Comics Interview — Issue #024

The Ms. Tree creative team discuss their tight full-script collaboration from the same Iowa town, contrasting it with their less satisfying experience working "Marvel style" on The P.I.s for First Comics. Collins defends the viability of Ms. Tree as a live-action property with mainstream appeal beyond the direct-sales market, while both creators express commitment to the book's unified storytelling approach and defend their traditional page layouts against critics. They also discuss the move from Eclipse to Aardvark-Vanaheim (now Renegade Press), praising Deni Loubert's editorial trust and the duotone color format as better suited to the noir mood of the book.

In his first major interview, the Marvel veteran talks about his long career trajectory from advertising work to joining Marvel in 1968, sharing candid opinions including his view that Stan Lee's Silver Surfer characterization made the hero too "wimpy" and that he prefers loose plot-style scripts over full scripts for the creative freedom they allow. Buscema discusses leaving the Hulk and ROM after nine and five years respectively to avoid creative ruts, praises Walt Simonson and John Romita as underappreciated comics talents, and expresses strong views that comics should reflect Judeo-Christian values and avoid graphic violence and sexuality. He is currently working on a twelve-issue Eternals limited series (written by Peter Gillis, inked by Al Gordon) which he considers the best work of his career, plus a Balder & Karnilla mini-series written by Walt Simonson.

DC's editor of Swamp Thing, Legion of Super-Heroes, and Amethyst discusses her unconventional path into comics editing (via a journalism class and a tip from friend J.M. DeMatteis), her enthusiasm for "off-genre" books over superhero titles, and Swamp Thing's 60% sales increase under Alan Moore's tenure. She shares frank observations about why female characters fail to attract girl readers, why the comics market is overwhelmingly male, and her ambitions to launch a sophisticated comics property aimed at girls (written and drawn by Barbara Slate). Berger also discusses her experience on New Talent Showcase, the emergence of writer-editors (which she views skeptically), and her belief that editorial objectivity is essential even for experienced creators.

The founder of Graphitti Studios explains how he pioneered quality licensed comic-character T-shirts for the direct sales market, having started with Dave Stevens' Rocketeer and Will Eisner's Spirit before word-of-mouth brought creators to him. Chapman discusses the frustrating difficulty of licensing from DC and Marvel (whose licensing arms demand unrealistic revenue projections for niche characters), the technical process of hand-separated and laser-scanned screen printing, and the current bestseller: a new Cerebus "Most Holy" shirt. He also previews upcoming expansion into cloisonné pins and a signed limited hardbound edition of The Rocketeer graphic novel.

The pseudonymous Canadian super-fan, who has had over 552 of his 2,045 letters published across comics in seven years, discusses his letter-writing habits while carefully guarding his real identity. He reflects on the value of fan letters to editors (primarily useful as aggregate feedback rather than plot influence), the importance of writing because you have something to say rather than to get published, and his concerns about the industry's narrow market focus and the need to diversify beyond the superhero/fantasy genre to attract new readers. He also shares his views on European and Japanese comics and the pricing challenges facing independent publishers in Canada.

DAK makes the case that Comics Interview itself may one day be a sought-after collector's item, arguing that genuine collector's items require both intrinsic value and scarcity — qualities that mass-printed superhero comics bagged in plastic lack, but that low-print specialty magazines may possess.

A short essay in which writer Peter Gillis explains his enthusiasm for reviving Jack Kirby's Eternals concept in a new twelve-issue limited series, praising Kirby's original moral complexity and the themes of immortality and divine judgment, and crediting editors Ralph Macchio and Mark Gruenwald with championing the revival.