Comics Interview — Issue #017

DuBois, who wrote the Dell/Gold Key Tarzan comic virtually uninterrupted from the late 1940s through 1971 before retiring from comics, discusses his long career beginning with pulp western novels and Big Little Books in the 1930s, including ghostwriting The Lone Ranger. He describes how editors shaped Tarzan scripts while he wove in authentic ERB elements, and recalls that the Burroughs family was warned they would "lose money" if they replaced him — advice they ignored, to the series' detriment. A devout Christian, DuBois reflects on religious influence on his writing and argues that Dell's eventual shift toward horror and occult material contributed to the company's commercial decline.

Willingham, creator of The Elementals at Comico, traces an adventurous pre-comics career spanning cultural anthropology fieldwork in the Yucatan, truck driving, and three years as a military policeman in Germany, before a circuitous path through TSR Hobbies, rejected Marvel auditions, and two collapsed independent publishers led him to Comico. He explains his unusual process of pencilling the full issue before writing any dialogue, emphasizes keeping all creative control in the studio, and discusses upcoming storylines revealing why the Elementals were created. He delivers an extended, outspoken critique of organized religion as inherently political, compares it to the TSR/Dungeons & Dragons controversy over religious pressure, and defends his characters against charges of being Marvel analogues. Rankin, who came to comics after a decade in rock music and managing a comic shop, discusses his inking approach and his upcoming work on a Jack Kirby's Demon mini-series written and pencilled by Matt Wagner.

Colquhoun, veteran British artist on "Charley's War" in Battle weekly, discusses his thirty-year career from post-war beginnings at Amalgamated Press through long stints on Lion and Roy of the Rovers to his current celebrated work. He reflects on the difficulty of depicting WWI trench warfare in comics form, the liberalizing then re-tightening of violence standards in British weeklies (citing the influence of films like Jaws on Battle and Action), and laments that Cockney dialect is now censored from Charley's speech despite Pat Mills writing it authentically. He credits Alex Raymond as his greatest artistic influence and notes that organized comics fandom is a recent and welcome discovery for him.

Plunkett, whose detailed work on Marvel Fanfare #6 (inked by P. Craig Russell) attracted wide attention, discusses his slow, painstaking process and ongoing struggle to balance craft with commercial deadlines. He cites Al Williamson's EC work as his primary comics influence and describes his admiration for heroic figure-drawing traditions while acknowledging the gap between realistic anatomy and superhero convention. He is working on a difficult EPIC story about the death of Robert E. Howard and tentatively planning a run of Defenders covers for Marvel.

Grandenetti recalls his origins as a background artist at Will Eisner's studio, describing Eisner as "like a god to us," and traces a career spanning DC war comics (as one of Bob Kanigher's main artists), Warren's horror magazines (where he had full creative freedom to experiment with layout), and collaboration with Joe Simon on offbeat features like Prez and "The Green Team." He singles out his Warren period as the most exciting of his career and his time at Eisner's studio as the most formative, and speaks candidly about DC's war books being so sanitized he could never relate them to his own Navy experience. By the time of the interview he had retired from DC.

Stan Lee's original secretary at Marvel (March 1963–1968), Flo describes the tiny, low-key early Marvel offices and a production process where Stan wrote everything, a handful of freelancers drew it, and the staff was literally just two people. She recounts the shock of the MMMS fan response, the casual disposal of original art (thrown out when files overflowed, including early Fantastic Four pages), and anecdotes about Wally Wood dropping ashes on Stan's carpet and an FBI visit over a threatening letter from Texas. After leaving Marvel she worked at Warren's mail-order division, produced the underground anthology Big Apple Comix with contributions from Neal Adams, Wally Wood, and others, and is now managing editor at Arts Magazine. She reflects critically on pop artists like Lichtenstein "appropriating" the comic image to become fine art while the original practitioners were not considered artists.

A brief, comic editorial in which DAK celebrates finally excavating down to his actual desktop after years buried under paper, presented as a momentous personal achievement.