanked. I was working for Acclaim and they folded. I wasn’t politically connected up at Marvel or DC at that time and with everybody desperate and scrambling, I just wasn’t at the top of anybody’s list. Also, coincidentally, right around that time the advertising work started drying up. The agencies cut back on their budgets drastically for hiring outside people doing storyboards and comps for them and started just using the art directors and also at that time the computer revolution started coming along. And what happened was that even people like Neal, who had a multi-million dollar business by that time, really got clobbered. There were no more animatics. Do you know what an animatic is?

Stroud: I’ve heard of it but I’m honestly not certain.

Reese: An animatic was basically an animated storyboard, where they would use sort of cut-out animation where you’d draw the pretty, nice lady holding the glass of orange juice but you’d make a loose arm so she could raise the orange juice up to her lips. That kind of thing. What they would do is they would film these on an animation camera and do the voice-overs in order to test commercials before they went out and hired live actors and spent all that money. This was a pretty common practice in the advertising business at that time. Before they’d make an actual live-action commercial they might make ten animatics of the concepts and test them on folks to see what they thought was going to fly.

So there was good money in that and there were a lot of people doing it. But once the computer revolution came along then all that stuff dried up because they could do all that stuff on the computer now with clip art and stock photography. It was a lot cheaper than having to hire an artist to visualize the stuff for them. There was a big change in the advertising industry around that time, too. There was maybe a tenth of the work that there used to be just a couple of years prior.

At any rate, to make a long story short, I found myself totally high and dry. I wound up getting evicted from where I was living, I went through some very hard times and actually ended up going out to drive trucks for about ten years. I just couldn’t get work.

Witching Hour (1969) #23 pg18, art by Ralph Reese.

Stroud: Oh, no. That’s awful.

Reese: Well, it was quite a shock, I’ll tell you that. I thought that my artistic career was fairly secure. I mean I had a six-year old daughter and the bottom fell out of my whole life.

Stroud: It almost sounds like the same thing that has been happening to lettering for a while now.

Reese: I used to pick up lettering jobs when I was first starting in the business like in between if I couldn’t get other work. If I couldn’t get artwork I’d go over to Marvel and say, “Give me something to letter.” At least it would keep a few dollars coming in and kept my hand in.

Then I got injured in the trucking business and messed up my back and wound up becoming disabled, so now I’m on disability, doing the occasional commission for a fan now and then, but I haven’t really worked in about 15 years as far as having regular artwork to do.

About five years ago I got a call from Sam Viviano at Mad Magazine out of the blue and I thought I might be able to make a comeback then, but they didn’t like my work. They said it was too old fashioned.

Stroud: Oh, that’s ridiculous.

Reese: I can’t believe it either. I think it was political. So much of the business is about who you know and who your friends are. I’ve been out of touch for so long and I’m perceived as being from another era. I got a job from DC about a year and a half ago. Somebody up at Vertigo was bringing back the old House of Mystery title and I had done some work in the original House of Mystery books, so I guess they tracked me down and they gave me that one job and then nothing. I sent samples up there and called them and looked hard for more to do, but they gave me that one job and that’s it.

I went so far as to go to the Hero’s Initiative people last year and asked them for help because I was in a pretty desperate situation. Even as things are now I’m kind of living month to month. I get a Social Security disability, but it’s not enough to live on.

Flash Gordon newspaper strip from 2-26-1991, art by Ralph Reese.

Getting back to the Crusty Bunkers, though, it was mostly me and Neal, actually along with whoever else happened to be around that week pitching in. Frank Brunner would do some, especially on his own assignments. We inked a couple of Doctor Strange jobs as I recall. It’s a little hard to remember after all these years. But it was mostly me and Neal at the time that I was there. Maybe Terry Austin, too. He would do backgrounds it seems. At that time he was just starting out and I don’t think Neal would let him do the figures.

Neal would do all the main figures and leave me a lot of the secondary characters to complete and then various and sundry would fill in blacks or work on backgrounds. Who else have you heard mentioned as being a Crusty Bunker?

Ralph Reese art for an unpublished issue of Web of Horror.

Stroud: Well, those I’ve spoken to so far have been Greg Theakston, Mike Nasser, Joe D’esposito, Steve Mitchell…

Reese: Joe D’esposito? He and I and Joe Barney had a studio together for a number of years. We were partners. We split off from Neal and formed our own little advertising place. We called it Studio 23 and it lasted maybe four years.

Let’s see Bob McLeod was around when I was there and Pat Broderick. They pitched in if there was something going through there at the time while they were there. I’m not sure of exact timelines. People came and went. McLeod and Terry Austin rented space up there and so did Pat Broderick. So they had their own little rooms in the back like Larry and I did. If there was a Crusty Bunker project going on at the time while they were there…I don’t know. Crusty Bunkers might have been done by the time they showed up. I’m just not sure.

Stroud: Well, and it’s not easy to pin down when the Crusty Bunkers really started or ended. It’ not like there was a formal charter or anything.

Reese: That’s true. It was a very interesting time with a lot of interesting people.

“Curse of the Yeti” written by Otto Binder with art from Ralph Reese

(from Web of Horror (1969) #3)

Web of Horror (1969) #3 pg11, written by Otto Binder with art from Ralph Reese.

Web of Horror (1969) #3 pg12, written by Otto Binder with art from Ralph Reese.

Web of Horror (1969) #3 pg13, written by Otto Binder with art from Ralph Reese.

Web of Horror (1969) #3 pg14, written by Otto Binder with art from Ralph Reese.

Web of Horror (1969) #3 pg15, written by Otto Binder with art from Ralph Reese.

Web of Horror (1969) #3 pg17, written by Otto Binder with art from Ralph Reese.

Web of Horror (1969) #3 pg16, written by Otto Binder with art from Ralph Reese.

January 30, 2019

An Interview With Greg Hildebrandt - Remembering the Kubert School

January 30, 2019/ Bryan Stroud

Written by Bryan Stroud

Greg and Tim Hildebrandt - known as the Brothers Hildebrandt - (born January 23, 1939), are American twin brothers who worked collaboratively as fantasy and science fiction artists for many years. They produced illustrations for comic books, movie posters, children's books, posters, novels, calendars, advertisements, and trading cards. Tim Hildebrandt passed away on June 11, 2006, leaving Greg to continue their artistic legacy alone.

Another Kubert School instructor shared a few remembrances with me of his tenure. Odds are good you've seen the spectacular work of Greg Hildebrandt and didn't even know it. He and his late brother have done stunning work for years and the iconic Star Wars movie poster is only one example. Still at it after all these years, Greg (who just recently turned 80) continues to crank it out and does it in superlative fashion. Check out his offerings at his online art gallery if you're skeptical.

This interview originally took place via email on October 24, 2010.

Dream 1: Crucifiers - by Greg Hildebrandt.

Bryan Stroud: What led you to the Kubert school?

Greg Hildebrandt: My daughter, Mary, wanted to go to art school. I saw an ad for the Kubert School. I was a fan of Joe [Kubert]’s art. So she enrolled in the school. A few years later I decided to teach.

Stroud: Joe suggested it was a way to give back and laughed that it certainly wasn’t for the money. Any thoughts?

Hildebrandt: It definitely was not for the money. It was a thrill for me to teach at Joe’s school and to have the opportunity to work with other teachers that were great artists. I believe that I have a certain amount of artistic information to convey. I believe that I did a pretty good job of conveying it to my students and I had a really good time doing it.

Stroud: What was your specialty?

Hildebrandt: Painting is my specialty. My course was about light and its impact on color.

Stroud: Were any students particularly memorable?

Hildebrandt: Do you mean particularly memorable then or now? Then I remembered all of them when I was teaching. Today I remember the ones that are still in the business. Of course, Adam and Andy Kubert were two of my students and they are both memorable for sure. I remember the mistakes they made and how good they were and were not. I remember how quiet one was and how loud the other one was. And I remember how cool it was to have them both as students of mine.

Captain America Vs. Hitler - by Greg Hildebrandt.

Stroud: Was it rewarding to teach?

Hildebrandt: I learned from my students and my students learned from me. So yes, it was rewarding.

Stroud: How long were you at it?

Hildebrandt: I taught for 3-4 years. Don’t actually remember.

Stroud: How did you come up with your curriculum?

Hildebrandt: The first year was trial and error. The second year I had a direction.

Stroud: Who else taught there that you remember?

Hildebrandt: When I was there Irwin Hasen, Tex Blaisdell, Joe Kubert, Stan Kaye and Milt Neil to name a few.

Deadpool Vs. Thanos (2015) #2, cover by Greg Hildebrandt.

Journey To Star Wars_ The Last Jedi - Captain Phasma (2017) #2 Variant, cover by Greg Hildebrandt.

Mighty Thor (2016) #8 Variant, cover by Greg Hildebrandt.

January 23, 2019

An Interview With Hy Eisman - One of the Original Teachers for the Kubert School

January 23, 2019/ Bryan Stroud

Written by Bryan Stroud

Hy Eisman (born March 27, 1927) is an American cartoonist - active since the 1950s - who writes and draws the Sunday strips for Popeye and (until the strip went into reruns in 2006) The Katzenjammer Kids. In December 2008, Eisman introduced the character of Bluto to the Popeye Sunday strips, as the twin brother of Brutus.

He entered the comic strip field in 1950 and worked on several strips, including Kerry Drake, Little Iodine and Bunny. In comic books he was the last artist doing Little Lulu before it was cancelled in 1984. He took over The Katzenjammer Kids in 1986 and the Popeye Sunday strip in 1994.

In 1976, Eisman became a teacher at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art.

Eisman won the 1975 National Cartoonists Society's Award for Best Humor Comic Book Cartoonist (for Gold Key's Nancy comic books). In 1983, he received an award for his work on the Little Lulu comic book.

I took the opportunity to do a couple of more interviews with Kubert School instructors and thoroughly enjoyed talking with Hy Eisman, one of the originals.

This interview originally took place over the phone on October 22, 2010.

Adventures of the Fly (1960) #30, cover by Hy Eisman.

Bryan Stroud: If I understood correctly, Irwin Hasen told me that you were the original staff member hired by Joe Kubert for the school. Is that correct?

Hy Eisman: That’s true, yes.

Stroud: I know you’re still there. How long have you been at it now?

Eisman: Since 1976, so that would be about 34 years. Joe and I are the only two still left from the original teachers.

Stroud: Quite the accomplishment.

Eisman: Especially since neither Joe or I have much to do with computers. (Chuckle.) Nowadays everything is being done by computer. The students, of course, are all using computers.

Stroud: I sort of miss the handwork and craftsmanship of comics done the old-fashioned way.

Eisman: In about 10 years you’ll be watching the Antique Road Show and someone will bring up a thing and say, “Do you know what this is? This is a hand drawn cartoon. Done by dipping a pen into ink. Do you see this little thing?” “What is that?” “That’s worth $50.00, it’s called a steel pen.” (Mutual laughter.)

Stroud: Once when I spoke to Joe he was getting into the computerized coloring and as I recall he described it as a learning process. I know from chats with some of your fellow teachers and Joe, too, that he described the work at the school as a way of giving back and not necessarily for the money. Any comment?

Eisman: (Laughter.) It’s true. When he started the school, he didn’t tell me he was starting a school. He just told me, “Why don’t you come out and see what I’m doing?” I live east of him near the George Washington Bridge. He’s about 45 minutes west of me in Dover. It was a nice day and I said to my wife, “Do you want to ride out to Joe’s? He said he’s doing something.” That was a mistake, taking her along. (Chuckle.) Because when I got out there, he’s got this old mansion and he says, “I’m going to put a school here.” I thought, “Well, that’s nice.” Why, I don’t know, but sure, that’s a good idea. He says, “I want you to teach here.” I said, “I don’t know how to teach, Joe. I’ve never taught.” He said, “No, all you have to do is do what you’re doing and show them and tell them as you’re doing it.” I said, “That’s all there is to it?” He said, “Yeah.” I realized at that point I’d been working in the attic of my house for 26 years. I wasn’t speaking to anyone except (chuckle) with people involved in the neighborhood. Everything went through the mail. I hadn’t got up and talked in front of anybody. I can’t do this kind of thing.

Adventures Into the Unknown (1948) #90 pg.1, art by Hy Eisman.

My wife said, “Yeah, why don’t you do it? It will get you out of the house once or twice a week.” There was the mistake. I said, “All right, I’ll try it.” It worked out. He developed the school and Ric Estrada, of course, was teaching at the same time. I read that thing you sent me that Ric said. He’s actually the guy that taught me how to teach.

Stroud: How was that?

Eisman: Well, I didn’t even know how to begin and he told me, “Try to stay basic.” I didn’t know how basic to stay because at that time guys didn’t know about steel pens any more because they were using mechanical pens and bits and I was talking about putting a pen nib into a holder and dipping it into an inkwell and they never said anything and I didn’t know they didn’t know what I was talking about. So you had to go back and say, “These are steel pens that you can use that are flexible and they work like a brush if you use, say a 290 Guillot. I kept going back and back, more basic. “This is a pencil.”

Another thing Ric told me that I never forgot because it happened to me often: He said, “Don’t ever show your students your own work. It’s like asking for a bullet in the back of the neck.” Slowly but surely, he guided me on my approach. He had done some prior teaching, I think. I was sad to see him go. I didn’t realize until I read your transcript that he had that offer in Mexico. I had no idea. You only saw people maybe once a week at the school, so it wasn’t really a social kind of thing and it made it kind of hard to keep track of people.

Most of the cartoonists at the time did one day a week. A little later on I took on two days, but I couldn’t keep that up doing two Sunday pages, freelancing and the other things I was doing.

Stroud: Was your schedule up to you or was a certain minimum required or was it whatever you could squeeze in?

Eisman: Well, today most people pick their own day. When we first started there were only 8 guys on the teaching staff, so we all picked a day. Two people would be trading off. One class would have one guy instructing in the morning and then have the other instructor in the afternoon. You switched off.

At the beginning I was teaching continuity, so I would teach one group in the morning and then a second group in the afternoon and whoever was teaching in the afternoon took the morning class. Of course, there were only 25 people at the time, to begin with.

Stroud: So that was pretty manageable at the time.

Eisman: Yes, and then it grew and there were a lot of guys. I think it got up to 30 cartoonists working at the school.

Stroud: Other than yourself and Irwin and Joe obviously, who were the original instructors?

Eisman: Henry Boltinoff, Ric Estrada, Lee Elias, who along with some comic book work did a strip about parallel life on another planet. I think they did it for the News Tribune Syndicate. Dick Giordano taught the first year. Irwin, Joe and there was a lady who I believe was a colorist for DC named Harris. That was the group.

After the fist couple of years people kept asking how to letter because of course they were still hand lettering then. So, Joe asked me to teach lettering. I did that for the next 15 or 20 years. Just lettering. (Chuckle.) That’s become an extinct curriculum. Just two years ago we phased out hand lettering because they all insisted on using the computer.

The letterers design their own fonts. Joe has a font and Adam Kubert has a font. They do their own. The kids at the school generally just use a commercial font and everybody’s stuff looks alike. Which turns it into a printing press. I think it loses that energy that old-time cartoonists brought with their own unique lettering styles. Some were good and some were bad, but it was their own stuff. If you know Walt Kelly’s stuff, you can’t do Pogo unless you letter the way he used to letter that material.

When the Reverend spoke, he spoke in “Olde English” and it looked like stuff coming out of the Bible. The kids can’t grasp that. They don’t understand that the lettering is like the drawing. It’s a part of the artist’s makeup.

Stroud: It’s an art all unto itself.

Eisman: Definitely.

Popeye, drawn by Hy Eisman on an uncut sheet of $2 bills.

Olive Oyl, drawn by Hy Eisman on an uncut sheet of $2 bills.

Bluto, drawn by Hy Eisman on an uncut sheet of $2 bills.

Stroud: Are the sound effects done the same?

Eisman: They pull the sound effects off these commercial fonts. So, the sound effects also tend to all look alike. It’s become very mechanical. I’m now teaching continuity again so I try to get them to look at the stuff and see the value in being a little different so you don’t look like you’re producing something mechanical. But you know young people grow up today with that computer in the crib and an iPhone, too. (Chuckle.) “Mom! Thirsty.”

Adventures Into the Unknown (1948) #159 pg.17, art by Hy Eisman.

All the students seem to know what to do with a computer and inevitably ask, “Can it be done on the computer?” The other thing we used to try and explain to them is that a morgue is a good idea. You clip photos and you shoot photos so that you have a ready file of material and you get a varied look of whatever you need. An automobile, a motorcycle. And they go to the computer. So, if it’s a motorcycle they’re seeing a profile of a motorcycle. What if you needed a ¾? Go out and shoot it yourself. You can’t seem to make them understand research.

Stroud: Of course. When you type in the same thing, you’ll get the same image result.

Eisman: That’s exactly what happens. Now Pixar had a big exhibit at the Museum of Modern Art a couple of years ago. They use sculpture, which is amazing, to sculpt the characters so that the animators can work from it and they had a big sign that said, “It all starts with a pencil.” And I try to impress upon them that very thing: “It all starts with a pencil.” Pixar had stuff done in crayon and wash and oil and pastels and they were concept drawings of stuff that the people were going to do and actually put on a computer, but it all has to begin with a creator. That’s what I’m trying to impart to them. “Close the computer. Sit down with your pencil and dig into your brain.” That’s what guys used to do.

Stroud: The very core of it all.

Eisman: Do you draw? Are you a cartoonist?

Stroud: No such luck. It flies completely in the face of Joe’s philosophy, but I don’t feel like I have any talent and got discouraged years ago. I know that Joe is convinced if you have the desire…

Eisman: Strong desire. It has to be what they used to call the fire in the belly.

Stroud: Yes, the strong desire and the willingness to put in the hours equal success in Joe’s formula. I’m just skeptical in my own case. (Chuckle.)

Eisman: Well, if you have a strong interest in this medium and you write about it, that’s also a talent.

Hy Eisman recieving the Outstanding Instructor Award from the Kubert School - in recognition of his 38 years teaching.

Stroud: Well, thank you. This project has made me feel 10 years old again.

Eisman: That’s the way I felt with the old cartoonists.

Stroud: I don’t know where the industry would be without the Milton Caniff’s…

Eisman: Hal Foster. Alex Raymond. Raymond Van Buren. Al Capp.

Stroud: Roy Crane. All the pioneers.

Eisman: And they ended up taking on assistants and ghosts and that began even more careers.

Stroud: You did that, too, if I’m not mistaken.

Eisman: (Laughter.) It’s been my career. I could never sell my own stuff, but they’d look at it and say, “Well, we can’t use that, but how would you like to draw this?” Anonymously. That’s the worst part.

Stroud: As you taught, did any students particularly stand out?

Eisman: Oh, yes. Many of them went on to become professionals. One of them is doing Dr. Morgan. (Chuckle.) I have trouble coming up with the names offhand. Some of them, in fact, did very well and then retired, which makes me feel a little ancient. Tim Truman, Jan Duursema, Mandrake, Rick Veitch. Many of them went on to do solid comic book work and many of our current instructors at the school are former students. I taught most of them. Fernando Ruiz, for example, who does the Archie books, teaches at the school.

In fact, during some of the time I was teaching I was ghosting Archie material and used it as lessons. A lot of the fellas got work at Archie Comics. At least a half dozen former Kubert School students ended up there. Most of them wanted to work for DC or Marvel and every once in awhile I would say, “You know it’s great if you can do the underwear heroes, but if you want to get work fast work on Archie because fewer people are interested in doing that.” A few of them took me up on it and have been working there for years.

Stroud: Nothing wrong with steady work when you’re a freelancer. I’ve heard their rates are less generous, but bird in the hand and all.

Eisman: Comic book rates are less generous, that’s true. But they learn to work fast. That’s really the secret of the thing. Not only to draw, but be able to complete a number of pages in a given timeframe.

Stroud: That would go back to Joe’s work ethic of spending time at the board.

Eisman: Oh, yeah. Joe is constantly coming out with new stuff. Even as we speak. He’s my role model.

Stroud: As someone who has been employed long term in the industry, what drives you? Just a sheer love of what you do?

Eisman: Absolutely. It took me so long to actually put this all on a paying basis; I feel that I just got into the industry yesterday.

There is another thing. A personal thing. I grew up during the Depression and my father was out of work from about 1933 to 1942. He would pick up odd jobs, but never any long-term work during that whole time and it made life very precarious, so part of the drive is not to depend on anything but myself to make sure there’s enough so that I don’t have to ask for any help from anyone. That’s a large part of the drive for me.

Stroud: How did you go about coming up with a curriculum?

Adventures Into the Unknown (1948) #158 pg.25, art by Hy Eisman.

Eisman: As I mentioned before, Joe said, “Just show them what you’re doing.” So I showed them what I’m doing, but they didn’t understand why I did it. By that time, of course, I’d been doing it for 26 years, so you don’t really think. You don’t remember when you didn’t know how to do it.

Stroud: Second nature at that point.

Eisman: Yes. I was forced to actually put into words the techniques and in doing that I was sort of teaching myself what I was doing. One of the things that happened…you know the expression, “Work expands to fill the available time?”

Stroud: Oh yes. I’ve experienced it. (Chuckle.)

Eisman: I was doing a Sunday page amongst other things. Little Iodine, which was a Jimmy Hatlow panel. “They’ll Do It Every Time,” and Little Iodine was a spin off of that. King Features had called me and by then I had a reputation of being a ghost, so they called me and I started doing the strip. That’s what I was doing when Joe called. I was doing the strip and I was also doing comic books. The strip would take two days. I thought that was the only way you could do it. I would pencil one day and the next day I would letter and ink it. Now I’ve got the work at the school and I use up a day at the school, which means I have to get up early one day and go all the way out there, teach and come back. So, I realized I had to speed up a little bit. I found out, much to my amazement, that I could do this page in a day, by using the whole day. Rather than taking a long lunch and all those things I actually could do it in a day. So, the school actually helped me with my work. (Chuckle.) In talking about how I do it, I was able to eliminate some of the things I did because I really didn’t have to do that any more.

So, I would eliminate putting the stuff on a separate page and would go right to the Bristol board. I would do a storyboard and then go to the Bristol board, but I had been doing this thing so long that I really didn’t have to do that storyboard. Things I never would have thought of. I can speed it up and now I have to tell these guys how I do it. They would ask, “Why do you do it that way?” I’d say, “I don’t know. I’ve just always been doing it that way. I’m going to cut that out.” So, I really was teaching myself while teaching them. That’s the thing that’s kept me there, because in spite of the computer I still get feedback from them. At the beginning I was only twice as old as the students. Now I think I’m eight times as old. (Chuckle.) I’m further and further away and they look at me differently than the earlier guys did. But they keep me in touch with what’s happening and that’s really a big part of it.

Hugh Hefner (on the left) stands in full military uniform with Hy Eisman sketching (on the right).

Stroud: Sort of an energy and vitality to feed from I would guess.

Eisman: That’s exactly what it is. The other kick is that I bring in originals. Over the years I collected stuff just by trading material before the stuff had any value. The cartoonists used to just send you a strip if you sent them a note or some guys would want to trade, so I ended up with Prince Valiant originals and Alex Raymond originals and I’d bring them into the school and introduce them to cartoonists that even today these younger people really don’t have an interest, or they don’t think they have an interest in the old cartoonists of the past. I’d bring them in and they’d be amazed that this was done by hand.

On Prince Valiant I explained that he drew these animals, such as the horses, the figures, without reference because he knew how. His reference of the castles, backgrounds, the trees and such that he was depicting; those trees came from that area. It wasn’t just a generic tree. That’s how he produced that strip. They marvel at that. I love that feeling when I introduce them to it and their eyes open and they see something is done that you just can’t find today. You can’t find a man that’s working the way Hal Foster worked.

Stroud: One of the truly great masters. I was actually lucky enough to see an original Foster Sunday Prince Valiant at an exhibit last year.

Eisman: Full-sized.

Adventures Into the Unknown (1948) #152 pg.20, art by Hy Eisman.

Stroud: Yes.

Eisman: Not only is the current version very different, but they’ve got it down to the size of a postage stamp. I don’t know how anyone could work that size any more.

Stroud: No comparison.

Eisman: He produced that thing, the horses and the humans, without reference. He just knew the human body and he knew the animals. I had a student who ended up teaching and I had introduced him to Alex Raymond originals and he was so taken by it he ended up interviewing Raymond’s relatives and descendents and doing other research and put out a beautiful book on Alex Raymond.

You know Hal Foster didn’t really want to do a comic strip. He only went into it because it was the Depression and he had to keep a studio going. A strip was the only thing that would bring in enough money for the rent. A lot of the guys drank because of that. They thought they were losers because they weren’t doing real, respectable illustration work. Though many made a lot of money at it, they thought it was degrading.

Stroud: And yet the people doing comic books longed for a syndicated strip.

Eisman: Not only that, but if you look at early comic books a lot of the stuff was swiped, because they felt that if they weren’t signing their name to it and they’re getting three dollars a page, well, this is what I’m going to do. (Chuckle.)

Stroud: I remember reading a study comparing early Bob Kane to Hal Foster panels showing obvious swipes.

Eisman: Oh, they could do that with anybody at that time. Most of the stuff at one point was all Flash Gordon dressed up in a suit. The figures were definitely lifted from Sunday pages. Flash Gordon in a double-breasted suit and hat. You saw that constantly and the guys did it because of the anonymity. The publishers did it purposely because if anybody suddenly became a fan, they’d have to pay them more money. So, in turn the guys would say, “Well, it’s unsigned and I need speed, so this is what you get.”

Stroud: If you’re going to swipe, swipe from the best.

Eisman: Today it isn’t called swiping. It’s all homage.

Stroud: (Laughter.) I guess it’s like the old joke that if you copy one person it’s plagiarism, but if you copy three people it’s research.

Eisman: And if you copy five, it’s homage.

January 16, 2019

An Interview With Bob McLeod - Continuity Studios & The Art of Inking

January 16, 2019/ Bryan Stroud

Written by Bryan Stroud

Bob McLeod holding a Green Lantern commission.

Bob McLeod (born August 9, 1951) is an American comic artist best known for co-creating the New Mutants team with writer Chris Claremont. He began his career at Marvel Comics and in his time there he inked several different artists and series - including inking Mike Zeck's Kraven's Last Hunt storyline. McLeod drew the graphic novel and the first three issues of the 1983 New Mutants series (and inked a number of subsequent issues). When he started working for DC Comics, Bob found himself inking on titles like Action Comics, Kamandi, and Detective Comics. McLeod was the keynote speaker for the 2012 Inkwell Awards ceremony at HeroesCon. In 2018, he was awarded the Inkwell's Joe Sinnott Hall of Fame Award for his many years of inking.

This time up, another gent who spent some time at Continuity back in the day, the talented and knowledgeable Bob McLeod. To my delight, Bob made an appearance in Colorado in the not too distant past and I got a chance to shake his hand and chat for a bit, which was a great treat, just like this interview.

This interview originally took place over the phone on October 15, 2015.

Captain Marvel (1968) #55, cover penciled by Pat Broderick & inked by Bob McLeod.

Bryan Stroud: I read your 3-page “Origin” story that you sent and am wondering what to ask. (Chuckle.) I guess I’ll start with the obvious: How did you end up at Continuity after your rather scary introduction to New York City?

Bob McLeod: It’s amazing how scared I was coming up from Florida. I bumped into Pat Broderick at the New York Comic Con. We were both in the same high school art class, but had never met each other. I just recognized his face. We became roommates to share expenses and he insisted that I should meet Neal Adams. He’d met Neal and was really impressed by him. I thought at the time I needed to go get into Marvel. To me, Neal was just another freelance artist. I didn’t see the point in meeting Neal. I knew nothing about networking or all the other reasons you’d want to mix with other artists. I was so intent on just learning my craft at that time. But he finally convinced me to go up and show Neal my stuff, so that’s what I did. At the time anybody could just walk in. You didn’t need to even make an appointment. I just went up with Pat when he was going up there one day and he introduced me to Neal.

Stroud: That had to be almost surreal.

McLeod: You know, I was too stupid to even appreciate that much just what Neal’s position in the business was at the time. I knew he was a top artist. Obviously I really respected his work, but I just didn’t know who I was meeting and the importance of that meeting. So I wasn’t that intimidated or anything, I was just like, “Okay, here I am. What have you got?” (Mutual laughter.)

Stroud: “I have arrived.”

McLeod: Yeah. “See how great I am? Give me something.”

Stroud: It’s amazing how we can be in our early 20’s.

McLeod: Yeah, we just can’t see ourselves.

Stroud: Did you immediately get assignments at Continuity?

Action Comics (1938) #668, cover penciled by Dan Jurgens & inked by Bob McLeod.

McLeod: Oh, no. Neal didn’t offer me anything. I was just about to leave town. I had sold my car to get the money to finance my trip and I was down to my last 10 bucks or so and just as a last ditch effort thought I would see Neal. I didn’t really expect anything to come out of it. He asked me what I wanted and I said, “Anything that pays. A job.” So he just picked up the phone and got me a job in the production dept. at Marvel just on his say so because he was friends with John Verpoorten, the production manager. So that was pretty much that and I said, “Thank you very much,” and I left. I think I only showed him one or maybe two samples of my stuff and he wasn’t that impressed. He didn’t offer to have me work with him or anything, but I just went off on my way to Marvel.

I don’t remember when I decided to rent space at Continuity, but it wasn’t too long after that. It might have been right away or I might have waited a few months. I just can’t recall off the bat. Probably it was very soon after that. I just asked him if I could rent one of the desks in his studio and work there and get out of my apartment so I could be around the other artists and see what everybody else was doing.

Even then I was just renting studio space from Neal. I wasn’t working with Neal. I had my own stuff I was trying to do. I might have even waited until I had my own freelance work, like six months later maybe before I got the studio space. So I was working on my jobs and Neal would just come by and take a peek and just shake his head or something and he really didn’t have much to say about it. I was always waiting for him to make some comment. The only thing he really said was, “Slow down.” “Take a little more care.” I took note of that and tried to do that and then a Crusty Bunker job came along and everybody was chipping in on that and I said, “Well, can I do some of that?” Everybody said, “Yeah, anybody can do it. Jump in there.” I didn’t actually ask Neal, I just started inking. That’s how it all started.

Stroud: Do you happen to remember which job that was initially?

McLeod: That might have been over Bob Brown, probably. Son of Satan or that female... Satanna? It might have been a black and white magazine rather than a color comic. It’s hard to remember.

Stroud: Well, it has been awhile back after all. (Chuckle.)

Tarzan (1977) #16, cover penciled by John Buscema & inked by Bob McLeod.

McLeod: Yes, it has.

Stroud: Who else did you encounter up there, Bob?

McLeod: The whole crew. I got there before Carl Potts. I started in ’74 and Russ Heath was there and Jack Abel. Larry Hama, Ralph Reese, Joe Rubinstein, who was kind of the studio gopher. He was just a young kid of 16 or so. Joe Brozowski was up there, too.

Stroud: As Greg Theakston described them, all the young bucks.

McLeod: I only saw Greg Theakston up there a couple of times. He would bring in an oil painting to show everybody. Mike Hinge was working in the back at some point. He was kind of an odd guy who pretty much kept to himself.

Stroud: It sounded like he was quite the eccentric.

McLeod: I was very surprised to see him doing art for some kind of game or toy. I think it was a toy. He was designing the box that the toy would be sold in. It had never occurred to me that someone had to do that.

Stroud: Yeah, isn’t that something? I know that when I interviewed Don Perlin he said he’d done a lot of advertising type illustration and it struck me at the time, “Oh, yeah. Somebody has to draw that stuff.” And I shouldn’t forget Murphy Anderson’s work on the old Captain Action toy boxes in the 60’s.

How long were you at Continuity?

McLeod: Well, I started in ’74 and I was there two years and the comic book I was working on, “The Black Panther” for Marvel got canceled and I couldn’t find enough steady work. Even being at Continuity there just wasn’t enough work at that time to support me. I couldn’t find another book and I’m sure if I had just stuck around something would have come up, but I was out of money. I just couldn’t pay the rent and I didn’t know what to do. So I just ended up leaving. I went home to Florida and worked in advertising for a year. I just got bored out of my mind doing that. I just could not imagine doing that year after year, so I decided I had to make another attempt at comics. That was in ’76, so in ’77 I went back to New York and started over - doing backgrounds for Bob Layton and Al Milgrom and whoever I chanced upon and my career took off again from there. I quickly got all the work I could handle. I don’t think I went back to Continuity, though. I think I was just working at home in my apartment at that point. I was probably only at Continuity from ’74 to ’76.

Captain America (1968) #224, cover penciled by Mike Zeck & inked by Bob McLeod.

Marvel Graphic Novel (1982) #4, cover by Bob McLeod.

Jemm, Son of Saturn (1984) #8, cover penciled by Gene Colan & inked by Bob McLeod.

Stroud: Okay, so long enough to get a feel for the place. It doesn’t sound like you had to fill out an application to be a Crusty Bunker, but I’d say you were on the roster.

McLeod: You just had to walk in the door when the job was being done. (Chuckle.) You didn’t even have to be an inker really.

Stroud: That was the funny thing. I’d asked Bernie Wrightson in passing, “You were considered a Crusty Bunker, weren’t you?” “Oh, I don’t think so. Anybody that happened to be around could pitch in on a job, but I don’t think I was truly one of the Crusty Bunkers.”

Charlton Bullseye (1981) #1, cover penciled by Dan Reed & inked by Bob McLeod.

McLeod: We didn’t really consider Bernie one of the Crusty Bunkers. He was above that. He was a star already by then. He might have done a tiny bit here or there, and I suppose officially anyone that worked on a Crusty Bunker job was a Crusty Bunker, but he really didn’t get involved in it all that much.

Stroud: He just deflected the idea. For the gifts the man has, he’s so remarkably humble about it. I only wish he had a more regular gig so I could enjoy those gifts.

Any particularly fond memories from your time at the studio?

McLeod: Jack Abel was a wonderful person. I guess not everyone would say that because he could be kind of a sourpuss, but he was just such an interesting guy and a nice guy. He was a pleasure to be around. Joe Rubinstein and I used to hang out around Jack Abel’s desk a lot and talk to him.

Bob Wiacek and Terry Austin were in a room together and they were big fans of the Bob and Ray radio show and they would listen to that all day and so we would hang around and listen to Bob and Ray.

Mike Nasser (aka Netzer) was up there and we were all enthralled with Neal’s artwork and Mike especially was trying to draw just like Neal and so Joe Rubinstein and I wanted to ink Mike because he was drawing just like Neal and so we became friends and hung out a lot together.

Joe Rubinstein and I were really intensely studying Stan Drake and Neal Adams and Tom Palmer and so he and I would critique each other’s work a lot and we spent a lot of time discussing comic book art and comic book inking.

Stroud: It must have been a great place to learn the chops. Particularly with people like Jack Abel and Dick Giordano around, although I don’t know. People have spoken of Dick with the greatest fondness, but not mentioned a lot about his contributions there. Maybe he was more involved with the business side of things than artistically.

McLeod: Dick was the one with the head for business more than Neal, I think. Neal was the artist and Dick was the businessman, is how I thought of them. Honestly, I hardly ever saw Dick. I don’t think he worked in the studio that much. Certainly not in the couple of years that I was there. I rarely saw him and had almost nothing to do with him. He inked one page that I penciled for a satire magazine. I never did backgrounds for him, so I studied his work a little bit, but I was much more into Tom Palmer and Neal.

Fear (1970) #29, cover penciled by Ron Wilson & inked by Bob McLeod.

Stroud: You couldn’t go wrong there, either. Tom is definitely one of the top inkers and he’s still very fully employed.

McLeod: He’s wonderful and he was always my favorite inker on Neal and Gene Colan.

Stroud: Magical pairings with both those talents.

McLeod: Tom Palmer had a quality to his line and we could just not figure out how he got such a brush type line, knowing he was a pen inker. Rubinstein and I would ask him what pen point he was using and he wouldn’t tell us. (Chuckle.) He said it was a trade secret and it was a point he’d bought a bunch of years ago and that it may not even be made any more and all this. We tried every pen tip being produced and were trying our best to get the same kind of line Tom Palmer got.

Stroud: (Laughter.) I’m reminded of the legends I heard about “The Gaspar Stone,” and I finally couldn’t stand it anymore and I called Gaspar [Saladino] up one day and asked, “Gaspar is it true that you had this special stone you used to hone down your nibs for your lettering work?” He laughed and laughed and said, “No, no, no. I used a little sandpaper sometimes, but that was it.” I’m sure the equipment is very important, but maybe it’s more the user.

McLeod: Exactly. It’s just the way that you press on it and what you do with it much more than the pen point, but at the time we thought there must be some magic in his pen point.

Stroud: I recall someone telling me about picking up one of Russ Heath’s brushes and saying, “This is it! The source!” (Mutual laughter.)

McLeod: Russ would use old brushes. A gigantic #4 Windsor-Newton brush. He and Neal would both ink with that one. Most people would ink with a 2 or a 3. You can get a tiny little line with a 4, but you have to be really careful not to press down hard. I watched him ink a tank, a Sherman or whatever for some Sgt. Rock job with a #4 brush. You’d think he’d use a pen for mechanical parts, but he’d just slap it out with a brush.

Detective Comics (1937) #707, cover penciled by Graham Nolan & inked by Bob McLeod.

Stroud: I think it was in Bill Schelly’s biography of Joe Kubert where I read about Joe being in a bind and had to quickly ink something and all he could find was a letterer’s pen or something, I’m talking about things I don’t know a lot about, but I guess it was a tool completely unsuited to the job but somehow he made it work, which just attests to the idea that a professional can make it work one way or the other.

McLeod: Yeah. I’ve inked with a lettering pen before, too and you can do it, it’s just that you can’t get different things with it and you have to know how to be in control of it.

Stroud: You made an interesting comment, perhaps a little counter-intuitive, when you said Neal was cautioning you to slow down in your work. That would be the ideal, but when you’re faced with deadlines, how do you reconcile the two?

McLeod: He wasn’t even talking about slowing down overall. He was talking about each stroke. I was just whipping stuff out and he wanted me to lay down each stroke of the brush or pen with more care and deliberation. It was great advice. It’s so interesting that he came up with just that one comment that really affected my inking and made me a better inker. Because he didn’t give lessons. He wasn’t a teacher. He was handy with the criticisms, but not much good with the advice, generally.

Stroud: That sounds familiar, though nearly everyone I’ve spoken to has expressed a gratefulness for their time and exposure at Continuity. The comments have been sort of, “No, I can’t say I really learned a lot from a school sense.”

McLeod: Well, just being there and seeing Neal’s original art was amazing. Being in production at Marvel and just seeing all the art come through there was a fantastic education and really taught me a lot just seeing what everyone was doing and how they were doing it. I could puzzle out how they were doing it by seeing the original art.

Stroud: That does sound like a school in and of itself.

McLeod: Exactly.

Spider-Woman (1978) #10, cover penciled by Carmine Infantino & inked by Bob McLeod.

Stroud: Bob, were you one of the participants in the comic creator’s guild?

McLeod: I was in there. That was Neal’s baby and a lot of bigger name artists like John Buscema didn’t want to get involved because they were already making a lot of money and they didn’t want to rock the boat. There had been plenty of instances in the past where artists were just hung out to dry and couldn’t get any work if they weren’t careful. So everybody was very cautious, but me being so young and naïve, I didn’t realize I had anything to lose, so I said, “Sure, sign me up.” I was all for it.

Stroud: It obviously didn’t have a lot of legs, but can you tell me how it went forth?

McLeod: Unfortunately it didn’t go forth. It was just Neal mostly and other people at Continuity trying to talk people into joining. Like any union organizer trying to explain the benefits to them and why they should do it and why they were crazy not to do it. I didn’t take any active role in that. I just joined and told people I had joined and if it came up I would try to explain what I knew about it. It really just kind of didn’t go anywhere because they couldn’t get the big guns to join.

Stroud: As far as more influential creators?

McLeod: Well, just any number of creators. There was any number of artists at DC and Marvel that just wouldn’t join, and it couldn’t work if only young nobodies were members. They had to get the Joe Kubert’s and the John Buscema’s and the Murphy Anderson’s. Whoever was big at that time. They needed all those people and they couldn’t get them.

Stroud: The attitudes of the different generations of creators is sort of interesting. It seems like the old guard, if you will, treated it as just a job.

McLeod: Well, they all would much rather have been illustrators in newspaper comics like Milt Caniff or someone of that stature and they were doing comic books because they couldn’t get their own comic strip and they couldn’t get those big magazine illustration jobs, so they drifted into comics as third rate work.

Stroud: It’s an interesting contrast to those who followed and actively sought comic book work because they loved it.

Kamandi (1975) #58, cover penciled by Jim Sherman & inked by Bob McLeod.

McLeod: Well, you know, when I got into the business in ’74, everyone was seriously saying comics weren’t going to be around in another five years. They were just going out of business because there wasn’t any money. There were just all kinds of problems and they were seriously predicting the demise of the industry and so again, that’s why we couldn’t get the guild off the ground, because everybody was just glad they were getting work and were scared that they’d all of a sudden not be getting any work.

Stroud: Yeah, end up black-balled because of it. Was the goal to raise page rates or get benefits or royalties or what?

McLeod: Yeah. All that. It was just to be treated with respect and get a decent wage and get some kind of medical benefits and retirement. Everything every union wants for their workers.

Stroud: I’ve picked up smatterings here and there and when I talked to Mike Netzer, he was kind of lamenting the fact that things really haven’t changed that much and that he’s still signing a contract that is in essence work for hire. The publishers are making all this money from licensing and the artists are still getting a page rate.

McLeod: Exactly. Nothing has changed at all. In fact, for this job I’m working on right now they’re paying me the same page rate they paid me about 10 years ago, so with inflation they’re paying me much less than I earned 10 years ago.

Stroud: How does the royalty system work?

McLeod: Well, you know when they installed that royalty system they said only comic books that sold over 100,000 copies will earn royalties. At the time that they did that (chuckle) almost no comics were selling that many copies, so they figured, “We’ll appease them by telling them we’ll give them royalties, but we won’t actually have to pay any royalties.” But then they started doing fancy cover things and triple versions of the same comic and all those marketing things that came along and comic sales went through the roof, suddenly almost every mainstream comic that Marvel was publishing was selling over 100,000 copies. At least for a while. But now, it’s back down to where even the X-Men are only selling 15,000 copies or whatever. Maybe 40,000, but there’s almost nothing still that’s selling 100,000 copies and as far as I know it’s still 100,000 copies as the benchmark.

New Mutants (1983) #1, cover by Bob McLeod.

Stroud: Probably. I know Len Wein remarked that when he was doing fanzines he sold more than current comic sales volumes. Do you think there’s any credibility to the notion that the lack of ownership of a character is a contributing factor?

McLeod: I don’t think that’s the case because 30 or 40 years ago comic artists were such that nobody was a businessman and nobody knew anything about what their art was worth or whatever. Like Jack Kirby got royally screwed and since Neal Adams came along and started demanding that we get our original art back and started getting money for Siegel and Shuster and all that stuff, artists know better now. You can negotiate a contract now with a character and Marvel is very willing to negotiate with you if they want that character or whatever. So you can get a more advantageous contract if you’ve got something that they think might be big.

I think the main reason that comics are in the state that they’re in is because we used to have Marvel comics and DC comics and Archie comics and Charlton and you have to think about who was after that. There were just a handful of publishers. If you go to a comic shop now you see there are hundreds of publishers and yet we’ve still got the same small percentage of the population interested in buying comics. So where they used to have only a few comics to spend their money on, now they’ve got dozens and hundreds of choices and they’ve just watered down the profits for individual publishers. Along with DC and Marvel, there are just too many other comics, and often good comics, that the fans have an option of buying rather than X-Men.

Stroud: So, saturation.

McLeod: That’s what I think. I could be wrong, too.

Stroud: It just seems like there haven’t been much in the way of exciting new characters in quite a while, though I am a bit out of touch with the newer stuff. It may be my stage in life, too. I’m not exactly the demographic they’re shooting for.

McLeod: That’s probably got something to do with it. The new characters that have been introduced for the last 10 years are so are pretty lame, but they are being created. There might be 50 new X-Men alone. (Chuckle.)

Action Comics (1938) #674, cover penciled by Dan Jurgens & inked by Bob McLeod.

Stroud: Just what we need.

McLeod: Just in summary, the Crusty Bunkers were a really great thing. They helped a lot of us young guys get experience and get a decent page rate, and screw up and have Neal fix us. It was just an amazing experience.

Stroud: It almost seems like it was hearkening back to the old studio days that didn’t exist anymore.

McLeod: Yeah. The Iger studio and that kind of stuff.

Stroud: Precisely. It’s unfortunate that the environment doesn’t exist any longer to provide that sort of apprenticeship.

McLeod: Exactly. I didn’t apprentice with anybody, but just being in the studio, even if I just stood around and watched everybody else, I was able to learn just by being there.

Stroud: I would think that simply by being in a creative environment like that the synergy that exists had to be helpful in and of itself.

McLeod: Yeah. I would watch Jack Abel ink and of course he inked totally differently than Russ Heath would ink, who inked totally differently than Neal Adams would ink and just watching them put strokes down just really taught me a lot.

Stroud: It makes me think of when Al Plastino shared with me about being in a studio with Jack Sparling. He said it wasn’t really a competition, but Jack could apparently crank things out so fast that Al would pick up his own pace and tried to do at least as well. Your experiences sound similar and as memorable.

McLeod: It was one of the highlights of my life. I didn’t appreciate it as much at the time as I do in retrospect, but it really was a wonderful time.

Action Comics (1938) #672, cover penciled by Dan Jurgens & inked by Bob McLeod.

Iron Man (1968) #113, cover penciled by John Romita Jr. & inked by Bob McLeod.

Jemm, Son of Saturn (1984) #12, cover penciled by Gene Colan & inked by Bob McLeod.

Karate Kid (1976) #13, cover penciled by Rich Buckler & inked by Bob McLeod.

1992 Eclipse Famous Comic Book Creators trading card #10 Bob McLeod.

Marvel Premiere (1972) #23, cover penciled by Gil Kane & inked by Bob McLeod.

January 09, 2019

An Interview With Joe D'Esposito - "All-Hands On Deck" at Continuity Studios

January 09, 2019/ Bryan Stroud

Written by Bryan Stroud

Joeseph D'Esposito (born in 1958) is a storyboard artist and illustrator who began his artistic career at Continuity Studios in the 1970's. Starting out as an occasional member of the Crusty Bunker crew of comic artists, Joe went on to work as a colorist at both Marvel and Eclipse comics in the early 80's. Transitioning into more commercial work, Mr. D'Esposito left comic books to work in storyboarding - helping to create ad spots for Evian, PayPal, and even "The Most Interesting Man in the World" commercials for Dos Equis. He is currently working on a graphic retelling of the life of artist Bernie Krigstein called Krigstein: A Graphic Novel - and you can see updates at Joe D’Esposito’s Storyboards.

Joe was another delightful chat about how things worked in the early days at Continuity Associates. Friendly and down to earth, he continues to carve out a career as an artist in the Big Apple.

This interview originally took place over the phone on October 11, 2010.

Bryan Stroud: What led you to Continuity?

Joe D’Esposito: I was Neal [Adams]’s assistant for five years from ’76 to ’81. Even before that I was bouncing around at Continuity with my friend Joe Rubinstein. We went to the same high school together. This was back in ’75 and we’d go up there together and I was like, “Oooo, Ahhh.” It was all-hands on deck sort of quality. When you have that volume of work, you just have no idea. It’s a lot of work to ink in comics and especially with the detail in Neal’s work. Neal re-introduced a highly detailed inking style, and it’s great, but the downside of that is, of course, that it’s a highly detailed inking style. You need to have a lot of hands on deck between the backgrounds and the Zipatone.

When you look at that stuff, the older stuff, it’s just great, but Neal brought in this highly realized rendering that we hadn’t seen in a long time. I remember working there once and coming in and it was a John Buscema job. It was a Conan job. Imagine that.

Stroud: (Chuckle.) Buscema on Conan? Come on…

D’Esposito: It was an early one and really nice and I think it was bouncing around the studio. Neal would do the heads and the main figures and whoever happened to be there would jump in on the lesser figures and backgrounds and so forth. It was a great learning thing. It really kind of goes back to the early days of the old studio systems. One guy pencils, another inks, another letters. This was taking sort of that same path; only it was breaking down the inking job and taking it to another level.

Scorpio Rose (1983) #2 pg.2, colored by Joe D’Esposito.

Stroud: Sort of like an assembly line.

D’Esposito: In a sense, but it was just so great because you’d get people like Joe Rubinstein, Terry Austin, Bob Wiacek, Ralph Reese and just whoever was in the studio would be jumping in and helping out a little bit to proceed with the job and get it done. It really added a certain luster to it. I remember doing an Alan Weiss job. It was just beautiful. It was drawn by Alan but inked by Neal and I believe it was a Crusty Bunkers job and it was on one of those black and white books. I think it might have been Solomon Kane.

It was just a beautiful job. Neal looked great on Alan Weiss. He just looked fantastic. It was a way for Neal to get around. It allowed for some great inking and to lift things up to another level and additionally to get other guys broken into the business and give them a chance to develop their skills.

Stroud: So, would you call it an apprenticeship of sorts?

D’Esposito: I believe I would, yes. Dick Giordano was there, too. I was really on the bottom of that food chain. I was filling in blacks, putting in Zipatone. There were many guys there who were much better than me and they’d decide who would be touching the backgrounds and things like that.

Stroud: It all contributes to the whole, though.

D’Esposito: Exactly, and there were people who went on to be terrific inkers in the business. They got a lot of training by working there at Continuity. It was a pretty sizeable list of talent there.

Stroud: It really was an impressive list. When I spoke to Bernie Wrightston a couple of years ago, he sort of scoffed at the idea that he was one although everyone mentions him spending time and effort there.

D’Esposito: Well, Bernie was on his way up at that time. Neal had that studio and it was just a great experience for a young artist just to be exposed to have a chance to do some work.

Scorpio Rose (1983) #2 pg.5, colored by Joe D’Esposito.

I worked with Neal mostly on the advertising end of things and just whatever Neal wanted me to do. I was sort of like (chuckle) his indentured slave. There was always a lot of work to go around. Sometimes one week there would be a storyboard job and then there might be an illustration job. He really kept that studio hopping. There was a lot of work and a lot of people around, so if you found yourself with a down hour or two, just jump on this. “Let’s get that inked. Let’s get that going.”

I’m not sure if it was a Crusty Bunker job, but I remember the first KISS comic and I do remember working on the boots. (Chuckle.) Inking those things took forever.

The deadlines were different then, too. We lived in a world where there were some pretty long deadlines. Some people have put Neal down on that, but there was really a lot of work. He wasn’t slow by any stretch of the imagination, but he just did this highly rendered work and he did a lot of it. So, the consequences of doing a lot of work like that is that it takes a long time.

Stroud: I’m sure the sheer volume was staggering.

D’Esposito: Oh, yeah. Neal was still doing some comic book work. I remember my first year there I was helping out on the Muhammad Ali comic. I think the inker listed on that was Dick Giordano, but I know Terry did a lot of the backgrounds on that. You started to see people branching out. That first generation from the Crusty Bunkers led to guys who became pretty important inkers in their own right. They were branching out doing backgrounds and such and sometimes just laying it out. Stats and things like that, too.

Those guys were in there really earning their chops and developing their skills. Terry in particular was just doing some wonderful stuff and working with Dick, too.

Dick was a really nice guy and he was there the first year or so after I arrived. After he left it was all Neal all the time. (Mutual laughter.)

Comix #5, oil on canvas - painted by Joe D'Esposito. — **Comix #5**, oil on canvas - painted by Joe D'Esposito.

Stroud: A lot of the guys have said it was hopping around the clock.

D’Esposito: Oh, yeah. There was just so much work and Neal was doing a lot of things. It was often around the clock and I was 18 at the time. You really had to be young to keep up the pace. We all just worked our asses off. People have no idea. Again, Neal was the first to do that really highly rendered style of inking in comics. After the EC era, the only quality of inking of that sort could be found in comic strips maybe. That detailed, photo-realistic style that Neal was doing.

Sometimes you’d hate it. “Oh, you’re making us do all this highly rendered work and we’re not making enough money!”

Don’t get me wrong. It was really great. Almost an impressionistic quality to it. Neal brought in this realism that you weren’t seeing anyplace else in comic books. It just took a lot of time and you don’t get rich inking stuff like that. But if you have a lot of people in the studio, looking to do some work…

Stroud: Crusty Bunkers.

I Am Cyote (1984) #1, colored by Joe D’Esposito.

D’Esposito: Exactly. It wasn’t like nobody had ever done that type of thing. As we were discussing earlier, in the old days they’d break up the job, so in some ways it’s not new. Thinking again about the work being done at EC it’s hard to believe they were doing things that were so good and it just dropped off. After EC comics went out of business nobody else seemed to be reaching for that pinnacle any longer. On the other hand, when you’re doing detailed work like that and the high use of Zipatone, that’s a labor-intensive job. In fact, that was what I did. A lot of those jobs called for a lot of Zip and that was up to me.

Stroud: You were fully employed, then.

D’Esposito: The inking really carried a lot. The coloring available at the time was really limited. I mean it was bad. So, it really mattered that you had good rendering. Strong use of light and dark. With the limitations of coloring you used Zipatone to get a good gray. Soon you began to see a lot of people of that generation using it again. If you look at the Silver Age work, you don’t see any Zip. But after Neal and the Crusty Bunkers, you started to see Zip. If you go back to say, Bernie Krigstein, who was my high school art teacher, by the way…

Stroud: Oh, wow.

D’Esposito: Yeah. He never talked about comics very much. We kind of knew about it, but he didn’t talk about it that much. Anyway, if you look at his work, he used a lot of Zip. In particular to create depth. Going from light to dark. You couldn’t get that with the coloring. It was just impossible. You were just at the mercy of what they had, even when it was good for the time, but even then, you needed Zip. Either that or cross-hatching or other pen and ink effects.

Stroud: So you say you were there for five years?

Scorpio Rose (1983) #2 pg.14, colored by Joe D’Esposito.

D’Esposito: Just about that and it seems like around that time the Crusty Bunkers were tapering off. That new generation was coming into their own and taking over. You had the Terry Austin’s and the Rubinstein’s and the Bob Wiacek’s.

Stroud: A pretty good graduating class.

D’Esposito: Many of them began assisting Dick Giordano. “Crusty Bunkers” was pretty much whoever happened to be in the studio. (Chuckle.) Gray Morrow, for example, might walk in. Sometimes you could look at a job and tell. “Oh, that’s Ralph Reese,” just because I know how Ralph inks. Or sometimes it would be Rubinstein doing his best Neal imitation on a small figure. Joe was really that first generation. He was doing Neal’s style of inking and was his apprentice for a time.

I remember going in with Joe early in the game and Neal was working on this huge storyboard job and I was asked if I wanted to help color. “Yeah, sure.” I’d never colored with a marker in my life. I was half terrified. “Oh, my God, I’m coloring Neal Adams.” Joe said, “Don’t worry about it. If it gets screwed up I’ll just re-ink it.” You just had to learn to be confident. That was an important lesson.

Stroud: What do you feel was the most important thing you took away from your experience, Joe?

D’Esposito: Good work comes from hard work. If you really want to create something good, you’ve got to put in the time. Neal never slacked off and I think it showed in the work, although perhaps the changes in the business and the money to be made off the advertising work may have caused things to go down a little toward the end. You may recall he did his own line of Continuity comics for a while.

Stroud: Did your time there open any doors for you professionally?

D’Esposito: Sure. I’m still doing storyboards and I’m still a painter. I painted the whole time I worked for Neal. I’m working on a painted graphic novel as we speak.

Below are some sample pages from Joe’s current project, Krigstein: A Graphic Novel.

Krigstein: A Graphic Novel - Sample Page 1, art & story by Joe D’Esposito. — **Krigstein: A Graphic Novel** - Sample Page 1, art & story by Joe D’Esposito.

Krigstein: A Graphic Novel - Sample Page 2, art & story by Joe D’Esposito. — **Krigstein: A Graphic Novel** - Sample Page 2, art & story by Joe D’Esposito.

Krigstein: A Graphic Novel - Sample Page 3, art & story by Joe D’Esposito. — **Krigstein: A Graphic Novel** - Sample Page 3, art & story by Joe D’Esposito.

Krigstein: A Graphic Novel - Sample Page 4, art & story by Joe D’Esposito. — **Krigstein: A Graphic Novel** - Sample Page 4, art & story by Joe D’Esposito.

Krigstein: A Graphic Novel - Sample Page 5, art & story by Joe D’Esposito. — **Krigstein: A Graphic Novel** - Sample Page 5, art & story by Joe D’Esposito.

Krigstein: A Graphic Novel - Sample Page 6, art & story by Joe D’Esposito. — **Krigstein: A Graphic Novel** - Sample Page 6, art & story by Joe D’Esposito.

Krigstein: A Graphic Novel - Sample Page 7, art & story by Joe D’Esposito. — **Krigstein: A Graphic Novel** - Sample Page 7, art & story by Joe D’Esposito.

Krigstein: A Graphic Novel - Sample Page 8, art & story by Joe D’Esposito. — **Krigstein: A Graphic Novel** - Sample Page 8, art & story by Joe D’Esposito.

Krigstein: A Graphic Novel - Sample Page 9, art & story by Joe D’Esposito. — **Krigstein: A Graphic Novel** - Sample Page 9, art & story by Joe D’Esposito.

January 02, 2019

An Interview With Steve Mitchell - Invasion of the Blue Jean Generation

January 02, 2019/ Bryan Stroud

Written by Bryan Stroud

Steve Mitchell (born in 1953) is an American comic book artist known for his time at both Marvel & DC comics, where he worked mostly as an inker. He began his comic book career in 1972 with a story for Marvel Team-Up #4. His first published work for DC Comics came in 1973 for their G.I. Combat. Steve enjoyed lengthy runs as the inker on titles like Batman, Detective Comics, and Iron Man. Switching gears in the '80s, Mitchell started writing scripts for cartoons. He wrote episodes for Transformers, G.I. Joe, Jem, Viper, and Star Wars: The Clone Wars. He also wrote the b-movie horror classic Chopping Mall, and wrote and directed King Cohen - a documentary about legendary filmmaker Larry Cohen. But before all of that, Steve was the assistant to Dick Giordano at Continuity Studios and a founding member of the Crusty Bunkers.

Yet another enjoyable Crusty Bunker interview came courtesy of Steve Mitchell. As a good friend of Alan Kupperberg, I was given the green light to contact Steve and I'm so glad I did. From his work at the Big Two comics publishers to his time at Continuity and even a short tenure as a Junior Woodchuck at the DC offices helping to produce the Amazing World of DC Comics prozine, he's a man who's seen and done a lot. Be sure to look into his film "King Cohen" as well.

This interview originally took place over the phone on September 26, 2010.

DC Comics Presents (1978) #30, cover penciled by Rich Buckler & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Bryan Stroud: What contrasts do you see in the business today?

Steve Mitchell: It’s more of a business than it used to be. I think that back in the day there were fewer players in the pool and as a result there was a lot of overlap of experience and contact. When comics were a tad younger, everybody had to live within the tri-state area of New York City. Because Federal Express was not the way the world worked. I think Express Mail showed up first and then Federal Express after that. Of course, a lot of stuff is delivered digitally today. But back then you had to be near the offices. So, everybody had a lot of contact. Everybody kinda, sorta knew most people. To take that old Hollywood phrase, it was a smaller town back then. That’s what I’m talking about.

Stroud: I can see that. I wonder, sometimes, if something hasn’t been lost.

Mitchell: The one thing I think that has been lost is that there was a kind of un-hip, spontaneity about comics that I experienced first hand, and towards the tail-end of my comics career, was certainly evaporating. Guys would talk about stuff. They would get ideas and they would walk into an office, whether it was at Marvel or DC, and they’d say, “Hey, so and so and I thought it might be cool to do, (fill in the blank.)” And then whoever it was behind the desk, whether it was a Jim Shooter or Dick Giordano or somebody like that, they would react to it and they would say, “Gee, that sounds pretty good. Let’s do it.” That never happens today based on what I know.

Stroud: That sounds very consistent with what I’ve heard from other creators. The “bull-sessions” are all but a thing of the past.

Mitchell: There was a creative flow that existed back in the day, and I’m somewhat removed from comics, so I can’t say exactly how it works today, but there was a creative flow back in the day that I don’t think exists now. Comics were a lot more fraternal, and a bit more of a club than they are now. What would happen was that once you got into the club or the fraternity, whatever metaphor you want to use, and you proved that you could do it, and that you could do it on time, you would get work. So, there was a lot of “I’m going into the office today. I’m going to pitch. I’m going to deliver some work today and find out about more work.” Being a freelancer was not a hard way to make a living in the comic book business. I remember hearing something at a San Diego comic book convention, maybe as many as six years ago, where somebody had finished doing something and an editor, and I don’t know who the editor was, said, “Gee, looks great, don’t give up your day job.” Well, when you worked in comics back in those days, that was your day job. It certainly was mine for a long time.

Iron Man (1968) #169, cover penciled by Luke McDonnell & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Stroud: What an odd thing to pop off with.

Mitchell: Yeah, it’s not the same in so many ways. But the kind of clubhouse atmosphere of doing comics was part of why it was so much fun. Back at 909 Third Avenue, when the DC offices were there, which, by the way, were my favorite DC offices, they had a coffee room with a bunch of crappy vending machines, but it was sort of a coffee/lunch room that they shared with Independent News, which was the distribution arm of the company. And Neal Adams used to have an office up at 909, and he shared it with Murphy Anderson. Neal and Murphy liked to go to work. They liked to have an office to go to.

Stroud: A structured environment.

Mitchell: Yeah. That’s why a lot of artists have studios outside their home, because the going to the studio or the going to work is an important part of their process. I say this because when I was doing comics, I had 4 or 5 studios and I liked to have that structure of going to work. Anyway, Neal got a free office along with Murphy and they used to do their work in the office and they had this coffee room and the coffee room became a kind of clubhouse. Especially on Fridays a lot of guys would come in, deliver work, they would usually pick up a check, they would hang around in the coffee room, show each other their stuff…I’m sure you encounter that word “stuff” a lot, particularly when you talk to comic book people of my generation.

Stroud: Oh, yeah.

Mitchell: And there would be sort of an exchange of thoughts, experience; guys would show other guys pages. It was a great place to be and Neal was sort of the king of that world. Now I was on staff working at DC in the production department. I had a job that lasted a couple of days during an Easter vacation in 1970, which got me a summer job in the production department that summer, the following summer and the year after that I think I had a summer job or they gave me a job before I went to college. So, I was around for the Neal Adams coffee room/coffee table reviews and these Friday interactions of a lot of young freelancers. Guys like Mike Kaluta, Alan Weiss, Howard Chaykin. I think [Dave] Cockrum would show up. Sergio Aragones whenever he was in New York would hang out there. Berni Wrightson would be around sometimes.

Secret Origins (1986) #3, cover penciled by Jerry Bingham & inked by Steve Mitchell.

If you were a young guy and you were in New York at the time, you would usually go to DC on Fridays because also after office hours usually there would be a lot of sort of co-socializing. Guys would hang out. It was like your buddies. And that circumstance was, I think, an important component of the social interaction and professional interaction of the younger guys breaking in at the time. And Neal, of course, was the champion for all of us. Neal was always trying to get the young guys into the club. And trust me; it was tough to get into the club back in those days. It was very tough.

Stroud: Was it due to a provincial viewpoint?

Mitchell: I think they hated us long-haired young kids. I mean I’ve done some interviews before about those days. One of the phrases I’ve tried to get into the parlance was that we were the blue jean generation and the guys that preceded us all looked like businessmen. Because I think they were embarrassed to be in comics on one level or another. And all the guys that I knew when I broke into comics, they were all grownups. Generally, most of these guys wore suits or slacks and a sports jacket and they were commercial artists. They weren’t comic book artists. And I always got the impression they were a little bit ashamed. In fact, you know how the original art used to be one size and then some time in the late 60’s it was reduced down to I think it was 10” x 15”?

Stroud: Right. The twice-ups went away.

Mitchell: Yeah, the twice-ups went away. I don’t know why they did it. Maybe it was to save money on paper. I think it was partly done because those smaller pages would fit into an attaché case. And guys could carry an attaché case with pages into the office. And therefore, they looked like businessmen. That’s only a guess on my part, but I’m sure it probably figured in some way or another.

But these guys all looked like they were going into a different business and then there was the blue jean generation where we all had big ass portfolios, long hair, blue jeans, and we looked like…well, we kind of looked like hippies as defined back in the day.

Stroud: (Chuckle.) Not a necktie to be seen.

Red Sonja (1983) #2, cover penciled by Dave Simons & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Mitchell: Not a necktie to be seen. I’m trying to think if there was anyone that tried to adapt. Jim Shooter was the only guy that I know who really adapted to that sort of business wardrobe. But the rest of us were all what my dad would call hippies. Some of us more so than others. Some of us a little less than others, but we were young of the time and people who were our age at the time dressed the way that they dressed. So, it was a big contrast.

Actually, I don’t think they were trustful of us. I know John Romita, Sr. really did not trust the young guys. I think it was also true of some of the other guys. I think they were worried that we were going to take over and replace them. And I’ve always maintained we didn’t want their jobs. We wanted to sit next to them and do our jobs while they did theirs. I know that from my point of view, I wanted to bask in the aura of these guys. I didn’t want to kick them to the curb. I was fascinated by what they did because I was a fan. I was most of the time charmed by them, because they were interesting guys. And I wanted to sort of soak up their opinions; I wanted to learn from their experience; I wanted to be a part of their world. I didn’t want to make it my world, I wanted to be in their world. I think a lot of guys from that time share that feeling. There was no animosity at all toward the generation before us. We loved these guys.

Stroud: You keyed in on something there, I think, based on prior conversations I’ve had. There was a completely different mindset with your generation, if I may be so bold, who went in with a passion to do that kind of work, whereas the predecessors saw it as work. A way to make a living, as you already stated quite correctly, I believe. It wasn’t considered honorable work because there was still that fallout from comics being vilified back in the 50’s.

Mitchell: Yeah, I think this is the pecking order as I’ve always understood it: If you were a commercial artist, you wanted to be an illustrator first, because illustration was a very honorable, noble profession. And that’s mostly dead today, which just makes me sad. Or you could be a newspaper strip artist. If you were on the funny page, but you were in a major newspaper, that validated you. A lot of these guys like Leonard Starr, for example and guys like Hal Foster, Alex Raymond…

Stroud: Caniff.

World's Finest Comics (1941) #280, cover penciled by Rich Buckler & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Mitchell: Caniff. These guys were held in very high regard and their profession, while it was unusual to the average working person, I think, it was kind of a form of show business. Whereas comics were always looked upon as sort of pulpy, second class citizens. I mean, let’s face it: Comics were created to be cheap entertainment.

Stroud: And disposable.

Mitchell: Disposable, yeah. Very much so. The whole idea of collecting comics and them having some sort of pop cultural value was never part of the perception of comics. Whereas if you were a newspaper strip artist it was a kind of legitimacy. It was a form of illustration. And look at a lot of the comics guys who were influenced by newspaper strip guys. What guy from Neal Adams’ generation wasn’t influenced by Stan Drake? Or Leonard Starr? Or Alex Raymond? Or John Cullen Murphy? Or so many of those guys. They were amazing artists. So there was a legitimacy in that field and I don’t know if you know that comics, at one time, was probably the fastest paying art job you could get in the commercial art world.

Stroud: No, I hadn’t heard that before.

Mitchell: DC comics, at one time, you could put a voucher in on Monday and it would be paid on Wednesday. You would put a voucher in on Wednesday and it would be paid on Friday. And then years later they went to a system where you would get paid once a week. I don’t know how it works today, but the whole idea was if you could work fast, deliver, you would be paid fast. And being paid fast was not an inconsequential draw for comics, I think. To some guys.

Stroud: I’m sure you’re absolutely correct. I’m reminded of when I spoke to Ric Estrada…

Mitchell: An incredibly sweet, warm, delightful man, by the way.

Stroud: Absolutely. I loved him immediately. One of the things he mentioned was that he had a large and growing family to provide for, so he said, “I loved doing those little 6-page backup stories. Because I could turn those around and turn them into cash and buy groceries.”

Incredible Hulk Versus Quasimodo (1983) #1, cover penciled by Sal Buscema & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Mitchell: I met Ric when I was a fan and he was warm and delightful to me, and he was warm and delightful to me every single time I had contact with him. He was the kind of comics professional they don’t make any more. He was a delightful, delightful person. He was a very human being.

Stroud: We are poorer for his passing.

Mitchell: No kidding.

Stroud: How did you end up at Continuity, Steve?

Mitchell: I was part of the firmament at 909 and I knew Dick [Giordano] and I knew Neal. At one time I was the youngest guy in comics. And when Dick and Neal decided to go in business for themselves, they needed assistants, so Alan Kupperberg, who is a friend of mine and who I went to high school with by the way, the High School of Art and Design, in Manhattan, in New York, it was about 3 blocks from 909 Third Avenue, by the way, not inconsequently. They needed (laughter), slaves, so we filled the bill. Alan was Neal’s assistant and I was Dick’s assistant. That’s how I came on board with that. I was not being paid a salary, but for Dick I was doing backgrounds. I was inking backgrounds and then when certain jobs would come in to Continuity, I would be a part of the advertising jobs. Which, by the way, took forever to get paid. I mean Dick and Neal said, “When we get paid, you get paid.”

Stroud: Oh, no.

Mitchell: Well, on some of that advertising stuff, it took months to get paid. The work was interesting and it paid better than comics, but it took a long time sometimes to get money for that, so primarily what I did was I worked with Dick on comic stuff. Alan and I also were general assistants around the studio so we did other crap as well, but some of it got pretty boring.

Stroud: Alan told me you guys had a lot of scut work.

Mitchell: That’s not an inappropriate description. My day started when Giordano showed up and he’d give me a couple of bucks and I’d go across the street and get him coffee and a roll and so I was fetching him breakfast. Which, by the way, I didn’t mind. It wasn’t sitting behind a drawing table.

Shadow Cabinet (1994) #2, cover penciled by John Paul Leon & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Stroud: Was Dick as nice as I’ve heard?

Mitchell: Dick was, for the most part, a charming, delightful, smart guy. He was a real grownup and a real professional. By the time he and Neal decided to go into business for themselves, Dick had spent quite a lot of time as a freelancer and he’d spent an enormous amount of time as an editor and as an editor-in-chief. My understanding was the reason he left DC to start up with Neal was that he didn’t like working with/for Carmine Infantino. I think that Dick felt that Carmine was not really equipped for the job as the guy who ran the company. I don’t know how many people you’ve talked to about Carmine. I have mixed feelings about Carmine. But I do remember that most of the people who worked in comics did not really think that Carmine was a good comics executive. Wonderful artist. Amazing artist. Unique artist. Iconic artist. But as an executive, I think that there were a lot of people that thought he was underqualified. I’ll put it to you that way.

Carmine, to me, just to me, was kind of an enigma. On the one hand I think that he was a pretty ballsy guy. And then I think sometimes he was an insecure guy. I think that he had opinions based on experience. I think he almost blackmailed his way into the job, from what I understand. He had a contract and Carmine was, in a sense, the face of DC comics. Back in the day you would see covers for so many books, like the Batman books, that were all done by Carmine. Carmine was basically Julie Schwartz’s star player. When you think of DC in the 60’s, I think of Carmine. Because of the war books, I think of [Joe] Kubert.

Carmine had a contract with them, but I think he wanted to step away from the board and have a somewhat easier life. I think that’s how he kind of got the job. He sort of said, “Listen, I’m going to leave if you don’t promote me to some kind of creative position.” And I think that’s how he got that job.

Stroud: Could be. It’s interesting how he went from art director to the executive ranks.

Moon Knight (1980) #16, cover penciled by Denys Cowan & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Mitchell: Listen, everybody wants to move up in their life. Nobody is satisfied in just doing what they do. I think it’s different in today’s world. I think in today’s world if you’re an artist and can make a living doing what you want to do, that’s actually pretty good. Actually, for the blue jean generation, we just love comics. We love being in the comics business and loved being around guys that were our heroes. For the most part, it could be a living. For some more than others. It depended on your ability to produce. But if you were a professional, you went to work every day and turned out a certain amount of work every day and you made a living. But then again, and I think this is true for anybody who gets into their 40’s, perhaps, they start to go, “I don’t want to work that hard, but I want to get paid more money.” Remember now you had guys like Giordano, Orlando, Kubert, those professionals who had turned out so many pages of work. I think they wanted to be recognized as elder statesmen and not have to sit behind a drawing table to make a living.

I know Joe Orlando was at a point where he could not do that. He just could not just sit behind a drawing table and draw for a living. I just don’t think he had it in him anymore. But Joe was a fantastic editor. I mean, the proof is in the pudding. The Joe Orlando books were some of the best books that DC ever put out. Dick was very good and personally I think Kubert walks on water. I’m a huge Joe Kubert fan. But things were changing. Guys wanted to step up a little bit. I think Carmine was one of those guys.

Stroud: Logical. Artists are in kind of a difficult position because with obvious exceptions, it’s not the sort of work you can do forever. Eyesight and motor skills begin to dwindle with age and your back can’t continue to be hunched over a drawing board for 12 to 20 hours at a stretch.

Mitchell: I think that’s mostly true. I think during my inking career that with each job I got better. One thing you didn’t mention is that your hands go. Your hands are just not the same. Part of that is the evolution of your talent. Part of that is your hands just can’t quite take the having to hold something and whack away. It’s a tool. A brush or a pen or markers, they’re all tools, but your hand has to sort of cramp into a claw-like position and I just think that guys who are mentally as good as ever but their hands aren’t as good. That’s part of what happens.

Stroud: And of course, the computer has put a whole new spin on everything from lettering to coloring to the art itself. Collaborators can now be literally across the globe, which is kind of “gee whiz,” but…

Silverblade (1987) #2, cover penciled by Gene Colan & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Mitchell: It goes back to what we were talking about earlier. There’s no longer that same sense of community. It’s amazing that the world has become a smaller place, but at the end of the day, what you have and what you’ve lost is a sense of community. Part of why I liked being in comics was that sense of community. The guys that were in comics when I was in comics for the most part were really pretty interesting people to one degree or another. And it’s just different today. Today if you want to get to know people in the comic business you have to go to the San Diego comic con and walk around to the different booths.

Stroud: That’s true. They’re scattered to the four winds.

Mitchell: You got that right. One of the things that was also nice about being in New York back in the day: I’m sure you’ve heard stories about the Phil Seuling Comic Con. Well, one thing that always happened at the Phil Seuling Comic Con was that Phil would throw a cocktail party for the guys in the business. Because all the guys in the business would show up and help him put on the show in a sense because they were there to be on panels and we made ourselves available to Phil. And Phil always threw a pretty nice cocktail party that was sort of a social event for that summer. So, you got to meet guys. You got to hang out with guys. Sometimes guys who would never be in the neighborhood, so you would get to speak to guys like Joe Sinnott and Jim Aparo and other guys like that who would sometimes make the trip in for that party. Or, there was the DC Christmas party, which was a pretty big deal. And it was another chance to interact with people that you would not see very often. Which was nice.

Stroud: Sounds fantastic.

Mitchell: It was great. I had many good memories even though often times I was a little polluted. I can’t remember a bad DC Christmas party from back in the day. I always had a great time.

Stroud: Speaking of those you don’t run across I’ve heard Ditko would show up at Continuity on occasion. Did you run into him?

Timeslip: Coming of the Avengers (1998) #1, cover penciled by Matt Smith & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Mitchell: Oh, yeah. I knew Ditko very well. I have an interesting relationship with Steve Ditko. It wasn’t very deep, but it was a little bit different than everybody else’s. I know that we’re talking about Continuity, but this is worth talking about. When I was a kid I used to go around and barge in on artists in their studios so they would do a sketch for me. It was a way of me sort of taking my heavy-duty fan boy interests, in fact I grew up in New York City, and just decided I had access to these guys. So, one day I looked up Steve Ditko and he had a studio on 44th Street and 8th Avenue, which was kind of a funky neighborhood. It was a neighborhood where there was a certain amount of strip clubs and porno shops. It was up until maybe the last 10 or 15 years not the best of neighborhoods. Steve had a little studio there and one day I knocked on his door and he came to the door and he talked to me in his doorway for about an hour. We were always on a first name basis after that and I made a little bit of a connection with him.

There was not much of a connection to be made with Steve Ditko. He was a very private guy. My other sort of intimate Steve Ditko experience (chuckle) was when the James Bond movie “Diamonds Are Forever” opened up. I think it was Christmas of 1970. I went to go see it one afternoon at the DeMille theater on Broadway in Times Square and going into the same show was Steve Ditko. We sat next to each other, totally silent until it was over. He hated it, because the hero didn’t really save the day and I kind of got an insight that Steve had very, very defined ideas about hero fiction. It was pleasant enough. I said, “Nice to have seen the movie with you. I’ll see you around.” It was all very amicable and whenever we saw one another we smiled at each other. Maybe because we have the same first name. (Chuckle.) He was always very nice to me, even though Steve Ditko was, and this is no secret, he was probably what you would call an odd duck. He was somebody who did not really interact. He wasn’t unfriendly, but he was kind of his own guy. He kind of stuck to himself and he had very strong opinions on things. But personally, I thought he was a nice guy. I liked him.

He would occasionally come to Continuity, getting back to your earlier question, but not a lot. The guys that came to Continuity, and by the way, Continuity became the new 909 Third Avenue DC coffee room, because when guys would come into the city to drop off work… It’s funny. Manhattan has always been referred to as New York City. If you lived in Connecticut or New Jersey, or Queens, or Brooklyn, or Long Island, people were always saying, “Going into The City?” So, when guys like Gray Morrow and Jay Scott Pike and Jeff Jones and Berni and Vaughn Bode occasionally would come in, a lot of those guys lived out of town. They lived upstate or in the general tri-state area, but they didn’t live in Manhattan. They didn’t live in the boroughs. A lot of times they would go to Neal’s to hang out.

The Comet (1991) #18, cover penciled by Mike Netzer & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Neal would always give them the worst coffee in the world. It’s not like it was designed that way, it just wasn’t very good. And guys would come in and hang out. So, I think in some ways the fact that Neal’s studio was a social destination, it also became a place for and of certain kinds of ideas.

Stroud: When did the actual Crusty Bunker thing kick off?

Mitchell: I don’t recall. I think Alan would have a better memory of it than I did. What happened was there were certain guys that were getting their start in comics. Guys like Chaykin in particular. Chaykin was getting work, but Chaykin could not ink to save his life. His inking style was very unattractive. But Chaykin was an interesting penciler, and Howard was a very interesting guy. I think Neal saw something in Howard’s work that was a plus. I think Neal volunteered as almost kind of a guarantor in terms of the quality of the final product and Neal would ink the job. Neal would occasionally take time away from penciling and Continuity work and ink. Generally, my recollection is that a lot of these jobs didn’t have deadlines. You didn’t give anything to Neal that you needed in a week.

I think sometimes the turnaround had to be pretty fast. Anyway, what happened was the Crusty Bunkers kind of evolved from having me and Kupperberg there and guys who would come and visit. Guys like Alan Weiss, or Berni, or Jeff or Kaluta would sometimes come in and spend some time inking some panels and maybe ink figures. It was really one of the original, to use a musician’s phrase, jam ever done in comics. I don’t think any comics were ever inked that way. There was always a guy like Dick or Wally Wood or somebody who would ink all of the figures or most of the figures. I can’t remember the last time Dick ever inked any backgrounds. Although I think when he penciled and inked some work of his for Marvel, Dracula stuff I think, he did ink his own backgrounds on those, but I’m not completely sure. But anyway, guys had help. The thing about the Crusty Bunkers was it was sort of all help. Neal did most of the key figures, but he didn’t do all of them. I would come in and see some job, I think often it was the Fafhrd the Barbarian and the Gray Mouser and I would come in and see some of it had been inked over night by other guys.

Neal would say Alan Weiss had come in, or Jeff or Berni or other guys and they would poke at it for fun. That’s kind of how some of these Crusty Bunker jobs were done. If you look at the pages, especially on the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser backups…do you remember what books those were published in, because I can’t.

Conan the Barbarian: The Usurper (1997) #3, cover penciled by Steve Lieber & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Stroud: Not off the bat, I’m afraid.

Mitchell: Well anyway, if you look closely, there are all kinds of different styles going on in there besides Neal’s. I don’t even remember how we got paid for them. I know we didn’t get paid much. But it was really Neal trying to help young guys get in and sort of quality controlling the job. While Kaluta and Berni could ink their own stuff, Weiss was often inked by other guys, although Weiss was a pretty good inker as I recall. Chaykin could not ink. But these were all guys who were working very hard to get into the club and Neal was trying to help them do that.

I’m sure you’ve talked to a lot of guys about Neal, and you’ve heard a lot of interesting and contrasting opinions or thoughts about Neal. One thing about Neal that I liked is that he was very paternal. I think he was often times referred to as “Uncle Neal.” He was just sort of the father of all these wayward children who were living in New York doing comics. You could also maybe say there was a slight Fagin quality about him. But I don’t think it was ever malevolent or malicious or negative. I mean Neal kind of liked being the center of the universe. He just thought it was a stimulating and interesting place to be. And he created that environment along with Dick, who was the grownup of the two. I think ultimately that’s why Dick left. It just wasn’t working out. I think they were making money. But it was just an interesting pairing of two different types, and ultimately Neal kind of was a corrosive factor on that relationship.

That’s the way I remember it.

Stroud: Well, I’ve heard a lot about how complicated Neal can be.

Mitchell: I think Neal has evolved into something that ultimately is not the Neal that we knew. But Neal was always a complex guy. There are dozens of reasons and I could probably come up with a few and they would either be the same or complement what you may or may not have heard. Neal has an enormous ego. I don’t think that’s any secret. And Neal’s ego is so enormous that there have been times when I think he has taken reality and tried to mold it to fit his ego. It’s kind of what makes him an interesting character. I mean if you were to see a guy like Neal in a movie, you would say that’s a really interesting guy. And trust me, there are a number of guys in comics that are interesting in that way. I think Jim Shooter is another one of those guys.

Iron Man Annual (1970) #6, cover penciled by Luke McDonnell & inked by Steve Mitchell.

I have no real axe to grind with Jim Shooter unlike most people. I think Jim has the perspective of a man who has lived many lives. That’s number one. Jim was always good to me when I worked for him, until that one day when he decided to fire me. I don’t know if you know anything about my comics career or not, but I was inking Iron Man in the 80’s. I had a very long run on Iron Man with Luke McDonald and we were doing some nice work. In fact, those books had the famous Tony Stark alcohol storyline that Denny [O'Neil] wrote.

Stroud: Oh, okay.

Mitchell: And Obadiah Stain, the first villain in the Iron Man movie was created during our run on the book. Of course, I didn’t make any money from it, but “Hey! There’s Obadiah Stain!” When I worked for Marvel Jim was a very good boss. I remember clear as day that I walked into his office one day and whenever I went to Marvel, I always went in and said hello to Jim, and I always worked the room a little bit, because as a freelancer you sort of found it was smart to do so.

Stroud: Keep your face out there.

Mitchell: Yeah. I’m a big guy, I’m a tall guy. Jim’s taller than I am, but not by much. This particular day he said, “So how’s it going? Everything okay?” I said, “Oh, I wouldn’t mind making a little more money, but otherwise I’m okay.” He said, “What are we paying you?” I told him what my rate was and he gave me a $5.00 page raise on the spot. Five dollars a page might not sound like much, but over the course of a 20-page job that’s an extra hundred bucks and back in the early 80’s a hundred bucks was worth a lot more than a hundred bucks is worth today.

Stroud: It adds up.

Mitchell: Over a course of a year, it does add up, and the one thing about Jim, you cannot take this away from Jim: He always felt that a well-paid freelancer, a freelancer who could pay his rent, feed himself, take care of his family, would be a loyal freelancer. Loyalty was a big deal for Jim. That was always to me one of the most endearing things about him. If Marvel took care of you, then you would take care of Marvel by putting extra effort into it.

Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight (1989) #66, cover penciled by Joe Staton & inked by Steve Mitchell.

One time when Jim was really good to me was when I got a call from Bob Layton. I was at my studio in the west 20’s. I don’t know if you’ve ever been to New York, so I don’t know if the layout of Manhattan means anything to you.

Stroud: No such luck.

Mitchell: Anyway, I was in my studio one night and I think it was 7 or 8 o’clock and I got a phone call from Bob Layton. “Steve, it’s Bob.” “Hey, Bob, what’s going on?” “I’m trying to finish an issue of Hercules and I’m horribly late and I need help. Can you come on over to Marvel and anything you can do, I would appreciate.” It was a hot, sticky night. The studio I was working in did not have any air conditioning and I said, “I was going to go home anyway, so sure.” I went to Marvel’s offices, which were kind of directly across town. I was at 21st and 7th and they were at Park Avenue and 27th, so it wasn’t that far. I spent the whole night there just poking away. I was literally there to put lines on the paper.

Shooter was the last guy who left. He said he really appreciated me helping out Bob and helping out Marvel. Shooter was the first guy there in the morning and he said, “How are you guys doing? What can I get you for breakfast?” He went out and brought us breakfast and we just kept going and going until I just couldn’t keep my eyes open any more. I don’t remember doing a lot, but I do remember that Bob was very appreciative and Shooter gave me a sort of Marvel bonus check for my efforts that night. I seem to recall it was about 400 bucks. I don’t think I did 400 dollars’ worth of work at the time, but it was Jim saying, “I really appreciate you helping us out.” And that was what Jim was like.

Now in many ways Jim was not always everyone’s favorite executive. I’m sure you’ve heard about that. I read not long ago in an interview that he was described as fascistic, but that’s again what made Jim like Neal. They were very strong contrasts. I was working on Iron Man for I think a couple of years and then one day Mark Grunnell says “I’ve got to let you go.” I said, “What? Why? What’s going on?” “Jim told me to get rid of you. I don’t know if there is a why, he just told me.” I had a very good relationship with Grunnell and those guys. They were very happy with me.

So, they just outright fired me and I think Luke McDonald was fired an issue or two later. I was sort of told at a later time that if anything was sort of successful or good, if Shooter didn’t feel he had a personal finger, thumb or hand on that, he felt he had to destroy it because it was not representative of him. So, I was a victim of Jim’s sort of dark side. Len Wein explained it to me in a sort of articulate but vague way. The Shooter Way. “With Jim Shooter everything is hunky dory, everything is swimming, everything is just fine until you do “The Thing.” “What thing?” He said, “The Thing. It is like this noun that covers a multitude of somethings.” So, I guess in the case of Luke and I, the thing that we were doing was that we were doing a good job and Jim had nothing to do with it.

Rom (1979) #30, cover penciled by Al Milgrom & inked by Steve Mitchell.

I always heard that the worst place to be at Marvel was to be doing something at the top of the food chain or at the bottom. If you could stay in the middle comfortably, Jim would never pay any attention to you. But I guess Iron Man was getting some attention at the time, partly I think because of Denny’s storyline. He created Rhodey and Obadiah Stain and Tony Stark had that really serious alcohol problem and while comics were different than they are today, it was getting some press, believe it or not, because we were dealing with something like alcoholism.

Stroud: Socially relevant stuff.

Mitchell: Stuff that people were noticing. We were on time, for the most part. We were a problem free book and getting a little press and Jim had nothing to do with the book, so he had to destroy it. So, I’ve benefited from Jim from when he was at his best and I have been affected by Jim at his worst.

I think Neal, on a parallel universe, had that as well. Neal had a really good side, and I think Neal had sort of a dark side as well. And people were affected by that. If I had a dollar for every time some young guy came up to the office and wanted to be in comics and would show Neal his stuff…Neal could be a complete and utter bastard. Generally, it would start off like, “There is so much wrong with your stuff that I don’t have enough time left today to tell you what’s wrong with it.” That’s a pretty crushing thing to say.

Stroud: Devastating.

Mitchell: Yeah. I think it actually did affect some guys who did want to get into comics. I believe Frank Miller may have come up to Continuity and showed him his stuff and I think Frank Miller, of all people got pasted by Neal (chuckle) in that classic Neal way. I think Neal felt like “If you can put up with that from me then you’ve got the stones to make it in the business.” A Marine drill sergeant sort of tough love thing, I guess.

Stroud: It does sound like boot camp.

Mitchell: Artists are very sensitive people, though and Neal could be merciless.

Ghosts (1971) #100, cover penciled by Rich Buckler & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Stroud: The Bob Kanigher school of nurturing. (Laughter.)

Mitchell: Bob Kanigher never nurtured anything in his life. There was another interesting character of the comic book business.

Stroud: Mike Esposito told me about how he thanked Bob once, despite all he’d done to Ross and him and that he thought Bob was going to cry.

Mitchell: I think I know why Mike said that, too. Bob was one of those people and if you looked at a bunch of DC comics in the 60’s, Mort Weisinger’s books were drawn by Mort’s guys; Julie Schwartz’s books were drawn by Julie’s guys; Kanigher’s books were drawn by Kanigher’s guys. All of these guys had these sorts of unofficial contracts. “You work for me. You get the job done on time at a certain level of quality and I will continue to give you work.” It was a non-contract contract. And Kanigher was very loyal to all of these guys. You know why? Those guys made his day easier. If you talked to Jack Harris, you know that a freelancer is an editor’s best friend or worst friend.

Getting into the whole Vinnie Colletta controversy, as a consumer, I’m sure you and thousands and thousands and thousands of other people would say, “Why in the hell did Vinnie Colletta ever get work?” The one thing Vinnie Colletta did was he never made your day harder as an editor. I said to [Paul] Levitz, “Why do you give Vinnie work? Why do you give Vinnie good pencils?” He said, “It’s Friday. The book is late. I need the job on Monday and with Vinnie, I’ll get it on Monday. It won’t be good, but I’ll get it.” It’s the periodical business! This shit has to come out every month! And a lot of guys forget about that. A lot of the artists that were part of my generation and generations to follow, and Neal…they didn’t give a flying rat’s ass about deadlines for the most part.

Neal always felt that if he did, and this is a quote, “Good stuff,” that the deadlines didn’t matter. Which is not true.

Stroud: They’re unforgiving.

Mitchell: It’s a periodical business. It’s not the art business. And a lot of the guys who followed the Silver Age and Golden Age guys didn’t get that. An editor wants to know that it’s coming in tomorrow. If it doesn’t come in tomorrow, it can f*** things up. And Neal was horrible at that. Horr-i-ble!

Incredible Hulk (1968) #281, cover penciled by Ed Hannigan & inked by Steve Mitchell.

By the way, I’ll tell you a quick Neal story. Remember the Superman/Muhammad Ali book?

Stroud: Sure.

Mitchell: I actually worked on that. I did some backgrounds and some figures on that. Like a lot of guys did. I remember when Neal brought the pencils in. It was a BIG deal. And Sol Harrison was looking at the pencils. Sol had a way of looking at the pencils very quietly. He would just sort of turn one page over right after another. His eyes were very quick. And he turned to Neal and he said, “You know, Adams, it’s the best work you’ve ever done…and not worth the wait.” The book was like a year late. So Sol, who was another of the great comic book business characters, who a lot of people don’t say good things about, but I always liked Sol, gave him a compliment and then yanked it away.

But it probably was Neal’s best comics work. But that was Neal. Neal always had contempt for the restrictions of the job, I think. I don’t know what he says, but I always got the impression Neal felt that deadlines were meant to be broken. The only deadlines he ever kept were for his advertising clients. A lot of times we were working very close to the edge on those.

Stroud: That’s probably where the bread and butter was, I suppose.

Mitchell: Yeah, it’s just that sometimes the bread and the butter took a long time to get there. There was an ad agency that we used to do animatics for. It was about 3 blocks north of Continuity and I remember running over there with a lot of pages and I remember saying all the time, “Gee, they’re three blocks away from us. Why does it always take them so long to pay us?” It’s not like it’s coming cross country by mule train. It just took a long, long, long time to get paid. If you could afford to live in that universe and wait, that’s great, but most of us can’t. That’s why comics are so attractive. You just knew when you were going to get paid.

Stroud: Cash flow can make or break. I’m reminded of stories a distant cousin told about dealing with Wal-Mart’s tactics of demanding deep discounts from suppliers, the deepest in the industry and then insisting on freebies and then routinely paying 60 days beyond invoice.

Sun Devils (1984) #10, cover penciled by Dan Jurgens & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Mitchell: I haven’t worked in comics since the early part of the decade and one of the things I do to make a living, such as it is, is to produce DVD special features and Wal-Mart does not report its sales numbers. Everybody reports their numbers so people have an idea, “Well, how is it selling?” But the Wal-Mart numbers are not available to the public and the Wal-Mart numbers are probably the biggest numbers or have been in terms of DVD sales.

Stroud: They move the market. I sometimes wonder what would happen if they controlled comic book distribution.

Mitchell: They operate to the beat of their own drummer. And they get away with it because they sell so much product. But, that’s a topic far afield.

Stroud: Yes. Steve, what do you think, in summation, you took away from your experience at Continuity?

Mitchell: It helped me learn how you went about doing comic books and what I mean is literally the experience of putting ink on pages and also working with guys like Neal and Dick. Jack Abel, by the way, was renting space up there and it was a chance for me to be around guys who had a lot of experience. Guys who could tell interesting anecdotes for purposes of entertainment, but could also give me anecdotal information about doing the job and being a pro. It was clearly a way to apprentice in the business that I wanted to be in. It gave me exposure to the business and being around guys who were at the top of their game.

Jack Abel, to me, it was interesting that Jack worked at the same office that Neal did. Because while Neal seemed to work all day long, but it didn’t seem that his output or his productivity was good every day. But Jack would come to work at 10:00 in the morning, and he would go home at 6:30 or 7:00 at night and he would ink 18 panels that day. Because Jack felt that 18 panels was the equivalent of 3 pages. So, Jack was doing 3 pages a day and he did it like f***ing clockwork. Sometimes he came in on Saturday for half a day. But basically, Jack was turning out about 15 pages a week. Like clockwork. I thought Jack was a very good inker. I think Jack was sometimes not as good as he needed to be and sometimes better. Jack was one of those guys I would call an equalizer. I did not like Jack on certain guys and I saw Jack on other guys and he was fantastic. I always thought he was underrated as a Curt Swan inker. I thought his work on Curt was quite good. Although I think he would tend to flatten out some of Curt’s drawing.

Defenders (1972) #116, cover penciled by Don Perlin & inked by Steve Mitchell.

Curt Swan, by the way, as a draftsman, was one of the finest draftsmen I’ve ever seen in comics. If you saw his pencils, you would be amazed at how well he drew.

Stroud: The pictures I’ve seen looked like they were very tight and detailed.

Mitchell: It wasn’t that tight. It was amazingly well drawn. It wasn’t so tight because it was more grey-toney than line specific. I think Andrew Loomis, who was a great illustrator and an illustration teacher was a strong influence of his and I’ve seen pencils of Curt’s and I’m going, “Look at how good he can draw!” Amazingly so. I don’t think anybody, unless they’ve seen his pencils, know how well Curt could draw. Of course, in a sense I don’t think Curt ever got really good inking. He got good inking, but I don’t think he got great inking. I think George Klein was stylistically pretty good with Curt and Murphy and I think Jack, too, although I think Jack would flatten out some of his work, but I thought the overall result of Jack on Curt was a pretty nice result.

But there’s Jack, cranking it out like clockwork. Totally professional, and Neal just being, you know, Neal. I learned a lesson from being exposed to those two different approaches to the business. Dick was very professional as well, and I learned a lot from Dick. I liked Dick a great deal. And listen, I liked Neal, too, back in the day. Neal was an interesting guy to be around. It was an interesting place for young guys like me and Kupperberg. We were exposed to a lot of interesting characters, a lot of interesting talent, some crazies. I don’t know whether Alan named names or not. There were some nutty guys who worked up there. Alan and I were sort of the…and how’s this for a self-complimenting kind of thing? We were the vanguard of assistants.

Stroud: (Laughter.)

Mitchell: I say that with a smile on my face. Alan has a shockingly good memory for stuff that can be personally embarrassing to me. He’s a good guy. I live in California and he still lives in New York. For many years we just kind of lived our own lives and we’ve reconnected a bit in the last year or so and it’s nice to be in touch with Alan. As an aside, do you watch Madmen?

Stroud: I’ve been meaning to, but haven’t pulled it off yet.

Mitchell: Madmen is the best show on television, bar none. It would behoove you to go out and get the DVD’s and get caught up. Other than the fact that it’s great, I will tell you why in particular if you are interested in Silver Age comics. The environment of Madison Avenue and the advertising business was not terribly different than the environment of the comic book business. There are a lot of parallels that exist, I think, between the world of that show and the world of DC. To a larger degree at Marvel, to a lesser degree of the day.

For example, this season on Madmen, season four, they have new offices. The new offices really remind me of the offices of the Lexington Avenue days. The Lexington Avenue offices physically, architecturally, are very similar to the offices in Madmen. The overall 60’s style of the offices. And some of the attitudes as well. I like Madmen because it’s good drama, but it does take me back. If you’ve never been to New York City and would like to get the tonal atmosphere of New York City in the late 60’s in a business that is involved with art, as advertising was and is, it will give you tonally sort of a parallel universe and an understanding of what comics was like. To quote Neal Adams, it’s “Good stuff!”

Creator Conversations - Retro

Creator Conversations - Retro

“Curse of the Yeti” written by Otto Binder with art from Ralph Reese

(from Web of Horror (1969) #3)

Below are some sample pages from Joe’s current project, Krigstein: A Graphic Novel.

Nerd Team 30