Blake Bell News

My Ditko article in San Diego Comic-Con 2012 Annual

2012-02-07T20:33:00.000-05:00

I hate "sitting" on cool stuff. It worked for me when the editor of the Marvel Masterworks series couldn't get my Dr. Strange introduction approved in time for inclusion but, this time, I was on needles and pins for months waiting to spill the beans on the Ditko excitement found in this year's San Diego Comic-Con 2012 Annual. I was hired last November to write a 2000-word piece on Steve Ditko's contributions to the Spider-Man book and character for the Con's show piece publication. It's the 50th anniversary of Steve Ditko and Stan Lee's creation that first saw print in Amazing Fantasy #15, and the Con is all over it in their 80-page annual. (Perhaps prompted somewhat by the new movie starring the guy from Never Let Me Go, Andrew Garfield.)

The Annual has a print run of 135,000 copies (probably making it the most widespread publication I've been included within). The book is squarebound, on lovely matte-finish paper and shipped in a polybag. The Con introduced the publication last year and it was a great success. You can also read and download it online at the Con's website. The Annual also features a piece on the John Romita era by Tom Spurgeon, he of the super-blog Comics Reporter. If you see me at this year's Con, stop me and say hello.

(Thanks to Ben Towle - cartoonist supreme at www.benzilla.com - for the above scans.)

Bill Everett Archives v1 Toronto Book Launch Event

2012-01-29T19:49:00.002-05:00

On Wednesday, February 29, 2012 at 7pm, The Beguiling (Toronto's finest book store) is hosting a book launch for the release of my latest book, Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1. It looks like the book will make its way into stores on the Wednesday prior, so there will be plenty of copies available for purchase!

The event features a book signing and exclusive slide show entitled "Bill Everett and Steve Ditko: Before the Sub-Mariner and Spider-Man" (as we also preview the third volume of my Steve Ditko Archives series, out in April). Join our Facebook Page for the Event.

The event is being held right next to The Beguiling at The Central (restaurant and bar), 603 Markham St., Toronto, Ontario, Canada. All those who attend will receive a signed Everett Archives v1 tipped-in bookplate by me!

Bill Everett created the Sub-Mariner (the first anti-hero and mutant of the Marvel Universe), and co-created Daredevil. "The Bill Everett Archives v1" reprints for the first time Everett's earliest work in comics from 1938-42 featuring his creations Amazing Man, Hydroman, Skyrocket Steele and many more!

Steve Ditko is the co-creator and original artist of the Amazing Spider-Man, but produced an entire library worth of work in the decade prior. "Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives v3" debuts in April and focuses on Ditko's stellar work from 1957 for Charlton Comics.

More information on Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1
View the Bill Everett Archives v1 promo press sheet for more information on the book, published by Fantagraphics Books, Inc.

Pre-order from Amazon.com or directly from the publisher, Fantagraphics Books Inc.

Listen to me talk about the Bill Everett and Steve Ditko Archives series on Inkstuds.com and Collected Comics Library.

Watch a video preview below and read a 23-page excerpt featuring three Hydroman stories!

Satanic Torture in the Secret History of Marvel Comics

2012-01-15T22:15:00.000-05:00

Last week, we announced that my upcoming collaboration with Dr. Michael Vassallo, The Secret History of Marvel Comics: Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman’s Empire, has expanded from 168 to 300 pages. This is to accommodate the tons of imagery by the top artists at Marvel of the 1940s and 1950s that we continue to uncover since we announced the book last November (still on track to debut in July at the San Diego Comicon).

What is even more intriguing, however, is the content of some of that imagery. Remember those quaint comic-book covers from the 1940s that featured light “bondage” with women tied up by a villain as the hero rushed in to save her? Well, apparently, as an artist finished the latest issue of, say, Captain America, they then took their pens to something a wee bit more extreme.

Below is a handful of illustrations from just one issue of a Martin Goodman pulp, Mystery Tales, from 1940. (Another connection to the Marvel Comics of the 1950s – Mystery Tales was a comic book that had a 1956 issue featured on the TV show, Lost; an issue that featured Steve Ditko’s second story for Marvel.)

These make even those 1960s Eric Stanton/Steve Ditko bondage (and temperate sexual sadomasochism) collaborations look like children’s books. The material below is not representative of all the imagery in our book, by any means, but it is a sub-genre that can’t be ignored because it’s not just limited to one issue or one famous Marvel artist.

Remember Stanley Kubrick’s last film, 1999’s Eyes Wide Shut, and that scene with Tom Cruise entering the mansion where all that open sexual intercourse is being played out amongst the upper crust of Manhattan? Below, that “Yield, Lovely Maidens, to the Blood-Master” double-splash page makes Kubrick look like Garry Marshall! Scantily clad women forced to jump off a raised, fiery platform, destined to be impaled by large spikes laid out in front of tables of laughing rich guys? “Get behind me, Satan!” indeed.

We posted these images (click to enlarge) because, as happened sometimes in those days, they are unsigned and Michael Vassallo, our art expert, is leaning towards Jack Binder. Binder was the creator of the original Daredevil character (the non-Marvel version), and older brother of comic-book writer, Otto Binder. Please use the Comments section below to weigh in with your opinions.

There are other images in the book not featured here by famous Marvel artists that display women being whipped, scars visible all over their bodies, an inch away from death by demons and zombie-like figures in human form; the extremes between the innocence of the Golden Age of Comics and this wing of Martin Goodman’s empire makes you understand why we called this book, The Secret History of Marvel Comics...

"Secret History Of Marvel Comics" x 2!

2012-01-08T22:49:00.000-05:00

Last week, we revealed the origins of how me and my collaborator, Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, brought our latest book, The Secret History Of Marvel Comics: Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman’s Empire, into being. We promised a big announcement this week and here it is! Originally, the book was going to be 168 pages, but it now can be told that it is going to be increased to 300 pages! The book will make its debut at the San Diego Comicon in July of this year. so we've got some work to do, but how did we almost double the page count, while only raising the cover price by $10?

After you pre-order the book from Amazon.com, I want you to come back here next Sunday night for a showcase of some of the amazing artwork (toe-curling imagery that you won't believe made it onto the printed page back in the 1940s!) that has overflowed our hard drives since we announced the book back in November. We thought we had too much to begin with, but we've uncovered so much more artwork from the creme of Marvel Comics' stable of artists from the Golden Age of Comics that we were able to convince our publisher, Fantagraphics Books Inc., to jump that page count in hopes of containing it all. Remember, virtually no one alive has seen this artwork, buried in owner Martin Goodman's non-comics publications from 70 years ago, and we've uncovered even more of it in the last two months.

I update this blog every week with news about the book, but you can join the Secret History of Marvel Comics Facebook Page, or my Twitter account and Doc V's account, to get real-time updates on how we are putting this milestone book together.

To see a list of all my books available for order (or pre-order), including the first volume of The Bill Everett Archives and the third volume of the Steve Ditko Archives, go to the Purchase My Books page that I created this weekend.

"Purchase My Books" Page is now up!

2012-01-07T21:42:00.001-05:00

I've just created a "Purchase My Books" page on my blog where you can order (and pre-order) all my books from Amazon.com, and those to which I've contributed, at big discounts! You can also order directly from my publisher Fantagraphics Books Inc. or if you want to order a signed copy of a book directly from me, please email me at ditko37@rogers.com. A nice checklist of my writing career...which also includes an oddity: I ran a Thompson Twins fan web site starting in 1996 and BMG U.K. hired me in 2003 to write the linear notes and compose the track listing for the Greatest Hits of the 1980s new wave, synth-pop power house (known mostly for their #1 hit, Hold Me Now). Lead singer Tom Bailey still pays compliments to my recap of that era. Anyway, help me feed my hungry mouths with a purchase of my books, thank you kindly!

Behind The Scenes of the "Secret History Of Marvel Comics" P2

2011-12-31T17:31:00.002-05:00

Let's close out 2011 with how it all began in 2010! The good news re: this project is that the deck is completely clear. The Bill Everett Archives v1 is likely on shelves in late January, the third volume of the Steve Ditko Archives is out of my hands and in production (for an April release), I finished a significant piece on Ditko for a 2012 publication (the proprietor of which should be announcing the details in Jan or early Feb), and I even just dusted the distributor's catalog promo text for the Bill Everett Archives v2 (yep, the publishing wheel begins to turn that far in advance). All of the above means that my entire focus is on tying off my next publication, The Secret History Of Marvel Comics: Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman’s Empire that makes its debut at the San Diego Comicon in July of 2012.

I just came off a conference call with my collaborator, Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, about where we are with our particular responsibilities, and we are going to have a major announcement about the book next weekend, but let's first recap how we got here.

My best friend of almost 30 years, Len Lumbers (noted in comic-book history for the distinction of having three letters printed in Steve Ditko's 10-issue run of the Marvel comic, Speedball), sent me an email back in 1997, advising me of a Steve Ditko Discussion Group on the Internet, and that's what launched me into comic-book fandom. From there, I produced my Ditko Looked Up web site (now mothballed for the time being), and it led to my association with TwoMorrows for my first article in 2001 and my first book, I Have To Live With This Guy! being published in 2002. And, for a blip in 2001, I created and ran the official web site for Steve Ditko and his publisher.

But one of the participants on the Ditko group was Dr. Michael J. Vassallo; "Doc V" his moniker, noted for his collection of 1950s Marvel material. He graciously shared information and photocopies with everyone of any artist you'd request. Once I had unveiled the Ditko web site in April of 1998, I began work on a Bill Everett / Alex Schomburg / Syd Shores web site. One day, I was chatting online with Michael and told him that I wanted to start up a Bill Everett Discussion Group. Instead, he suggested that I start a Timely-Atlas list (the names associated with Marvel Comics' output in the 1940s and 1950s). On September 24th, 1999, I did just that and it lasted until late 2006 (topped out at 500 members) when a crash at yahoogroups made the list disappear for a few days. In its absence, Michael started a new one and that continues to go strong (join here).

In November 2001, Len and I had the pleasure of staying at Michael's place in upstate New York, mainly driven by me doing research on my first book, but also wrapped around a NYC comic convention. It was right after 9/11, and was the first time I visited Steve Ditko at his Times Square studio (more on that another time) and we saw David Letterman live too (was approached about tickets literally right after leaving Ditko's studio).

If you've scanned the pictures taken from the weekend back in November of this year spent at Michael's (click here and work through the links in the first sentence), you'll notice that it is quite the experience to be in his "Fortress of Sequential Art" aka the basement of his house that his wife kindly tolerates. I stayed there again in June of 2008 (and August) when my Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko book was being released, but it was the subsequent visit in August of 2010 that spawned our collaboration.

My Bill Everett biography had just debuted at the 2010 San Diego Comicon, but our August visit was strictly a social call with my 12-year old son, Luke, determined to see the new Yankees stadium (he had attended a game at the old Yankees stadium in Aug '08 with me). By this point, Michael had expanded the scope of his collecting to include more than just Martin Goodman's 1950s comic-book output. Michael's main focus at this time was Goodman's pulps of the late 1930s and 1940s.

Whilst the family dog, Cindy (aka "Jaws"), was taking chunks of flesh out of my son's foot and hand (completely unprovoked), I was looking over these pulps and said to Michael, "Wow, there's a whole secret history of Marvel Comics that barely anyone knows!" Michael concurred, saying that there was a ton of material by the Marvel artists who were moonlighting on Goodman's non-comic-book publications.

"We gotta do a book on this," I said to Michael, "'The Secret History of Marvel Comics'!" After some debate on the word "secret" (hey, if only a handful of people have this material - Michael now being the #1 collector of Goodman publications by a mile - and no one has showcased and documented this work and history in print, that's a pretty workable definition of "secret" in my book!), I whipped together a proposal and the publishers of Fantagraphics, Gary Groth and Kim Thompson, agreed to publication immediately. And the rest will be history in 2012 when the book debuts in about 7 months!

Michael and I landed on two main objectives for the project - one, showcase the non-superhero artwork of the Marvel Comics' artists of the 1930-50s; and two, showcase the fact that comics were, indeed, a small part of Martin Goodman's publishing empire. The artists' crossover was bound to happen, and was far more prevalent than anyone truly understands (based on the stunning volume of material that we keep uncovering literally to this day).

We'll be back next weekend with another installment as we edge closer and closer to revealing all the secrets of Marvel Comics...

Bill Everett Archives v1 advance copies in!

2011-12-27T09:11:00.000-05:00

The advance copies of Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1 have arrived on U.S. shores! My publisher, Fantagraphics, has received the small batch, destined for promotional outlets, and the book looks amazing. The rest of the print run is literally on a slow boat from China and will likely hit stores in late January or early February. You can pre-order it from Amazon.com at the link above, or pre-order it directly from Fantagraphics to get it ahead of the game (they ship out pre-orders as soon as the books hit their warehouse). I am very proud of this volume for a number of reasons. First and foremost is that it gets this super-rare, super-expensive, super-awesome Bill Everett artwork out there for the first time. When the book finally hits stores, I'll run through the Overstreet Price Guide and tally up how much it would cost to buy all this material even in not-so-good condition. Prediction: a lot of money. And that's even if you could find half of it. There is so much super-rare, barely-ever-seen material in this book; some illustrations that I had never even seen before until putting together this volume.

Second reason for contentment is how I organized the book - by hero, not by chronology - and how that plays out so wonderfully in the design. Each action hero has its own special section, introduced by some context regarding their history and appearances. It's so "colourfully" organized too, so well designed overall and with such wonderful reproduction of this 1938-42 artwork. Thirdly, there's the value of the introductory essay. I went to town on the piece, drawing the lines from the earliest sequential art to this specific period in history. That's important given that Everett's first work in comics predates every major superhero milestone in comic-book history.

Need proof of how good this book looks? Here's a POV promo video on YouTube:

Need more proof? Read this 23-page .pdf preview that features three Hydroman stories! And here's a Facebook Photo Album with lots of still photos of the book and insides. Have to get back to work now on the distributor catalog text for volume two...

Being Punked by Jerry Robinson & Other Memories

2011-12-22T23:06:00.000-05:00

I never run into writer/artist Darwyn Cooke without him reminding me of the time I was punked by Jerry Robinson, one of the earliest Batman artists and creator of The Joker. Jerry passed away earlier this month at the young age of 90. I say “young” because his mind was that right up to the last time we spoke, even if his body had begun to slow him down in the last three years to the point of him riding around the San Diego Comicon in his own motorized chariot. (That’s what happens in a solitary occupation like comic books. You often only see fellow professionals once a year, or every other year, which means you come with a picture of how they looked/moved since you last saw them, and it can be a bit sad/jarring to see their health/mobility drop another level.)

I give thanks for the few encounters I had with the man related to my books on Steve Ditko and Bill Everett...including the time when I walked straight into a metaphorical, super-powered punch in the jaw while hosting a one-on-one panel in Toronto with Jerry, clearly still a man with his utmost wits and sense of humour about him. “Punked!”

Everyone in the field knows Robinson for his work on Batman, but his contributions to the comic-book medium include being, first, an inspiration to Steve Ditko and, second, his teacher at (what is now) the School of Visual Arts in Manhattan. Ditko was unique for many reasons, and one of those was that he didn’t fit the stereotypical profile of a comic-book cartoonist in the “Golden Age of Comics” – he wasn’t Jewish and he wasn’t born in New York state.

Ditko was from Johnstown, PA, and developed his love of comics through Robinson’s work on Batman (as well as Eisner’s The Spirit newspaper strip). Such was Ditko’s interest in the strip that, in his youth, he had his mother craft Batman and Robin costumes for him and his best friend Mike to wander the streets of Johnstown playing Cased Crusader and Boy Wonder.

Inspiration turned to influence when Ditko used his monies from the G.I. Bill (after having served in Germany in the post-War constabulary forces there) to head to Manhattan in 1950 to study under Robinson at the Cartoonists & Illustrators School. Robinson spoke of teaching Ditko in an interview for Alter Ego #39 conducted by Jim Amash: “Steve was quiet and retiring, a very hard worker who really focused on his drawing. Some of the ones who weren’t overly gifted went further than more talented ones, solely because they were driven. They must understand the story’s structure and characterization. Steve understood all of that. He could work with other writers as well as write his own stories and create his own characters.”So impressed with Ditko was Robinson that he helped him get a scholarship for Ditko’s second year. Ditko was so devoted to his schooling that he even remained in school part-time at night in 1954 after being published in 1953.

Ditko was also effusive in his praise of Robinson. In a 1959 letter to fan Mike Britt, Ditko said of his 1953 work, “If Robinson had seen some of that stuff, he’d have me shot. But there’s a big difference in knowin [sic] what’s right and having time to apply everything properly. I’m not alabing [sic] the things I did, a lot of it was pure junk but now I’m in a position to do better and I hope I am.”

In a 1966 interview conducted by Robert Greene for issue 2 of the fanzine Rapport , Ditko expanded on this: “Until I came under the influence of Jerry Robinson, I was self-taught, and you’d be amazed at the hours, months, and years one can spend practicing bad drawing habits.” Of the chief lessons Ditko learned from Robinson: “The basics of art — perspective, composition, anatomy, drapery, light and shade, storytelling, etc. You can’t really draw anything well unless you understand the purpose of that drawing (storytelling), the best way to get the drawing across (individual point of view — composition) and convincingly (perspective, anatomy, drapery, light and shade).”

In my 2008 bio/art book on Ditko, Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, I put panels of Robinson’s early 1950s work against Ditko’s late 1950s work and you’d struggle to tell the difference. Ditko’s creation of Captain Atom was a homage to Robinson’s 1946 character Atoman in form and function.

In 2005, I had the pleasure of hosting a Jerry Robinson one-on-one at a Toronto comic-book convention. He was an exemplary gentleman, but also had a mischievous look in those eyes when he playfully thought he could mess with a youngster like me. During the one-on-one, I asked all my penetrating questions about his time on Batman and his later career...all leading up to my "true intent": to drill him more about his time as teacher with Ditko.

He must have sensed this because, when the questions at the end died out, I explicitly went after him to relate some untold stories about that period. Without a hint of sarcasm in his eyes, he said, “Blake, did I ever tell you about the time at the school when Steve Ditko saved a woman from being raped?”

My ears, eyes and entire posture shot to attention with the glow of a naive researcher coming across a gold nugget of history never before discovered. I exclaimed, “No, Jerry, you’ve never told that story!” Jerry then replied, “Oh, that’s because it never happened. I’m just messing with you.”

I quickly turned to the maddening crowd and said, “I just got ‘punked’ by the Joker!” and the audience roared in approval at my folly. (Punked was the Ashton Kutcher show at the time where he pull practical jokes on his Hollywood peers, Kutcher famous for his part in the That 70s Show, being married to Demi Moore, and replacing Charlie Sheen in Two And A Half Men.)

Darwyn Cooke was amongst those in attendance, and has never failed to remind me of my shame and humiliation. Secretly, it was, and is, a great joy to share any memories with one of the industry's original members.

I also had occasion to talk with Jerry in person at the 2008 San Diego Comicon about Bill Everett and, like most of Bill's peers in the 1940s who worked for Marvel, Jerry had few memories of the man, just admiration of his work. (Everett worked in Lloyd Jacquet's Funnies Inc. shop that supplied Marvel with all that Golden Age material such as Bill's Sub-Mariner, but Everett never worked in the offices.)

When my Everett book debuted at the 2010 San Diego Comicon, I spoke with Jerry again, this time while he was in that scooter, his legs having begun to fail him (at least in terms of getting around a behemoth like that convention). That was the first moment where it hit home that time stands still for no man, no matter how much you freeze them and their work in your mind as eternal.

I started writing this post on December 12th. Since then, Joe Simon has passed away, as well. Joe was Jack Kirby's partner for many years. Together, they created Captain America, the romance genre and countless titles in the 1940s and 1950s. Joe was one of the first employees for Martin Goodman at Marvel Comics (then known as Timely Productions).

With the passing of these two legends, we are again faced with the reality that almost all members of the first generation of comic-book creators are gone. Few still stand, like Stan Lee and Al Jaffee, and we are blessed to have them around still, as we were to have Jerry and Joe with us for so many years. They lived long, healthy lives and leave a legacy up and down the comic-book industry. I'm glad I had the chance to appreciate them while they were still with us.

PS. My co-conspirator, Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, on our book, The Secret History of Marvel Comics, has a lengthy blog post with rare art, photos and videos of both men.

Behind The Scenes of the "Secret History Of Marvel Comics" P1

2011-11-27T21:44:00.001-05:00

Let's make this a weekly feature, okay? Last week, and the week before, we let you behind the scenes of putting together my latest book: a collaboration with Dr. Michael J. Vassallo entitled The Secret History Of Marvel Comics: Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman’s Empire that makes its debut at the San Diego Comicon in July of 2012. And everyone's been asking us "just what exactly is this book about?" What's the angle from which we are approaching "Martin Goodman's Empire?" Are we focusing on his skin/smut magazines that ran parallel to those for-kidlet superhero comics in the 1940s, 50s and 60s? (Nah, boring.) Is this going to be some academic exercise into the financial maze that was Goodman's interconnected web of companies and dummy imprints found in the indicia of all his comics? (Yawn!) What is the scope of this book and how will it truly please comic-book fans of Jack Kirby, Stan Lee, Bill Everett, Alex Schomburg, Matt Baker, Joe Maneely, and so many more (it totally will, in ways no other book ever has!), as well as fans of pulp and magazine illustrations, the sci-fi genre and L. Ron Hubbard, Tom Cruise, John Travolta and the rest of the Scientology crowd...plus Liberace, Elizabeth Taylor, and Jackie Gleason fans? Yes, Doc V. and me aren't known for the sacrifice bunt when we can swing for the Green Monster instead, so here's a sneak peak at the book's entry in the Fantagraphics catalog for Spring/Summer 2012 that gives a lot more on the scope of the project...but not all the details, so come back next week when we reveal the secret origin of how this book came to life in the Fortress of Sequential Art...

Putting Together The "Secret History Of Marvel Comics" P2

2011-11-19T20:42:00.001-05:00

Last week, we published part one of our weekend dedicated to putting together the visuals for my latest book project, The Secret History Of Marvel Comics: Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman’s Empire, that makes its debut at the San Diego Comicon in July of 2012.

My collaborator, Michael J. Vassallo, and me not only poured over some great artwork, but some of the innards of those 1930-50s mags could evoke a great deal of hilarity. Here are some visuals of the weekend, including the few moments I saw the sunlight outside of Michael's Fortress of Sequential Art...

First Row: 1] One of Michael's prized possessions is his Secrets Behind The Comics by Stan Lee; a small 1947 publication that features Lee pontificating on how to put together comics. This is a special one because Michael has a zillion Timely creators sign the cover. Can you pick out all the names? 2] The biggest laugh came from a magazine ad for the Do-It-Yourself-At-Home dentures! "We have thousands of customers all over the country wearing teeth we made by mail at sensible prices" from National Detective Cases v1 #3 (Jul '41). 3] Wow! In just 5 months during 1941, the cost of Do-It-Yourself dentures went up $1.10 in price! 4] Best Martin Goodman pulp magazine ad ever? Are you ruptured? Need the "double Rupture-Easer"? Of course you do. 5] The book's primary focus begins in the early 1930s when Martin Goodman starts publishing pulps and ends in the 1950s. I'm holding Snafu #3, Martin Goodman's Mad Magazine rip-off, but a treasure trove of art by Bill Everett, Joe Maneely, John Severin, Russ Heath and more!

Second Row: 1] Me buried deep in Michael's basement. Can you name some of the art of his walls? (It can now be revealed - Michael's been secretly hoarding all the old Timely original art!) 2] Nellie The Dental Assistant? Even in Michael's dental practice does Martin Goodman rule the roost. 3] Remember when a few Ditko fanatics got all over UK teevee personality Jonathan Ross for the scene when he and Neil Gaiman visited Ditko's Manhattan studio and "revealed" the address on the building? Yet, Ditko the alleged "Recluse" has had his studio phn # and address published publicly for decades. 4] Times Square in November, ten years after I visited Michael for the first time in 2001 (two months after 9/11) when I visited Ditko's studio for the first time. Of course, back in 2001, there was no security guard blocking the elevator. I blame you, Jonathan!

Steve Ditko Archives v3 in November PREVIEWS

2011-11-10T12:17:00.001-05:00

PREVIEWS is the distributor catalog for comic book stores and Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives v3 is in the latest issue for ordering (the Nov '11 issue). The book's entry is on page 280 in the Fantagraphics Books Inc. (the publisher) section. The ordering code is NOV11 0991 and you have until Friday November 11 to tell your local comic book store that you want them to put it on pre-order for you (you don't pay them up front, of course, but stores have to submit their Diamond order form for the books that should arrive in store in January). You can always order after this date, but this is your way of making sure it's there for you that first week when it arrives. Click HERE to read all about the volume which features over 210 pages of Steve Ditko's work from 1957 at Charlton Comics.

Ordering through Amazon.com? Click HERE to pre-order (you won't be charged until they ship it). Join my Steve Ditko Archives Facebook Page for exclusive updates leading to the book's release!

Putting Together The "Secret History Of Marvel Comics" P1

2011-11-08T20:05:00.001-05:00

This past weekend was dedicated to putting together the visuals for my latest book project, The Secret History Of Marvel Comics: Jack Kirby and the Moonlighting Artists at Martin Goodman’s Empire, that makes its debut at the San Diego Comicon in July of 2012.

My collaborator, Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, lives in a "Fortress Of Sequential Art" and we locked ourselves inside from Friday to Sunday night scanning our little hearts out from all the work that had been put into researching the visuals. Here's some of what we were digging into this weekend (click to enlarge the photos). These may not appear in the book but are too much fun to resist not capturing in some manner...

Okay, that's my 2010 Bill Everett bio / art book which I'm pouring over, but let your eye wandering around the outskirts of the photo. You can see our scanning set up on the desk in the (your) bottom right corner (yes, that's the Iron Man Marvel Comics Omnibus we used to flatten out the materials that were being scanned, Ditko never far from my reach). Post your comments in the Comments Section below on what else catches your eye around the room.

That's Michael to my right in the photo. Michael's written 16 introductions to the Marvel Masterworks series of books; his knowledge of the 1930s-50s Marvel Comics empire is unrivaled. In my hands is the cover to a Martin Goodman magazine, National Detective Cases ("Sex Blasts Our Hideout" emblazoned on the cover). Michael is holding National Detective Cases v1 #2 from May 1941 with the captions "...He Tried To Burn Me Alive!" and "Case Of The Unwanted Babies".

Martin Goodman put out comic books, he put out pulps, and he put out magazines, books and smaller digests as well. Michael is holding a 3-Book Western digest from 1957 that features Matt Baker artwork. I'm hiding behind an illustration from the same issue by Carl Burgos, creator of the Human Torch in Marvel Comics #1, the very first comic that Goodman published (also featuring Bill Everett's Sub-Mariner debut). Probably the best Burgos illo. I saw all weekend.

One of my favourite Golden Age artists from my teenager years (in the 1980s) was Syd Shores. He took over as artist from Jack Kirby on Captain America Comics back in the early 1940s, and had a rendition of Sub-Mariner that I loved. Here, buried in a Martin Goodman magazine is Shores doing an illustration for the story, Devil's Weed. Yes, that's Satan rolling a doobie. Shores' brilliance really shines through on this material.

Michael's having fun with a Martin Goodman pulp entitled The Angel Detective from 1941 in his right hand, and a copy of the magazine, Amazing Detective Cases from 1942. The cover is by illustration artist Caldwell Higgins (who never did do any work for Goodman's line of comic books). Hmmm...Michael sure seems to be surrounded by a whole bunch of interesting artwork. Post your identifications of each to our Comments Section below.

We'll back for Part Two of our adventures in putting together our Secret History Of Marvel Comics book, including a look at some of the hilarious material to be found in the Martin Goodman books that was probably normal for the 1940s but is stunning when taken out of context.

Join our "Secret History Of Marvel Comics" Facebook Page

2011-11-05T00:13:00.000-04:00

Want to see how a book is constructed from scratch? Join our Secret History Of Marvel Comics Facebook Page where me and my collaborator, Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, are posting pictures and other random miscellanea about our weekend of scanning in the "Fortress of Sequential Art" somewhere in upstate New York (Michael Shannon, you shalt not find us!).

Also, follow me on Twitter for more exclusive updates and missives as we progress to the book's release date in July 2012 at the San Diego Comicon.Want a peak at what's under that cover? Keep your eyes on our Facebook page!

More on "The Secret History Of Marvel Comics"

2011-11-03T22:42:00.000-04:00

On Tuesday, we revealed my next book project, The Secret History Of Marvel Comics - a collaboration with Dr. Michael J. Vassallo, the world's foremost expert on the empire of former Marvel Comics owner Martin Goodman. "Doc V", as he is affectionately known in comic-book fandom, is the author of 16 different introductions to the Marvel Masterworks series.

Michael's primary area of interest started as an art-spotter and collector of 1950s Marvel Comics (often referred to as "Atlas Comics", Michael now owns an almost complete collection of that era) before expanding his scope to include 1940s Marvel (known then as "Timely Comics").

Michael then took his interest in Martin Goodman's empire to a whole new level when he began his pursuit of Goodman's other publishing endeavors. These included Goodman's pulps, magazines, and digests; Michael's interests primarily residing in the material from the 1930s to the 1950s.

When I visited Michael's fortress of sequential art in upstate New York in August of 2010, he showed me how the collection was building, and the goldmine that was found inside, and a light blub went off in my head - "The Secret History Of Marvel Comics". Realizing the same, Fantagraphics bought in quickly, and the world will get to see the results when the book debuts at the San Diego Comicon 2012! More details tomorrow!

Happy 84th Birthday, Sturdy Steve Ditko!

2011-11-02T10:16:00.004-04:00

Ayn Rand sends her love too....

BAM! Next Book Project! July '12!

2011-11-01T21:13:00.000-04:00

Bill Everett invades Spain!

2011-10-27T14:50:00.001-04:00

As we await the arrival of Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1 from the printers, take a look at where my Bill Everett biography / art book, Fire & Water, is turning up! Clearly, La Central (located in Barcelona, Spain) is a fine purveyor of quality books, based on the selection of graphic novels present in the photos (courtesy of Bill's daughter, Wendy Everett)...

Technically, these photos were from late last year, and it's not the first time I've invaded Spain. The first Steve Ditko Archives volume was translated into the Spanish language.

Bill Everett Archives v1 final cover! Book to printers today!

2011-10-18T16:59:00.010-04:00

It's equal parts exhilaration and unease whenever a book you've taken from conception to reality leaves the publisher's hand for the printing press. It's that moment when that moment comes, after months and months of knowing you can make changes, that you can no longer have an impact on what will be the final product that is in print forever.

I've gotten much better about being super-diligent on checking and rechecking those final .pdfs for errors, but you just never know. Mark Evanier once said that it was inevitable that he'd get back a book, and the first page he'd open would have the one type in the entire job.

I feel great about Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1 for numerous reasons, not the least is how amazing the final cover has turned out. Lots of time in this industry, the publisher slaps together a cover just to get it into the distributor's catalog on time because that information has to be prepared a good year or so in advance. With my book going off to the printers today (hopefully to arrive in stores before Christmas), I can finally share the finished version of the cover; in fact, the entire cover. Click on the top left image for the front cover, or click on the image below for the back, spine and front cover...

Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1 collects, for the first time, some of the earliest original comic-book material, all from the pen of Bill Everett – one of the true originals in the annals of the Golden Age of Comic Books. Everett – one of the first “five-tool players”: writer, penciller, inker, letterer and colorist – created the Sub-Mariner in 1939, the first mutant in the Marvel Comics Universe and the first anti-hero in comics. It was Everett’s sensibilities that paved the way for the X-Men’s Wolverine and other morally-challenged characters whose anger and disfranchisement saw them walk a fine line between hero and outlaw.

Everett is also “famously unknown” for co-creating the blind superhero, Daredevil, in 1963 with Stan Lee during the Silver Age of Marvel Comics. Bill Everett, however, wasn’t always a “Marvel Man”.

This volume brings together rare and classic material from as early as 1938, over a year before Marvel Comics #1 hit newsstands in late 1939. The pages that follow feature Everett's work for Golden Age titles like Amazing Mystery Funnies (1938), Amazing-Man Comics (1939), Target Comics (1940), Heroic Comics (1940), and Blue Bolt Comics (1940) to name a few. These books display an endless array of Everett-drawn characters such as Amazing-Man, Hydroman, Skyrocket Steele, Dirk the Demon and more. The majority of the comics were produced during Everett's early years as lead artist and Art Director for a company named “Funnies Inc.”, a collective of writers and artists that sold packaged comic books to first-generation comic-book companies like Centaur Publications, Novelty Press, Eastern Color and Timely Publications (known today as Marvel Comics).

Click HERE to pre-order the book from Amazon.com and stay tuned to this blog for more updates and previews as we inch closer to the book's release date!

Bill Everett Archives v1 in September "Previews"

2011-09-01T10:56:00.000-04:00

Run, don't walk, to your local comic-book store, because "Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1" is available in the September "Previews" catalog for ordering! This means the book is scheduled to arrive in comic-book stores in November (I'd say late November). "Previews" is the catalog from the distributor (Diamond) which supplies all comic-book stores and you can pre-order your November purchases just by contacting your local store. This is important because, a lot of times, comic-book stores order just what they know, and what customers tell them they want. Times are tight and they often don't take a chance on non-returnable books (which is all that the distributor, Diamond, offers). If you really want to see publishers continuing to put out Golden Age Comics material, you need to put your stake in the sand early, so that the publishers know this is desired material and can order enough to meet the demand.

Information you need to order:

On the Diamond Customer Ordering Form, there's an ordering code for the book (which is on pg. 297 of the catalog). The ordering code is SEP11 1101. Give this to your comic-store owner and ask him to order the book. You don't pay until the book arrives. Click HERE to read all the details about the book. The 5000-word introduction of the history of comics leading up to, and including, Bill Everett's entrance into the comic-book field in 1938 is worth the price of admission alone!

Gene and Adrienne Colan: A Love Story (P3)

2011-07-02T21:28:00.003-04:00

In memory of Gene passing Thursday, June 23, we're representing the first chapter of my book (slightly edited). Click HERE for part one and HERE for part two. Every quote is in Adrienne's voice. Onto part three...

"I Have To Live With This Guy!" (published Aug '02)

Chapter One - Gene and Adrienne Colan (Part Three)

As she had done for Gene at the Sherry Studios in the early ‘60s, she finally has to confront Gene to help him say stop. “It must have been within that week I came into his room one day and asked him, ‘Why are you continuing this way? Why aren’t you quitting? Is it because of me, the children, the whole suburban thing, the house, the cars and the stereos?’

“All these years he’s at his board, when the family comes in and talks to him, he would always not even stop work. But now, he stopped his art, turned around and said, ‘Yes.’”

Adrienne marched into her son’s room and typed her husband’s resignation. Stan Lee attempted to mediate by long distance, but he was already off to set up the Marvel Hollywood offices, and was no longer a buffer. Marvel asked Gene to stay to try a six-month trial period. Adrienne was hopeful, but not for long.

“The vice-president at the time, Mike Hobson said, ‘I’ll talk to Jim, see if the two of you can...’ blah blah blah. They got Jim to write this so-called apology letter. In fact, Virginia Romita called and she said, ‘Gene, hold on; you’re getting an apology letter.’

“But it wasn’t an apology letter - it was just whatever fantasy world he’s in. It was his version of an apology letter, but it wouldn’t have mattered because it wasn’t an apology that Gene wanted. He told Mike Hobson and he told Jim, “I only want one thing: I just want creative license. Just leave me alone. That’s all I want.”

Exactly what Jim Shooter thought he was going to accomplish, trying to alter the style of a thirty-year veteran was unclear, but he wouldn’t relent.

“Shooter said, ‘I can’t do that.’ Gene said ‘Well, I can’t work here and I don’t want any trial period’.”

In the summer of 1981, Gene took his last walk into the Marvel offices. “Jim stood there and stared out a window while Gene talked and tendered his resignation. Gene walked out of Marvel and people -- including John Romita -- came out of their doors with their thumbs up. It was like something out of a movie.”

Adrienne’s role in Gene’s life took a dramatic turn. They were now partners in the truest sense of the word. Gene handled himself where money was concerned in the pre-Shooter days, but the aftermath left him a man who cared to focus solely on the creative. “Once a year it was a little bit nerve-wracking having to ask Sol Brodsky for a raise and it was always like pulling teeth. Not because of Sol, but just because it was hard to get raises. You’d get fifty cents to a dollar. Outside of that, there was no politics.”

After the Shooter years, Adrienne not only continued handling the household finances, but she became his manager. She never went back to work after raising the children. “I really just worked for Gene to facilitate him being able to draw. I stepped in and did negotiating contracts for him. Post-Shooter I really had to because it makes Gene very nervous. When he has to talk business or numbers or contracts or dates, it’s like he may as well be back in third grade and the teacher may as well be teaching trigonometry!

“The only thing I really felt that I missed out on was those eighteen years not being in Manhattan. As far as a career, I was just thrilled to see Gene evolve, to see those original pages come to life and hear compliments from the editors and writers. It was gold to Gene and it was like platinum to me.”

After tendering Gene’s resignation, Marv Wolfman, who had been working on Gene for a year, had no problem coaxing Gene over to DC. “Before Gene took the resignation letter in, Gene called Marv and said, ‘Do you think there’s room for me at DC?’ Marv said, ‘Hang on, I’ll get right back to you.’ Within an hour, Marv called and said, ‘You’re hired and we’ll work on Night Force.’

“We knew when he handed in the resignation, he could literally just cross the street, but we had to forget that we lost a lot. We lost a lot of benefits, insurance, savings, he was working towards a pension - a savings plan where they added equal to it. We got that - what we had put in - but those kind of good times were over. At least he was able to continue to be gainfully employed and even go over there with a contract.”

The reality was that Gene had little choice if he was going to remain in the comic-book field. 1981 was not the time to be out of the mainstream loop with a mortgage and a family. He may have made even more money in advertising, but creatively that would have left himself a husk of the man he was at his peak.

But DC Comics had never been Gene’s home. Night Force was not a mainstream superhero book, neither was his project, Nathaniel Dusk, with writer Don McGregor. Gene’s contract with DC came to an end. They used him in whichever way they could – on Batman and Wonder Woman - but Gene was a ship lost at sea. By the summer of 1988, there was nowhere else to go.

“Then I really started actively helping Gene with his career, choosing projects, taking up teaching, selling original art, negotiating contracts.”

What was left for the couple was living on a project-to-project basis, jumping to and from smaller, independent companies like Eclipse and Comico - neither of which survived the 1980s. There was not even a guarantee that his work would be published at those places. Feelers always had to be out, in case the roof caved in on a job.

When Shooter left Marvel in 1989, Colan and McGregor were back at Marvel – “back” being the word, as Gene was restricted to anthologies and one-off jobs.

“Make no mistake. It has been nerve-wracking to keep his career afloat. A lot of manipulation, a lot of flexibility, a lot of keeping ourselves together emotionally - it could often be unpleasant. We had to give the impression of not being needy, of being busy and gainfully employed, like ‘What do you have in mind? I’m willing to listen. I’d love to hear the project.’

“This comes full circle. Remember that man I met in Tamiment that had no guile? Well, I had to go beyond being a secretary and sharpen my own street sense. I could pull it off better and he was grateful for some relief. Business can be tough, especially to sustain success without losing one’s principles, humanity and mind.”

With the children out of the house, they moved into a one-bedroom Manhattan apartment. “We had the whole bedroom set up like an art studio and had a fold out futon bed for sleeping. I had my own office - also in the bedroom - but Gene’s whole art studio, it was beautiful built-ins. It was just a great setup. In a sense it was a nerve-wracking time, but we were very close. The children were gone; we found ourselves arguing less, excited about living in New York for as much as he hates it. There’s always a movie being made outside our door. I’d go do some shopping and have to come flying back saying, ‘Gene! De Niro’s on 67th Street’!”

Gene Colan had a heart attack in 1989, and Adrienne’s sense of “legacy” became more acute.

“I’m not a teacher,” said Gene who bristled at Adrienne’s suggestion about the School Of Visual Arts, but Adrienne put together the outline for the course and the syllabus. “I said, ‘Just get yourself hired.’ I told him how to get himself hired. ‘Go in there to the president, don’t let it be about you. Ask how you can be of use, and that you have your own approach to teaching, and it’s a hands-on approach, and it’s one of positive reinforcement.

“It was not just strictly to have a financial base or some sort of an income, but also for the nobility of doing the right thing. He would be a gentle and good teacher. He just has a lot to offer as a human being and particularly for sensitive artists, being one himself.

“I told him how to do the interview. He literally rehearsed it again and again, to walk in to the president and give a mental image that you want to roll up your sleeves and get started.

“I waited outside in the lobby at SVA and he nailed it! They needed him to write up a thing for the catalog; they all think that Gene was able to do it, but no. That was my end and I just rose to that challenge. I don’t even know how. I don’t think my twelve months at secretarial school, when I was seventeen, prepared me for that. Maybe it’s genetics and my total belief in Gene’s excellence as an artist and as a man.”

Her father’s example had taught her well.

“We muddled through. There always seemed to be something. Marv was calling with a project from Dark Horse, Curse of Dracula, or Don was calling, or an editor would call from a particular company. There seemed to be a small network of professionals out there.”

The couple moved to Vermont in 1991. “He tried to commute once a week to the School of Visual Arts every Friday - and did it for a couple of years. I would take him to the Albany, N.Y. train station, which is an hour and-a-half ride, and then nearly three hours by train - this is one way - and then to do two back-to-back classes just to keep an income coming in.”

The 1990s brought the industry to its peak (the success of Image Comics and one million copies sold of the second X-Men title) and quickly back down to its lowest valley (Marvel’s bankruptcy and overall sales diving by almost seventy-five percent by decade’s end). Artists from Gene’s heyday, artists from the 1940s to the 1960s, were deposited on curb, and most vanished from sight.

Gene’s page count, which once stood at over 500 in the middle of the 1960s, was reduced to fifty-five in 1993. “We held it together.”

They essentially had to until 1997, when events began to unfold that resurrected the reputation, the career of, but most importantly the will to live for Gene Colan.

“It all started when Gene was invited to visit a comic book store, That’s Entertainment, in Worchester Massachusetts. You may as well have said the moon. I don’t know why, I just felt we should accept the invitation. I’ve been keenly aware of Gene’s age ever since he’s been in his mid-60s and since his heart attack in Manhattan, around 1989.

“With that in mind, I say to Gene, ‘Do it. I’ll get you there. We’ll find Worchester.’ ‘Oh, I’m not being paid...’ he crabbed. I say, ‘Do it - Do the right thing. Whatever fans come, if they want a little sketch...’

“‘Well, I’m gonna charge,’ he threatened. I say, ‘No, you’re not.’

“‘Well, I wanna get paid,’ he grumbled. I say, ‘Maybe take five dollars. Make it a day where you’re not going to think about you. You’re going to think about giving, not receiving, and that’s the attitude we’re going to go with, all right?’

“The store manager, Ken, showed us the setup. He was working on a computer and I said, ‘Oh, I’m so afraid of them!’ “I did a couple of little things and he saw that I basically already understood the concept of it. He said, ‘If you ever want to learn about the computer, or setting up a web site, Kevin Hall’s the guy for you,’ and he introduced us.

“The book signing went great. We were supposed to be there two hours, but we stayed maybe four or five. There was a little electrical light out when we opened the car door to leave. To Gene, all things have the same value. In other words, cancer diagnosis or the light is out on the door: same hysteria!”

“There was Kevin. He was outside talking with a buddy when we discovered this pathetic little light that was out. Whatever it was, he just took care of it. He allayed Gene’s fears that nothing tragic was going to happen to us on the way home.”

Several months later, Adrienne got up the nerve to buy a computer and re-connected with Kevin. “I said, ‘Let’s work on a web site and eBay.’ That was it – the beginning of great career independence for Gene and deep connections to his fans worldwide.”

Kevin set up an official e-mail list for Gene. “That’s when Gene really came to understand just what’s out there. There are all these young men who grew up on his comics, who have grown into men of accomplishment, who could understand Gene’s artwork indicated a maturity and depth. The one thing Gene did understand, when he was working in the 1960s, was it was probably not going to be understood by most six-to-nine-year olds. Stan always told Gene, ‘That is your audience, Gene – six year-olds.’

“Gene understood that but couldn’t help himself. He couldn’t play down to that because he needed to stretch as an artist. We knew other artists were more popular because they appealed more to the masses, like Romita, and Kirby, and even John - because as powerful as their work was, it was clear. We knew his work was not always clear, not always easy for anyone, let alone a youngster to read.”

Adrienne was correct in her assessment that Gene’s artwork had many levels; levels a child could grasp, but deeper levels an adult could appreciate. Jim Shooter’s platform was to knock out all the levels he could, believing only then would Gene appeal to a mass audience.

“And that’s why Gene’s main criteria – his main criteria – is artistic freedom. Every project, that’s the only thing he wants and literally insists upon.

“In terms of managing his career, I said to him, ‘From this point on, we’re not going to accept just anything.’ You always want to be paid as well as you possibly can, but I said, ‘Different companies are going to have different budgets. We’re going to base the decision on how interesting is the project; how much do you want to do it; and if you want to do it, but the pay is lousy, do it. We’ll go for the exposure on that one.’

“It would be hard for most men to give themselves permission to prioritize the project, not the pay. I’m kind of proud of some of my thoughts are a little outside the box.”

Whether it was invites to conventions, the rebirth of the fanzine (in actuality, the prozine), or just fandom’s realization that, in ten years, everyone of their heroes would be long gone, the Internet helped lead a mini-revival of the Silver Age and Golden Age artists. This revival also helped to build interpersonal connections between artists who never before socialized, never before traded stories, together.

“Gene didn’t understand in those years how much was available to him in terms of friendships. For example, he would put John Buscema on such a pedestal; he was intimidated to call him. He’d want to call and reach out. One second he’d be all humble and intimidated, and then he’d get his back arched and say, ‘Well, I mean, he never calls me.’

“That would be his way of saying to me, ‘I feel like a baby - an idiot - calling him.’ Same thing with Tom Palmer; he would say, ‘He doesn’t call me to socialize; I feel like a jerk calling him.’ He wasn’t a card player so he wasn’t ‘one of the guys.’ There were times where Marv or Ernie Colon, or a whole group of them, would get together and play poker or whatever. Gene was not asked. He comes off somewhat aloof. He’s painfully shy around people. He really doesn’t know what to say.

Gene’s dream of reaching out to those fans has not altered from the 1950s until today. At the 2001 San Diego Comic Convention, a black man in his thirties – during the panel on Gene’s artwork – asked Gene about how he knew so much about black people. At the end of Gene’s explanation, the fan shouted out, “Black people love you, man!”

“That was just so extraordinary. It was like this great reward at the end of it all to discover that whatever he’s been doing in his art, and in portraying black people, that they know. It’s got soul; all his faces have soul.

“When Gene draws a black person, there’s a love for their look and their character that Gene feels. They are not caricatured. He would rather draw a black face, man or woman. It’s like the soul is deeper. They’re just more interesting to him.

“I think it’s his artist’s eye. It’s his good experience in the Air Force with black servicemen, as opposed to white servicemen from the South that were jerks. The nature of the black servicemen was, no matter how hard or how frightening the circumstances might be, they always found a reason to laugh and blow it off. It was comforting to Gene and he admired it. We have some fine art paintings of black people sitting on their porch he did in the days where he lived in a home in New Rochelle and there was a black community there. Times were different, and they didn’t necessarily really welcome him, but he got away with taking some photos.”

One watches Adrienne buzz around a convention table and knows she shares the same experience with a Carrie Nodell or Lindy Ayers. They are the caretakers, the “managers of the shop,” leaving their husband’s free to perform. “I know Virginia Romita’s a devoted wife, and she was terrific for John in that she knew how to be a company woman. I never met John Buscema’s wife until last year in San Diego: a doll.

“The only other wife I’ve ever met is Marsha McGregor, Don’s wife. I see some of myself in her. She does get in there to help Don storm through the life of a freelance creator. She’s deeply devoted to him, but she’s also worked all those years outside the home. She involved in acting and has her own life.”

The process of daily living for Gene, now in his mid seventies, is an exact one. “If I get up early, he gets up early. He doesn’t get right to work. He’ll walk the dog, maybe go to the post office in town, but he’s always been one who can’t gather himself quickly. He needs to get dressed, shaved, and have breakfast. Just that stuff takes like an hour and a half.

“I’m different – everything is bing, bang, boom. Everything – even the shower – is within a half-hour. Maybe that’s why New York and I fit. I’m just more of an ‘ants in your pants’ kind of person.

“He’d rather do a commission, no matter the size. At this time in his life, he likes tackling one main pin-up project than to tug along with a story – particularly one that doesn’t interest him. He almost doesn’t have that in him anymore. The only recent story he’s done that he just loved doing, and because of it the time went quickly, was Buffy the Vampire Slayer. He’s enjoying Doug Petrie’s scripts and is currently doing his second Buffy book, then onto a project for Argosy Publications.

With multiple prozines flooding the market, with conventions and the focus companies put on reprinting of various works - the Marvel Essentials and DC Masterworks - the impression one receives is that artists from the 1950s and 1960s may have suffered in the early 1990s, but now they’re doing much better now. This is not the case.

As spiritually healing as the past four years has been, the financial recovery has not matched. “Definitely not. It’s just the opposite. The cost of living is tough these days.”

Commissions don’t role in every day for the Colans, and Marvel’s latest editor-in-chief, Joe Quesada, flat out says he can’t market older artists. “He will command and get paid more per page,” she says. “Dark Horse is pretty generous, but usually because they’re studio-backed projects so the money is available.

“Marvel and DC – he will not accept any work from either. The projects offered so far are insignificant and the page rate is insulting. The projects are insulting. He doesn’t want to go out doing filler stuff.”

Adrienne is focused on her husband’s legacy and is willing to gamble that work will always be present, while the worry may be that she’s pricing her husband out of the market.

“Here’s an example of how ridiculous and hard-nosed Marvel is. They called him just recently for a pinup they wanted to use somewhere. He asked for $400 – which is like nothing. It was an elaborate superhero pinup. They said their budget was for something like $340 or $350. Would you believe they let him walk?”

Is love blind? Few love as hard as Adrienne Colan, and few respect their husband’s talent more. “He’s not going to lend his great talent, his great name – this is me, he will never say something like this – and he will just feel bad and feel demoralized, but I put the words to it to get his ego back up.

“The conversation around here goes like, ‘No, you’re not going to take it. I’m not going to have you lend your talent and your name to something like that and they can’t even pay you a pathetic little amount. Your fans will pay you better than them. They’re riding on your great name and they can’t even, for like $50, stretch it? He is a marquee name for them and if they have a budget of $350, and they can’t even pay him $400 for a pinup that they’re going to make a fortune on? No.

“When you think of how much they have given other artists who are ‘hot tickets’ - taking nothing away from them; great for Todd McFarlane, he’s a great businessman – we know they play a game with the numbers. So, I give him the words so he doesn’t stay in the demoralized state, but feels proud of himself.”

But Gene is not on the Top Ten list of favourite artists in Wizard Magazine (the Teen Beat of the industry), and Marvel won’t even make a fortune on the Spider-Man movie. Adrienne walks a tight rope between reality and keeping her husband’s confidence high.

But Gene’s talents haven’t abated one bit. Few in the industry from his era are still drawing. John Severin, Russ Heath and Colan (when dedicating themselves completely to a project) are the three most able to lay claim to the fact the quality of their artwork has not diminished with age.

So deep was Gene’s desire to return to the fold, so deep were the scars from his break with Marvel that, in early 1997, when he receives a call from Ralph Macchio to go back to Daredevil, Gene confessed to Adrienne he had been waiting for the call for years.

“He never told me this. I said, ‘You’re kidding me.’ He had a secret desire and believe me, he tells me everything. We’re together all day long. Every thought in his head comes out.”

The dream only lasted a mere handful of issues before conflicts with the series writer, Joe Casey, had Gene withdrawing from the project. Unless Gene is comfortable with a writer, unless Gene can be given what he considers enough artistic license, he will not devote himself to a regular book.

“As far as his emotional state, his mental outlook, and just his whole sense of how he feels about life, he’s just never been happier. He would never be able to accept a monthly comic now, but it’s the best time of his life. The money isn’t the be all and end all. There’s no sadness here, no bitterness because it’s been a great career and a great life. He’s a very happy man.

“We love one another and have been very fortunate in the past several years, living up here in Vermont, to have made some extraordinary friends. A couple of them are artists – not comic book artists - and that’s of great satisfaction to him.

“He’s still collecting photo reference. There is still art on his desk everyday to be drawn.”
Extraordinary talent doesn’t make a career. If you don’t own the company, or own your own creations, you can be crawling your way in the dark, hoping the sharp edge to your left is not a cliff over which you are about to spiral off.

“She has been my biggest fan and most severe critic,” says Gene, “hardly ever wrong in evaluating where I went wrong on any of my work. She has been the driving engine in my life that has never quit. I have seen people stop her in the street and ask her for directions on how to get to a place and she never fails to know how. She will always be my North Star.”

Marriage can be like crawling around in the dark. You reach out your hand and realize you’d rather not be in the dark with anyone but this person who truly loves and respects you, your work, and your desire to remain in an industry that brings your life as many cliffhangers as you have drawn on the last pages of so many stories.

Gene and Adrienne Colan: A Love Story (P2)

2011-06-29T23:35:00.000-04:00

In memory of Gene passing last Thursday, we're representing the first chapter of my book (slightly edited). Click HERE to read part one of our three-part series. Every quote is in Adrienne's voice. Onto part two...

"I Have To Live With This Guy!" (published Aug '02)

Chapter One - Gene and Adrienne Colan (Part Two)

In the early-to-mid 1960s, Stan Lee was not above using the “Why, you’ll be working for Marvel!” line when trying to hook back artists he desperately needed (knowing he could count on them to consistently produce product). Stan also called John Romita, offering far less than DC. Lee would feign indignation at their refusal, but he would always call back the next day with a five-dollar page rate increase that cinched the deal.

Gene Colan had a quiet pride about him, and didn’t leap at Stan’s bait. “Stan got a little huffy and said, ‘Look, forget about it. I don't need this. Quite frankly, we’re getting a lot of artists from Spain and can pay them way less than you and they're sensational. We are not going to need you anyway.’

“Gene said, ‘Alright, Stan,’ and ended it cordially. The phone rang the next morning. We were thrilled. $5 a page was money for us at the time! Marvel was truly where Gene wanted to be working, but he just felt it wasn't right for Stan to ask him to be exclusively Marvel, offering nothing other than being exclusively theirs. Gene and Stan have never been able to be cross with one another for more than a minute.”

The dream had been achieved. By the summer of 1966, Gene began his nine-year run on the Lee / Bill Everett creation, Daredevil. The work was steady enough for Gene and Adrienne to eventually move into their own home. There would be twelve years of creative harmony before the walls came crumbling down in the worst way imaginable.

The greatest myth of Marvel Comics in the 1960s: an actual bullpen, a gang of raucous comrades, whooping it up all day in the tiny offices at 625 Madison Street. Such is the charm of Marvel Comics during the “Silver Age of Comics.” Stan Lee’s hyperbole made you want to believe it all. In fact, Gene had worked at the only true Bullpen Marvel ever had – in the Empire State Building of the late 1940s.

Like ninety percent of all people who came through Marvel, they worked at home, or in their own studios. In his earliest days at Marvel, Gene, Adrienne and baby lived in their Queens apartment; one room devoted to the baby's nursery, a living room/dining room combination, a tiny little kitchen, and their bedroom.

In these cramped quarters, a freelance artist must be able to exist in harmony with his environment. Distractions are the work-for-hire’s worst enemy, but the toll is not the artist’s to absorb alone. “Gene had a corner of our bedroom. He’d get to work around 10am, but then days would end like 12am, 1am, 2am and very often not. I would go to sleep with the light on. He put in so many hours to do as much work, and be as perfect, as he could.”

With Gene trapped indoors by his career, the age difference finally became a factor, manifesting itself in the cultural divide between the woman in her early twenties and the man closing in on forty. “I would say in my twenty-year-old enthusiasm, ‘Want to go to Woodstock?’ Like who wouldn't? How can you not be part of it? He would, in his 36-year-old voice, ‘What? Are you nuts?’ There was some stress in that regard.

“He also came from an era of showing a lot of attention and respect to parents. In 1963, I'm still twenty years old. I grew up with East of Eden, Rebel Without a Cause and Splendor in the Grass with Natalie Wood and Warren Beatty. He looks back now and thinks I had every right to expect to see concerts more and parents less... and he adores the Woodstock album!”

The lack of time spent together due to work took the greatest toll. “It wasn't too bad in Queens because he could work up to nearly the last minute, and a restaurant and a movie were nothing more than a walk or five minute drive away. When we moved out in '66 to the suburbs - which was Gene's heart's desire - my feelings hadn’t changed. I wanted to stay in the city. That was the lifestyle I liked.

“I said, ‘When did you know you hated the city,’ and he said, ‘When I was six!’ He always felt that it was crowded, doesn't like the pace, found people intolerant and had some really bad experiences. He’s been held up at knife point. He's been chased after with knives. He's had to stand up to bullies and get beaten around, but won the respect of the bully because he stood up to him. It may have been awkwardly, but he attempted to beat the crap out of the bully, so I guess the bully gave him an ‘A’ for effort.

“I, myself, have been pick-pocketed twice, maybe three times in Manhattan and I see no dark side. I just feel alive. I think if he never saw the city again, it would be too soon. He tells me now that he enjoys the city going back more as a tourist, but I don’t believe him.”

The dichotomy was that Gene’s work for Marvel had such an urban, downtown Manhattan feel to it. “In spite of himself, what is more interesting to draw? What's more edgy than a street scene, interesting architecture, garbage cans, and chain link fences?”

Ripping and snapping became Gene’s tools of trade out in the ‘Burbs. “He worked from reference he had already been collecting since 1946. He kept it current with taking pictures of street scenes. Even when we lived in Queens, even when we moved out to New Jersey, and even living here in Vermont, when he wants a particular scene, we simply go into the city with his camera. Most of his reference material is his own angles and perspective, but Gene has an extensive file of pictures of everything from every imaginable source. I usually say, ‘No magazine or book is safe around him!’

“When we got to the suburbs in 1966, and for all the eighteen years we stayed there, those were very tough years, in terms of the hours he put in. He would come out of his room for maybe lunch and definitely dinner, which we'd have with the children, then right back up to the art board. He'd come down for certain things. We'd all say, ‘Daddy, come down the Waltons. Let's go!’

“Outside of that he was really in his room. That was very hard on me because I didn't fit into the suburbs at all. Even though I had friends, I felt very lonely.”

Luckily for Gene, he was an artist who preferred background noise when he drew. In the days of their Queens apartment, daughter Nancy “wasn’t more than 6 footsteps away. Day or night, raising her never interrupted with his work.”

Their son Eric spent a great deal of time looking over his father’s shoulder. Such is the trade off of having your father around twenty four hours a day, just within reach, but forced to be a million miles away in the fantasy world he’s creating to make sure the roof stays over their heads.

“On one hand, it was all right for the children but, looking back on it, it wouldn’t be what a modern father would consider proper raising of a child at all. He didn’t like sports, so he wouldn’t be taking Eric to any kind of games. On the other hand, Eric was a born artist; he didn’t feel he missed anything. When I’d leave to shop or run an errand, he’d sneak in and show the kids scary movies. I wanted to kill him!”

Perhaps it was the insane assortment of sounds emanating from Gene’s in-home studio that produced such a unique style. “We’d get calls from friends, saying, ‘Turn down the volume!’ It could just blow your eardrums out.”

Gene’s ambient music consisted of classical and modern classical music and...sound effects? “In those days, he was big on reel-to-reel or eight track. He would record dialogue from the audio of films and would play back entire films for himself while drawing, driving me nuts.

“It was horrible, because most of the time he was not playing the kind of music I wanted and, even if he did, it was just unbearably loud. He would just be in his own world.

There’s no escaping the stress of trying to raise children, who are on their own body clock, while a freelancer burns the midnight oil. “I’d be in the bedroom trying to sleep, but not really. The light would be burning in the next room and I would have to say, ‘Will you come to bed already?’”

Working continued even outside the home. “We would see parents on the weekend, mostly mine, therefore, we could count on one day of the weekend where he would not be working. When they’d leave, though, he’d go back to work. My Dad rigged him up an art table in their basement so Gene could work while visiting in Fairlawn if it was a real tight deadline.”

Two factors played into Gene’s decision to never say never to Stan Lee’s constant supply of stories - money and ego. “There was a fear, definitely about money, but Gene loved being put on all these titles at Marvel. He loved the opportunity to show what he could do.

“It was also about ego. If he has a shot to do X, Y, and Z characters all in one month, he wants to be the one to do it. When he was a kid, he wanted to be a famous artist. I think that’s dear and sweet and it charmed me.”

As with most artists from the 1950s and 1960s, Gene was completely oblivious to any sense of fandom. To whom was Gene showing off? “His editor, himself, and the fans that he imagined were reading. He didn’t think of them so much as fans, but readers - readers of comics. He hoped they noticed he was trying to make it feel more like a movie, more like going on a trip, where you’re suddenly not aware of anything else but the reality of what’s on the pages/screen. Artistically, that really turned him on very big.”

There are traps involved in the artistic process, and many not of the creative variety. Gene took on the artistic reins of Dr. Strange and the door to a bottomless pit opened. Gene almost fell in. “He began to take amphetamines to keep pace. Eventually, I demanded he stop those pills. I feared he’d bring on a heart attack. He then discovered cough syrup with codeine, but eventually stopped all those things.”

Letters to the editor were the only connection a creator may have had to the readership. Stan Lee turned the letters’ pages into raucous events, but it wasn’t until comic book conventions began in New York that artists like Gene felt the impact of their work. Adrienne and Gene attended one of the first conventions ever, across from Madison Square Garden in the late 1960s.

“Whoever was running this convention secured a balcony level of this hotel with tables going around the balcony area. We didn’t know what to expect. We walked into the lobby and he was besieged by a bunch of fans asking for sketches. Before he could even get upstairs to his table, he was in the lobby drawing sketches and signing autographs. It was so flattering. We were both dumbstruck!

“That was the first awareness that ‘Wow! There’s something going on here! There are specific fans that know specific artists and Gosh, you’ve got a bit of a name!’ We couldn’t wipe the smile off our face the whole train trip back to New Jersey. It began to snow and Gene and I thought this was the most romantic night of our lives – like a movie.”

For a proud man like Gene, who had seen the bottom, this adulation only egged him onward. For Gene it also helped cement his bond with Stan Lee. “They were gentlemen of a certain era, cordial, sweet by nature, ‘except if you talk about money!’ Gene would always say.”

From a working perspective, Stan allowed Gene the freedom to be the storyteller. “Stan would just call and give a five-minute synopsis of a seventeen-page story and it just didn’t get better for Gene. Even when he would do wrong on a rare occasion, he would get a call from Stan saying, ‘Enough with the car chases, Gene!’”

Gene became infamous for cinematically shooting scenes at different angles, and didn’t hesitate to draw out a scene for full emotional, or physical, impact. “What Stan would say was ‘The pacing! Why do you use the whole page for Tony Stark putting on his tie? And a whole page with the hand on the doorknob!’”

Lee knew how to handle each artist’s unique ego – especially the fragile ones. “Even in those days, the complaints weren’t intimidating. It was almost like a loving, ‘I know I’ve got a mad, little genius scientist here. I’m not going to harm you, hurt you, or make you correct or change.’ It was almost like begging, like, ‘Please, watch the pacing’!”

The early 1970s saw the Comics Code Authority relax its rules on the inclusion of all things ‘horrific,’ including vampires. Gene commenced work on what many consider his signature series, Tomb Of Dracula. It was a difficult series to write because the central character is a force of evil. Written by Marv Wolfman, the series spawned the vampire hunter, Blade, now with two Hollywood movies under his belt. Wolfman continued the Gene-happy trend of simply telling a story, rather than an overly wordy script with text panel-by-panel breakdowns.

“Marv was deeply respectful and appreciative that Gene would monkey with the script in order to allow Gene to display the visual the way he interpreted it. If Gene felt combining or cutting a page off in half in order to make that page become a cliffhanger - so you’d want to turn to that next page - he would pace it himself. In all those years, Marv never said ‘boo.’”

Scripts entered the household, but Adrienne believed imposing her point of view on Gene in this way was akin to his days at the Paul Sherry studio. “I have never seen or read one script in all the years – not from the very first day at that hotel - Gene has received from anyone. I’ve never heard the taped synopses Stan would give him. I was only aware of the duration of the phone call because very often I’d be sitting there in his room. If they ran ten minutes, that was a long conversation; five minutes would probably be more accurate. I have never given any direction or my point of view. My eyeballs should fall out, and my children’s eyeballs should fall out, if anybody thinks I am lying or even bending the truth!”

Two exceptions to this rule developed. “When Gene was working on Howard the Duck with Steve Gerber, I’d hear him in his room, day and night, roaring with laughter. He’d say, ‘You have got to read this!’ He’s just had the greatest admiration for Gerber. I’ve never known Gene to relish working on anything as much.

“The other was D.C.’s Jemm, Son of Saturn. ‘This Greg Potter, he’s terrific,’ and he would always ask me to read the opening. Each story would start out with a special preface that would be in a box or a scroll in the first panel. It was always very thought provoking and would set the tone for the story.

“I would see the pages as published comics for the simple reason that all those years that Marvel was sending him the monthly or bimonthly subscriptions, I would always shout out, ‘The package is here!’ It was the manila envelope with the rubber band around it.”

Further validation came from opening up those envelopes, with Adrienne boosting Gene’s self-confidence by pouring over his finished books. “I would always play this game - especially in these past years where he’ll get just a small story fit in with other people’s work - where I’d always go, ‘Now there’s this, and this, and this. Oh, and then there’s this.’“

The “this” was Gene’s work. “I’d line them up and it would make him smile – very quiet, very humble, but he’d smile. My point was you’d go, ‘Oh, this story, this story...what’s this?’ Even if you thought, ‘This is the worst thing I’ve ever seen,’ his would be the one that would make you stop.”

Gene appreciated two artists more than any others and the incoming package of books provided a monthly ritual for husband and wife. “He ran for two comics - Buscema’s and his own. There would be a silence that would fall over us looking at Buscema’s. Gene feels John Romita is brilliant - the quintessential American artist.

“Gene would check out maybe Joe Kubert or Gil Kane, but it was John’s work he had to see before even his own. It was John’s that took his breath away and by whom he measured himself. Other than the ones mentioned, there would be like a relieved ‘snicker’ on my part that Gene’s was superior.”

Even if they didn’t read it, Gene was so obsessed with having the reader always being able to follow the story from the art. Adrienne herself rarely read the actual stories. “Gene always wanted to keep the suspense alive for himself, so whether it was Marv’s or Steve Gerber’s or Greg Potter, he did not read ahead with scripts he would get. Of course, if it was just Stan’s synopsis, there was nothing to read.”

Within Gene’s work, she recognized photos she had taken for him, or ones he had taken of the children and her. “He would use Playboy a lot for Clea or the Black Widow. He always needed somebody with a raincoat on, or a broad-brimmed turned down hat and a gun or a rifle! We have more photos of Erik in some sort of ridiculous falling type of position in his underpants, so Gene could get the body structure. Our daughter despised it, but she would be a woman or a man in a particular position from a particular angle and light source. We have the most bizarre collection of family pictures!”

Gene refrained from using popular models or actresses of the day. “He is a notorious beauty parlor magazine swiper. He has files that are very specific: women looking right, women looking three quarters to the left, women looking up, women screaming. There’s like ten different categories. Doctors throughout the world are missing magazines that are all in my home!”

Gene continued his dream ride, a dream in the sense of working without interference for a company he loved. Perhaps he could have made more in another field, but he could never been anything but an artist. The consistent work gave him a sense of security, financially, emotionally and creatively, but it was all about to be ripped out from under him by one man.

The Devil in Disguise, as the song says, is Jim Shooter.

Martin Goodman owned Marvel Comics since the 1930s, but if you asked half the kids in America, Stan Lee ran the show. As long as it was the Goodman’s family business, Stan stood as a buffer between the business realities and creative needs of his artists.

After Goodman sold out in 1968 to the conglomerate Cadence Industries, the buffer began to weaken. Stan himself stepped down in September of 1972, leading to a parade of writers thrust into a position that forced them away from the creative side of the business. None of Roy Thomas, Len Wein, Marv Wolfman, Gerry Conway, or Archie Goodwin lasted more than three years each - Conway for only a month. Goodwin, considered by all to be the consummate editor, returned the company to profitability. He was keenly aware that proper people management gets the most of out of individuals with varied egos and unique personalities.

Goodwin resigned in late 1977, and left the door open for one of the most contentious men to ever walk through the doors of a comic-book company. On the first day of 1978, Jim Shooter became the editor-in-chief and lasted ten years in the position before being ousted by the corporation and burned in effigy by its creators.

Born in 1951, Shooter was a comic book prodigy, selling three Superboy stories to DC Comics at the age of fourteen. Shooter appeared at Marvel as an associate editor in 1976, also writing for The Avengers, Ghost Rider and Daredevil. Once assigned the role of leading the company, Shooter distinguished himself from his predecessors by jumping into the financial end with great vigor. All too appropriate for the 1980s’ definition of corporate mogul, Shooter soon simply wanted it done his way or the highway.

Argue over whether events like the birth of the direct market bolstered Marvel’s fortunes in the late 1970s, or whether it is solely Jim Shooter’s direction - everyone else does. He came in a blaze of glory, and left the same way. The only given was that, in every subsequent interview Shooter gave, the turmoil with the creative staff at Marvel during his tenure was never his fault. Shooter always had his loyalists, but the cause of every failing he recites lands in someone else’s lap, usually in the hands of those pesky creators who couldn’t take his directions.

There may never be a story more symbolic of creator versus businessman in the comic book industry than the story of Gene Colan and Jim Shooter. Gene’s fall from the high towers of Marvel, a fall from which he never truly recovered, in terms of consistent employment, underscores the thin line of the tightrope every work-for-hire artist in this industry walks on a job to job basis.

It became quite clear, quite quickly to Adrienne and Gene that Shooter either hated Gene’s style, or believed him to be incompetent as an artist. To this day, the bile Adrienne exhibits when mentioning Shooter’s name is very vivid.

One can argue the intent of Shooter, whether it was personal against Gene, or simply a professional man guiding his company’s ship in the necessary direction, but one can’t argue that Jim Shooter almost broke Gene Colan financially, emotionally, spiritually, and artistically. Financially, Shooter most certainly turned the Good Ship Colan into the Titanic, but of immediate concern to Adrienne was Gene the man.

A post-Gerber, Howard the Duck story was burned into Adrienne’s memory, but that was only the beginning. “The corrections were just so unbelievable. It was the amount of the corrections and the nature of what Shooter would ask.

“In all the years I had been married to him, I never ever heard him ask me anything about a script or what should be drawn. There we were, in a Chinese restaurant in Red Bank, and he’s asking me about a panel. He’s saying, ‘This is what I drew but this is what’s being asked of me. I just can’t see it because if I did, then the person who’s supposed to be flying on the top of the room would be on the bottom of the room.’”

Across the table, Adrienne’s watched her husband return, spiritually, emotionally, to the Paul Sherry Studio. “That was exactly what was going on. I was literally watching him just emotionally crumble in front of my face. It was a horrible thing to watch. He didn’t want the corrections, but he didn’t want to lose his job. Those were years where you got better contracts if you were in good favor. Those were years where Marvel was giving you vested interest.”

Then. Jim Shooter fired Gene Colan.

Stan Lee temporarily smoothed over a return, warning Gene about the cliff on which he’s standing. Gene returned, but the corrections kept coming.

To be attacked on a creative level was one concern, but Gene had a two-child family for which he had to provide. It was pulling the proud man apart. “I didn’t even realize all of that stuff was factoring in for him, in terms of why he was allowing himself to be tormented this way. He couldn’t even understand what was being asked - notes saying ‘your artwork defies the laws of gravity’ and things that would undermine his confidence.”

(to be concluded tomorrow night in Part Three...)

Gene and Adrienne Colan: A Love Story (P1)

2011-06-28T22:53:00.002-04:00

Back in 2001, I sold TwoMorrows Publishing on the idea for a book that focused on the stories of comic-book history's greatest creators...seen through the eyes of their spouses/partners. It was my first-ever book, and I titled it "I Have To Live With This Guy!" I came up with the idea at the 2001 San Diego Comicon, after spending time at the show with couples like Gene and Adrienne Colan.

These artists worked mostly in isolation, so when they came together, the stories got bigger every year. I watched as the women stood patiently by their men, sometimes rolling their eyes, and you could tell these were the people who really knew the story behind these creators.

Adrienne Colan's passion for her husband, his career, and her part in both, changed the direction of the book and I moved their chapter right to the beginning because their story was just that good, just so "comics", in terms of its intensity and ups/downs that faced artists in the industry's infancy.

In memory of Gene Colan's passing last Thursday, we've been publishing a number of blog entries on Gene (this one will give you some good context on my relationship with Gene and Adrienne) and we're going to spend the next three nights representing the Gene and Adrienne Colan chapter of my book (slightly revised). Except for where Gene speaks in one paragraph, it's Adrienne's voice throughout. It's quite the love story, so I hope you enjoy it:

"I Have To Live With This Guy!" (published Aug '02)
Chapter One - Gene and Adrienne Colan (Part One)

“If anybody could draw a hand on a doorknob and keep your interest, it would be Gene.”

The above has been "rubber chicken dinner" line from Stan Lee, famed former editor-in-chief at Marvel Comics for almost forty years, but truer words...

Few artists in the comic-book field had a style as unique as Gene Colan. Stan Lee encouraged every artist during the 1960s who came through Marvel’s front doors to draw like Jack Kirby…except for two – Steve Ditko and Gene Colan. They arrived at Lee’s door fully formed, and suggesting alterations of their fundamentals would have been akin to spraying water on a fiery oil slick.

But the talents of the above three artists filled Marvel’s coffers more than lined their own pockets. The comic book industry has a work-for-hire history, often ensuring that a creator receives no compensation, other than one’s page rate, even if one creates a pop culture icon, such as Ditko’s Spider-Man, or Kirby’s Hulk. If you didn’t “step into the engine” of the company (as did John Romita), if you didn’t leave to make greater monies in animation or advertising, you stayed because you just loved drawing comics.

And that love can get you killed.

What doesn’t kill you leaves you beaten and broken at times. Industry swoons and fads can leave a freelance artist gasping for air, with a family to support, and no hope of a pension or medical benefits. The artist and spouse may think the job on the table will pay for the month’s necessities, but one industry slump, one bout of illness, even one work-free vacation brings home the reality that the gerbil’s wheel of pumping out page after page has to spin non-stop. Step off for a breather, or a drink, and you may never get back on board.

You’d find few people who loved as hard and faithful, and perhaps blindly, as Adrienne Colan. One is unlikely to find someone so protective of her mate in all aspects of life – the emotional, the physical, the financial and the ego. She was a perfect example of what the male freelance comic book artist, under this industry’s ‘big top,’ requires: a safety net for a partner who walks a financial and emotional tightrope, never being able to see beyond the next job on the table, or if there will even be one.

Is it truly the love of the medium, the industry, the finished page in front of the artist that kept people like Adrienne and Gene Colan coming back for more, even into the twenty-first century?

Eugene Jules Colan was born in the Bronx on September 21, 1926. Adrienne classified him affectionately as “one of these weird little kids, into very progressive, but classical music at a very young age. I had little or no interest in it, except where it would cross over with the music I was accustomed to from my dad. Gene and my dad shared a lot in common: the Copeland thing, Villa Lobos, and Gene would introduce me to Jean Carlo Menotti operas like ‘The Saint of Bleeker Street’.”

After attending a public school, George Washington High School, focused on gifted students in the visual arts, Gene fell under the tutelage of illustrator Frank Riley and the Japanese surrealist Kuniashi.

With so many peers off at war, Gene found work at Fiction House in 1944, drawing Wings Comics. Pen and ink kept Colan from an early grave in World War II, Corporal Colan spending two years (starting in 1945) in the Philippines, producing art for the Special Service in the Army Air Corps.

After his time in the Army, Colan arrived at Stan Lee’s Empire State Building doors in 1947. Known then as Timely Comics, the company would become now as Marvel Comics in the 1960s. Colan’s early work was nondescript but, during the 1950s, Gene trademark flourishes began to shine through, especially in the horror genre.

As all things in comics, it didn’t last. The company clawed back dramatically in 1957 after the bottom fell out of their distribution deal. The hands of Gene Colan instead pumped gas for a living at a local station, while he chased jobs at the nadir of the industry, Charlton Comics in Derby Connecticut. They were known for the lowest page rates (and quality of product) in the business.

Ten years of working in comics and Gene was left with nothing. He found work in New York at the Paul Sherry studios, drawing stick figures for educational films. Any attempts at “flourishes” were quickly crushed by an art director only concerned with the client’s requests for the bland. And what was expected? If you couldn’t make it as an artist, you either pumped gas until you were gray, or you took what your talents afforded you.

At least it was work. No child of The Depression was going to hang on a wing and a prayer. With an industry in tatters, what chance did a freelancer like Gene Colan have? In the eye of the hurricane, who loves you enough to reach in and pull you out?

Back up to 1942, in Forest Hills, NY, and Adrienne Gail Brickman is born. By the age of eight, she was roaming the big boulevard streets of New York City, taking herself to lessons in ballet, tap and voice.

Her Broadway dreams were dashed in 1955 when her parents’ dream of home owning placed the young teenager miles away in Fairlawn, New Jersey. “It was really just twelve minutes over the George Washington Bridge, but when you're a teenager, and you can't drive, Manhattan may as well have been a world away. I was absolutely thrilled for my parents and totally bored out of my gourd!

“I wasn't exposed to art all that much. From fourteen until the end of high school, it was initially Elvis Presley until the Beatles came along. The Beatles came and Elvis Presley was over. It was like I closed the door. I couldn't listen.

“But at the same time, there was Motown. It was Motown and the Beatles. I stilled love jazz: Miles Davis and Modern Jazz Quartet and Dave Brubeck. I introduced Gene to Brubeck's Take Five album.

“Through all those musical things that I mentioned, there would be Frank Sinatra; Frank Sinatra doing and singing anything. I watched Frank Sinatra’s films and had every single album.”

The influence of Adrienne’s father played a great role in how she regarded, and managed, Gene Colan and his career. Her father was a small business owner in Queens, and his independent spirit was transposed onto his daughter, to the Gene’s benefit later in life.

“When we used to live in Queens, my father would get on a truck at three in the morning. He would go to the manufacturing plants that produced like corn beef, pastrami, salami and hot dogs and distribute them to the restaurants, delis and diners. He made out really well. They tucked their bucks away.

“It was always his dream to have his own manufacturing plant and, soon enough, he did in New Jersey. My dad had an expression all his life. He said, ‘A peanut stand, but my own.’"

Her father’s early hours brought him home by three in the afternoon and that allowed Adrienne to develop a mythical image of the man. “He was a hero to me. He built his own darkroom for photography and won some awards, submitting them to photography magazines.

“He did not grow up with a life a privilege to say the very least. He was the oldest of four boys, from a broken home. He was supporting the entire family plus two immigrant-divorced parents at the age of eleven. He married my mom and wound up still taking care of his parents and my mother's parents.

“My mother was like Imelda Marcos. She had a gazillion pair of shoes! He built her a whole closet just for shoes! He went on to build exquisite furniture for the house. There was almost nothing he couldn’t do. He built his own stereo cabinet. He even put together the radio parts.

“My mom’s entire life centered around the family, our Jewish culture, beauty parlor Fridays, and maid three times a week, no matter what. She loved my Dad tremendously and also looked up to him a lot. She took her cues from him in terms of cultural tastes. She'd read two, three books at a time, many of the struggles of the Jewish people and family life.

“They fought about two things: ‘Your family stinks – no, your family stinks.’ The other was my mother’s shopping. Bills would arrive at the house, they would disappear into their bedroom and I could hear him just quietly confronting her. Before you knew it, plates were flinging, tears flowing, and cupboards were slamming!”

Music dominated Adrienne’s memories of her father, and explains its importance in her own life. “My father liked great symphonies. He was very diverse and had the first record album that was on the unique sides of Jerry Mulligan and Dave Brubeck. They had like an ensemble called ‘West Coast Jazz.’ It was just so progressive and so fantastic. He would bring home the album to West Side Story and then go see the show.

“My Dad would play Rachmaninov and Stravinsky, and stand in front of the stereo, pretending he was the conductor. He was a very modest and quiet man but, in the privacy of our own home, he really let go with complete abandon. My dad was listening to Rachmaninov and then is completely blown away by Sergeant Peppers. That particular album knocked him out.”

Adrienne graduated and enrolled in secretarial school, taking her right back into Manhattan every day. “When school would let out, I would take the subway uptown and hang out in Harlem visiting record shops and such until Harlem signaled they didn't want me. It wasn't me not wanting them. Towards the end of 1960, early 1961, it was clear to me I wasn't welcome in the neighborhood and so I didn't go.

Single, with girlfriends, working in New York City in the summer of 1962, the group was always on the look-out for “Mr. Right.” Adrienne’s twenty year-old life took a dramatic turn when she and friends decided to go away one weekend to Tamiment, a singles’ resort in the Poconos of Eastern Pennsylvania.

“It’s the first night and everybody goes out on the veranda after dinner. It’s just swarms of people. I had always told my mother, when I married, I want it to be like Tony and Maria in West Side Story. They meet at the dance and everybody else seems to disappear.

“It seems like everybody coupled off within seconds. All that is left is this huge gooney-looking guy and I am with a very gooney-looking girlfriend. She’s very, very, tall and awkward. In my day, I was really quite pretty in my day - slim and dark-haired.

“So this gooney guy starts walking over and I thought, ‘Oh, brother, he's going to pick me. He'll never go for Rochelle.’ Sure enough, I can’t even attract the gooney guy!

“I’m sitting alone on the wall by the veranda. I look over to my left. He hesitates, then takes another few steps towards me, as if he's trying to keep his options open. I'm thinking ‘I’m a thin, 20-year-old, dark eyed, dark hair, cute little chippy in my best little summer, spaghetti strapped dress, so what gives?’

“Now, I'm getting cranky, like, ‘Come on!’

“He does come up to me and says, ‘Would you like to take a walk?’ We take a little walk, give a kiss, and just love one another instantly.”

The man was Gene Colan, alone (“definitely girlfriend hunting”) at the resort, on a suggestion from his cousin Helene.

“My immediate impression is ‘No airs, without guile and handsome.’ He is shy in the most attractive way that one could say that Gregory Peck or Gary Cooper was shy. He has a way about him that is not stupidly macho. He’s good with conversation but not in a chatty way, like it's all about him. My instant impression: he’s rock solid - stable.”

While the 1950s may be viewed as the most conservative decade in twentieth century America, that didn’t stop a 35 year old Gene from chatting up a woman 15 years his younger. “I loved the idea he was older,” says Adrienne. “We talked about spiritual things right away; just basic belief systems. There was a ‘positiveness’ about him - a gentleness.

“He was very handsome, too. I loved all his features. I thought immediately, ‘What a terrific nose. I'm going to have gorgeous children!’

“I always had this theory that if your first born is a daughter, she has the father's nose. So, if the father has a big honker, she's gonna have a huge nose! After we were married, he told me it was the first thing he thought of, too.”

Adrienne had Tony and Maria in her head, but Gene reset all her expectations. “The only thing I spelled out was ‘Tall, dark and handsome’ and Gene wasn't. His hair was sandy colored. He was bald in the middle, although not as tragic as he made it then! I just looked at his facial bones and features. I thought he was really very handsome and had a great butt! You know, it was all there.

“Gene told me his age right away because he felt he owed it to me to be honest. Prior to him, I was dating a dentist my age and it got booooring. My mother was salivating in the corner, dying for me to marry him. It was every Jewish mother's dream to marry a dentist or a doctor, and I just couldn't. He listened to elevator music! I couldn't believe it. I felt like I was with someone ancient.”

Exhibiting an excess of manly bravado, Gene drove Adrienne home and made a beeline for her parents’ place.

“My father was very pleasant, but I know that my mother wanted to kill him. She said, ‘I knew that this was going to be the person you were going to marry, because you had never said to me before, 'Mom I met a man.’

“So, A) he's thirty-five - every mother’s dream for her twenty-year-old daughter; and B) he was born Jewish, but his family were practicing Christian Science. Both my father's parents, and my mother's mother, were immigrants. We’re talking about the war years with Hitler and Jews. Nothing was discussed about the war or the Holocaust in my entire childhood. My parents were not proactive politically. They didn’t wear their pain on their sleeve. They completely sheltered me from harsh realities.”

Adrienne and Gene were engaged three months later. She knew Gene as an artist, but had not yet discovered his history in comics. Gene had shown her some of his paintings done in his private time, so Adrienne was in for quite a shock when she met him for lunch up at the Paul Sherry Studio, on 47th Street. “It's these stick figures for school films, for driver's education or health, like in slide form you grow up seeing. They are just a little beyond stick figures.

“I couldn't believe it. Suddenly, him being an artist was of interest to me. I just couldn't believe that one could paint the way he did, and yet to earn a living he had to draw stick figures! It was absolutely unacceptable to me! I’m huge on ‘injustice.’ I was immediately struck by what it must feel like inside a human being, to not be able to show it – express it – reach beyond it!”

The image of the bullpen at the Paul Sherry studio played in sharp contrast to the antics of Stan Lee running crazy in the 1940s Bullpen of Marvel Comics, where Gene tutored under his mentor, Syd Shores

“Gene was always falling asleep at the Sherry studio and was paid a paltry amount of money. He would try to embellish a little, put some folds in that jacket of the kids running after the ball between two cars. The art director wouldn’t allow it. It was nothing against Gene, but he knew his client would not accept that. It had to be a formula thing. Gene was just frustrated, sad, and tired.”

Once Adrienne discovered Gene’s love of comic books, she was determined to end his soul-crushing days at the Sherry studio. “We got married on Valentine's Day of 1963. We went down to City Hall, grabbed a hot dog and went before a judge. He needed a secretary to type out the marriage certificate and said, ‘Does anybody know one?’ And I say, ‘Yeah, me!’ He says, ‘Well, sit down, you're going to type your own.’

“We married and spent the weekend at the Waldorf Astoria. Then came reality. We moved into a cheap old hotel, the Bretton Hotel, for a month in Manhattan on the Upper West Side until we could get ourselves an apartment in Queens. This was a rooming house hotel that had seen better days, or never saw better days, but it had a bedroom, a living room and it was right on Broadway. As far as I was concerned, that was great.

“Gene had to set up an art board in the living room. He had a little western story, ‘Fury In The Streets!’ from Stan he was working on after hours that was published in Kid Colt #112, but no promises of anything more. He was upset he wasn't really back in the comics industry. Before we were married, he really didn't speak about what he had already accomplished in comics. He would just speak of his hope to get steady comic work again like he once had. He was hoping that maybe after this job, Stan would make a commitment and that he'd get steady work. What would happen, though, was he'd finish a story and then maybe he'd get one a short while after. Nothing at all was steady - nothing was hot.

“He had no xeroxes or issues of comic books he had drawn. I just had the examples of his paintings and the current Western he was working on to know he could draw. The most compelling thing about Gene was he was an ‘artist’ to the depths of his being. There was no considering anything but art. Neither he nor I gave that another thought - ever.”

Symbolic of Gene’s early struggles to regain his footing in the industry he loved – symbolic of the scratching and clawing a comic book freelance artist endures - came in the form of the first job Gene received shortly after their marriage. With only the odd five-page story having been thrown his way, Dell Comics hired Gene to produce a thirty-five page Ben Casey story in March of 1963.

“Certainly, we were afraid to hope that there would be more, especially since Gene was not familiar with this company. He didn't think there would be any future, because he had no past with Dell. He wanted to be in comics, but he didn't want to be with DC Comics. He really had his eye on being back at Marvel.”

The Ben Casey job was the break point for Gene and Adrienne. It led to the first of many career- altering moments in which Adrienne assisted Gene.

“The minute he got the Dell job, I told him to go and quit Paul Sherry. He said ‘Are you crazy? We'll starve!’ I remember riding home on the subway - I was still working myself – and I said to him, ‘I would rather starve than to see you work beneath what you are capable of doing as an artist.’ He quit immediately with only the Dell job between us and nothing. We had nothing because, three months after we married, I was pregnant and quit my job.”

The significance of Adrienne’s belief in his career was not lost on the artist. Said Gene, “She has always been marching to a different drummer. From the day I met her, she had this inner strength that could make you believe almost anything. She made me feel things could happen that I never thought would. I was hated doing the film. There were moments when I actually fell asleep at my art table. She visited me one day, sized up what I was doing and what a waste it all was. All I remember was I found myself walking out with Adrienne on one arm and my art table being dragged along with the other. A taxi was hailed and all three of us drove off into the sunset.”

Aside from the Ben Casey job, Gene had no other work at the time. Thanks to the financial strain, the story - so many pages – seemed to take forever. “By the time Gene did it, we were down to absolutely nothing except a penny jar. He had to take fifteen pennies to buy his token to get the bloody check from Dell!”

Enough steady work began to roll in, mostly from DC Comics on drab romance stories, relieving the emotional burden of being a freelance artist without a steady gig and a child on the way. Returning to work for Stan Lee and Marvel Comics, however, remained Gene’s dream.

“Frankly, we prayed over it. Later in 1964, DC approached him about working exclusively for them, but he had a bad taste in his mouth with one of the editors there who gave a very rough time back in the 1950s. He never really had it easy there - very intimidating.”

The page rate at DC is superior, but it never offers Gene the freedom, or the joie-de-vive, of Lee’s Marvel. “There was other questionable requests and, in general, a too heavy-handed, serious approach to work at DC and Marvel was always a good ‘fit’ for Gene. He liked simply being given the assignment, being left alone, and not picked on when he would deliver it.

“He loved Marvel stories. To Stan and Gene, it was truly playtime, like ‘Hey Kids! Let’s put on a show!’ They were very (are very) boyish, instinctively sweet and fun loving – both of them.”

Finally, in the spring of 1965, the call came.

“We were in our second apartment in Queens, already with our daughter, Nancy. A call comes from Stan in the evening and he wants Gene to work there exclusively. Gene said, ‘Well, what are you offering’?”

(to be continued tomorrow night in Part Two...)

Gene Colan and Syd Shores

2011-06-28T07:57:00.002-04:00

After creating my (for the moment, defunct) Steve Ditko website – Ditko Looked Up – in 1998, I embarked on creating a similar (for the moment, defunct) site for my Golden Age comic-book heroes, Bill Everett, Alex Schomburg, and Syd Shores.

Having discovered that Syd was a primary influence on Gene Colan’s work and his career, I sent Gene an email through his website, asking if he’d like to write a piece for the site on Syd. He graciously agreed to do so.

In memory of Gene's passing last Thursday, here are Gene Colan's words on one of the first-generation comic-book artists:

A Tribute to Syd Shores
By Gene Colan, August 3, 1999

There was a magic to Syd Shores' work that eluded me. Oh how hard I tried to imitate it.

My first real professional start in the comic book business began in the summer of 1946, and that is when I met Syd Shores. He was the head man in the Art Department of Marvel Comics. I was twenty years old and was hired on to illustrate whatever subject matter came my way. I was flying by the seat of my pants...hoping that everything would turn out. I didn't want the seams to show but that was all part of the learning process and Syd helped me wade through.

I remember working on a panel showing a young girl making up in front of a mirror. No matter how hard I worked at it, constantly looking for a certain naturalness, the worse it turned out. The truth was I just didn't know how to do it. I brought the problem over to Syd. He sat about three art tables behind me. In less than a minute, he sketched out the entire thing and with such ease.

His realistic style, for some time, became an obsession with me. His characters looked like the real thing. Whatever he had them doing was as real to life as you could get.

Syd Shores could draw a horse from any position and all out of his head. His cowboy heroes and villains would literally leap off the page. Their gun belts were real...their hats were real...everything about them you could almost touch!

Syd gave me the biggest push to start me off.

He moved about with a slow Robert Mitchum gate...always with a cup of coffee in one hand and a cigarette in the other. He had seen action in World War II, but seldom spoke about it.

After about a three year stint with Marvel, I left to go out on my own into the freelance field. The last time I met Syd again was many years later at a gathering amongst other fellow artists. He appeared with his wife that evening and it was plain that he was quite upset. He was not getting very much work to do in the business. New people were coming on board and they were the ones the publishers of comic books favored.

What A Terrible Mistake They Made in Syd's Case! He was a seasoned veteran and we all could have learned so much from him.

Shortly after that meeting, Syd Shores passed away. He will remain in my heart forever. I still think of him quite often.

"Why did Gene Colan exist?"

2011-06-26T23:42:00.003-04:00

(RIP Gene Colan, Comic-Book Artist: September 21, 1926 to June 23, 2011)

The answer to the question became obvious in short order to anyone welcomed into the comic-book family of Gene and Adrienne Colan. Tom Field, part of that family, made an apt (if slightly extreme) comparison in his Comics Journal.com remembrance piece, noting the similarities between Gene and (still alive) Brian Wilson, singer/songwriter of the Beach Boys, both virtuosos in their medium.

Wilson went so far over the edge, emotionally (and remarkably came back), so that’s what makes me bristle. Noting Gene’s similar artistic sensitivities is one thing, but I don’t think it answers the above question that could really apply to both men: why did they exist? If something exists, it is, and it sustains, and sustains on (usually) some kind of self-generating energy.

In conversations with Gene, and about Gene (mainly with Adrienne, but also with Gene’s peers), and through observations of his life and lifestyle, it is clear that Gene Colan, like all other almost-purely artistic souls, existed to communicate.

That sounds simple, but I believe that even someone as “solitary” as a Steve Ditko would cease to exist if they couldn’t communicate with an audience what is in their heart, mind and soul. Colan and his peers do it through the pencil; Wilson, McCartney and Lennon did it through voice and fingers. People like Colan reveal themselves, upon deeper inspection, to be so driven to communicate that it often leaves them like one of the characters that Colan drew – (Ditko’s) Dr. Strange: a man with one foot in two worlds, belonging to neither, losing himself in both, lest he lose his mind completely.

Gene Colan existed to communicate through his artwork. At various times in his career, when this was threatened, he very nearly ceased to exist, and the objects of those threats became a thorn in his side for life, never to be forgotten or forgiven. And if he didn’t have Adrienne Colan at his side throughout his life, he might not have stopped communicating long enough to eat, sleep, or even acknowledge his children. He appeared to operate at times in such a vacuum that all he really knew was the worlds he was created. The outside world, the “real” world, was Adrienne’s job. Gene’s passion was so overwhelming, so volcanic, that Adrienne had to build a moot around him so that he and the family could survive.

A search of the Grand Comics Database turns up over 3200 entries for “Gene Colan” but that’s barely part of the story. The scary fact is that, amongst his peers in the 1960s, if you sat down Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko and Gene Colan in front of a tribunal of the greatest artists in the history of “art” and said “impress!”, the winner would likely be Gene Colan. He was that good with a pencil. He was a fantastic sequential artist, but he was a better artist that just about anyone who’s existed in the comic-book field. Line ‘em all up – the best of the best from 1939 to present, at the point in their careers when they were at their best – and say “draw me the best scene you can”, an audience of non-comic-book people would likely pick Gene’s work above all comers. Russ Heath would dazzle, as would Lou Fine, or Bill Everett, but Gene...

What also made Gene unique in the field? If you saw many of his pencil commissions in the late 1990s/early 2000s, he was one of the few who, when not restrained by the pump-it-out monthly mechanics of the industry, legitimately got better as he got older. Such was his passion for communicating through his artwork that he never hacked it out later in life, never cut corners when his peers were jettisoning the interesting details from their work in the name of alleged “simplicity/clarity”.

Others on the Internet have done a great job relating their thoughts on his stylings, and their favourite work, but what fascinated me – beyond what the talent produced on the page – was this overflowing passion, this need to exist by communicating on a blank canvass, and how palpable it was, and the manifestations of it. Much like Brian Wilson, Gene was a sweet man at his core, but he also had a fire in him too that could come out when he believed that Adrienne wasn’t “guarding the gate”, i.e., deflecting the real world’s distractions. It was fascinating to have an absolutely coherent conversation with the man at a convention or signing or for an interview, so articulate about his work, and all his other passions that informed his work, but then I could call him on the phone at home, and he was so far in his world, that he wouldn’t remember who I was until he forcibly had to pull himself back to reality to engage in a brief dialogue about something functional.

All of this passion – this singular devotion to communicating through his artwork – quite literally reshaped my first book, I Have To Live With This Guy!, which debuted in 2002 from Twomorrows. Time for a little context: when I discovered the web version of comic-book fandom that sprouted in the late 1990s, I had already created my Steve Ditko website – Ditko Looked Up – in 1998 (which led to all my connections that resulted in my about-comic books writing career) and was embarking on a similar site for my Golden Age heroes, Bill Everett, Alex Schomburg, and Syd Shores.

Having discovered that Syd was a primary influence on Gene Colan’s work, I sent Gene an email through his website, asking if he’d like to write a piece for the site on Syd. He graciously agreed to do so (which I’ll post tomorrow, since the site’s been down for a while now – too much time writing books these days).

The internet saved Gene Colan from the graphite morgue of history. When his website debuted in the late 1990s, and the Gene Colan mailing list was established, he blossomed again. But it was his wife, Adrienne, that really (once again) managed his career and life, and it was (without question) her presence as the mother to all Colan fans that drove the renaissance of Gene Colan.

The 2001 San Diego Comicon (my first outside of Canada) changed my life in many ways. My first published work – an article on Ditko for Comic-Book Artist #14 – was released at the show, but it was everyone I was to meet that was dazzling. All the heroes of my childhood from the Silver Age of Marvel were present at that show, and it really was the last time they would be. I wrote this on my website after the Con, related to my first meeting with Gene:

It was the 4pm to 5:30pm panel featuring a surprise birthday party for Gene Colan that no one will forget. They tried to trick Gene into believing he was on a panel for erasing techniques in comics and Mark Evanier had him tricked. The curtain came up, out came the cake, and other comics luminaries to sit on a panel about Gene Colan's work and influence. I've had the pleasure of corresponding with Gene and his wife Adrienne before, but I was able to tell Gene specifically what a gentleman he was. Gene was no doubt overcome by the outpouring, especially from the brother who stood up and said "black people LOVE YOU, man!" At the end of the panel, I approached gene colan yahoogroups list moderator Kevin Hall and asked him to introduce me to Adrienne Colan. I was worried she may not remember the name, but as soon as she heard "Blake Bell", you could tell every piece of praise spoken about her was true. Her greeting was exceptionally warm and she truly did make you feel like you were the only one in the room. Gene was still talking to people at the dais, but that didn't stop Adrienne from introducing me to one of my favourite artists. Gene is as warm and friendly as his wife. I would end up sitting beside Adrienne for the Marvel Bullpen panel on Saturday and spend time with them on numerous occasions at their table, and they were always generous with their attention and time.

The association with Gene and Adrienne Colan was essential to, on the night of the Eisner Awards, me coming up with the idea for interviewing the wives/spouses of cartoonists throughout the ages. I sold the idea of I Have To Live With This Guy! to John Morrow the next morning and Gene and Adrienne were the first I approached about being in the book.

Originally, I was going to order the chapter chronologically but, in my first interview for the book with Adrienne – over three hours – that passion in Gene, for Gene, that she was able to convey (and the dramatic story about the treacherous life of a cartoonist back in the day) made me completely readjust the entire scope of how I arranged the book. The Colans’ chapter moved right to the front of the book, theirs was that good of a story. In fact, back in early 2009, a couple of documentarians wanted to do a documentary based on my book – taking four of the subjects – and Gene and Adrienne were my number one choice to lead it off. Personal concerns got in my way of following up on that, but I wish I had now.

I never did “take advantage” of the opportunity to honour Adrienne when she passed away last June. The circumstances shook me to the core, and I didn’t want to “inflict” upon Gene memories that might upset him. Perhaps it wouldn’t have, but just didn’t want to take the chance. With both gone now, however, I think it’s fitting to re-tell the story of “Why did Gene Colan exist?” and at the heart of that was two love stories: that of Gene and Adrienne Colan, and that of Gene’s love for communicating through his artwork.

I’ve always dreamed of winning the lottery just so I could rewrite I Have To Live With This Guy! The content is all there, but I was just too “green” to do it the justice it truly deserved. I’m not going to obsess with completely re-writing the chapter and present it here, but I will clean it up a bit, and represent it over the coming days. I’ll follow each segment up with the never-before-published interview with Adrienne that was the basis for the chapter. I hope you all enjoy the tale of the Colans. It definitely has some heartbreak in it, but it’s a love story of two people and for the medium that we all love. See you tomorrow (Monday) night with part one.

Fantagraphics.com page for Steve Ditko Archives v3

2011-05-28T17:46:00.000-04:00

Fantagraphics is the publisher for all my books and they've just created a couple of pages on the fantagraphics.com website related to all my Steve Ditko books. Check out the Steve Ditko Archives series page, which has links to all three of my Ditko books, as well as the new Mysterious Traveler: Steve Ditko Archives v3 page. This is where you'll be able to pre-order the book from Fantagraphics, as well as get access to reviews, videos, and all sorts of other exclusives. You can also join my Steve Ditko Archives Facebook Page for all sorts of content related to the series, and follow me on Twitter.com where I'll update even more minutia about my work on volume 3. I'm off now to organize the Table of Contents. Twitter updates to follow!

Bookgasm reviews of my 3 Ditko books

2011-05-24T22:34:00.000-04:00

Yesterday, we cracked the news re: the title and cover image for my next next book ('cause I still have Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1 on its way in September), Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives v3 that will be coming out in November.

In the meantime, Rod Lott welcomed the news yesterday with his review of my Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives v2. "As always, Fantagraphics’ top-notch presentation makes the publisher the go-to stop for comics preservation."

The review also links to his review of my Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives v1 - "it’s assembled by Blake Bell, who wrote the terrific Ditko bio 'Strange and Stranger' in 2008" - as well as his review of the aforementioned Ditko biography/art book o' mine, Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko - "it’s one of the year’s finest nonfiction works on the comics industry."

Remember, you can join my newly-created Steve Ditko Archives Facebook Page for updates on volume 3 in the series, or follow my Twitter feed at @blake_bell.

Steve Ditko Archives v3 cover and title revealed!

2011-05-23T23:41:00.001-04:00

What could top the first two volumes of my Steve Ditko Archives series (v1 = Strange Suspense; v2 = Unexplored Worlds)? Volume 3, of course! Preparation has begun in earnest for my next book, due out in November of this year from Fantagraphics, entitled Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives v3 (click on the cover image to your left for a closer look).

Steve Ditko didn't just bring to life the Amazing Spider-Man, Dr. Strange, Mr. A, and the Creeper. His career began almost 10 years before the birth of Spider-Man, and the Steve Ditko Archives series reprints his 1950s work in chronological order for the first time ever.

You can follow updates on the new volume at the newly-created Steve Ditko Archives Facebook Page (with information about the contents and how to order for all the volumes in the series) and you can also follow along on my @blake_bell Twitter Feed.

Mysterious Traveler: The Steve Ditko Archives v3 features over 210 full-color pages of Ditko in his early prime. What makes this volume of The Steve Ditko Archives so noteworthy, and what makes Steve Ditko a giant in the industry, is that he was producing his best work to date, and of his career, at a time when few would have been paying attention.

Picking up where volume two left off, in 1957, the shy Johnstown, Pennsylvanian artist that came to New York City in 1950 (toiling away for three years before he was published) was fully ensconced at Charlton Comics. What makes this volume so special is that meteoric improvement in Ditko’s work as he toils in obscurity for a company that treated their comic books like toilet paper for their more profitable magazine and song books. Such is the irony of one of the great living artists of the 20th century – working with stories churned out for an audience of children, Ditko produced the highest quality material in the industry with no editorial oversight at an amazing pace (all the stories within were produced in 1957 alone).

Another reason this volume ranks as the most superior in the Archives series to date is the inspiration Ditko took from comics related to old radio shows and that had hosts who narrated the tales. Comics like Tales of The Mysterious Traveler and This Magazine is Haunted saw an explosion in Ditko’s ingenuity with manipulating the traditional comic-book page layout. This filtered over to his work on other books like Mysteries of Unexplored Worlds, Out of This World, Strange Suspense Stories, and Unusual Tales marking this third volume as the best example yet of the Steve Ditko that would later craft with Stan Lee at Marvel Comics in the 1960s.

I'll be signing at TCAF on Saturday at 12:30-1:30pm

2011-05-06T14:26:00.001-04:00

I'll be doing a signing at the Toronto Comic Arts Festival which runs this Saturday (May 7) and Sunday (May 8) at the Toronto Reference Library (789 Yonge St. - just above Bloor St.). I'll be at the Fantagraphics booth (tables #162-163) from 12:30-1:30pm, so please stop by with your copies of my I Have To Live With This Guy!, Stranger & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko, Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives v1, Fire & Water (My Bill Everett biography/art book), Unknown Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives v2 or any other books that I've contributed to for Marvel or DC Comics. Click HERE to read the announcement on the Fantagraphics website, which includes the hours and location of the Fantagraphics booth. I'll be snagging the new books by Chester Brown and Adrian Tomine for sure.

My Bill Everett book nominated for an Eisner Award

2011-05-06T12:28:00.001-04:00

I’ve been so busy working on my next book, Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1, and beginning work on the third volume of The Steve Ditko Archives that I haven’t even had the time to acknowledge here that my Bill Everett biography/art book from 2010, Fire & Water, received an Eisner Awards nomination for Best Comics-Related Book. The Eisners are the comic-book version of the Oscars/Academy Awards, named after Will Eisner, one of the comics medium pioneers who created The Spirit newspaper strip back in 1940 and is considered the “Godfather of the Graphic Novel”. It’s his seminal book A Contract With God that many point to as the tipping point for a change in the delivery model for sequential art from “floppies” towards the graphic novel format that dominates today.

10 years ago, at the 2001 San Diego Comicon (my first convention outside of Canada), I attended the Eisner Awards and it’s a moment I’ve never forgotten. Why? Well, the event was the culmination of being submersed in the “Comicon Experience” (back when the emphasis on comics was much stronger). My first article had been published at the show (on Steve Ditko in Comic Book Artist) and I had already been “star struck” from meeting many of the artists and writers I had admired for the first time, attending panels, and also buying more comics than I could likely afford. And, a few weeks before on July 4th, I had launched the official (yep, Steve Ditko had sanctioned it) web site for Ditko and his co-publishers to sell their wares on the Internet and get their message out. That attracted some professional ears, leading to my first meeting with my soon-to-be-(co)publisher, Gary Groth (of Fantagraphics), as well as Mike Catron (who had co-founded The Comics Journal with Gary back in the day) who I helped with some filming of the various panels.

But it was at the Eisner Awards where I sat and watched Jill Thompson win everything and she ran up to the stage effervescently to great cheering and I thought to myself, “I’d give my teeth to be a part of this industry.” Dave Sim’s “you’ve got 2000 bad pages in you, so get them out first” words rang in my ears, so I knew my entry into the industry likely wasn’t going to come producing comic books but instead through the documentation of their history and in showcasing the careers of the creators within.

At that ceremony, the sense of appreciation for the effort and sheer force of will and determination that it takes to produce quality work in the comic-book medium was palpable. I grew up having such an appreciation for the medium and those who toiled in it that, on this night, that feeling of wanting to be a part of the industry was probably what remains as the most salient emotion from my Comicon Experience.

That night would also launch my book-writing career. Mike Catron grabbed me after the Eisners was over and introduced me around to every luminary he knew and, as I watched the patient spouses of these creators tell their tall tales, I came up with the idea for my first book, I Have To Live With This Guy! (thinking that these women must know the real story of these creators who work in such solitary confines) and sold it to TwoMorrows the next morning. Thirteen months later, I was holding a volume in my hands featuring in-depth interviews with Will and Ann Eisner, as well as Stan and Joanie Lee, Alan Moore and Melinda Gebbie, Howard Cruse and Ed Sebarbaum, and on the list went on.

So, to see a book on Bill Everett receive recognition at the Eisners is a satisfying signpost in my journey as a writer in this industry. Everett passed away before I was even three years old, but I hope his family – who were instrumental in making the book more than just a nice picture book – appreciate the recognition too.

Click HERE to see the full list of Eisner 2011 nominees. The Awards are held in conjunction with the San Diego Comicon this July (the awards show itself on Fri Jul 22). The other nominees are a daunting group:

Doonesbury and the Art of G. B. Trudeau, by Brian Walker (Yale University Press)
Fire and Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics, by Blake Bell (Fantagraphics)
The Oddly Compelling Art of Denis Kitchen, by Denis Kitchen and Charles Brownstein, edited by John Lind and Diana Schutz (Dark Horse Books)
Shazam! The Golden Age of the World's Mightiest Mortal, by Chip Kidd and Geoff Spear (Abrams Comicarts)
75 Years of DC Comics: The Art of Modern Mythmaking, by Paul Levitz (TASCHEN)

Thank you to the Eisners nominating committee, to Fantagraphics for publishing the book, and to the Everett family for all they offered to make it a worthy work.

Steve Ditko Archives v1 translated into Spanish!

2011-04-01T21:40:00.001-04:00

You know you've made it when your work is available in two languages! Recently, Fantagraphics worked out a deal with Spanish publisher Diabolo Ediciones to translate and publish my Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives v1 in Spain!

Click on the publisher's link above to see a selection of the interior pages of the book which literally translates all the word balloons into Spanish. That's a lot of pre-Code Ditko material in a second language! Click on the book's cover to your right to see the Spanish cover for "Los Archivos de Steve Ditko Vol. 1"!

To your right is the splash to Ditko's "Hold In His Head!" story from Black Magic #27, one of Ditko's very first stories from back in 1953.

Interestingly, on the interior pages, the publisher didn't translate the story title, but did translate it on the Table of Contents page.

Hopefully, we'll see more of The Steve Ditko Archives, and my Bill Everett works, translated into other languages across the globe!

Intro. to Bill Everett Archives v1 off to the publisher today!

2011-03-19T11:05:00.000-04:00

Whoever said "half of writing is rewriting" I don't think got their percentages quite right. Today, I'm sending to my publisher, Fantagraphics, the completed introductory essay to my upcoming book, Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1, that will make its debut at this year's San Diego Comicon. The book collects Bill Everett's non-Marvel Comics work from 1938-42 for the first time.

So, other than writing this blog post, what do you think I'd be doing today? Surely not rewriting a 335-word passage at the 500-word mark of this 5000-word essay, right?

Well, you'd be wrong. In giving the introduction one final read, I wasn't happy with this 335-word section that speaks to the evolution of sequential art in the 19th century, the comic strip, and the influence of the Hearst/Pulitzer newspapers. Thankfully, in part, by just moving some elements around, it reads more clearly and makes its point more succinctly.

Lots of people use the first appearance of Superman in 1938, or Marvel Comics #1 in 1939 (featuring Bill Everett's The Sub-Mariner), as the landmark in comic-book history and they certainly are key in the history of the super-hero, but Bill Everett's beginnings in the comic-book industry pre-date both events. His career can be viewed as a bridge between the evolution of the comic-book form and the whirlwind of superhero comic books that led the charge into World War II. We explore the connections in essay and I've been rewriting it until I've gotten it right...which I've hopefully done this morning!

Listen to my Inkstuds.com interview re: Everett & Ditko

2011-03-18T12:47:00.000-04:00

Click HERE to listen to a podcast of my hour-long Inkstuds.com interview, conducted this past week for Vancouver radio with Robin McConnell. We spend the hour discussing all things Bill Everett and Steve Ditko. Our main focus is on my upcoming book, Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1 - debuting at this year's San Diego Comicon which features Bill Everett's non-Marvel Comics work from 1938-1942, collected for the first time. However, we also delve into my Steve Ditko Archives series, as we look forward to volume three coming out towards the end of 2011. Check out the rest of the interviews on Robin's site - he is the premier interviewer when it comes to gathering the industry's talent to talk about comics (case in point - the interview before mine was with one of my all-time favourites - Joe Sacco). Click HERE to listen to the 2008 Inkstuds interview for the release of my Strange and Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko book.

Inkstuds.com interview about my Everett/Ditko books

2011-03-12T15:51:00.000-05:00

Just got off the phone with Canada's best comic-book interviewer, Robin McConnell, he of Inkstuds.com. We spent an hour discussing my upcoming Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1 book, as well as my ongoing Steve Ditko Archives series. Robin hopes to have the interview air on radio this Thursday and we'll let you know when it's posted on line for your listening pleasure. Inkstuds is a stunning resource of recorded interviews with great cartoonists from every aspect of the industry. Just yesterday, Robin posted his interview with one of my favourites, Joe Sacco. You can also still hear the interview Robin and I did together back in 2008 for the release of my Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko biography by clicking here.

"Bill Everett Archives" Update: The Winding Road to Centaur

2011-03-12T00:17:00.000-05:00

I've locked myself indoors all weekend to finish off work on the introduction to Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1 that will be debuting at this year's San Diego Comicon. It reprints Everett's non-Marvel work from 1938-42; stories never before collected as such.

Many fascinating aspects of the comics themselves have bubbled up during my research for the introduction. Sure, the creators in the Golden Age of Comics were fascinating, but almost as unique are the publishers of the comics and how the industry operated, especially before the onset of the superheroes in 1938/39.

Case in point: Centaur Publications. This was the company that hired Bill Everett to do his first ever comic-book work. They published most famously Amazing-Man Comics and a host of other titles featuring Everett-drawn characters. To your left is the cover to 1938's only issue of Uncle Joe's Funnies. It doesn't have a month associated with its publication, but it's amongst the first ever comic book entries in Everett's canon of work, drawn a year before Marvel Comics #1 with the Sub-Mariner made its debut. What's interesting is how the history of Centaur's line of comics winds back before the company began even publishing comics.

The trail begins back in 1936, with the formation of the company Comics Magazine Company, Inc. by John Mahon and Bill Cook, former employees of Major Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson who had formed National Allied Publications - the company that published the first all-original material comic book the year before, 1935's More Fun Comics (the company would eventually evolve into what we now know as DC Comics).

When Mahon and Cook left, they took some of NAP's inventory with them for issues 1 and 2 of The Comics Magazine (#1 cover-dated May '36). Issue #2 adds "Funny Pages" to the cover title, but the indicia remains The Comics Magazine.

With issue 6, however, only Funny Pages remains in the title, cover-dated Nov '38, which skips a month - Sep to Nov - from issue 5 of The Comics Magazine (Funny Pages). This is an important issue in comic-book history as it features the appearance of the first masked hero to appear in an American comic book, The Clock, by George E. Brenner. The publisher also debuted a new title that publication month - Funny Picture Stories v1 #1 which features The Clock for 7 pages and on the cover, another first.

What's also interesting to note is that The Comics Magazine + (Funny Pages) issues #1-5 all have a Chicago company address, but that changes to a St. Louis address for FPS v1 #1 and no mention of either in Funny Pages #6. The only consistency is the New York editorial office at 11 West 42nd Street.

Comics Magazine Company, Inc started publishing books with a May '36 cover date, but comes to an end as a company with their books that have a Jun '37 cover date, such as Funny Pages v1 #11. (Oddly enough, #8 has a Cleveland address for the company versus the original Chicago office that was then followed by the St. Louis office, even when the editorial offices are consistently in Manhattan? Perhaps Cook or Mahon used their home address for the company and keep moving!).

The Comics Magazine Company, Inc brand name comes to an end with the Jun '37 books because Cook and Mahon sell out to two gentleman, I.W. Ullman and Frank Temerson, who brand their company Ultem Publications. Ultem acquired two of their four titles from Mahon and Cook - Funny Pages and Funny Picture Stories - and two from the company Chesler Publications, Inc. - "Star Comics" and "Star Ranger" - which was run by Harry A Chesler, who would remain as editor of the books.

A quirk about Funny Pages v2 #1 published by Ultem. It has two different indicias. From the indicia on inside front cover: "FUNNY PAGES is published monthly at 404 N. Wesley Ave., Mount Morris, Ill., for Comics Magazine Company, Inc., 1213 W. 3rd St., Cleveland, Ohio. EDITORIAL OFFICE, 11 W. 42nd St., New York, N. Y." From the indicia on contents page: "FUNNY PAGES is published monthly by Ultem Publications, Inc., Mount Morris, Illinois. EDITORIAL OFFICE, 276 FIFTH AVENUE, NEW YORK, N. Y."

Ultem, however, only holds out for five publishing months before the two men, Joe Hardie and Raymond Kelly, who have been publishing pulp magazines under the Centaur Publications banner, ride in and take over the four titles to start Centaur's line of comic books with the Mar '38 cover dates. (All four of Ultem's titles stop with Jan '38 and they then skip a month to start under Centaur with Mar '38).

Centaur's main thrust is humor books until they hire Lloyd Jacquet as editor who steers them towards the action-adventure genre. 1938 is the year Jacquet hires Bill Everett, who starts with his Skyrocket Steele strip in Amazing Mystery Funnies, the cover to issue one (seen above) and then Everett's first full story in issue two, cover-dated Aug and Sep '38 respectively.

And there you have the twisting road leading to Centaur's line of comics and the hiring of Bill Everett into the comic-book industry! Back now to fleshing out the introduction to Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1, where we go into greater detail about the early days of the Golden Age of Comics, and pick up the Centaur/Everett story as Jacquet, Everett and their band of creative anarchists break away from Centaur to form their own company that will ultimately package the contents for Marvel Comics #1 featuring Everett's the Sub-Mariner!

Super-Rare Material Uncovered for The Bill Everett Archives!

2011-03-06T22:06:00.000-05:00

There's gold in them thar hills, I tell ya! I feel like Doctor Who when putting together books like The Bill Everett Archives - the wonderment and unabashed surprise when you uncover something that likely 99.9% of the world has never seen before.

Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1 is making its debut at the San Diego Comicon this July. It features over 200+ pages of Bill Everett's non-Marvel artwork from 1938-42. Most was done for the Lloyd Jacquet shop, Funnies Inc., which supplied packaged artwork for publishers like Centaur, Eastern Color, Novelty Press and more (not to mention Timely Comics). The original comics are rare and haven't been thoroughly examined like their Marvel and DC Comics counterparts have.

Little did I know when I started this project that I'd uncover artwork by Bill Everett that I'd never seen before, that I never knew existed! To your left is a text illustration that I never knew existed (remember those pesky two-or-three page text stories companies used to throw in to get a cheaper postal rate? They actually now have some value!) and ranks as one of the five oldest published pieces of Bill Everett comic-book artwork known to exist (there's actually two illustrations by Bill in this text story)!

The two illustrations are buried in a text story from an issue of Funny Pages (v2 #11 - Nov '38) that otherwise contains no Everett artwork, so who would have thought to look there? And since it's not exactly a name book, a superhero book, that made the chance of its discovery even more rare. The only challengers for older Everett artwork are his first - the cover to Amazing Mystery Funnies v1 #1 (cover-dated Aug '38), his first interior work in Amazing Mystery Funnies v1 #2 (cover-dated Sep '38), issue #3 of that series (Nov '38), and possibly his cover to Uncle Joe's Funnies, which is only dated "1938".

What we're uncovering (with fellow Everett enthusiasts like Steve Carey, Ryan Heshka, and Robert Weiner) doesn't just end at those two illustrations. We've found nine total text story illustrations to date from this 1938-42 period that likely few have ever seen. I didn't even know that he did the cover to Dickie Dare #1 (1941). Now I do. If you think you have any more super-rare Bill Everett material, please email me so that we can make these two volumes a complete representation of the man's work!

Help with Bill Everett credits on Heroic Comics

2011-03-05T16:52:00.000-05:00

(The newspaper headline for this story should be "Do you see any Everett in this Music Master story from Heroic Comics #13, but here's some context first...) Ahh, the fun one has when putting together a book about comic artwork from the 1930/40s when credits were nowhere near as meticulous as they are today...and, sometimes, many artists could contribute to a particular story, clouding the credits even more. This is mostly owing to the "Shop" mentality in the Golden Age of Comics. "Funnies Inc." was the Lloyd Jacquet shop, featuring numerous artists like Bill Everett, that packaged comics for publishers. Sometimes, even when an artist signed his name to a story, there was no guarantee that it wouldn't pass through other hands to finish up the pencils on backgrounds or when it needed the inks finished to rush it out the door. These people had no time or inclination to care about history, that we'd be looking at these books 70+ years later with such an eagle eye.

The two volumes of The Bill Everett Archives that I'm putting together are relatively straightforward in presenting Everett as Everett. Luckily, we have a great resource like the Grand Comics Database that lists credits in detail for almost every comic you can plug into the search engine.

Everett's work on the Hydroman character is amongst his best of the era and it can be found in Heroic Comics. Starting with issue 1, Everett did all the work up to issue #9, but then his involvement gets a bit hazy. The covers stop being signed by Everett after #6, but #7 - - looks clearly like Everett, #8 and #9, though, not clearly so much. The Hydroman looks like Everett, but the Man O' Metal character looks like two different artists drew him each time. The GCD lists H.G. Peter as the cover artist and Stephen A. Douglas (S.A.D.) is listed as the creator of Man O' Metal. Anyone want to take a guess at this?

Issue #10 is not signed by Everett (for the first time on the run). The GCD listing, however, credits it as being signed by Ben Thompson and while I don't disagree that this looks like Thompson (perhaps with some assists by Everett, or Everett inking/touching up?), if you'd like to take a look, you can click here to go to the page on the Golden Age Comics public domain downloading site and take a look for yourself. Thoughts?

Issue #11 of Heroic Comics has a cover signed by "S.A.D." (for Stephen A. Douglas, a Golden Age editor at Eastern Color, who published Heroic Comics), even though the GCD listing says it's by Everett. The GCD listing also credits the Hydroman story to Everett, even though in the first panel, it says "by Ben Thompson." Ben doesn't do a bad Bill Everett in some panels and you can click here to download issue #11 to take a look. Thoughts? Any Everett here?

Issue #12 (May '42) has no Everett on Hydroman (again, the GCD listing has Everett doing the script, pencils and inks for Hydroman, even though "By Ben Thompson" is above the masthead, but this is the first appearance of The Music Master. The splash panel says the character was "Created by Stephen A. Douglas". Here's the cover to #12. Thoughts from anyone on whether this is pure Everett, some Everett, no Everett? Who else?

Issue #13 is where it goes off the beam. The cover date of May '42 for issue 12 is the same cover date of Marvel Mystery Comics #31, Bill's last work on the Sub-Mariner before he goes off to War. Again, the GCD listing has Everett doing the script, pencils and inks for Hydroman, even though "By Ben Thompson" is above (can't see a whit of Everett here). But it's the Music Master story here that is interesting. There are elements of Everett, some panels that definitely look like Everett (page 3, panel 1), some inking that looks similar to Everett, but there's clearly somebody else at play here, but who? Stephen A Douglas? I don't (the world doesn't?) have enough of his work to know the difference.

Here are scans of pages 1 to 3 (click on to enlarge) of the Music Master story. Anyone care to comment on whether or not they see Everett here and who else?

Issue #14 has no Everett Hydroman work, and there's another Music Master story, again only saying "created by Stephen A. Douglas". It doesn't look like Everett at all in any panel.

I don't have issue #15, but I'll "go out on a limb" here and say the GCD listing is also wrong here for the Hydroman story. Can someone please confirm this? Issue #15's cover date is Nov '42 and Everett enlisted in the War in Feb '42.

And then there's this Stephen A. Douglas person. Editor as Eastern Color in the 1930s for sure, but brief cover art and creator of some of the Eastern Color characters? Anyone have more on him?

There's more magic that I've unearthed in my work putting the Bill Everett Archives together and I'll comment on that tomorrow! Stay tuned!

A short film about original art to Spider-Man's 1st appearance

2011-02-21T18:08:00.002-05:00

Click HERE to download a short, 3-minute film from the U.S. Library of Congress website (scroll down their page to stream it without downloading) featuring curator Sara Duke chatting about and showing the original art to the Amazing Spider-Man's first appearance in the comic, Amazing Fantasy #15 (1962). The artwork is by Steve Ditko, story by Stan Lee. The artwork was gifted to the Library a couple of years ago and anyone can go down to Washington, D.C. and check it out for themselves.

Organizing the ToC for Bill Everett Archives v1

2011-02-21T12:09:00.001-05:00

With my Steve Ditko Archives series (volume three out this November!), we've been publishing the stories from Ditko's pre-Spider-Man career in chronological fashion (literally in the case on volume two onwards; by story # versus publication date). Because the stories are just random genre tales, the value is in seeing the progression of Ditko's style versus Charlton random publishing efforts where a story could sit on a shelf for over a year before seeing print.

But we have a unique opportunity with our two volumes of the Bill Everett Archives (which reprints Bill 1938-42 non-Marvel work). Virtually all stories feature Everett's action/superhero creations. One concern of mine, with the way the Table of Contents (ToC) would play out chronologically over two volumes, is that all the Amazing-Man stories would fit into volume one and all the Hydroman stories would fit into volume two. So what we're going to do is group the stories of each hero together regardless of publication date. We will, however, spread out the "biggies", like the two aforementioned heroes, over the two volumes. We're also going to do that for Skyrocket Steele and Sub-Zero. Some heroes will only be featured in each volume, since they don't have enough stories worth spreading over two (e.g., The Conqueror, Rex Reed).

This way, people who pick up both volumes will be assured that they get great value in each volume, and that each volume shows Everett's style progressing over the four years. That was another concern, that doing it chronologically would split his stylistic advances into what one could argue would be two distinct phases.

The other good news about this approach is that, if those who are sending a story or two come through for me, then I only need one more story to have all the visuals for volume one in the can. I'll detail out tomorrow what we still need for both volumes, but the one story that no one's come forward yet with is in Blue Bolt v1 #6 (Nov '40), the Sub-Zero story. If you have this and can contribute scans, please contact me privately first before scanning. You'll receive a free copy of the first volume. Thanks to everyone so far for your contributions! It's looking amazing, folks!

Cover image chosen for "Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1"

2011-02-19T14:25:00.000-05:00

Back in December, we opened our second contest related to my next book, "Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1" (reprinting Everett's 1938-42 non-Marvel Comics work) - choose the cover art and be entered into a draw to win a copy, the book being released at the San Diego Comicon in July '11!

The choices came in on my Blog and on my Bill Everett Facebook Page. The submissions then went to the publisher, Fantagraphics, who made the final choice and it is what you see to your left; Victory Comics #1 featuring Everett's The Conqueror! Co-publishers Kim Thompson and Gary Groth thought this cover emphasized numerous aspects that would appropriately market the book. First, it had a Golden Age feel to it (versus a lot of Everett's illustrative work), representing the mad chaos of action that was synonymous with that era's books (typified by Everett's peer, Alex Schomburg) and, second, that it emphasized that this volume was filled to the brim with Everett's superhero creations (versus some of the other cover choices that lacked a central, heroic figure on which to focus).

Two contestants had chosen this image. Their names were entered into the draw, and a third party picked out the winner (without even seeing the two names)...Jamie Coville! Look for your copy, Jamie, when the book is released.

Title for "The Bill Everett Archives v2" revealed!

2011-02-18T21:26:00.000-05:00

Awhile back, I opened the "Name the Bill Everett Archives" contest, where people could suggest prospective titles to the first volume on the series reprinting (Sub-Mariner creator) Bill Everett's non-Marvel Comics work from 1938-42. Suggest a great title, win a copy of the book that will debut at this year's San Diego Comicon in July.

As we revealed yesterday, the title chosen is "Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1". True story: Fantagraphics co-publisher, Kim Thompson, is the one who's literally landed the title of (now) all five of my books published by Fantagraphics. I've suggested a bunch for each and he comes in from the bullpen in the ninth inning and closes it out for us!

For volume one, I sent him all the names and he came up with his own, based on "Amazing Mystery Funnies", the comic that featured Bill Everett's first work back in 1938 with his creation, Skyrocket Steele. Kim thought this had a "Golden Age"-type feel that would promote that aspect of the volume (doesn't get much better or older than never-before-reprinted comic-book material from 1938!).

Because no one chose that title, what we're going to do is throw all the names of those who suggested title into a hat and pick a winner. To maintain objectivity, the picker of the winner will be a non-Fantagraphics/non-Blake Bell person, and we'll announce the winner here on the blog.

In looking at the titles for volume one, we also landed on the title for the second volume - "Heroic Comics: The Bill Everett Archives v2" that will debut at the San Diego Comicon in July '12 (a year after volume one). What makes these two volumes so much unique is the vast amount of superheroes that Bill Everett created in a short time and they really have his stamp of fun all over them.

Tomorrow, we'll reveal the cover image for the first volume...and who won the contest for picking the cover image (yes, ladies and gentlemen, we do have an actual winner!...and will the above image be the cover for volume 2? Time will tell...).

Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1 out in July!

2011-02-17T22:12:00.001-05:00

The first volume that reprints Bill Everett's non-Marvel Comics work from 1938-42 will be titled "Amazing Mysteries: The Bill Everett Archives v1" (revealed here for the first time. It will debut at this year's San Diego Comicon, July 2011. Tons of never-before-reprinted material featuring many of Everett's fantastic creations while working for the Funnies, Inc. shop. - Amazing Man, Hydroman, Skyrocket Steele, Dirk The Demon, Skyrocket Steele, Sub Zero and so many more!

Over 200 pages in restored, full color (just my Steve Ditko Archives series)! The majority of the work in what will be a two volume series was being produced at the same time that Bill was drawing the Sub-Mariner for Marvel Comics (known then as Timely Comics) so you know it's high quality material. Stay tuned for tomorrow when we reveal the title for the second volume on the series, to be released July 2012.

Listen to Wendy Everett discuss her Dad, Bill Everett

2011-02-16T21:46:00.003-05:00

As we are but weeks away from completing work on volume one of the Bill Everett Archives (reprinting Bill's non-Marvel work from 1938-42), we present for the first time an audio treat for all EverettNation! Back on Saturday, September 25, 2010 in Toronto, The Beguiling book store hosted a launch party for my "Fire & Water" Bill Everett biography / coffee table art book. We were blessed to have Wendy Everett, Bill's daughter and first child, fly up from her home in Cambridge, Mass. to participate in a discussion about her Dad's life and career as one of the first-generation comic-book creators.

Click HERE to start downloading the mp3 (70 MB) where I spend 16 minutes recapping Bill's career and life, and then just over an hour of me and Wendy Everett discussing her Dad. The audio is crystal clear, recorded by the people at Innis College Town Hall. Wendy is such an articulate and classy lady, so her ability to convey her emotions about her Dad's passion for comics, and the impact of her Dad's alcoholism on his career and on his family, is very vivid (thanks to Jamie Colville for hosting the audio).

Chris Butcher, Manager of the store The Beguiling who hosted the event, tweeted this during my on-stage chat with Wendy Everett: "This presentation is utterly amazing. The story of Everett's battle with alcoholism coming from his daughter... Heartbreaking." Wendy also talks about how her growing up legally blind was the influence for the character Daredevil that Bill Everett and Stan Lee (Wendy's godfather) co-created. She also shares her thoughts about pursuing an ownership claim on Daredevil.

"Unexplored Worlds" featured in Montreal Gazette

2011-01-22T12:19:00.000-05:00

Click HERE to read the review of my "Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives v2" book that debuted last month. Nice to read this part: "the quality of the reproductions is outstanding".

We'll return to a lot of "Bill Everett Archives" news this week! Working today on replying to all the great response to our call for scans help. Need to also tie off the introduction to the book soon, and we'll be revealing the title of the book, as well as the cover image.

We're also going to have a special treat posted this week: my sit-down with Wendy Everett from the Toronto release party for "Fire & Water" back in September. It's a fascinating look into the man and the impact his career and personal struggles had on his family.

"Bill Everett Archives" news: Help with Scans needed! Earn free copies! 10% of royalties goes to The Hero Initiative!

2011-01-17T09:19:00.002-05:00

This is going to be "Bill Everett Archives Week" as I look to finish off work on the collection that I'm editing of Sub-Mariner creator Bill Everett's 1938-1942 (non-Marvel) stories that have never been collected before.

And, as you can tell from the longest-Blog-Post-title-ever above, I need your help with scans from the original comic books or the collections will not see the light.

Do you have the comics listed below? If so (regardless of condition), please email me at ditko37@rogers.com (before scanning anything, please contact me for instructions; this is also to check if we've received worthy scans of a story already):

Amazing Adventures Funnies #1
Amazing Mystery Funnies v1 #1-3a, 3b; v2 #2-7, 18
Amazing Man Comics 5-11
Blue Bolt Comics v1 #4-11
Blue Bolt Comics v2 #1-3
Famous Funnies #85
(Reg'lar Fellers) Heroic Comics #1-9, 11-15
Keen Detective Funnies v2 #11, 20
Silver Streak Comics 20, 21
Target Comics v1 #1-9
Victory Comics #1, 2

As we did with the two volumes in the "Steve Ditko Archives" series from Fantagraphics, the pages of the comics are "rinsed" from the original source material. God blessed me with the material that I do have in the original comic-book form, but for a kid born in 1970, and rich only in wonder, purchasing these expensive books from the Golden Age of Comics was not my destiny. I instead found solace in microfiche, scans, photocopies and B&W stats.

There are enough Bill Everett stories from this period to make up two volumes if we find and scan all of them. Will you help? You will be rewarded if so. Contribute at least 5 pages and we'll send you a free copy. Contribute 10 pages and we'll send you two. Contribute 20 or more pages and we'll send three copies!

Help The Hero Initiative! As I am doing with my "Fire & Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner & the Birth of Marvel Comics" book, I am donating 10% of my royalties on the "Bill Everett Archives" to The Hero Initiative that helps comic-book artists going through financial struggles. So, let's help make these two volumes a reality for the worthy cause and to ensure these rare works of Bill Everett live on for future generations!

Reflecting on "My Bill Everett Year"

2011-01-01T15:22:00.001-05:00

When I reflect on this past year, I am very grateful for having realized a life-long dream: to honour Bill Everett with a book worthy of his talent and career. I said this to Wendy Everett on numerous occasions in 2010 - "Fire and Water" would have been a nice picture book (that would have perpetuated many a myths about Bill...that he himself helped craft) without her contributions. Because of her, I think we have the best portrait of her Dad that we could have hoped to create, especially so long after his passing in 1973.

My favourite moments were 1) being able to add to and correct all the bio. data out there that has existed as "fact" in people's heads for a good forty years; 2) seeing the scans come into my inbox of those 1937 sketchbook drawings and that 1935 piece that opens the first chapter. Unearthing something that no one has seen before is always a treasure; 3) spending time with Wendy Everett in San Diego (handing her a copy of our book on her Dad) and then our marvellous show in Toronto where we really improved on our presentation and chat (I have a copy of it, just need a server to store it on), and especially our dinner afterwards with my son, Luke.

Having discovered Bill Everett's work when I was 12 back in 1983, when even artists like Steve Ditko weren't in vogue, it's really gratifying to share my vision of what represents his work with everyone. Thank you to all who have provided feedback on the book and your enjoyment of it, to those who contributed to its creation, and to Fantagraphics for stepping up and being very enthusiastic about publishing it.

2011 will continue "My Bill Everett Year" as we get to see "The Bill Everett Archives" come to fruition, rightfully reprinting his 1938-42 (non-Marvel) work for the first time for all to enjoy. Have a great new year, Everett Nation!

Duran Duran reading Fightin' Army Charlton Comic in "Rio" video! Name that issue!

2010-12-18T18:30:00.002-05:00

"Bill Everett Archives"! Choose the cover art, win a copy!

2010-12-18T16:18:00.025-05:00

On Wednesday, we announced the release of "The Bill Everett Archives" reprinting Bill's 1938-42 work for companies other than Marvel Comics. The book will feature never-before-reprinted stories starring Everett creations like Amazing-Man, Skyrocket Steele, Hydroman, The Chameleon, Sub-Zero and more! Our "Name the Book" contest is now closed (winner to be announced shortly), so long live the "Choose the Cover Art" contest! Below is ten cover images (click on them to enlarge) from stories that appear in the Archives series and we'd like you to help choose the cover image!

Contest rules: You have until Tuesday EOD. Post your choice (one choice) in the Comments section below or post on the appropriate thread on my Bill Everett Facebook Page (these are the only two places you can post to qualify). After the contest closes, if you chose the image that will adorn the cover, your name will go into a hat and one winner will be chosen at random to receive a free copy of the book when it's available (tentative release date is this year's San Diego Comicon in July, 2011). When you look at the images below, focus on the best image versus the one you think everyone is familiar with.

Announcing "The Bill Everett Archives"! Choose the title, win a copy!

2010-12-15T22:00:00.000-05:00

You've read my Bill Everett artbook/bio (right?) - "Fire and Water" (picture left) - and now we can reveal that Fantagraphics and myself are again teaming up to put together a reprint volume of Bill Everett's non-Marvel Golden Age work (from 1938 to 1942). This will be very similar to my "Steve Ditko Archives" series (full-color, 240 pages, introduction by me). We're aiming for a San Diego Comicon 2011 release date.

So how can you win a copy of the book? We'll speak more to the contents (and how you can earn a free copy by helping out with scans) in the coming days, but what we're looking for now is your help in choosing a title for "The Bill Everett Archives". What we need is something in the vein of my Steve Ditko Archives series. Volume one for that was "Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives v1" and volume two was "Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives v2". A play on words from a title Everett worked on, or from a character that Everett worked on, is ideal, but it doesn't have to be that. It can't be more than 3 words in front of "The Bill Everett Archives".

So, in the Comments section below, post your title by Friday EOD and if I pick it over what I already have come up with, then you get a copy of the book! You can also post it on my Bill Everett Facebook Page. Here are the titles I already have: "Amazing Men: The Bill Everett Archives v1"; "Heroic Comics: ..."; "Heroic Tales: ..."; "Golden Age: ..."; "Deep Blue Sea: ..."; "Raging Waters: ..."; "Just Add Water: ..."; "Raging Sea: ..."; "Thicker Than Water: ..."; "Hell or High Water: ... "; "Troubled Waters: ..."; "Above Water: ..."; "Waterworks: ..."; "See More Glass: ..." (ok, I was losing it by that last one...).

Post your title below and I'll report back next week on this Blog what the winning selection is!

"Uexplored Worlds: Steve Ditko Archives v2" out now!

2010-12-15T09:42:00.000-05:00

Okay, we're back in the bloggin' business, in part owing to the release of my latest book - Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives v2. It picks up from where "Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives v1" left off. We're now at 1956 with Marvel but the vast majority within is 1957 Charlton Comics gold from Ditko!

This is where Steve Ditko became Steve Ditko! Both volumes are also available at www.fantagraphics.com. It's 240 pages which includes a 5000+ word essay on this period in Ditko's career. Stay tuned this week for news related to my next project; another collection of a certain famous Golden Age artist...

Book Launch party in Toronto last night w/ Wendy Everett

2010-09-26T10:24:00.000-04:00

Yesterday's Book Release Launch in Toronto for my Bill Everett book was not to have been missed! It was a far better presentation than what Wendy Everett (who flew up from Cambridge, Mass.) and me had done at the San Diego Comicon. Not that what we did at San Diego was a reflection on Wendy at all but, for this presentation, I had a great deal more time to refine my approach and achieve a better flow with my questions for her. We also changed up the format. I opened with a 15-minute slideshow review of Bill's career and key images from the book, and then Wendy and I sat down and had our chat and took questions for just under an hour.

Chris Butcher, Manager of the store The Beguiling who hosted the event, tweeted this during my on-stage chat with Wendy Everett: "This presentation is utterly amazing. The story of Everett's battle with alcoholism coming from his daughter... Heartbreaking." Aaron Broverman, also in attendance, said, "I hope Wendy knows that her contribution to Daredevil in making him blind when she was just a teen, suddenly christened possibly the first disabled superhero. In doing so, she and her father provided a source of possibility, hope and inspiration for millions of kids with disabilities, including me."

Luckily, the presentation was recorded and we'll share it with you soon. The response to it has been so good that Wendy and I are looking at holding another event in New York City before the end of the year. Stay tuned for more details!

TIFF: Deep Thoughts

2010-09-18T17:29:00.000-04:00

I'm sitting two seats from a beautiful French brunette, waiting to be seated for "Little White Lies" starring Oscar Winner Marie Cotillard. Just came out of a showing of "Never Let Me Go" that starred...Spider-Man! Andrew Garfield (cast to replace Tobey McGuire in the reboot of the Spider-Man franchise) has to match up with Oscar noms Carey Mulligan and Keira Knightley (more on the film later). Last night was dicotomy central. "Casino Jack" with Kevin Spacey & Jon Lovitz, followed by "The Butcher, The Chef & The Swordsman", a first for the festival from mainland China...featuring the director with only one name: Wuershan! It was his first feature and was a mash-up to end all mash-ups (more on this one later too).

My Bill Everett Book Launch starring Wendy Everett on Sat Sep 25 in Toronto!

2010-09-17T22:30:00.001-04:00

On Saturday September 25, 2010, a book launch party for my new Bill Everett book will take place in Toronto, Canada (Everett being the creator/artist of the Marvel Comics' character, the Sub-Mariner, and co-creator/artist of Daredevil). The launch party will be hosted by the world-renowned book store, The Beguiling, and doors will open at 4pm. This is taking place at Innis College Town Hall, 2 Sussex Ave, just barely off St. George St, just south of Bloor St (the Hall is part of the University of Toronto).

My book hasn't hit stores yet, so this will be an opportunity to be one of the first to get a copy. And we have two special treats for those who attend. At 4:30pm, proceedings will begin with a presentation by me on Everett's work and career, but the real treat is that I will be joined during the presentation by our very special guest, Wendy Everett, who is Bill Everett's daughter and first-born child. She's making a special trip up here to Toronto for the launch of the book and this is a unique opportunity to hear her share stories about her Dad, the man, the father and the artist. Wendy is incredibly articulate and exceptionally versed in the details of her father's life and career.

The second treat is that anyone who buys a copy of my book at the launch party will receive a very limited bookplate signed by myself and Wendy Everett.

A Facebook Event page has been set up with all the details. What's also unique about Sat Sep 25 is that, in the same location, our launch party is being followed up by a Louis Trondheim event, so it's really a two-for-one special when you come out that night. Hope to see you all there!

TIFF Review: "Rabbit Hole"

2010-09-16T14:12:00.004-04:00

Monday night at the Toronto International Film Festival saw the world premiere of the new Nicole Kidman-driven film Rabbit Hole, also starring Aaron Eckhart and directed by John Cameron Mitchell. It's the story of a well-off couple who, eight months later, are about to hit a breaking point regarding their reaction to the death of their 4 year-old son. The boy was killed outside the family's house after the boy chased his dog out into the street and was hit by a teen aged driver.

For pictures from the premiere and to view the trailer, scroll to the bottom of this post.
Follow me on Twitter @blake_bell for more TIFF quick hits.

I'll put my cards on the table right up front. During a particular unpleasant period in my life (centered around 2007), John Cameron Mitchell's two films - Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus - were instrumental in keeping me from slipping into a greater sense of despair that I already thought was unimaginable. And it wasn't just because I identified with the characters or the themes expressed in them in a way that young music fans of the 1980s identified with Morrissey's lyrics in The Smiths; it was because both films were phenomenal pieces of work, one man's vision completely realized in a way that few films do and make it above the waterline of public awareness.

Partly because of Mitchell's Woody Allen-like devotion to crafting all elements of those two films, and partly because of the time required to raise funds for such low-grossing films, Mitchell's output on film in the first decade of the new millennium has been unfortunately relegated to those two movies.

I'd have followed the man over a cliff with any project, so much so that I didn't even blink an eye when I hear he was getting a crack at something a wee bit more mainstream. Mitchell was hand-picked by producer Nicole Kidman to direct Rabbit Hole which is based on the Pulitzer Prize-winning play by David Lindsay-Abaire. I figured the greater the name Mitchell receives for himself, the more likely he'll get to finance another Hedwig or Shortbus.

That may still come true, but imagine my disappointment at the Visa Screening Room (i.e. the Elgin Theatre) on Monday night as I watched (what one reviewer called) an "admirable" movie, yet one bereft of almost any unique element bestowed on its story, characters, or delivery. For once, in my TIFF Reviews, I'm going to move my experiences at the premiere to the bottom of this post because I don't want people to think they influenced my opinion of the film (which they didn't - nothing could have rendered me desireless to see a Mitchell film send him rocketing to a higher platform of marketability for his works). Let's get right into my concerns with the work itself.

The Review (spoilers)

The film begins eight months into their mourning period, husband Howie Corbett (Eckhart's character) aware that he and his wife, Becca (played by Kidman) are "in status" but doesn't see the pathway out; Becca about to veer very close to a cliff with a long drop. After Becca rejects group therapy as an option, husband and wife take different journeys that converge at the end to pull them through to the next phase of their grief. Howie ponders having an affair. Becca incites a relationship with the teen aged boy, Jason, who ran down her son, and also trips into deeper conflict with her family. Her wayward sister has been knocked up, and her mother (played by Dianne Wiest) draws unappreciated comparisons between the early death of her son (Becca's brother, who overdosed on recreational drugs) and Becca's tragedy.

I Loved:

Very little about this movie (explanation below).
Jason's comic book. In a movie with very few unique ideas layered in, the one element that stood out was the inventiveness of the comic book (entitled "Rabbit Hole") that the boy who ran down the Corbetts' infant son gives to Becca. We see early in the movie how Jason meticulously hand-crafts the center-spread and, while a bit crude, it is the most compelling emotional piece in the whole movie. I'd rather have seen a movie based on the story in the comic book than what was offered on screen.

I Liked:

John Cameron Mitchell's direction. Not that I doubted Mitchell's ability to adapt his comparatively "flamboyant" directing style to this low-key material (there are plenty of moments in even Hedwig where the effects of isolation and withering pain of regret are deeply moving and quietly delivered). The pace of the movie, given the dreariness of the subject matter, moves along quite well, and how Mitchell slowly unveils the comic book also shows his deft touch. Kidman obviously saw Mitchell's acumen for quiet, tender scenes in his earlier movies and Mitchell adds his stamp on the direction without indulging himself once by standing out ahead of the material.

It Lacked:

Originality in the source material. The horror slowly began to creep over me as each minute passed that there wasn't going to be one interesting or unique facet of this story that seemingly wouldn't fit the textbook telling of a "loss of child" story. While watching, I had difficultly believing that this material won a Pulitzer Prize for how it handled its subject matter - oh, it's all very proper, and you are challenged to not say "well, that's the reality of that experience, isn't it?" I sat there mesmerized by the thought that either there wasn't another play that could have been nominated for a Pulitzer that year, or that this was the first story ever told about parents' reaction to the death of a child...the very first.
Unique or interesting emotional moments. Unless you're the TV show 24, you as a writer are compressing time into a 2-hour period where you have to decide on pivotal emotional moments to put on display that will make a viewer see an age-old story/theme in a light that they haven't thought of before. In this film, almost every moment chosen is so "Loss-of-a-Child 101" that you're stunned the writer chose them as a way to reach for a deep emotional response. For example, Howie is seen by Becca looking at the video of his son and...that's it. Moment ends - the absolute expected response. Howie also considers having an affair with another parent who's lost a child...but he decides against it. Not a slight hint in the script of this being delivered with any unique spin, or even engaging dialogue (out of Eckhart's mouth comes the words "I love my wife" - end of conflict, very cookie-cutter). Becca is in a grocery store and sees a mother having a difficult conversation with her child. Guess what's going to happen? Becca inappropriately approaches, as if she's never been in a grocery story in 8 months or has seen a mother and child interact. What would have been interested is to see Kidman's character attempt to repress the urge to interfere and have that emotional manifest itself in a way that would give Kidman something challenging to do.
Emotional honesty. All along the story, when a moment arises where the choice is presented between a cliche and the willingness to make something unique out of a character's reaction to a circumstance, we get the cliche, something absolutely expected. What truly disappoints then is the inference that I as the viewer am supposed to imbue the film with my own sense of empathy or identification to give weight to the film's emotional resonance. That's a form of cinematic manipulation that is far below the standards of all the stakeholders involved. It's "a bitch" when you're dealing with source material that's standing on a Pulitzer platform, but I should be able to come into a movie without a single relating experience and have the story-writer earn my emotional response by making narrative choices that go beyond the cliche and make me look at a story (told many times) in a new light because of some new insight brought in by the writer. Otherwise, watching a documentary would produce better results. This movie has none of that. I was shocked that the movie had not one moment that I couldn't predict what was going to happen in the following moments, since I'd seen it happen so many times before in the same fashion.
"Likability" for the lead characters. Was there anything redeemable about Kidman's character throughout, other than the manipulative nature of the story to say that you have to empathize with her or you're an uncaring, bad person? Echkart's character was more likable because he stood in contrast to this harsh bitch who was annoying when wallowing in her self-pity. He was borderline buffoonish, and is allegedly redeemable because he didn't jump in the sack with Sandra Oh's character (I'll give him credit for that, being married to such an unresponsive ice queen who admonishes him for daring to even think about physical intimacy after eight months). Of course, when he tars and feathers the teenager who ran over his kid, he loses a lot of that and, much like the rest of the film, he doesn't earn it back; you as the viewer are just expected to give it to him. I don't have to "like" a character in a movie, but I do have to respect them for the strength of their convictions (even if I don't agree with them, or they're struggling with them). I also wasn't enamored with the writing for the supporting cast either. Dianne Wiest plays it dutifully pitiful, and the sister is dutifully wayward, but we are manipulated into "liking" them only because they stand in contrast to the hammer that Kidman's character bashed them all with, not because those characters redeem themselves on their own two feet.
Better acting. It's fascinating to watch an industry convince itself that the actors involved in an "admirable" project ("admirable" being code for "a worthy subject matter, rendered in a banal fashion, but told inoffensively") are giving "career-defining" performances solely based on the subject matter. Eckhart's always going to come across as a "affable" actor but how different is his character here from his character in that god-awful film he did with Jennifer Aniston, Love Happens. He's really just the same character just emoting at a different degree than the previous version. And Kidman fails to truly make us care for her character beyond the attempts of the material to manipulate us because we should care for a mother who lost her child. There's not a single reaction or emotional moment by Kidman in this movie that ventures beyond the expected that makes the viewer see her grief in any new light. Her conversations on the park bench with the teen aged driver were opportunities to do something different - and no, not over-the-top melodramatic flourishes - but building up to a cry-on-queue is perhaps all the material allows for. I doubt the blame should rest to heavily on these actors' shoulders. There's not much to do here beyond cry a lot, or look sad a lot, or get angry and yell some; again, all in an "Acting Responses 101" cliched manner.

Final Analysis: C (or 2 stars out of 5)

Reaction to this film is going to be utterly fascinating. It's a morose enough subject, in morose times, that unless the studio's marketing machine can convince an audience that there's a bevy of Oscars to be had here, Kidman's track record of "late" is not that of a star able to pull in heavy box office numbers on her name alone, and Eckhart's in the same boat. We're already starting to see that dichotomy; the initial reviews clearly were trying hard not to appear to harsh because of the subject matter, because the film is so "inoffensively well done", and now some mentions of the movie are discussing whether it's lightweight fluff or actual Oscar material. Sometimes Hollywood loves to see a once-acknowledged actress come "back into the fold" (Kidman won for "The Hours" in 2002), but if she does receive a nomination, I have to believe it will be token at best, and a dismal sign of the lack of quality roles for women this year (something I don't believe, but Hollywood subjects women to a different standard, I find, than men when it comes to scratching the surface to look at strong female performances that are out there if they don't feature a name actress).
John Cameron Mitchell will walk away from this with an enhanced reputation as a director capable of playing "with the big boys and girls" so that's a good thing.
I relate with this sentiment, from one of the discussions in the press of the movie - "There was widespread shock among New York theater wags when it won the Pulitzer Prize". I too was left stunned that so little was earned in this movie and so much was asked and taken for granted. You leave with the impression that the story was so reverent to its subject matter than it decided not to take a single chance to create anything unique to say about the subject matter.

The scene at the premiere

What a difference seeing a premiere at the Visa Screening Room (i.e., Elgin Theatre) makes compared to, well, anywhere else. If someone tries to sell you on this being the ideal place to see a movie, they are lying to you. Because of the height of the screen, obstructed seats abounded on the ground level and at the sides. The Ryerson Theatre, while not having ample leg room, is far superior a venue. Not as ornate in design, but then I'm staring at the screen, not at the trappings.
Outside the theatre, either the pretension of the "stars" or the "prestige" of the venue kept fans at a much greater distance then at somewhere like the Ryerson Theatre. Forget about pictures or autographs or any even distance interaction.
Even the Festival itself landed as elitist and segregationist, separating the public into the "regular" Visa credit cardholder line (god forbid where you were asked to stand if you paid in cash) and those who had a Visa gold, platinum, or infinite card. Of course, the Festival doesn't tell you to bring such a card and surprises you with the two line format, but then that's what elitism is all about, no? You only find out you're a second class citizen when it's too late and you can't do anything about it.
And for such an expensive ticket price, were viewers treated to a Q&A with its stars? No, I guess Kidman considers herself beyond such interactions. Her and hubbie Keith Urban were out the door to the after-party before the lights went up.
The best part of the entire experience? John Cameron Mitchell stayed behind to informally greet friends and acquaintances, and whomever wandered up to say hello. So, in the end, I did get to shake his hand and thank him for Hedwig and Shortbus, and he did seem genuinely pleased to hear about the impact he had on yet another person's life with his work. Not all is swallowed up into the Belly of the Beast, so that's a good news story to report on.

Photos from the showing

Follow me on Twitter @blake_bell for more TIFF quick hits.
Click on the pictures below to enlarge.

Outside the premiere on Yonge St.

John Cameron Mitchell after the showing.

Mitchell and actor Miles Teller, who played Jason,
the teenager at the center of the tragedy.

Scenes from the film

TIFF Review: "127 Hours"

2010-09-15T11:46:00.005-04:00

The second showing at the Toronto International Film Festival of Danny Boyle's 127 Hours (starring James Franco) took place at the Ryerson Theatre on Monday, and the line up started early and was long. Thanks to the second showing being so close to the first, director Danny Boyle (who also directed films diverse as Slumdog Millionaire and Trainspotting) was in attendance for a Q&A after the movie.

Photos from the showing

Click on the pictures below to enlarge.
Scroll down to the bottom of this post to watch the trailer.
Follow me on Twitter @blake_bell for more TIFF quick hits.

The Review (spoilers)

127 Hours is based on the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston’s (James Franco) time spent in an isolated canyon in Utah where he must save himself after he falls into an rock opening and a fallen boulder crashes on his arm. He's trapped inside with little food or water, and no knowledge of his whereabouts by anyone. The film is not just about the journey of escaping his predicament, but of self-awareness, as the fact that he let no one know where he was going is an indictment of his attitude towards those who care for him.

I Loved:

The real star of the movie - editor John Harris. As Boyle admitted during the Q&A when I asked him, the pace of the editing is so crucial to the story. The opening scenes show a rush of humanity that, on the one hand, Franco's character embraces (he's hyper-frenetic in all his activities) but, on the other hand, rejects by ignoring those who care for him and by making the empty, isolated vastness of places like the Utah terrain his "second home". The movie blisters along until Franco gets him arm stuck by the boulder and then the pacing drops instantly. But, even as the main character literally can't leave the spot he's melded to, the editing of the dream and hallucination sequences (especially the flash flood scene) don't leave for a dull moment.
Danny Boyle's direction. The film I saw at TIFF prior to this was Passion Play and, while first-time director Mitch Glazer did an admirable job, it is immediate during the opening sequences of 127 Hours that you are dealing with a master of every aspect of the medium. You're in the hands of a person who's going to guide you through a unique experience and a bond of trust forms right away. It's not about razzle-dazzle, special effects, or really having the director stand out by over doing it with technical flourishes - it's acutely maintaining the balance of all aspects of the medium that a director has in their tool kit...and Danny Boyle has a deep tool kit. The amputation scene was note-perfect, especially how Boyle (and Franco) make you aware of the pace of the movie picking up when it begins, and how Boyle holds that pace until the ending.
The amputation scene. The side-shot of the inside of his arm when an object was going under the flesh was shocking in its uniqueness. The music used when Franco's character was touching a nerve in his arm was one of those little details that Boyle inserts and is another example of his mastery. Since you have a sense of what's coming when you enter the theatre, that moment when Franco falls into the crevasse and everything about the film screeches to a halt, the power of knowing what is coming is immense because of how Boyle's set you up at a different emotional level in the lead-up.
The running time of 90 minutes. Danny Boyle had to make the self-absorbed character likable, he had to make the time when Franco was stuck on his spot interesting for the viewer, and he had to make the self-awareness insights come to life without making the hallucination scenes laughable, and he picked the proper running time. Anything shorter would seem rushed; anything longer would have dragged on exponentially.

I Liked:

Franco's portrayal. He's an interesting actor, in terms of his choices, but I'm always interested in watching his actual acting to see if he's really got the goods, at a level of where one can tell he wants to be based on his choices. There's some Oscar buzz surrounding this role and, while it wouldn't be surprising to see this type of role receive a nod from the Academy, I'm not sure that Franco the actor deserves it...yet. He, as a projection of his personality, definitely has a high "likability quotient", but I still see a little too much of Franco in his roles to date to warrant an Oscar that should come from total immersion in a role (it's the actor's job to find out what that involves, and they can't just say "Well, he was just a normal guy, so I played it that way"). Sean Penn winning for Milk two years ago versus Mickey Rourke in The Wrestler is another example of the emphasis in Hollywood (versus the rest of the world where Rourke dominated, e.g. Golden Globes, BAFTA, Independent Spirit) on a certain type of role being rewarded versus how far an actor was able to push the boundaries within a role. Penn was certainly a deserving candidate but Julia Roberts in Erin Brockovich or Sandra Bullock in The Blind Side show how far off kilter that can lean (even Bullock acknowledged in her Oscar acceptance speech that this was a one-time affair).
The emphasis on the character's redemption as an impetus for hacking off his forearm. Without this added in, the movie would have been merely a technical exercise in how to survive without food and water...and perform surgery on one's self. The journey from self-centeredness to self-awareness could have been incredibly maudlin but once again the direction by Boyle kept them restrained emotionally and the editing by Harris brought them to life.

It Lacked:

Did it lack anything? Would a more accomplish actor than Franco have added even more to the role? But how many young actors are out there that would have done better?

Final Analysis: A- (or 4 stars out of 5)

From start to finish you're willingly swept up in the hands of a master film maker. Boyle didn't hold back on the amputation scene and he has to be admired for that because...
What will now be interesting is to see how this film's box office life will play out. Boyle and Franco are big enough names, the story's compelling and "well-known" enough, and there's sufficient Oscar-worthiness to have the studio put a good amount of dollars into marketing, but will the spectre of what happens down in the crevasse overshadow the uplifting aspects of the film (not just the character's personal journey, but of Boyle's craft) and keep the bulk of the audience away? Because of Boyle and Franco's name, it's not another The Hurt Locker scenario but will it be viewed in that light - more of an "indie" film that the critics thunder about, but audiences don't thunder to the theatres to see? It'll likely be a smash in the major centres, but what will its final box office draw be? This will be one to watch at Awards time and at the box office.

127 Hours and Rabbit Hole tomorrow at TIFF

2010-09-12T13:25:00.001-04:00

Back to TIFF blogging tomorrow. I'll be at two movies: the new Danny Boyle film (he of Slumdog Millionaire et al.) with James Franco, 127 Hours . This is the one that's made showings at other film festivals call for the medics: "127 Hours is the true story of mountain climber Aron Ralston’s (James Franco) remarkable adventure to save himself after a fallen boulder crashes on his arm and traps him in an isolated canyon in Utah. Over the next five days Ralston examines his life and survives the elements to finally discover he has the courage and the wherewithal to extricate himself by any means necessary."

But what I'm really looking forward to is the world premiere of the new John Cameron Mitchell-directed movie, Rabbit Hole, starring Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart: "A family navigates the deepest form of loss in John Cameron Mitchell's screen adaptation of the Pulitzer Prize winning play by David Lindsay-Abaire. Nicole Kidman and Aaron Eckhart deliver captivating performances as a husband and wife who fight to save their marriage in the life that begins again after tragedy." Kidman produced and hand picked Mitchell, who should be in town for the premiere (Mitchell brought us two of my favourite films, Hedwig and the Angry Inch and Shortbus). Look for my Loved / Liked / Lacked reviews of 127 hours on Monday and my Rabbit Hole report with pixs from the premiere on Tuesday.

TIFF Review: "Passion Play"

2010-09-11T12:23:00.000-04:00

Friday night at the Toronto International Film Festival saw the world premiere of Passion Play; the directorial debut of Mitch Glazer (writer of Scrooged) starring Mickey Rourke, Bill Murray, Megan Fox and Glazer's wife, Kelly Lynch. The red carpet featured all of the above at the Ryerson Theatre. I'm reviewing all the movies I see at this year's TIFF under the moniker of Loved / Liked / Lacked. I'll post pictures, discuss the scene at the showing, and then share what I loved about the film in question, what I liked about it, or what I thought it lacked.

Photos from the premiere

Click here to see what was happening outside and inside the theatre.
Scroll down to the bottom of this post to watch the trailer.
Follow me on Twitter @blake_bell for more TIFF quick hits.

The scene at the premiere

You wouldn't think it by looking at it but the Ryerson Theatre lends well to intimacy on the red carpet.
Executive Producer Rebecca Wang arrived first, followed by Glazer, then Rourke, then Murray, then Fox.
Murray apparently has more balls than men twice his size, coming up from behind Rourke and rubbing his head profusely til Rourke caught on.
The cast was introduced on stage before the movie but, like seemingly all of Rourke's pictures, he vacated the theatre. He still doesn't like to watch himself on the big screen.
The crowd reacted well to the movie throughout at the end. As much love as there was for Mickey Rourke in the theatre, people really love Bill Murray. Not too many more likable gentlemen in the history of the medium.
Glazer came up on stage at the end for a Q&A, relating how he and Rourke went to high school together and that it was Glazer's mother who showed them their first films; "A Place In The Sun" with Montgomery Cliff making a huge impression on Rourke.
The screenplay was written 20 years ago and is almost now as it was then.
Spoke to Kelly Lynch afterwards about one of my favourite roles of hers: Connie the Dyke from the 1993 movie Three of Hearts (which Glazer wrote). She had met Glazer during her Drugstore Cowboy era and told me that Glazer was the "secret director" of Three of Hearts because the original director had a nervous breakdown and Glazer had to step in.

The Review (spoilers)

Passion Play features Rourke as a down-on-his-luck trumpeter who is dragged into the desert to receive his just desserts for unknowingly sleeping with gangster Bill Murray's wife. Not much of a spoiler to say he escapes his death sentence, and wanders the desert until he comes across a freak-show circus that has Megan Fox as a "bird woman" but those wings are real. A love triangle ensues between Rourke, Fox, and Murray.

I Loved:

Glazer's balls. Slap wings on your lead actress and then cast Megan Fox as an angel, putting her up against Mickey Rourke and Bill Murray? Few people in North America are likely to pay money en masse to see a modern day fairy tale.
Mickey Rourke's performance. Rourke can infuse any line with whatever the moment requires, and there were numerous scenes where he made the most of the material. It's rare to see him play a character who takes joy out of the little things in his life, and I think Rourke smiled genuinely more times in this movie then in all his combined.
Bill Murray's performance. Much like Rourke, Murray is living large in the second phase of his career and every role he touches, he turns to gold. His physical appearance alone in this movie took the audience back for a moment but they loved it immediately. He's always been so a great ad-libber that you think he's creating the dialogue as he goes along, the character comes so natural to him.
Glazer's ability to shatter the fairy tale veneer. Numerous times in the movie the audience was jolted back to the reality that there were darker elements to this fairy tale.

I Liked:

The fact that there were two or three times when I thought the movie was going to end and it didn't.
The writing for Murray's character. You don't leave an actor like Murray with one note, and Glazer gave a little more depth to Murray's gangster than he could have settled for, but it was required to make the story go.
Glazer's concept that, in the last moment of your life, your mind can't handle the enormity of what's occurring, so your mind crafts its own ending. The "big reveal" at the end worked.

It Lacked:

Stronger dialogue. It had moments from Murray and Rourke but overall, it needed to be taken to another level. Fox's scene when she first opens her trailer to Rourke is an example. If you're going to pull off a character-driven love story, you'd best have those characters' dialogue rise above that which simply moves the plot forward, as it did here a few too many times.
More reason to believe these characters would actually fall in love beyond initial fascination. The greatest challenge of any love story is to create belief that two characters could fall in love with each other in a relatively short span of time. A writer has to craft specific events and made them unique and believable within the context of the characters to convince the viewer that there's a reason for the characters' connection. More efforts needed to be invested in this regard. The writing for Murray had more of this than did Rourke's, although Rourke played the scene extremely well when he came to Murray's house to retrieve Fox, as he did when they all happen to meet at the Museum benefit. Still, this is all after the fact; after those important initial moments that set the foundation.
A stronger female lead. It was going to be easy to take shots at Megan Fox in a dramatic role. And I do emphasize the word "stronger" because she wasn't horrible by any stretch, but if you're going to make me believe Mickey Rourke and Bill Murray would fall in love with your character, and that you are going to effectively convey that love back, you need more tools in your kit than Fox has at this moment in her career. You can't just look sad or mournful, it has to radiate right out of your eyes, and with every facial expression or change in your voice's tone. Fox certainly has the look down for an angel, but it's that frozen-face beauty that also limits her. If she's ever going to be taken seriously as an actor, she needs to work harder behind the scenes to get beyond what she's exhibiting so far in her career. I'm not suggesting that Helen Mirren would have been the replacement, but I worry that Glazer fell in love with that look of Fox as the angel and was not as focused on what she could do.
Enough Kelly Lynch. I suspect you may have had more of a story if Kelly Lynch had been tied to Rourke's character more throughout, that some kind of longing for him was presented in her (at least an awakening of this in the face of an angel from heaven making her realize what she would lose), and that she'd have to battle that within as Rourke grew closer to Fox. Plus Rourke may have had more to work off of if Lynch had been present on more of his journey.

Final Analysis: B- (or 3 stars out of 5)

Enjoyable, a strong concept, but didn't get to the top of the mountain for the reasons mentioned above, all of which land at Glazer's feet. Surprisingly, he showed more acumen than you'd expected from a first time director than he did as a writer on this particular project. Perhaps he was a bit to close to the material to see that mountain top.
A jaded North American audience will likely have three concerns: they won't buy Fox as an angel; they're likely to take pot shots at the CGI effects in the final sequence; and they're just not whimsical enough in nature to be sold on a gritty modern day fairy tale.
From a non-financial perspective, credit, though, goes to Glazer and the cast for committing to such a film. More films that make attempts like this with well-known casts are needed to diversify an entertainment landscape dominated by Megan Fox's other projects.

How do comics, Mickey Rourke, Steve Ditko & me connect?

2010-09-10T19:33:00.000-04:00

Back in 2007, I was hired by Marvel Comics to write an essay for their reprint collection Amazing Fantasy Omnibus. It featured mainly reprints of stories by artist Steve Ditko and writer/editor Stan Lee, mere months before they would co-create the Amazing Spider-Man in 1962. These were 5-page stories, mainly with Twilight Zone twist endings. One of my earliest memories of collecting comics is coming across the story "They Won't Believe Me!" from issue 7 (of what was then titled Amazing Adult Fantasy). It featured a story very similar to the "shock ending" in Mickey Rourke's 1987 movie, Angel Heart. So, in my essay, I referenced his name and the movie. Mickey also starred in the movie Sin City, the original graphic novel being written by Frank Miller, who adores Steve Ditko (when I met Frank back in 2003 for the first time and he learned I was writing a book on Ditko, he shook my hand and said I was "doing the work of angels"). Steve Ditko was also the creator of Iron Man's consummate gold and red armour, and Mickey Rourke starred in Iron Man 2, coming out next month on DVD. Makes sense? Sitting in line now, about 20 deep for Mickey Rourke's latest movie, debuting at TIFF, called Passion Play, also starring Bill Murray and Megan Fox.

Blogging from the Toronto International Film Festival all week!

2010-09-10T18:22:00.001-04:00

I'm hitting the Toronto International Film Festival hard for the next ten days and will be blogging and twittering from all the lines that they don't kick me out of for excessive drinking in public! Right now, I'm at Jack Astor's above Yonge & Dundas Square, waiting for my first movie to begin. It's Passion Play, playing at 9pm at the Ryerson Theatre, starring Mickey Rourke, Bill Murray and Megan Fox (well, two outta three ain't bad). It's the word premiere for this one, and I'm thrilled to see two of my favourite actors in the same film, and excited at the prospect that both will be in attendance. Is there something wrong with me that I'm least interested in Megan Fox out of that threesome? She's no Kim Basinger, but Fox better not mash this up for Mickey and Bill. That's the Big Leagues, sister, not Triple-A. I've heard nothing re: buzz about this film, so that means it'll be a sleeper or it will blow. Kelly Lynch is in it too, a reunion between her and Mickey from the early 1990s flick Desperate Hours (which also starred Anthony Hopkins). Other films I'll be attending at TIFF: 127 Hours; Rabbit Hole (John Cameron Mitchell directs!); American Beauty; Casino Jack; The Butcher, the Chef, and the Swordsman; Never Let Me Go; Passion Play; Meek's Cut Off. Check back for all the goods!

Bill Everett book on sale at SPX this weekend

2010-09-10T11:08:00.002-04:00

I won't be at the Small Press Expo this weekend in Bethesda Maryland, but Fantagraphics will be and they'll be selling copies of my new Bill Everett book. And don't forget that you can go online to the Fantagraphics website and order both my Everett book and the new Mort Meskin book combined for 35% off, and (if supplies hold out) get a bookplate for mine, signed by myself and Wendy Everett!

Order Everett & Meskin for 35% Off from Fantagraphics!

2010-09-09T14:17:00.000-04:00

Come back to this Blog every day because news is going to be heating up regarding the release of my Bill Everett book.

Item #1 is that the publisher, Fantagraphics, is offering a special deal if you order my Bill Everett book and their new Mort Meskin book at the same time. The offer is 35% off on both, plus there's a chance you'll get one of the signed bookplates with my book, signed by myself and Wendy Everett, Bill's daughter (quantities are extremely limited). It's a limited time offer so jump in now! Click HERE for all the details.

Item #2 is the unknown love Clint Eastwood has for Bill Everett's Sub-Mariner. Click HERE for all the details!

TVSquad.com on my Everett / Ditko slide show at Toronto Fan Expo

2010-08-29T11:22:00.000-04:00

Click HERE to read a detailed account by TVSquad.com's Aaron Broverman of my new slide show on Bill Everett and Steve Ditko. I unveiled the new slide show on Friday at the Toronto Fan Expo (typing this at my table on the floor - here til noon, then back from 4-6pm) and it will accompany me to the various events we do this fall for my two new books. I'm quite proud of this presentation, showing how (for example) the motifs that people associate with Ditko on Spider-Man were taking their roots in the Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives v2 volume of mine (reprinting Ditko's 1956/57 material) that will be out in October. We're also finalizing an event for September re: the release of my Fire and Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics book, so stay tuned!

My "Spotlight On Howard Cruse" Panel at San Diego on YouTube

2010-08-28T10:55:00.000-04:00

Want to see what I'm doing when I'm not involved with Ditko or Everett? The Spotlight On Howard Cruse panel that I moderated at this year's San Diego Comicon is up on YouTube (four parts, runs about 50 mins). I had the pleasure of learning a great deal about Howard's work on Barefootz (in the 1970s), Wendel, Gay Comix (in the 1980s) and his seminal graphic novel, Stuck Rubber Baby (in the 1990s) back in 2001/02 when I interviewed his husband Eddie Sebarbaum for my first book, I Have To Live With This Guy!. Truth be told, I have one or two more books in me on Golden/Silver Age comic-book artists, but then my next dream books would be on Dave Sim and chronicling the rise of the independent/alternative comics from the late 1970s that morphed into the graphic novel industry that we know today. If only March did have 32 days!

Canadish.com piece on my books

2010-08-22T10:51:00.001-04:00

Thanks to Tim Hodgson for pointing out this nice piece on me and my books at Canadish.com, a new site dedicated to all things Canadian. That's a Bill Everett piece I'm holding in my picture with U.K. superstar talk show host and raconteur, Jonathan Ross but other than that, a great piece.

And don't forget about my Steve Ditko / Bill Everett slide show this coming Friday at the Toronto Fan Expo. It's at 5pm and I'll then have a table for the rest of the night and at least Saturday. Even more exciting is that I'm making headway on the proposal for my next book project! I may be able to announce it in early September so stay tuned!

See my Ditko / Everett slideshow at Toronto Fan Expo!

2010-08-20T16:19:00.000-04:00

On Friday, August 27, 2010, come to the Toronto Fan Expo (running from Friday to Sunday) and see my slideshow entitled "Steve Ditko and Bill Everett: Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Daredevil & Beyond". The hour-long presentation begins at 5pm in Room 103A and features tons of imagery and commentary related to my two new books Fire and Water: Bill Everett, the Sub-Mariner and the Birth of Marvel Comics (out in Sep) and Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives v2 (out in Oct).

I'll also have a table for the Friday and Saturday at the show - here's the seating plan and floor plan for the show. I'll have copies of my Strange & Stranger: The World of Steve Ditko and Strange Suspense: The Steve Ditko Archives v1 for sale that I'll be signing, or bring yours or any of my books to get them signed. I'll also have copies of my I Have To Live With This Guy! book and copies of the fanzine, Ditkomania, for sale.

Here's the promo blurb for my slideshow:
Steve Ditko and Bill Everett: Spider-Man, Sub-Mariner, Daredevil & Beyond
Two Marvel Comics giants join forces! Steve Ditko is the co-creator and original artist of the Amazing Spider-Man, and creator of Dr. Strange and Mr. A. The late Bill Everett created and was the original artist for the Sub-Mariner (the first anti-hero and mutant of the Marvel Universe), and co-created Daredevil.

Join author Blake Bell for a slide show presentation and discussion on his two upcoming books from Fantagraphics: Fire And Water: Bill Everett, The Sub-Mariner, and the Birth of Marvel Comics, and Unexplored Words: The Steve Ditko Archives v2.

Bill Everett book video preview & pre-order info.

2010-08-19T19:54:00.001-04:00

Click on the image below to view a video preview of my Bill Everett book, out in September from Fantagraphics Books Inc. There are two ways you can pre-order the book:

1) Direct from Fantagraphics. This may get you the book a little earlier than through Amazon or store, and if you are amongst the first to pre-order, you can have included a free signed bookplate, signed by me and by Wendy Everett, Bill's daughter! These are extremely limited in supply, so order soon!

2) From Amazon.com. You save 34% off the cover price (and I get a little referral-fee slice if you order by clicking through this link).

Want to see more of the book's insides? Check out the Fantagraphics Flickr page! And come back tomorrow for more exciting news about when and where I'll be appearing to promote the book!

"Daddy, I Saw Dr. Who at The Met!"

2010-08-07T16:12:00.002-04:00

Okay, my 10 year-old son Luke didn't see Matt Smith and Karen Gillan hovering over a painting by Vincent Van Gogh, but the power of TV is that it can, sometimes, influence a child in a positive manner.

Having just returned home from NYC yesterday, my son still speaks of an appreciation for our visit (his first) to the Metropolitan Museum of Art. This place is somewhat sacred to me, having first visited in 1987. You quickly realize that you could spend an entire day there, but I could spend hours walking my feet off in the Impressionist section, feeling strangely empowered and bristling with energy standing next to the real-life-painted-over/around-120-years-ago masterpieces from my heroes Degas, Renoir, Monet, Van Gogh and the likes of Cezanne, Gaugain and Seurat.

How often do you get to stand within inches of beautiful timelessness, products of the human mind and hand that precede and will proceed your existence on this planet, that actually deliver on a blend of popularity and artistic credibility? I get a similar feeling holding, looking at a piece of Steve Ditko or Bill Everett original artwork, the B&W originals used to make the color comic books, but these paintings are the completed masterpieces right in front of you.

Back to Luke - this umpteenth season of Dr. Who featured the 11th incarnation of the famed British time traveler and his companion Amy Pond meeting up with the famed Dutch painter in the last year of his life. My son and I began watching my generation's Dr. Who - centered around the classic early Tom Baker years (the 4th Doctor) - half a decade ago when the DVDs began flowing in earnest. Luke carried the memory of the Van Gogh episode to NYC where we spotted a book on Van Gogh at the Borders on Broadway and he happily pointed out all the paintings (like the one above) he had seen in the show.

Fast forward to our attendance at The Met and he ran out ahead of us looking for Van Gogh and dutifully reported back when he had found each one. Me, on the other hand, I religiously start with a few minutes dedicated to the pre-Impressionists, just to set myself up for the change when Manet and Monet start down the path. Impressionism, as my art teachers in high school, Robert Montgomery and Hugh Elcock can still relate, saved my artistic life. Couldn't stand photo-realism (didn't see the point) and hated acrylics; the two seemingly tied together in my young eyes. Impressionism allowed my brush to break free and I never looked back; in fact, Mr. Montgomery suggesting I was the closest to a Fauvist (a painter who uses pure colors, as opposed to mixed) the class had.

The gallery was in fine form this year, with its Picasso exhibit extended past August 1. Below are some pics (no flash!) taken during my visit. There was a great emphasis on his Blue Period and his sketches (click on each image to see larger versions).

Okay, every one's seen the Gertrude Stein pic, but I don't ever remember the oral sex one on the left below:

Manet's never been one of my favs (like him but not close enough to what attracts me to the other Impressionists) but his pastels (below top left) are underrated, as I discovered on this trip. Of course, Degas is one of my secret loves (his dancers are lovely, but his bathers are underrated too)...

And you can take all the pictures you want of Renoir, buy all the books you want, but nothing will match seeing the colors burst off the canvas like they do in person, especially for someone like Renoir. Van Gogh's the same, but all the Impressionists have that quality too.

Obviously I'm not very good as this blogging thing because I'm only supposed to be sharing pithy, quick thoughts on topics that barely deserve more than that, but here we go - back on my old (soon-to-be-revived) Ditko Looked Up website, I live-blogged my June '08 visit to the Met (the first time there since 1989!), and here's that entry in its entirety...

I spent from 2:30 to 4:30pm ensconced at the Metropolitan Museum of Art. I hadn't been there since 1989, where I had an almost religious experience in the Impressionist section of the gallery on the 2nd floor. I remember walking towards that area, and noting how dark it was (they have the lights down low to protect Degas' charcoal drawings), but then I saw this incredible light coming from beyond that area. I thought it was going to be the most massively over-lit room I had ever seen, but it was the light coming off all the Impressionist paintings. That memory still sticks with me today, and I was back there for the first time in almost 20 years.

After drinking lemonade in the Balcony Cafe, my first stop was the "Superheroes: Fashion and Fantasy" exhibit that is showcased until September 1st. It was a let-down, and the sign outside of the Met just says "Superheroes" and doesn't mention the "fashion" part until you get inside. The opening verbiage when you walk in lists the comic-book eras as Golden Age: 1938-56 (I'd say it ended in the late 1940s), the Silver Age: 1956-71 (damn that Flash comic, and I'd end it in 1968, when Marvel started putting out all the #1s), the alleged "Bronze Age: 1971-80," and the "Iron Age: 1980-87" (?). Not a good start, and it was pretty paltry from there.

The exhibit was broken into sections in the walls with (at best) one actual costume of a superhero from a movie, and then surrounded by famous designers' far-out clothing that is supposed to resemble superhero garb. To its credit, the Iron Man suit (silver, pre-color) that Downey Jr. wears in the movie looks strong and bold in person. Christine Bale's costume from Batman Returns, however, does not hold up under scrutiny in broad daylight. They also had a full-bodied Mystique figure on its own, slowly rotating, and that looked impressive.

From there, it was an hour-and-a-half of touring the Impressionist and Post-Impressionist works from 1850 onwards. On a comic-related note, one painting I stumbled onto just outside those rooms was Alphonse Mucha's Maude Adams (1872-1953) as Joan of Arc from 1909 (Mucha being a Czech painter) and it looks like every Vertigo "Books of Magic" cover in the 1990s! The real painting in the gallery is a treat to see, compared to the above digital reproduction. For those looking for a fabulous new book that has excellent reproduction of the 1800 to 1920's European painters' work, check out the Met's new book, Masterpieces of European Painting, 1800–1920, in The Metropolitan Museum of Art. I picked up the hardcover and it looks to be a beauty for getting as close to the real painting as possible.

For those not interested in painting, now's the time to cut out, and we'll be back on Saturday with more blogging from MoCCA and my Jim Hanley's Universe event Saturday night at 8pm. I have booked a hotel room at 35th St (right between 5th and 6th) just two blocks from Hanley's (and 7 blocks south of Times Square), so when the event ends at 10pm, I'll be super-close to my quarters and can live out my dream of staying out all night in Times Square!

Here's a bullet blow-by-blow (all entered into my Blackberry at a hundred miles a minute) of what struck on me return to the Met after 19 years away, when I was 18 and in Grade 13 and in art class, having been completely drawn to the Impressionist period because I loved the freedom it gave me that I never found in realistic painting. When you read the below, remember that I haven't examined this era in over 10 years with any depth, so looking at it all again was like seeing it new for the first time. I had forgotten so much.

Degas - The Dance Class, 1874: can't believe I'm looking at it again. The Dancing Class circa 1870, his first ballet piece (quite small) really marked a big change in his use of light compared to the work right before it. Degas' Woman with a Towel, 1894 or 1898, stands out from the others, quite highly charged with eroticism, with what is exposed and the suggestive arch of the back.

Got to get more Japanese art circa 1850s that influenced Impressionists (once commerce trade opened up between Japan and France) like Monet's Garden at Sainte-Adresse, 1867. This one's not quite impressionist - still using the diagonal perspective.

The water reflection in La Grenouillere, 1969 is simple yet hypnotizing: his first true Impressionist work. The Parc Monceau, 1878, really takes his brushstroke work to the hilt.

Vetheuil in Summer: progression of brushstrokes and light on water, with such strong reflections of the shapes on the water, done 13 yrs later in 1880.

What a difference between Water Lilies painting from 1916-19 (Water Lilies, Reflections of Weeping Willows) vs. 1899's Bridge over a Pond of Water Lilies. The former is such a dark green, not tightly rendered at all, no brightness, as if done at night.

Pissarro was almost a Pointillist by 1880s but especially 1890s.

My art teacher in high school, Robert Montgomery, said (the last time I was hear) that I was closest to a Fauvist that we had in the class - pure, bright and unmixed colors - and the "free-ist" with the brush, yet I still have the fondest memories of the more subtly shifting colors of Renoir.

Wow, Renoir's Daughters of Catulle Mendes, Hughette, Claudine and Helyonne, for such an indoor, semi-posed scene, just has its colors leap off the canvas from another room. The blues are dominant, but are informed by the orange and brown that make for an almost red sheen.

Striking are the staring blue eyes and expression of the 5 year-old girl in Renoir's Marguerite-Therese (Margot) Berard (1874-1956), 1879, like she's almost alive on the canvas, and going to jump out at you.

Cezanne - still a little too "geometric" for me.

Never been a huge fan of Pointillism, but can't deny the power of Seurat's Study for "A Sunday on La Grande Jatte," 1884. I had forgotten the painted frame within the frame! Or his Circus Sideshow, 1887-88, seeing the difference in the lack of depth, and stiff coldness, versus "A Sunday..." is fascinating. Every print I see of "Circus..." looks like it's been brightened ridiculously in Photoshop. How Van Gogh and Seurat existed at the same time is fascinating.

Van Gogh's Wheat Field with Cypresses, 1889, still stunning with it's ripping, swirling movement across the sky and wheat fields.

Picasso's The Blind Man's Meal, 1903, from his blue period is wonderfully haunting. Love the brushwork on Mother and Child by a Fountain, 1901.

The Banquet of the Starved, 1915, by James Ensor, a Belgian, is almost a story on one canvas.

Would like to see more David Hockney, and quite enjoyed Marc Chagal's The Lovers, 1913-14.

First Everett Book Review's A Winner!

2010-08-06T17:40:00.002-04:00

Click HERE to read the superlative review of my Bill Everett book by the good folks at Popdose.com. It's the first of what's destined to be an explosion of press coming in the next few months so keep your eyes on my Bill Everett Book News Page, the centralized location for all things related to the book.

In other book-related news, tonight I'll get a look at the "finished" product that will be Unexplored Worlds: The Steve Ditko Archives v2 sent electronically from the designer. We're looking to have it go to the printers on Monday, so I'll be spending my Saturday reviewing every inch of it.

Also, tomorrow I'm going to be posting about my not-so-secret trip down to New York City that took place this past week (bloggin' from the highway through Hamilton, Ontario as this is being written) with pics from various comic-book locations in the city. Will I also mention the super-secret book project that began to take shape whilst I was there? Come back tomorrow and find out!

"I'm in love with Lou and I feel Fine!"

2010-08-01T17:00:00.000-04:00

Is there a strong enough market for a Lou Fine art book/biography like my Bill Everett and Steve Ditko books? Maybe/maybe not, but one of the joys of attending the San Diego Comicon is patrolling the original comic-book art dealers and seeing the odd 1940s piece of artwork that makes your jaw drop when compared to the printed version. Few artists back in the day were in Bill Everett's class, but Lou Fine is certainly one of them and the cheap printing back in the Golden Age of Comics didn't do justice to the man's line work.

Fine joined the comic-book field around the same time as Bill Everett, in 1938, Fine winding up at the Will Eisner-Jerry Iger studio. Fine would work on Eisner's The Spirit newspaper strip while Will was away during WWII, but Fine was out of comics by the end of the War.

That's a shame because this Black Condor piece of original art was on display at Mike Burkey's booth in San Diego and even the nice scan doesn't do the line work justice. Just beautiful penmanship. Joe Simon has been quoted as saying Fine was an influence on the great Jack Kirby, so you can't do much better than that.

Here's more on Fine's life, and here's his Google gallery of images. Here's another piece of Fine original art on Burkey's site and an example of his work on The Spirit. When I think of great comic-book artists from this era of comics that were true artists, I think of Everett, Fine, Basil Wolverton, Bob Powell and Matt Baker, just off the top of my head.

Another piece of art that I saw in San Diego reminded me that there's nothing like looking at the originals compared to the printed version. Here's an Alex Raymond Flash Gordon piece which, like the Fine, piece has exquisite line work.

So, what do you say, people? Should I do up a nice book on Lou Fine? If so, I'd have to get a hold of as much original artwork to show off his glory. Please leave your thoughts below.

First Interview about my Bill Everett Book on Meltcast.com!

2010-07-30T22:37:00.001-04:00

Last Saturday at the San Diego Comicon, I had the great fortune of being interviewed at the Fantagraphics Booth about my Bill Everett book by Meltdown Comics (biggest comic store in Los Angeles) Manager, Chris Rosa. Having Chris be a huge Sub-Mariner fan didn't hurt either.

Click HERE to access the podcast. The interview runs over 10 minutes and it most certainly covers the key themes in the book about why Bill Everett was such a special talent and so important a figure in the history of the medium. We're aiming to have me come to the West Coast once the book is out and Meltdown Comics will be my first stop in L.A.!

Audio for Bill Everett Panel at San Diego Comicon '10

2010-07-29T10:49:00.000-04:00

The primary reason I attended this year's San Diego Comicon was not because my Bill Everett book was debuting at the show, but because it was a chance to finally meet Wendy Everett, Bill's daughter. I couldn't pass up that chance and to do a panel and book signing with her, and to be able to hand her a copy of my book on her Dad who passed away 37 years ago. (FYI: the book likely won't be in stores until first week of September - these were copies flown in from the printers across the ocean especially for this show at a very high cost to the publisher, Fantagraphics)

I was able to accomplish all of this, and now you can listen to the audio of the panel with me and Wendy talking about her Dad (clicking on the link will start a download of the mp3, which is 50 minutes long, and 45 MBs in size). The audio for the panel is provided by fellow Canadian Jamie Coville who is the Keeper of the Audio Flame, travelling to various conventions and keeps a fabulous archive of audio files at thecomicbooks.com website.

He has many other panels of interest at that link from this year's San Diego Comicon, including audio of the Eisner Awards (where Gene Colan won for Captain America #601), plus Moto Hagio and Peter Bagge who received their Inkpot Awards at the show, and my publisher Gary Groth appearing in two panels, "Comics Criticism" and "Comics Reprints". My panel with Wendy Everett was also videoed and we had a slide show, so we're looking to have it all rolled into one package in the near future for your viewing pleasure. Click HERE to view all the pics of me and Wendy at the show.

Bill Everett Book News Page, P1 of "DVDs That Will Be Mine!"

2010-07-27T19:47:00.000-04:00

As we await audio of my Bill Everett and Howard Cruse panels from this year's San Diego Comicon (click here for Tom Spurgeon's The Comic Reporter site's "Collective Memory" entry that collects all the SD reports he's sent), I took the time to set up a Bill Everett News Page; a centralized place on this Blog that will house all upcoming information, reviews and appearances about my Bill Everett book (so far it includes the Amazon.com link to pre-order my book, and all my San Diego reports in one place). So bookmark this page and come back often!

In part one of an ongoing series entitled "DVDs That Will Be Mine!" (subtitled "And They Should Be Yours Too!"), we continue to explore what we discovered at the San Diego Comicon. I happened upon the Shout Factory! booth (the company that brought you the My So-Called Life and Freaks & Geeks on DVD) and discovered an upcoming gem - The Larry Sanders Show: The Complete Series. Yes, not just Season 1, which we've all had to date, but all the seasons. Their catalog said September 14, 2010, even though the Amazon.com list date is November 2.

The Larry Sanders Show, starring stand-up comedian Garry Shandling, began airing in 1992 on HBO and it set the standard for what the Cable TV world would offer over Network TV and the schism created never healed. As the Wiki entry says, "The show revolves around Larry Sanders, (Garry Shandling) host of the fictional late night talk show The Larry Sanders Show. It chronicles the daily life of Larry; the show's producer, Arthur "Artie" (Rip Torn); Larry's sidekick, Hank (Jeffrey Tambor); and the production staff, as they attempt to produce a successful talk show each night while dealing with celebrities, the network and everything in between." Tambor was a revelation and the writing was beyond whip-smart, better revealing the inside world of a talk show that any reality TV show could hope to produce.

Click HERE for host of YouTube videos that will give you a taste of the magic that was the six seasons of the show. If I put together a list of my Top Ten Comedies ever, this would be in competition without a doubt. There are so many classic moments - the both-late-of-this-world John Ritter and Gene Siskel going at it over John's movie career; the Hankercizer 200 (who numbers a product with only 3 digits? Hank Kingsley, of course); the Penis/Vagina Hank's Thoughts newsletter entry - and one of my favourites has to be the diss by Larry of the also now-departed Ray Combs, then host of the Family Feud, when Combs invites Larry out to dinner. Shandling's delivery in the scene is classic. Buy the Complete Series and find it! No regrets, guaranteed!

Reporting from San Diego Comicon: Round-Up Misc.

2010-07-26T20:02:00.004-04:00

Miscellaneous items and thoughts from this year's San Diego Comicon:

Gene Colan wins at the Eisner Awards for "Best Single Issue", sharing with writer Ed Brubaker for Captain America #601. No one more deserving than the brilliant artist now in his 60th year in the business!

I was delayed and showed up at the Eisners with four awards to go, and it was quite depressing (compared to my first in 2001). There were more professionals at the tables up front than were in the audience, and there weren't that many at those tables. And the after party was barely attended. I haven't been to the Eisners since 2003 and I hope this year was an aberration.

Delta trumps Continental because of its in flight Internet service (and cheaper baggage fees), but Continental gives complimentary meals instead of snacks, even on shorter flights.

Still waiting on audio from my Bill Everett panel (with daughter Wendy Everett), my Howard Cruse panel, and my interview with Chris Rosa of Meltdown Comics (for their Meltcast podcasts).

Stayed away from buying books that would interfere with my ability to get on a plane without checked baggage. The one exception was (and will always be) Seth's latest, Palookaville #20. Every issue of this good Canadian boy's output is a visual and physical delight, and this year tops every previous issue with its new format. The promo piece for this issue states "Palookaville #20 is the first volume of the seminal comic book series to be published in book form...Seth’s first autobiographical comics since Palookaville #2 and #3 will be featured in #20. Drawing in his loose sketchbook style, similar to his book Wimbledon Green, Seth details his trip to a book festival and his awkward struggle to overcome isolation and communicate with the people around him. Seth continues the serialization of his acclaimed Clyde Fans story line, about which The New York Times Book Review aptly noted, “Seth truly believes in his wares—the little meanings of regular lives.”

I had great fun at this year's show, owing mostly to the debut of my Bill Everett book, but I have to lament the lack of panels that interested me this year, especially compared to my first year at the show in 2001. This is especially true concerning Golden and Silver Age comic-book greats. I know this is, in part, a function of age, but the 2001 Con had everyone I ever wanted to see: Gene Colan, John Romita, John Buscema and it just went on and on. I think, however, it's also a function of the increased expense of attending a Con for an artist and the increasingly limited return on investment for anything comic-book related at the show. I hope this was just a bad year, but not many of my favourite current artists were in attendance, and some had reason to be there. But an artist's presence has to increase sales a great deal (as opposed to how many would sell anyway if they didn't attend) to justify the expense to the artist, so I understand it, but that doesn't make coming to San Diego any less of a value proposition for a consumer hoping to have an experience superior to walking into their local comic store.

I made a conscious choice at the end of the 1990s to steer away from original art so that I could buy 1950s Ditko and Timely/Atlas books, but I'm getting the itch again. Other than a few sketches, I only own a few Sam Glanzman pieces, but couldn't resist adding the piece to your right.

I loved Jill Thompson's take on Black Orchid in the 1990s and was able to tell her so at my first San Diego Comicon in 2001 (the year she won a fist full of Eisners). This year, I passed her booth and she was selling pages for only $60 (Nice!) Granted, almost all didn't have the Orchid in them, but this was the best by far of the bunch. Love the blacks in the first row of panels and the characters in the second row are large enough to make this a welcome addition for the price. Off to pursue a Hernandez and Seth piece now.

Did you know that Sparkplug Comics not only publishes Reich by Elijah Brubaker and Report by Dylan Williams (with a nice Mr. A nod on the inside cover of #6), but that, every year at the San Diego Comicon, they bring the latest self-published Steve Ditko material (Ditko is up to, what, eight new 32-page comic books since 2008)? Well, you do now.

Lastly, I'm glad I didn't attend Sunday (and not just because all three of my books had sold out by Saturday). It's kind of a sad day, saying goodbye to people you may not see again for one or two years, and I think general "Con fatigue" sets in. "Leave wanting more" than the opposite is a good way to look at it. Next year, I'll enhance the experience by bringing my (then) 11-year old son, Luke, and we'll do a whole week in San Diego, so that it's not just about the Con (looking forward to the Zoo, a ball game, and a beach - how novel to be out on the town during the day, instead of inside the Con walls 24/7).

Reporting from San Diego Comicon: Day 4 - More Art! More Everett!

2010-07-25T16:49:00.002-04:00

Saturday was my final day at the San Diego Comicon, but we went out with a BANG! With my Bill Everett book having already sold out, my signing at 11am was a little quieter than normal, but the good news is that people were still buying my two Ditko books and graciously flattering me with their appreciation for my work. Thank you to everyone who came out to see me. As is doing comics, writing is a solitary profession, so connecting with my audience is always a joy. I started writing for a few reasons, but mainly because there was a vacuum out there for this material, and I know how appreciative I was (and am) whenever able to purchase a quality book on a subject that's near and dear to me.

Speaking of enjoyable encounters, the entire Fantagraphics contingent was very accommodating throughout the show, and are a pleasure to associate with. It was great seeing Eric Reynolds, Mike Baehr and Janice Headley again, and I had the pleasure of making the acquaintance of the rest of the crew, including my first in-person meeting with Adam Grano who’s designed all three of my books with Fantagraphics and it was nice to hear him receive the praise he deserves. And he’s only 27 years old! I look forward to more collaborations with him. As always, time spent with the co-publisher Gary Groth (and his onto-university son, Conrad) is extremely enjoyable. We share a similar sense of humour, and a similar desire to put out the best quality product we can. From Day One of our association, he’s been nothing but accommodating, flexible, extremely easy to work with, and has always maintained a respectful manner when presenting the boundaries that publishers must operate within, and “the whys” behind this.

What also made the signing a joy was being interviewed for 10 minutes by the owner of Meltdown Comics (a super comic store in the Los Angeles area) Chris Roa for their “Meltcast” podcast (to be posted soon!) about my Bill Everett book. Chris is a huge Namor fan and it was great fun doing the first interview for the book. Expect a lot more press for this book in the months to come, and this will be the place to follow along.

Once I was able to break away from the signing, I made one last swoop of the floor, and had a few interesting encounters before preparing for my Bill Everett panel with his daughter Wendy at 5:30pm (I’ll post more tomorrow about the Everett panel, including a link to the audio!).

Click HERE to view the pictures I took on Saturday (new pics start on page two, third row) of the floor including multiples from the booth of original comic-book art dealer, Scott Eder (http://www.scotteder.com/) who also owns a gallery in Brooklyn, New York. His table was a stunning visual display of original art from my favourite artists of the past 10-20 years, including Dan Clowes, Chris Ware, Seth, Gilbert Hernandez, Chester Brown, and many more. Of course, my favourite comic store in the world, The Beguiling in Toronto, and Peter Berkimoe (owner) and Chris Butcher (manager) had great original artwork with them too, including three beautiful pieces from Seth's seminal graphic novel, It's a Good Life If You Don't Weaken.

Celebrity sightings on Saturday included standing beside Thomas Jane (Hung, Punisher) at Michael Zulli’s booth; watching Ray Bradbury pass right by me; shaking hands with Jerry Robinson (creator of The Joker); eyeing Dirk Benedict (original Starbuck of Battlestar Galactica and “Face” from the A-Team); brushing right by Zachary Levi (the lead in the TV show “Chuck”), and shaking hands with Sterling Beaumon (the young Ben Linus, a wee bit older now and with no glasses) and Noor Abed Jazeem (Nadia, Sayid’s soulmate) from one of my favourite shows, Lost. Ironically, the Lost panel that she was on was playing next door to my Bill Everett panel a half-hour later. I joked with a friend that they were going to have to take over because I’d leave my panel halfway through to see the Lost panel. Sensibly, I didn’t leave Wendy Everett hanging.

Another nice moment was getting a picture of Bern Nadette Stanis, who played Thelma on the 1970s show "Good Times" (also featuring Jimmy "Dynomite!" Walker). She’s still lookin’ hot and was very sweet, telling me that, indeed, lots of white guys have told her that they ended up with black women because of watching her on the show at a tender age (can’t argue it!).
Night time was spent having dinner with the preeminent Timely-Atlas historian (and Joe Maneely expert) Dr. Michael J. Vassallo and his family, then it was gelato til midnight with Gary Groth, Jaime Hernandez and the FBI crew.

On the way home to Toronto now (waiting in Houston for my connecting flight) but check back tomorrow for audio of my Everett panel and my interview with Chris Rosa of Meltdown, and maybe Prism Comics will have my “Spotlight on Howard Cruse” panel posted on YouTube by then!

Reporting from San Diego Comicon: Day 3 - Wendy Everett and Me

2010-07-24T13:43:00.000-04:00

On Friday at the San Diego Comicon, the moment I've waited for, two years in the making, was having Wendy Everett (Bill's daughter) arrive at the Con. The picture to your right is me handing her my book on her Dad, her first time holding and seeing it. Thankfully, she was extremely pleased with how it turned out. We spend a great day together at the Con, visiting the various publishers and original art dealers, looking at her Dad's original art that was on sale and hearing everyone gush about their love for her Dad's talents. I can't imagine being in her shoes, her father passing away 37 years ago, and here is all this attention pouring down on him and on Wendy.

Click HERE to view all the pictures from the day, one of my favourites being of Wendy holding a slabbed copy of her Dad's first cover (Amazing Mystery Funnies #1 from 1938). To make the day even more special, my good friend (and Timely-Atlas expert) Dr. Michael J. Vassallo brought Nancy Maneely to our signing at the Fantagraphics booth. Nancy is the daughter of Joe Maneely, the Jack Kirby of the 1950s at Marvel who passed away suddenly just before the end of that decade. He was Stan's right-hand man in those days, but Nancy was only two when he died. It was great to listen to Wendy tell Nancy that she knew her Dad (Wendy would have been around 13 when Joe passed) because Bill and Joe worked together from about 1955 to 1957 in the Marvel Bullpen.

I also met up with UK superstar television personality Jonathan Ross (the picture has me holding a piece of Bill Everett's work that's in my book). Jonathan is a huge Ditko and Everett enthusiast and it was great to finally shake hands after quite a while of phone and email correspondence. Jonathan is famous in the comic industry for his BBC documentary "In Search Of Steve Ditko".

I did by accident happen to run into my name sake, actress Lake Bell on the 5th Avenue after dinner with Wendy, and Jonathan wasn't the only celeb to buy my Everett and Ditko books. Who knew that Matt Groening, creator of The Simpsons loved Ditko and Everett so much?

Take a stroll through the above pictures if you are a lover of comic-book original artwork. I'm off to a 11am signing at the Fantagraphics booth, then an interview at the hotel across the street (press on the Everett book begins now!), and then join Wendy Everett and me in Room 9 at 5:30pm for our panel on her Dad.