Comics Interview — Issue #007

Group "First Look" interview with the creative team behind D'Arc Tangent, an independently published science fiction love story about a woman and a robot set against a war that began eighty million years ago. Foglio describes conceiving the story seven years earlier from a sketch of a robot with a sword, shopping it unsuccessfully to underground publishers, and finally self-publishing after collaborating with Freff and recruiting Chris Claremont as a story consultant. They discuss their publishing model of keeping every issue in print, following the trail blazed by Elfquest, and their ambition to create genuine science fiction in comics capable of winning Hugo nominations. Singer, an associate SF editor at Berkley Books who serves as publisher, describes the steep learning curve of dealing with distributors, while the team explains their plan for a roughly sixteen-issue run that weaves multiple prologues and subplots into a novelistic whole.

Interview with the relatively unknown young artist who replaced Keith Giffen as penciller on The Omega Men. Smith describes his pre-comics career as a rock'n'roll guitarist in Rhode Island, his training at the Joe Kubert School and Dick Giordano's inking workshop, and his path from doing backgrounds for Frank McLaughlin, Mike DeCarlo, and Gil Kane to landing his first pencilling assignment. He got The Omega Men because the deadline was urgent after Giffen left, and editor Marv Wolfman chose his more "Kirby-esque" style over another candidate's animated look. Smith discusses his admiration for "the three Ks" — Kirby, Kubert, and Kane — and shares Kane's motivating advice to either commit fully to comics or give it up. He acknowledges the legitimate criticism of the book's graphic violence and says the series will move toward a more entertaining adventure tone under Wolfman's direction.

The inker of The Omega Men since issue #1 discusses his decision to remain on the book despite Keith Giffen's departure and Roger Slifer's announced exit after issue #13, which had left him "disenchanted." He explains that his growing affinity with Tod Smith's pencils and his sense of obligation to a book he'd been with from the start convinced him to stay, after taking just two issues off. DeCarlo passionately advocates for the overlooked role of inkers, arguing that the final look of a comic is really the inker's responsibility, and cites his training under Frank McLaughlin and Dick Giordano. He reveals he has been hiding Marvel characters — the Hulk, the Thing, Iron Man, Spider-Man, and even Charlie Brown — as Easter eggs throughout The Omega Men, and expresses excitement about inking a Batman Annual pencilled by Michael Golden, which he calls the best work of his career.

Wide-ranging career retrospective with the veteran artist and inker, whose over-thirty-year career spans the Golden Age to the present and who notes this is his first published interview. Abel recalls attending Burne Hogarth's Cartoonists and Illustrators School alongside classmates Wally Wood, Al Williamson, Marie Severin, Mike Esposito, and Ross Andru, and describes the post-school bohemian scene of late-night inking sessions and bars near the school. He recounts working for Fox, Crestwood, Fawcett, Charlton, DC, Marvel, and the short-lived Seaboard/Atlas, as well as inking Joe Kubert's Green Beret newspaper strip and doing cover art for Israel Waldman's repackaged warehouse comics. Abel frankly admits he is "really sick of super-hero comics" and misses the genre variety of earlier decades — crime, westerns, romance, and mystery — while reflecting on Dr. Wertham's damaging crusade and the industry's evolution from a short-term hustle to a professional career path.

Interview with the quietly prolific Marvel letterer, who has been in the business since 1940 and calls this his first interview after forty years. Rosen traces his entry into comics through his brother Sam, who lettered The Spirit for Will Eisner and got Joe his first job lettering The Blue Beetle for Fox just before Pearl Harbor. He recalls Marvel when it was "just Stan Lee and Artie Simek working in the corner of an office on Madison Avenue" and credits Marvel's institution of creator credits with making letterers feel prouder of their work. Known for the smallest lettering in the business — a necessity he developed to fit heavy scripts into tight spaces on a Sgt. Fury story — Rosen describes lettering about forty pages a week while working seven days, and notes that his current contract with benefits would have been "undreamed of" thirty years ago when he earned fifty cents a page.

Detailed interview with the editor/publisher and director behind Eagle Comics, the new IPC imprint bringing Judge Dredd and other British 2000 AD material to the American market. They trace the history of Judge Dredd from his introduction in issue #2 of 2000 AD in 1978, which sold 350,000-400,000 copies weekly, through Titan Distributors' early failed attempts to sell the weekly format in America by bagging four issues together. They explain the complex transatlantic production process — paginating issues, requisitioning art from IPC vaults, melding weekly cliffhangers, resizing and coloring black-and-white originals, and shipping film to Sparta printers in America. Landau notes that American professionals highly rate Judge Dredd, with Frank Miller specifically requesting to meet artist Mike McMahon at a British convention, and announces Robo-Hunter as their second title with plans for mini-series of other 2000 AD properties including Strontium Dog.

Previews the issue's contents, noting the "First Look" at D'Arc Tangent provides a cross-section of comics creators from writers/artists to letterer, editor, and publisher. Highlights the mix of newcomers like Tod Smith and the D'Arc Tangent crew alongside veterans Jack Abel and Joe Rosen, plus the magazine's first interview with overseas industry figures.

(int. Dan Hagen) — The actor, best known for I Spy and The Greatest American Hero, discusses his childhood ambition to be a cartoonist, his deep admiration for Hal Foster, Alex Raymond, George Herriman's Krazy Kat, and Winsor McCay's Little Nemo. He describes his collection of nearly a thousand Big Little Books, reflects on the Warner Communications lawsuit against Greatest American Hero (which he won), and analyzes the show's use of "double negatives" and genre subversion, crediting creator Stephen J. Cannell's instinct for making familiar formulas fresh.