Comics Interview — Issue #012

Conducted at Moore's home in Northampton, England, this wide-ranging conversation covers his entire body of work: his working-class British comics upbringing, his early strips for 2000 AD and Marvel UK, and his philosophy of reinventing established characters by "destroying and rebuilding them." Moore discusses Marvelman as a serious examination of the superhero concept — exploring what it would truly mean, psychologically and socially, for a superhuman to exist among ordinary people — and V for Vendetta as a study of fascism versus anarchy set in a near-future Britain, deliberately avoiding pat moralizing. On Swamp Thing, he explains his determination to ground the character in genuine horror rooted in contemporary fears (nuclear anxiety, human evil) rather than EC-style genre formula, and praises the creative partnership with Bissette and Totleben. Moore is sharply critical of the auto-cannibalistic inbreeding he sees in mainstream comics and argues for drawing on literature, music, and art as fertilizing influences, citing Love & Rockets, Brian Eno, and Goya as touchstones.

Garcia Lopez, a Spanish-born artist who trained in Buenos Aires and spent years working for DC from Miami (including creating the definitive DC Style Guide and the Batman vs. Hulk graphic novel), has returned to New York City to work on Star Raiders and the new monthly Atari Force. He speaks candidly about his strong preference for inking his own pencils — arguing that even the best inkers lose something essential — but acknowledges that inking his own monthly would force the book to go bi-monthly. Helfer explains the complex backstory of Atari Force, which launched with characters originally designed for Atari game pack-ins before being reimagined as a new team; he notes that the first issue generated an extraordinary four hundred letters and that the book's third issue was the first one Garcia Lopez actually read. Garcia Lopez also reflects on the lyrical, emotion-focused storytelling tradition of South American and European cinema that he aims to bring to American superhero comics.

Interviewed in Athens, Georgia, during a University of Georgia football game, the legendary EC and MAD cartoonist looks back on a career stretching from inking newspaper strips in New York, through EC's horror comics with Al Feldstein and Harvey Kurtzman, to HUMBUG, TRUMP, and decades of prolific freelance advertising, movie poster, and magazine illustration work. Davis reflects candidly that he is no longer proud of some of the more gruesome EC horror pages, though he notes drily that "the things coming out now are a lot worse." He attributes his lifelong speed to an innate looseness in his style and credits TIME Magazine covers — especially the Joe Namath cover and a Gerald Ford portrait — as the high-water mark of his career. He offers straightforward advice to aspiring cartoonists: work hard, enjoy what you're doing, and believe in yourself.

Part Two of the interview with the veteran X-Men letterer covers his long association with Chris Claremont beginning with X-Men #94, his development of distinctive typefaces for the series (including the ragged balloons for Dark Phoenix, created with a worn-out animation-cel brush), and his scholarly approach to logo design drawing on historical lettering books from the 1900s through the 1930s. Orzechowski is candid about the inequity of Marvel and DC's royalty systems, which exclude letterers and colorists despite their contribution to a book's look and sales, and expresses hope that the system will eventually be extended. He also discusses his mentoring of apprentice letterers David Cody Weiss and L. Lois Bohalis, and reflects on his "umbilical cord" to comics that makes a move into other commercial lettering difficult.

Now transitioning from editor to writer, "Weezie" Simonson looks back on editing Marvel's most successful titles — including X-Men, New Mutants, and Star Wars — and shares data-rich insights into the comics market: X-Men sells equally well on the newsstand and through direct sales and has confounded predictions of decline for four consecutive years, while Star Wars sells primarily to a newsstand (younger, non-specialist) audience. She discusses the breakout sales phenomenon of Walt Simonson's Thor run, which quadrupled its readership in just four issues, and reflects on what makes the X-Men appealing: Claremont's deep investment in characterization over any single creative team. On her writing career, she talks about Power Pack, the inspirations behind the characters (including naming Julie Power after her own daughter), and her theory — elaborated memorably with Ann Nocenti present — that a Catholic education uniquely prepares one for comic-book writing by instilling a strong sense of myth, moral duality, and magnificent villainy.

The creator and host of Mister Rogers' Neighborhood, speaking by phone from his Family Communications headquarters at WQED-TV in Pittsburgh, offers a thoughtful, psychologically grounded perspective on superheroes and children. Rogers explains that the superhero fantasy is developmentally natural — children are small in a large, frightening world and need the fantasy of omnipotence — but stresses that adults must help children understand the boundary between make-believe and reality, particularly given how blurred that line is in young children's minds. He discusses his dedicated program episodes on superhero fantasy (including a visit to the Incredible Hulk TV set with Bill Bixby and Lou Ferrigno), and argues that television violence is genuinely harmful and that networks, parents, and society all share responsibility for addressing it.

DAK's editorial reflects on his writing output beyond Comics Interview over the past year: monthly World's Finest Comics scripts, specialty comics for sponsors such as the American Dental Association and American Cancer Society (with print runs in the millions), editorial consulting for Marvel Books (approximately 40 releases), and two paperback novels due in August/September 1984 — Ghost Knights of Camelot (Avon) and Robot Revolt (Scholastic).