Brian Cronin

by Was Superman a Spy?

  A little while later, writer Roger Stern took over the book and made another change to the story of Ghost Rider in the name of being inoffensive to the religious. Now, rather than it being Satan who Johnny Blaze was involved with, it was the fictional Marvel demon Mephisto (who first appeared as a nemesis of the Silver Surfer). Stern thought it made more sense for it to be an established Marvel character behind Ghost Rider’s origin and, at the same time, that it would be less offensive to religious readers who believe in Satan.

  It’s interesting to see how religiously sensitive Marvel is over what is essentially a demon riding a motorcycle! I doubt the extremely religious would be pleased with the concept no matter what.

  JIM STARLIN’S RUN as writer-artist of Warlock was one of the most acclaimed comic book runs of the 1970s. Starlin masterfully worked into the story line a gigantic space opera involving a genetically engineered human named Adam Warlock, a green female assassin named Gamora, and a foul-mouthed troll named Pip, issues with organized religion and the difficulties that arise in personal-identity conflicts (personified in a hero fighting against his evil self from the future).

  While the series was critically acclaimed, it did not sell that well, and Starlin ultimately had to resolve all of his story lines in the pages of other comic book titles. He did write one last issue of Warlock in the late 1970s, which was drawn by artist Alan Weiss and designed as an inventory story in case Marvel ever had use for it (during the 1980s Marvel actually started a series that published the best of these inventory stories, called Marvel Fanfare). A strange problem quickly arose, though, when the artwork for the issue disappeared. The reason for the disappearance was even stranger. It had been left in the backseat of a cab!

  Weiss had just flown into New York, and some folks from Marvel met him at the airport to help him carry his belongings, as he was going to move in with another Marvel artist, Al Milgrom. When he arrived, one of the people there (Weiss specifically refuses to say who, but it is worth noting that when he tells the story he names everyone who was there except the fellow whose apartment he was going to share) helped him carry his bags, and this person picked up a box containing the pencils for Warlock #16. When they arrived at the apartment, the box was missing—presumably circulating in a cab somewhere in the New York metropolitan area!

  Interestingly enough, copies were apparently made of the issue, so during the early 1990s there were plans to redo the issue for Marvel Fanfare, but then Marvel Fanfare was canceled. Then later on in the 1990s, Marvel planned to feature the story as a special issue of Warlock’s current book (Starlin had relaunched the character’s title in 1992), but then that book was canceled before they had a chance.

  The fates, it seems, do not want Warlock #16 to ever see print.

  IF IT WAS Milgrom who lost the art, he made an even bigger mistake some years later—a mistake so big that he lost his job over it!

  At the turn of the twenty-first century, Milgrom was working on the Marvel staff as an inker. He would ink some books and troubleshoot for other books that needed help with deadlines. At the time, the editor in chief at Marvel was Bob Harras. Harras was fired in August 2000 and replaced with Marvel’s current editor in chief, Joe Quesada.

  Milgrom was one of three inkers on a one-shot comic called Universe X: Spidey (Universe X was part of a trilogy of alternate-future comics, after the success of a similar concept called Kingdom Come that Alex Ross had cocreated for DC Comics with Mark Waid), inking the pencils of Jackson Guice (the artist from the Amy Grant incident on pages 181-82). At one point in the story, Al Milgrom snuck into the background of a panel, along the spines of books on a bookshelf: “Harras, ha ha, he’s gone! Good riddance to bad rubbish. He was a nasty SOB.”

  The panel was caught before the book went to print, but, apparently due a communication error in the production department, the book was printed with the panel intact. Marvel then pulped the entire print run and reprinted the book with the panel edited. At the time, the higher-ups at Marvel wanted to terminate Milgrom and never have him work for Marvel again.

  Ultimately, Quesada managed to get them to allow Milgrom to continue to work at Marvel on a freelance basis, although his staff position was taken away. Also, part of his payments would be deducted to pay for the cost of pulping and reprinting the comic (a sizable amount of money, well over twenty thousand dollars). Jim Starlin quickly arranged for Milgrom to work on a number of projects with him. Nowadays, though, Milgrom is working as an inker mostly for Archie Comics.

  An interesting (and relatively believable) conspiracy theory that the issue was printed even after the mistake was caught because the pulping of the book would be “just cause” to terminate Milgrom without having to pay him severance. This seems unlikely, as it is doubtful that the severance would be any cheaper than the cost of pulping the book, not to mention the time and effort to do the pulping and to supervise the new printing.

  Amusingly enough, when the issue was reprinted as part of the Universe X collection a year or so later, the same mistake was repeated—so the trade paperback was printed with the insult still there!

  MARK GRUENWALD WAS a beloved editor and writer at Marvel Comics for many years. Gruenwald was heavily involved in comic book fandom prior to being hired at Marvel in 1978, where he quickly rose in the ranks to becoming a full editor. He was a fixture of Marvel until his death in 1996, and it is only fitting that a piece of him lived on at the company after his death.

  Despite a remarkable eight-year run as the writer of Captain America, the work that Gruenwald was most proud of at Marvel was Squadron Supreme. Created by Roy Thomas as a joke between Thomas, then writer of The Avengers, and Denny O’Neil, then writer of DC’s Justice League, the Squadron was made up of analogues to DC’s Justice League. Hyperion was Superman, Nighthawk was Batman, Power Princess was Wonder Woman, etc. The Squadron Supreme lived on an alternate Earth. In 1985 Gruenwald did a twelve-issue series detailing what happened when the Squadron Supreme decided to use their powers to fix our Earth, by taking it over themselves. It was a brilliant look at a realistic demonstration of what superheroes could do in the “real” world and whether it was something that would be at all beneficial for society. A benevolent tyranny is still tyranny. The series is well remembered as one of the first “serious” comics, and Alan Moore’s classic series Watchmen, which began the next year, is similar in scope.

  When Gruenwald died of a heart attack in 1996, his will asked that he be cremated and that his ashes be mixed with the ink used to print a comic book by Marvel. The Marvel editor in chief at the time, Bob Harras, along with Mark’s widow, Catherine, decided to choose the first printing of the first trade paperback compilation of Squadron Supreme.

  Mark Gruenwald was part of Marvel for almost two decades—now he will be part of Marvel Comics forever.

  Part Three

  OTHER COMIC BOOK COMPANIES

  While Marvel and DC may snag the lion’s share of the comic book market, they are far from the only comic book companies out there. The following are probably the five most notable “other” companies out there: Image, Dark Horse, Archie, Fantagraphics, and Top Shelf.

  Image Comics is the brainchild of a number of popular Marvel artists who decided in the early 1990s that they were bigger than the comics they were doing at Marvel and that their fans would follow them wherever they went. So why not produce their own titles, with the freedom to do whatever they want and at a higher percentage of the income? The founding members of Image were Todd McFarlane, Jim Lee, Rob Liefeld, Erik Larsen, Marc Silvestri, Jim Valentino, and Whilce Portacio. The group was designed so that the seven men would each form an autonomous studio, but under the banner of Image Comics (Portacio decided to work through Lee’s studio, so there were only six original studios at Image). Since the formation of Image, Liefeld has left the group, and so has Jim Lee (Lee sold his studio to DC Comics). The company is still going strong, and is now one of the largest independent comic companies in the industry.

>   Mike Richardson started Dark Horse Comics in 1986, figuring it would be a nice side business to the chain of comic book stores he owned in the Pacific Northwest. Over twenty years later, Dark Horse is the third-largest comic book company in the country. Richardson began by courting less-established artists that he felt did strong work, but when he saw that the company might actually be more than a side project, he began seeking more-popular artists, and in his best business move he began attempting to license film properties. Richardson broke into the licensing market in an ingenious manner: if he could not get a license outright, he would license whatever he could from the company, whether it be making a statute or an action figure or stationery. He formed valuable connections, and within a few years, Dark Horse had some of the most notable licenses in comics, including Star Wars, Aliens, and Predator.

  In the early 1990s, Dark Horse formed a new company, Dark Horse Entertainment, which would attempt to make films based on Dark Horse comics. Their very first production was The Mask, starring Jim Carrey and Cameron Diaz (in her first film), and it was a smash hit.

  Today Dark Horse does a mixture of licensed properties (Star Wars, Buffy, Conan) and acclaimed comics with a slight horror tint (The Goon, Hellboy, Umbrella Academy), while still being involved in film. Its second film based on the Hellboy comic book was released in 2008.

  Archie Comics is one of the longest-running comic companies out there. It came into existence as MLJ Comics in 1939 but changed its name to Archie in 1946 after its breakout character, Archie Andrews, who first appeared in 1941 (see page 135). Archie is a seemingly average redheaded teen who has two lovely young ladies, Betty and Veronica, constantly fighting for his attention. His girl-hating best friend, Jughead, keeps him company; while Reggie Mantle is his rival at most everything in life, except for when Archie is at school, where the principal, Waldo Weatherbee, is the one making trouble for Archie.

  Over the years, the Archie universe has expanded, with such notable characters as Sabrina the Teenage Witch and Josie and the Pussycats, both creations of the legendary artist Dan DeCarlo.

  The wholesome nature of the Archie line of comics is attractive to other media, and Archie, Josie, and Sabrina have all had popular animated television series, while Sabrina also had a long-lasting live-action series. Josie and the Pussycats had a film a few years ago, and in the 1960s a group passing itself off as Archie’s band, the Archies, even had a number one hit single with “Sugar, Sugar.”

  Perhaps the greatest innovation by Archie Comics was to design a strict house style for its artwork (since DeCarlo joined the company in the 1950s, his style has been the basic house style), which allows its comics from the 1960s, ’70s, ’80s, and ’90s to look quite similar to the comics produced today. Therefore Archie Comics is able to run an extensive digest-reprint system, because it has decades of stories to choose from, all in the same basic style! Archie comic digests are often the only comics you can still buy at a supermarket checkout aisle.

  In 1976 Gary Groth formed Fantagraphics Books with Mike Catron. Kim Thompson joined the next year, and ever since then Fantagraphics has been devoted to delivering some of the best and brightest independent comic books that the industry has to offer. The number of critically acclaimed artists who work through Fantagraphics is practically incalculable. Highlights of the roster include Chris Ware’s Acme Novelty Library, which gave the world Jimmy Corrigan, the Smartest Kid on Earth (the first comic book to receive the Guardian First Book Award); Gilbert and Jaime Hernandez’s Love and Rockets; Peter Bagge’s Hate; and Daniel Clowes’s Ghost World.

  Fantagraphics also does extensive work reprinting classic comic strips, with its current series of Peanuts strips being a particularly big hit.

  Top Shelf Productions is a veritable baby compared to these other companies. Formed in 1997 by Chris Staros and Brett Warnock, but in just eleven years it has amassed one of the greatest collections of talent in the industry, including Alex Robinson and Craig Thompson, but its most notable addition to the world of comics is that it’s the only American comic company that you are going to see with comics by Alan Moore, as it snared him when he officially parted ways with DC/Wildstorm. It already had the rights to his classic From Hell series, but recently it published his controversial Lost Girls hardcover collection (a series of erotica, starring Dorothy from The Wizard of Oz, Wendy from Peter Pan, and Alice from Alice’s Adventures in Wonderland ), and will be publishing his future League of Extraordinary Gentlemen works.

  On Alan Moore’s name alone, the company begs to be paid attention to, but really so do most of the independent comic book companies out there, each of which seems to have at least one or two notable works. In addition, a number of distinguished comic book companies that have been out of business for years, like Fawcett, Quality, EC, Harvey, Fox, Lev Gleason, Dell, Gold Key, Charlton, and even most of the Disney comic titles are no longer published in the United States.

  10

  WALT DISNEY COMICS

  Walt Disney comics first began appearing in newspaper comic strips in 1930 with a Mickey Mouse strip. In 1932 Mickey Mouse gained a partner when the strip was joined by the Silly Symphonies strip, which starred various Disney characters. In 1934 Donald Duck first appeared in the Silly Symphonies strip and soon took over the strip entirely. The Mickey Mouse strips were drawn by acclaimed comic artist Floyd Gottfredson for over forty years, while the Donald Duck strips were drawn by Al Taliaferro.

  In 1940 Western Publishing purchased the rights to the Disney strips and began reprinting them, through a partnership with Dell Comics, in the pages of Four Color Comics. The reprint books were so popular that in 1940 they soon decided to start a brand-new title featuring original made-for-comic-books content, Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories. It was in this series that Carl Barks began his legendary run on the Disney titles. Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories became one of the most popular comics series of the 1950s, selling in the millions per month. In 1961 Western formed its own comic book company, Gold Key, which took over the Disney titles.

  In 1947 Barks introduced a new character in a Christmas story in Walt Disney’s Comics and Stories #178, “Christmas on Bear Mountain.” The character, Scrooge McDuck, was a takeoff of Ebenezer Scrooge from the Charles Dickens Christmas classic A Christmas Carol. He was a hit with readers, and after a few more guest appearances in Donald Duck stories, Scrooge received his own title, Uncle Scrooge, in 1952. Along with Walt Disney Comics and Stories, they are the only Disney comic books that are still published in the United States.

  While Disney comics are surprisingly not that popular in the United States, where it is difficult keeping even two Disney titles afloat, they are massively successful in the rest of the world, especially Europe. While sales in Europe have cooled off a bit in recent years, they still sell quite well in most countries—higher than the most successful comics in the United States (and considering the population differences between the United States and countries like, say, Denmark, it is quite impressive how well the books sell).

  The most notable Disney comic book artist is the aforementioned Carl Barks, who was so popular among readers of the comics that he was given a name by fans back when Disney did not list credits in its comics. He was known worldwide as the Good Duck Artist and the Duck Man because his Donald Duck (and later, his Uncle Scrooge) stories were considered to be a step ahead of the rest, even the great artists like Tony Strobl and Paul Murry.

  Nowadays, William Van Horn and Don Rosa are the two biggest names in Disney comics, although neither of them work for U.S. comic companies. They both work for European companies, but they work from the United States. Rosa is a devoted fan of Barks, and much of Rosa’s work is a sort of tribute to Barks’s comics. Rosa’s work has developed a strong critical following, and he has gotten a great deal of award recognition for his Uncle Scrooge comics.

  OF THE MANY things that change in a culture over the years, sense of humor is right up there with acceptable lengths of women’s skirts and
men’s hair. Some jokes that were commonplace in 1932 are avoided now because they are racist, sexist, and/or xenophobic, which is certainly a change for the better. However, there are other jokes that were acceptable then and would be shocking now that are more a matter of being daring with characters that the audience is used to seeing portrayed as fairly bland. It is striking to note that while Disney would most likely never dream of doing anything edgy with Mickey Mouse in 2008, Walt Disney himself was willing to do so almost eighty years ago.

  When the Mickey Mouse comic strip began in 1930, Disney wrote the strip along with penciling by Ub Iwerks (cocreator of Mickey Mouse) and inking by Win Smith. Iwerks left the strip soon after it began, and Smith took on both penciling and inking. Soon Disney became so busy with running his company that he did not have the time to write the comic, at which point Smith balked at the prospect of going from simply being the inker of the strip to being the inker, penciller, and writer—so he quit. Disney then went to a recent hire at the company, Floyd Gottfredson, to take over. Gottfredson had been hired as an animator and was told that the newspaper strip assignment would just be temporary—until they could find a permanent replacement for Smith. The “temporary” assignment lasted from 1930 until 1975, when Gottfredson retired.

  Gottfredson’s first story line was a continuation of an adventure Disney and Smith began, but in the fall of 1930 he was on his own. However, Disney managed to free up enough time to suggest a plot for Gottfredson, which he used in October of 1930, and it was a strange one.