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Discusses finishing Frank Miller's final Daredevil issue, wrapping up The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones after John Byrne's departure over a conflict with Lucasfilm, and discovering new talent Kevin Nowlan for Dr. Strange. Reflects on his X-Men tenure — "fun while it lasted" but he got "X-Men'd out" — and his career path from inking backgrounds for Dick Giordano at Neal Adams' Continuity Associates to becoming one of the top inkers in the industry. Talks about his tradition of sneaking Popeye and other characters into backgrounds, and the long-running Jack Abel/Howie Chaykin murder subplot hidden in newspaper headlines across multiple Marvel books.

Three creators respond to the question of why readers are concerned about the spate of superhero deaths. Terry Austin questions the inconsistency of keeping Phoenix dead while Elektra was resurrected; Steve Oliff argues stale characters should be killed off to make room for new ones; and Steve Gerber delivers a nuanced meditation on the difference between genuine emotional impact (Siegel's "Death of Superman," Miller's Elektra) and cynical marketing stunts, warning that handling death callously and "sold for $5.95 in the graphic novel format" trivializes the ultimate question.

Part two of a two-part interview with DC's Vice President and Managing Editor, focusing on his philosophy of inking and the state of DC's creative pipeline. Giordano argues that inking is primarily intellectual — "the work is done in your head before you sit down to a drawing board" — and that a good inker's contribution should be invisible to everyone except the penciler. Discusses training many of the industry's top inkers (Terry Austin, Bob Layton, Klaus Janson, Joe Rubinstein) through his assistant program, and his new talent development workshop at DC led by Sal Amendola. Reveals DC plans to revitalize their five core heroes (Superman, Batman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern, Flash) in 1984, admits to a severe graphic novel bottleneck because top creators are overcommitted, and laments that the direct-sales fan market doesn't embrace illustrative styles like Stan Drake's, making it hard to diversify beyond superheroes.

Part One of Orzechowski's career retrospective, conducted by Schutz in her capacity as editor of The Telegraph Wire for Comics & Comix in California. Orzechowski traces his origins in Detroit fandom — where he worked alongside Terry Austin, Jim Starlin, Al Milgrom, and Rich Buckler — and his path to Marvel at age 19 via Tony Isabella, where Starlin championed him onto Captain Marvel before he felt ready. He recounts his famous prank of changing the Comics Code stamp to "The Cosmic Code Authority" on Strange Tales #179, and describes his move west with Mike Friedrich's Star*Reach collective (alongside Englehart, Starlin, and Brunner), his years freelancing for independents, and how he eventually settled into working almost exclusively with Chris Claremont on X-Men. Part Two (covering his X-Men alphabet design, Dark Phoenix lettering, and royalties) is promised for the next issue.

Rubinstein discusses his start at age thirteen as an assistant at Neal Adams and Dick Giordano's Continuity Studios, crediting Giordano as the definitive influence on a generation of inkers including Klaus Janson and Terry Austin. He argues passionately that inking is a full artistic discipline requiring anatomical knowledge and an understanding of light and rendering, not mere tracing, and discusses his approach of preserving each penciller's individual style rather than imposing a homogeneous look, and his pride in inking 164 different pencillers for the Marvel Universe Handbook. This is part one of two.

Adams discusses his self-taught, humor-inflected artistic style, developed primarily through his work on LONGSHOT, and his habit of hiding background cartoon characters (Gumby, Wimpy, Goofy) in Marvel pages. He describes his upcoming projects — a LONGSHOT Graphic Novel he will pencil, ink, and color; a MARVEL FANFARE Longshot story that ballooned from 15 to 30 pages; and the GUMBY one-shot for Comico written by Bob Burden, a collaboration he initially tried to dodge. He expresses dissatisfaction with print reproduction quality and praises inkers Terry Austin and Craig Russell.

Lee, a Princeton psychology graduate who stumbled into comics only two years before the interview, recounts his rapid rise: self-taught from library anatomy books and back issues of Comics Interview, he landed a try-out story from Archie Goodwin and Carl Potts at his first ever convention, then completed eleven issues of Alpha Flight before moving to Punisher War Journal. He shares practical advice for breaking in — showing work face-to-face at conventions, using a mirror to spot anatomical errors (a tip from Terry Austin), and tracing published art to understand construction.

Features a formal joint statement by Terry Austin, John Byrne, Howard Chaykin, Jay Muth, Trina Robbins, Craig Russell, Alex Toth, and Charles Vess, threatening legal action against Innovation Comics publisher David Campiti for falsely advertising them as contributors to his line; a letter disputes DAK's comics rating-system questionnaire; a third laments the cancellation of the JLA/Avengers crossover project.