Back Issue #15

T H E U L T I M A T E C O M I C S E X P E R I E N C E !

BATMAN, DEADMAN, AND GRODD TM & © 2006 DC COMICS.WEREWOLF BY NIGHT AND GHOST RIDER TM & © 2006 MARVEL CHARACTERS, INC.

Ploog, Perlin,

Conway, and

Moench revisit

WEREWOLFBY NIGHT!

Ploog, Perlin,

Conway, and

Moench revisit

WEREWOLFBY NIGHT!

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UGH STUFF

INTERVIEW

INTERVIEW

GHOST

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MIKE

PLOOG

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GENECOLANPENCILSPOTLIGHT

FLASHBACK

FLASHBACK

DEADMAN

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JOSÉ LUIS

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STORIES NEVERTOLD

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GORILLA

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A p r i l 2 0 0 6

No.15$6.95

A p r i l 2 0 0 6

No.15$6.95

Volume 1, Number 15April 2006

Celebrating the BestComics of the '70s,'80s, and Today!

EDITORMichael Eury

PUBLISHERJohn Morrow

DESIGNERRich J. Fowlks

PROOFREADERSJohn Morrow and Eric Nolen-Weathington

COVER ARTISTArthur Adams

COVER COLORISTTom Zuiko

COVER DESIGNERRobert Clark

SPECIAL THANKSNeal AdamsTerry AustinJeff BaileyJoe BarneyMassimo BissattiniMike BlanchardBrian BoggsMichael BrowningIvan CheungLeonard ChuahAdrienne ColanGene ColanJennifer M. ContinoGerry ConwaySteve DavisLee DawsonEric Delos SantosStephen DeStefanoArnold DrakeRay FalcoaTom FieldKeif A. FrommJosé Luis García-LópezBenny GelilloFrank GiellaGrand Comic-Book DatabaseDave HennenHeritage ComicsDon HudsonThe Jack Kirby CollectorDan JohnsonMichael Wm. KalutaJoe KubertPaul LevitzBruce MacIntoshYoram MatzkinBrian G. McKenna

The Ultimate Comics Experience!

Bob McLeodModern MastersMike MignolaDoug MoenchSteve MorgerBrian K. MorrisAl NickersonBecky PerlinDon PerlinAdam PhilipsMichael PloogCarl PottsRoland ReedyKeith RichardBob RozakisRose Rummel-EuryMike StecklerTom StewartMatthew StockRoy ThomasMatt WagnerLen WeinMarv Wolfman

BACK ISSUE™ is published bimonthly by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614.Michael Eury, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor, 5060A Foothills Dr.,Lake Oswego, OR 97034. Email: [email protected]. Six-issue subscriptions: $36 Standard US, $54 First Class US,$66 Canada, $72 Surface International, $96 Airmail International. Please send subscription orders and funds toTwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Arthur Adams; cover art from the collection of Roland Reedy.Werewolf by Night and Ghost Rider TM & © 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Batman, Deadman, andGorilla Grodd TM & © 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. Allmaterial © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2006 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing.BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. Printed in Canada. FIRST PRINTING.

FLASHBACK: The Dead Zone: A Deadman History/García-López Interview . . 2Explore the “life” of Boston Brand with José Luis García-López

INTERVIEW: Matt Wagner: The Man, the Myth, and the Demon!. . . . . . . . . . 16The Grendel creator recalls his 1980s tour of duty in Kirby’s kingdom

FLASHBACK: Follow Him . . . for He is the Phantom Stranger . . . . . . . . . . . . .21Len Wein reminisces about DC’s mysterious man with a medallion, with art by Adams,Aparo, Dominguez, Mignola, and Schaffenberger

BEYOND CAPES: I Was a Marvel Comics Werewolf . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .31Werewolf by Night, through the eyes of series contributors Conway, Moench,Perlin, Ploog, and Thomas

ROUGH STUFF: Gene Colan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .40One of comics’ masters hosts a gallery of his pencil art, including Batman, CaptainAmerica, Jemm, Night Force, and Wonder Woman

FLASHBACK: Joe Kubert and the Ragman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 52The Tattered Tatterdemalion’s first foray into comics, with Kubert and Redondo art

BEYOND CAPES: Maybe I’m ’Mazed!: ’Mazing Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 57Co-creators Bob Rozakis and Stephen DeStefano and their likeable li’l do-gooder

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The Lost ’Mazing Man Story . . . . . . . . . . .64Bob Rozakis gives us a peek at the ’Maze story you didn’t see

INTERVIEW: Mike Ploog: On the Highway to Hell (Marvel Style) . . . . . . . . . .67Ghost Rider may be racing toward movie stardom, but artist Ploog remembers theSatanic Cyclist’s roots

INTERVIEW: Don Perlin: Revving Up with Ghost Rider . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .71Perlin’s recollections of his ride with Marvel’s baddest biker

GHOST RIDER ART GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .74Blazing art by Budiansky, Kane, Romita, Sr., Simons, and Starlin

GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Grodd of Gorilla City . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .76Super-gorilla Grodd almost got his own comic in ’77—and we’ve got the scoop(and unpublished art)!

COMICS ON DVD. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81New releases of interest to the comic-book fan

BACK IN PRINT: The Astral Avenger and the Ape-Man . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 82Reviews of Wrath of the Spectre and Tarzan: The Joe Kubert Years

BACK TALK . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84Reader feedback on issue #13

W e i r d H e r o e s I s s u e • B A C K I S S U E • 1

R.I.P.Deadman was a character born in 1967 in an attempt to

shake things up with Strange Adventures, one of DC

Comics’ anthology titles. Although editor Jack Miller, writer

Arnold Drake, and artist Carmine Infantino originally

intended the character as a “throw away,” they immediately

handed the reins to Neal Adams, who within a year turned

Deadman into an enduring icon who has had dozens of

guest appearances and four miniseries of his own. In

short, Deadman was a character that refused to die!

In the late 1960s sales were poor for DC’s anthology

series, because there were no central characters with

whom the readers could identify and would cause them

to continue to buy the titles on a monthly basis. Editor

Jack Miller gave Arnold Drake the task of creating a

character that could generate that reader interest and

loyalty. Drake wanted to capitalize on the late 1960s’

interest in Eastern mysticism, and a character that was killed

in his first appearance and returns as a ghostly apparition

was exactly what could bring life to the dying comic.

In spite of concerns that the Comics Code Authority

would disapprove of a dead character that “possesses”

the living (and whose very name contained the dreaded

“D-word”), Miller ultimately signed off on the concept

and Carmine Infantino was brought in for the artistic

chores, the result being Deadman’s debut in Strange

Adventures #205 (Oct. 1967).

However, it was a time of flux at DC, and after only

one issue Miller stepped down as editor due to his failing

health, Drake went on to pursue other titles, Infantino

was promoted into management, and Dick Giordano

was brought in from Charlton Comics as editor of

Strange Adventures. With Infantino assuming executive

duties and unable to continue penciling the comic,

Giordano leapt at the chance of assigning the artistic

duties of Deadman to Neal Adams.

2 • B A C K I S S U E • W e i r d H e r o e s I s s u e

The Dead Zone:A D e a d m a n H i s t o ry —

a n d a n I n t e rv i e w w i t hJ o s é L u i s G a r c í a - L ó p e z

José Luis García-López’s cover pencils for 1986’s Deadman #3. Specialthanks to TwoMorrows’ Modern Masters.

© 2006 DC Comics.

by B r u c e M a c I n t o s h

Neal penciled every appearance of the character

until Strange Adventures was canceled with issue

#216 (Jan.–Feb. 1969); with the exception of

George Roussos’ inks on issue #206, Neal inked

his own work. He also scripted seven of

Deadman’s first 18 appearances. Although

these early Adams’ scripts are beyond the scope

of this magazine and article, it is important to

note the development of the character and

how that changed in the 1970s and 1980s.

In a 2005 conversation, Neal Adams made

the comment, “The most important thing to

remember about Deadman is that he is dead,

man!” While that might just sound like a typically

tongue-in-cheek Adams remark, he had a point:

Deadman was angry . . . because he was dead!

Faithful readers will recall that Boston Brand

was a circus acrobat who had been fatally shot

for reasons unknown by a man with a hook for

a hand. (In his haste, Adams alternated

between the right and left hand—whatever fit

the panel composition.) Boston Brand, however,

returned in spirit form as Deadman: He had

been given a “special power” by the spirit of

the universe, Rama Kushna, to find and

destroy his own murderer. That special power,

he learns, is the ability to temporarily inhabit

and control the bodies of the living.

Deadman spent each issue of his run in

Strange Adventures (plus two appearances

with Batman in The Brave and the Bold and

three as a backup strip in Aquaman), chasing

clues and people who might have had

enough of a grudge against Boston Brand to

want to kill him. Each issue concluded with

the tormented Deadman learning that it

was all a cruel coincidence: The man he had been

pursuing that story was not his killer.

As the first series of Deadman stories concludes,

the ghostly hero learns that his death at the

“hands” of the man with the hook was merely a

graduation exercise for admission into a “Society of

Assassins” (a group now known as the League of

Assassins), headed by the a leader of dubious Asian

origin call the Sensei. Because Cleveland Brand,

Boston’s brother, has assumed the role of Deadman

for the circus, Sensei mistakenly believes the man

with the hook has failed his initiation assignment

and kills him. Having been robbed of his own

revenge, Deadman nevertheless fails to achieve

peace: he is doomed by Rama Kushna to float as

a disembodied spirit for eternity, using his special

power to “possess” the living and presumably

correcting injustice wherever it appears.

Neither Arnold Drake nor Neal Adams intended

the series to continue indefinitely; after a dozen or so


Boston Branddiscovers he’s“dead, man,” inDeadman’s originfrom StrangeAdventures #205(Oct. 1967).Courtesy ofHeritage Comics.© 2006 DC Comics.

4 • B A C K I S S U E • W e i r d H e r o e s I s s u e

issues, Deadman was supposed to find his killer, and

having fulfilled his mission on this mortal plane,

Boston Brand would presumably obtain eternal peace.

Although his killer was exposed, neither

Deadman nor Neal Adams were satisfied: The man

who ordered Boston Brand’s death, the Sensei, still

needed to be brought to justice. In what turned out

to be the final Deadman issue of Strange

Adventures, Deadman follows Sensei to Nanda

Parbat, a Himalayan retreat vaguely reminiscent of

Shangri-La. However, unlike the James Hilton novel

Lost Horizon, when people leave Nanda Parbat they

do not age and die, they turn evil! In a strange

twist, when Deadman enters the mountainous

retreat, he returns to his corporeal form, no longer

doomed to remain in spirit form. (Should he leave

Nanda Parbat, he would become ethereal again,

invisible to the living and only able to communicate

to them by possessing someone.) However,

Sensei wants to destroy this utopian society, the

one place Boston Brand could find peace.

Deadman must find a way to stop Sensei’s

nefarious plan. Alas, it was not to be: Strange

Adventures was prematurely canceled with issue

#216 (Jan.–Feb. 1969), before the story could be

finished, and the conclusion had to be hastily

written into a guest appearance in The Brave and

the Bold (B&B) #86 (Oct.–Nov. 1969).

Andrew Helfer explained it thusly in his editorial

for Deadman #1 (Mar. 1986): “I . . . was heart-

broken when it came to an end. Seemed to me

at the time, though, that it never actually did

end—that we left poor Boston right in the middle

of his biggest adventure yet—an adventure that

saw print, oddly enough, as a Batman team-up

in Brave and the Bold. Years later I learned from

Dick Giordano that Deadman’s story in Strange

Adventures had been cancelled in midstream, and the

Brave and the Bold story had been quickly put together

to give the readers some kind of a conclusion to

the saga of Deadman’s arrival at Nanda Parbat.

According to Dick, it wasn’t the whole story, but a

condensed (some would say patchy) version, since

faltering sales had already determined that it

would be Dick’s last opportunity to do a full-

length Deadman story. Writer/artist Neal Adams

Neal Adams’ original artto page 10 of the Jack

Miller-scripted “HowMany Times Can a Guy

Die?,” from StrangeAdventures #209 (Feb.

1968). Courtesy ofHeritage Comics.

© 2006 DC Comics.

Adams’ original coverart to Strange

Adventures #211 (Apr.1968). Courtesy of

Heritage Comics.© 2006 DC Comics.

© 2006 DC Comics.

was just about ready to break new

ground with the character—only to be

forced to tie up all his loose ends in a

tiny twenty-page package.”

In B&B #86’s rather contrived series of

events, Batman and Deadman foil Sensei’s

plan, with the latter vowing revenge: “Two

costumed fools have destroyed my plan!

Two costumed fools will pay for that act. You

will both be laid to waste by my hand!”

DEADMAN LIVES AGAINIn the 1970s DC began to experiment with

unusual characters that did not fit the

mold of the traditional spandex-clad

heroes that had been their mainstay for

over three decades. Characters like the

Phantom Stranger, Swamp Thing, and, of

course, Deadman, tapped into not only a

growing social conscience but also the

interest of the youth in the occult and all

things mystical. Because of the uniqueness

of this character, and the fact that he

tapped into the interest in the afterlife

and spiritualism, Deadman constantly

returned to comics for both guest

appearances, backup features, and even

several miniseries. In fact, although the late

1960s and early 1970 laid the groundwork

for the character, comics of the 1970s and

1980s is when things really got good!

Deadman made several less-than-

memorable guest appearances in the

1970s, most notably Justice League of

America #94 (Nov. 1971), The Brave and

the Bold #104, (Nov.–Dec. 1972, wherein he displays a dubious willingness to kill in the name of love),

The Phantom Stranger #33 (Oct.–Nov. 1974) and #39 (Oct.–Nov. 1975) through #41 (Feb.–Mar. 1976),

B&B #133 (Apr. 1977), Superman Family #183 (May–June 1977), DC Super-Stars #18 (Jan.–Feb. 1978, in

a visit with the Phantom Stranger to Rutland, Vermont, on Halloween night), DC Special Series #8 (1978),

and Challengers of the Unknown #84 through #87 (1979, teaming up with Swamp Thing).

Most of these appearances in the 1970s were canonical and served to reinforce and revisit

Deadman’s origin and connection with Sensei. However, having already fulfilled his original raison d’ être

(that of finding his killer and exacting retribution), Deadman is merely a guest-star. He simply

observes the proceedings or assists the other characters with his ability to possess the bodies of the

secondary characters. In other words, Deadman is only a plot device and little character development

takes place—his own story is never furthered.


From the collectionof this article’s writer,Bruce MacIntosh,comes this 2004Deadman/PhantomStranger sketch byMichael Wm. Kaluta.Art © 2006 Michael Wm. Kaluta.Characters TM & © 2006 DC Comics.

1 6 • B A C K I S S U E • W e i r d H e r o e s I s s u e

Twenty years ago, I was introduced to my first Demon comic. No, it wasn’t Jack Kirby’s original series;

however, it was writer/artist Matt Wagner’s The Demon miniseries from late 1986. Wagner’s Demon brought a

new depth and detail to the relationship

of Jason Blood, Etrigan the Demon, and

Merlin. It also drastically changed (for

a little while, anyway) the relationship

between Jason Blood and Etrigan.

—Al Nickerson

AL NICKERSON: How did The

Demon miniseries come about? Did

you pitch the idea to DC Comics or

did they come looking for you?

MATT WAGNER: I was at that point

in my career where Mage was fresh

on the stands and a hot new thing. I

was at a convention in Atlanta and we

all went out to dinner. The convention

takes everyone out to dinner. Just by

happenstance, I was seated next to

Dick Giordano, who was the head of

DC Comics at that point. Well,

operating head, I guess. Jenette

Kahn was President. We had a good

time at dinner. We got along well,

and Dick invited me up to DC

Comics to pitch him anything I

wanted. This was shortly after Alan

Moore had the Demon appear in

“He’s supposed to be a demon,” says Matt Wagner of DC’s Etrigan. Page 23 ofThe Demon #1 (Jan. 1987), penciled by Wagner and inked by Art Nichols.

© 2006 DC Comics.

Mage © 2006 Matt Wagner.

byAl

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Matt Wagner:The Man, the Myth, and

Swamp Thing. I thought the Demon might be a ripe character to

give the revamp treatment to.

Additionally, the Demon was a favorite character of mine. I loved

that series. I had done, I think in either eighth or ninth grade, an

acrylic recreation of the cover of the first issue.

NICKERSON: From the Jack Kirby series?

WAGNER: Yeah.

NICKERSON: Yeah, Kirby’s The Demon was amazing.

WAGNER: Exactly. Like I said, I did a big painted recreation of the first

cover. So, I have a history of the Demon going back for some time.

NICKERSON: I don’t suppose you still have that painting?

WAGNER: No, I don’t. [laughs] My parents might have it

stuffed away in the attic somewhere, but they live in Virginia

and I live in Oregon.

NICKERSON: Your version of The Demon seemed more medieval,

more gothic than other versions that I have read, even to this day.

Was that a conscious effort on your part?

WAGNER: Yeah. That was all in the stages

of, comic-book-wise, where everybody

was trying to do the big revamp, to

put a more “realistic” spin on things.

So I thought going with the medieval

approach and downplay the super-heroic approach was

a neat way to go with The Demon.

NICKERSON: That certainly makes sense. I found

that to be an important aspect to the story.

WAGNER: Yeah. I had done a lot of research.

In the storyline, Etrigan is the son of the

demon Belial.

NICKERSON: Right.

WAGNER: That was based on an actual

woodcut that I had found of the

demon Belial. It’s from medieval days.

He’s got fins for ears, little horns, and

he’s even colored yellow.

NICKERSON: I wanted to ask you about that because

according to The History of the Kings of Britain written

by Geoffrey of Monmouth, Merlin was the son of the

daughter of the King of Demetia and the son of a demon

(or incubus). Your spin with the Belial character where

you made Etrigan and Merlin half-brothers was something

you came up with on your own.

WAGNER: Right. I was really a neophyte in those days as far as

comic-book production goes. I had sent in to DC Comics a copy of

this print to include in the first issue. In the comic, Jason’s girlfriend,

Glenda Mark, points to the print in a book, but the artwork of the

The tormentedJason Blood, fromDemon #1.© 2006 DC Comics.

Beginnings:Comico Primer #2 (first Grendel appearance)

Milestones:Grendel / Mage / Batman/Grendel / Batman:Faces / Sandman Mystery Theater / Trinity /Green Arrow covers

Work in Progress:Batman and the Monster Men

Cyberspace:www.mattwagnercomics.com

MattWagner

W e i r d H e r o e s I s s u e • B A C K I S S U E • 1 7

© 2006 DC Comics.

print never made it through production. It

never made it in the actual printing of the

comic. So, as a result, if you’re pointing to

a blank page, that kind of works as a

magical sort of thing as well. But I had fully

intended for readers to see this print so you

could see what Belial had looked like.

NICKERSON: Yes. I remember that.

WAGNER: You remember that moment

in the comic?

NICKERSON: Yes.

WAGNER: There’s actually supposed to be

something there. [laughs]

NICKERSON: I had thought there was

something magical going on where Jason

Blood couldn’t see the image of Belial.

WAGNER: Yeah, that’s the only thing that

saves it. [laughs] Otherwise, it just looks like

a big, dumb mistake, which is what it was.

NICKERSON: That’s so funny. I had

thought it was intentional.

WAGNER: Nope. It was a production error.

NICKERSON: The major plot point to

this story was the separation of Jason Blood

from Etrigan. That was really shaking

things up a bit.

WAGNER: DC Comics didn’t like that.

NICKERSON: They didn’t like the idea?

WAGNER: No. They changed it back

right away. [laughs] I think it was in

Cosmic Odyssey. . .

NICKERSON: Yeah, in Cosmic Odyssey they

physically rejoined Jason Blood to Etrigan.

WAGNER: Which happens very shortly

after my series. Dick Giordano liked what I

was doing, but the Powers-That-Be at DC

didn’t like my approach very well.

NICKERSON: And DC didn’t really realize

what you were doing until the book came out?

WAGNER: Yeah. The first editor that DC

Comics had assigned me to was Len Wein,

who was on staff at the time. He pretty

much told me outright, “I really prefer the

former approach to yours. I always liked

the fact that the Demon was a good guy

but didn’t look like a good guy.” And I

The missing imagefrom The Demon #1,

page 5. Says Wagner,“The book I took this

from claimed, ‘A15th century German

woodcut depictingBelial, by tradition the

Devil’s advocate, ashe confers with other

demons at the jawsof Hell.’” Courtesy of

Matt Wagner.

From the collection ofMike Steckler, a Matt

Wagner-drawn Demonconvention sketch.

Art © 2006 Matt Wagner.The Demon © 2006 DC Comics.


DC. 1968. It was the “1/3rd Era,” coming hard on

the end of the “Checkerboard Era”; it was the era

when the title logo of the book took up 1/3rd of

the available cover space. In the late ’60s DC, the

#1 super-hero publisher (I’m betting that

Dell/Gold key beat most comics in sales up to the

’60s) had been losing ground the last few years,

and was trying to make it up by a policy that

seemed to be “throw everything against the wall

and see what sticks.” This may be unfair—Lord

knows, there were a bunch of good series being

published—but most were given little chance to

find an audience, much less an eighth or ninth

issue. During this great experiment, new

characters and titles were being created, old

series dusted off, and then those were dumped

for new, new characters, and new old series,

some so old or short-lived that most fans had

forgotten they had even been published.

Such was The Phantom Stranger.

DC’S ORIGINAL GHOSTBUSTERThe Phantom Stranger had made his first

appearance in 1952, unannounced by any

previous guest-starring or even special guest-

starring appearance, smack in his own book, The

Phantom Stranger #1. In that issue, he solves a

phony haunting. In fact, he solves two phony

hauntings and stops a mad magician from his


Neal Adams’ cover sketch for The Phantom Stranger #19 (May–June 1972),courtesy of Frank Giella, and the published version.Phantom Stranger TM & © 2006 DC Comics.

A Lo o k at D C ’ sS u p e r n at u r a l S w i n g e r

w i t h a G o l d Me da l l i o n

by Tom “The ComicsSavant” Stewart

TM

crazy scheme of achieving immortality. The Stranger

would appear, out of the swirling fog, solve the ghost

problem by exposing the greedy relatives or

smugglers, evil businessmen, and assorted crazy

magicians and sorcerers, then vanish back into the

ether from whence he came (you just have to use a

word like “whence” when talking about the Stranger),

all in six-page stories written mostly by John Broome

and penciled by Carmine Infantino, over the span of six

issues. This Stranger had something in common with

the radio shows of the decade before, The Mysterious

Traveler, The Whistler, and even The Shadow. He appears

at the right moment, issues a warning, then vanishes.

On the penultimate page, he confronts the crooks,

exposes their evil scheme, then fades away, a supernat-

ural Lone Ranger. Which might have been the problem.

In the ’50s, the Phantom Stranger was “maybe

supernatural.” He was mysterious, sure, but did he

really have any powers beyond that of being able to

make himself scarce at the wrap-up? He was a

one-man Scooby-Doo gang without a Scrappy problem,

exposing Professor Hyde-White and then fading away

without having the humiliating fadeout “joke.” Well

written, well drawn, but not all that different from

what was being published at the time, and pretty

tame even by those standards (remember, this was

the era E.C. was getting called on Congress’ carpets

for their horror titles). The Stranger faded into the fog

at the end of his sixth issue, never to return.

The End.


(below) An astounding page from The Phantom Stranger #7(May–June 1970), Jim Aparo’s first issue. Courtesy of Steve Morger.

© 2006 DC Comics.

© 2006 DC Comics.

Also from the Morger collection, page 10 ofissue #8 (July–Aug. 1970).© 2006 DC Comics.

Marvel Comics built its reputation on characters that

sometimes underwent horrific transformations and in

the process became unlikely heroes. Marvel’s idea of a

man becoming a monster-hero began with the

Fantastic Four when Stan Lee and Jack Kirby introduced

the Thing to the world. This notion was taken to an

even deeper level with the creation of the Incredible

Hulk and was explored to varying degrees in the pages

of X-Men. The motif was always the same: power equals

misery equals tragedy equals audience sympathy.

Marvel wasn’t the first to hit on this notion. Indeed,

the world of horror is filled with examples of people

who are at heart good, decent folks who become

monsters beyond their control. Among the most

famous of these beasts in horror lore is the werewolf.

So, when you get right down to it, what made more

sense for a new, tragic comic-book hero in the 1970s

than a werewolf? This was what the folks at Marvel

were thinking when the Comics Code Authority

loosened up on their rules allowing, for the first time

in almost two decades, mainstream comic-book

publishers to tackle the horror genre in earnest.


I Am Werewolf,Hear Me RoarJack Russell’s hairytransformation, in acommissionedillustration by andcourtesy of Don Perlin.Art © 2006 Don Perlin.Werewolf by Night © 2006Marvel Characters, Inc.

I WAS A MARVELCOMICS WEREWOLF by D a n J o h n s o n


MICHAEL LANDON-MEETS-PETER PARKERMarvel’s first effort was a character that was very much

in keeping with the previous hero mode. Upon his

eighteenth birthday, Jack Russell learns that his family

is cursed by the mark of the beast. Like many super-

heroes that had come before him, young Russell

found that he possesses a

power that made him far

superior to others, but like

Peter Parker and the

many of the young mutants

of the X-Men, it was a

power that was seen as

more of a curse than a

blessing. Thus “Werewolf

by Night” was born. The

idea of mixing teenage

angst and lycanthropy was

something that had paid

off previously in another

medium, and it fueled the

creation of this Marvel

series. “Werewolf by Night

was my idea,” Roy Thomas

tells BACK ISSUE. “[It was]

inspired by a combination

of I Was a Teenage

Werewolf, a movie

I’d liked since it

first came out in the late 1950s, and

Spider-Man. As reported elsewhere, I

made up the notion of a first-person

series I called ‘I, Werewolf,’ and my

first wife, Jean, and I plotted the first

issue, after which it was turned over to

Gerry [Conway] to dialogue and to

continue.” Gerry Conway, the series’ original

writer, had this to say on the subject of I Was

a Teenage Werewolf’s influence on Werewolf by

Night. “I had never seen [the film] and Stan Lee had

never seen it,” says Conway. “But it certainly was an

easy sell. This was something that Marvel does well:

teenagers with powers. The book also hit upon

another element that made Marvel a popular sell to

youngsters, the idea of the loner forced to deal with

a world that can not or will not accept them. [It also

addressed the idea] of someone who doesn’t have

power. A consequence [of gaining power] is that you

become ostracized because you’re suddenly more

powerful. If you look at what goes on with teenagers,

every new thing that they find that they can do has

a consequence to it that is not very attractive. That

also plays into it. You can drive, but you can get

killed driving. You’re now free to experiment with all

kinds of things you shouldn’t be doing because now

you’re more capable, but those have consequences,

too. It’s not just the positive, it’s the negative things,

too. The teen years are a tremendous time of growth

and expansion of possibilities, but at the same time

it’s a pretty miserable experience to go through. I

certainly felt that way myself, and that’s what I

brought to Werewolf by Night.”

Besides tapping into the agony of teens and

pre-teens, the horror genre offered something new

for Marvel to explore at a time when they were looking

for some elbow room on the newsstand. “[Werewolf

by Night] came around the same time as Tomb of

Dracula and the push towards expanding the Marvel

line,” says Conway. “Marvel had been doing ten to

12 titles a month and Stan Lee wanted to expand us

to 20 or 30 titles. In order to do that, we needed to

come up with a bunch of properties quickly. [We

The 1957 movie thatinspired Roy Thomas.

© 1957 AIP.

A “warm-up sketch” ofWerewolf by Night byMike Ploog, obtained

by its contributor, IvanCheung, at the 2005

U.K. Comic Expo.Art © 2006 Michael Ploog.Werewolf by Night © 2006

Marvel Characters, Inc.

believed] there were only a certain number of

super-heroes that you could do—of course that’s

been proven wrong—and the thought was there

wasn’t many more characters amongst the bullpen

at that time that could be tossed into their own

books. They had already given Sub-Mariner and Iron

Man and others their own titles.”

At the same time that Marvel was looking for new

properties to publish, horror was already experiencing

a huge resurgence. In the early 1960s there was a

horror comeback that was fueled by magazines like

Famous Monsters of Filmland and toys like the Aurora

Monster Model Kits. In the comics industry the

Warren line of black-and-white magazines that

included Creepy, Eerie, and Vampirella had been offering

up thrills and chills for several years without that

pesky Comics Code Authority getting in the way. In

the end, once the Code’s restrictions on horror were

lifted, it was only a matter of time before comic

books gravitated to it. “In the early 1970s there was

this mini-renaissance of fantasy and horror titles from

both Marvel and DC,” says Conway. “The notion was

this is an area that we could go into that is fairly fresh

ground. [The Code restrictions being loosened] was

one of the reasons we could do some of this stuff.

The Code had been applied in a pretty much arbitrary

manner and you had all these restrictions that made

no sense. Denny O’Neil said it best: ‘In the code you

couldn’t have zombies, but you could have ghouls,

which means you couldn’t have the walking dead,

but as soon as [the dead] sat down, you could eat

them.’ Werewolf by Night was certainly no more

scary than Lon Chaney’s Wolf Man movies. They

were fairly tame, especially in comparison to what is

available to kids today.”

A NEW BREED OF MARVEL SUPER-HERORight from the start—the character debuted in

Marvel Spotlight #2 (Feb. 1972), and after three

Spotlights was awarded his own series beginning

with #1 (Sept. 1972)—Werewolf by Night offered a

number of new twists for fans of Marvel Comics. For

the first time since the Comics Code Authority was

enacted, a Marvel hero was shown as being capable

of killing, and Jack Russell did just that to several of

his early adversaries. Werewolf by Night also brought

a new look to Marvel Comics via the artwork of

Mike Ploog. “Mike was so good at doing [books like

Werewolf by Night and Ghost Rider],” says Conway.

“He was very imaginative, a great storyteller, and

pretty fast, which was the criteria back then. He was

one of the first artists to break away from the Marvel

mode. Everyone else was trying to draw like Kirby

and Romita, and to a smaller extent Ditko, but Mike’s

stuff had no prior influences at Marvel, unless you go

back to the ’50s and the horror books. Mike is a

cartoonist, and I mean that in the best possible way.

He doesn’t try to draw in a style that mimics reality


Ploog’s splash page from Werewolf by Night #1, courtesy of Heritage Comics.© 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

© 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.


TOMB

OFDRACULA

MAGAZIN

E#1

(197

9)

Anything atmospheric always made my day. Doing Drac gave me that on almost every page.I almost didn’t get the opportunity to do Tomb of Dracula [see BACK ISSUE #6 for details].

©20

06M

arve

lCha

ract

ers,

Inc.

Art and captions by Gene Colan

(Special thanks to Bob McLeod, Tom Field,

and Jim Cardillo for the pencil photocopies).

©20

06M

arve

lCha

ract

ers,

Inc.

I vaguely remember this one. Seems like I was struggling with it.

RAW

HID

EKID

#149(1979)



Rory Regan was the son of a junkman who went

off to serve his country during the Vietnam conflict.

He returned home, not to ticker-tape parades or

the respect and admiration of those around him,

like the soldiers of World War II and the Korean

War experienced. His return wasn’t marked with

praise and pride. He came back to a country that

wasn’t impressed with his military record or sacrifices

he made overseas. He was back in a world that

seemed very different from what he had left a few

short years earlier.

One thing that was constant and unchanging

was the love and pride his father felt for Rory.

Gerry Regan wanted to give his son the whole

world on a silver platter, but didn’t have the

means to do such a thing. So, for Rory’s birthday,

Gerry and his friends created a suit out of rags

and planned to gift the younger Regan with

that attire. However, tragedy struck before

they all could celebrate. Gerry and his pals

found a stack of “dirty” money hidden among

the junk in the Regans’ Rags ’n’ Tatters junkyard.

When the thieves returned to retrieve the

money, Regan refused to say where the fortune

was hidden. He wanted the money to be Rory’s

heritage and future. He wanted it to buy Rory

everything the man had ever wanted, but was

unable to have in this life—at least so far.

The gangsters weren’t ready to lose all that

money, so they proceeded to torture the men,

trying to get one to crack and spill the beans on

that missing bounty. All refused, sticking to the plan

of letting young Rory have a grand future, even if

it cost them their remaining days in this world.

An utterly amazing 1993 commissioned illo of Ragman by Joe Kubert.Courtesy of its proud owner, Steve Davis.

Art © 2006 Joe Kubert. Ragman TM & © DC Comics.

!"# $%&#'( )*+ (,#by J e n n i f e r M . C o n t i n o

TM

Rory walked in on the torture of his father

and friends. The group was being electrocuted

by a fallen electrical wire and he was horrified.

He attempted to use a rubber tire to free his

father from the arc, but the plan fell apart and

Rory found himself in mortal danger as well.

The criminals left, figuring the men as good as

dead and their loot lost. But they didn’t count

on Rory surviving the shock.

After he recovered, Rory found the costume

his father left him and took that as a sign that

he should protect his neighborhood from those

evil men and others of their ilk. He wanted to be

another force in Gotham City to help those

frightened of the things that go bump in the

night. The enigmatic Ragman seemed a

welcome addition to Batman’s turf. Creators

Joe Kubert and Robert Kanigher thought their

“Tattered Tatterdemalion” would be a smash in

the mid-’70s when the hero made his debut.

The multitalented Kubert was an editor at DC

and believed the line he was responsible for

could use a new title. Thinking about how to

flesh out the DC Universe led Kubert to one

man: writer Robert Kanigher.

“I called Bob in and we discussed the need

for a new title,” Kubert recalls. “Initially we

thought that I would be doing the artwork,

which I would have enjoyed.”

However, other responsibilities prevented

Kubert from penciling their creation. Although

Kubert continued to draw the covers for the

series, Ragman’s sequential art on issues #1–4

was handled by the Redondo Studio, working


The Kubert-designed, RedondoStudio-finishedbriskly paced insetsequence on page 2of Ragman #1(Aug.–Sept. 1976)builds to the weirdhero’s reveal onpage 3. Original artcourtesy of BennyGelillo.© 2006 DC Comics.


Very early ’Mazing Man presentation art, penciled by StephenDeStefano (contributor of all of this article’s artwork) and inked byJoseph Delbeato (who placed a cigar in Guido’s hand).© 2006 DC Comics.

Maybe I’m ’Mazed!You Gotta Have

Friends. . .

When Sigfried Horatio Hunch III left the care of

Bellevue Hospital, one can only assume it was with the

permission of his doctors. After finding a place to live,

Hunch spotted a trash pile upon which lay a golden

helmet with two huge glass eye holes and a “W” at its

peak. When Sigfried lifted the helm, the letter spun on

its axis, making it an “M.” Knowing an omen when he

saw it, Sigfried christened himself ’Mazing Man.

Financially secure from winning the Publisher’s

Reading House Sweepstakes, ’Maze patrolled

Queens, equally willing to save a child from being run

over by a truck, then preventing him from swallowing

a discarded cigarette butt. “Heaven only knows

what eating one of them might do.”

Public reaction was divided, but not between “threat”

or “menace.” To one bystander, “He’s the neighborhood

looney-toon.” To another, “He’s great to have around, like

Lassie . . . and we don’t have to clean up after him.”

FRIENDSHIP, JUST THE PERFECT BLENDSHIPIn 1973 frequent letterhack Bob Rozakis received

permission to tour the DC offices from DC editor Julius

Schwartz. The comic-based crossword puzzles he created

for a fanzine wound up in the hands of Sol Harrison,

DC’s Vice President and head of its Production

Department who told Rozakis, “If you can make up

puzzles about Superman and Batman, we’ll buy them.”

Nine puzzles later, Rozakis found his foot in the door.

This led to a stint as Schwartz’s assistant, where he began

selling scripts for Robin and the Elongated Man (in

Detective Comics), The Freedom Fighters, and others.

In 1976 Rozakis transferred to Production, succeeding

Jack Adler in 1981 and remaining as Production

Director until leaving DC in 1998.

Just as Rozakis used to do, 13-year-old Stephen

DeStefano began his comics career by writing letters,

by B r i a n K . M o r r i s


page after handwritten page, covered with drawings of himself and

his dog. “To my astonishment and delight,” DeStefano recalls, “[Bob]

began writing me back. Bob was not only patient with me, answering

all of my dopey questions, but extremely generous.” When

DeStefano requested a job at DC because his father had been laid off,

“Bob wrote back, telling me he’d put me on the DC Comics comp

list, which was an exceptionally kind thing to do.” At 15, DeStefano

found himself interning at DC, working in the export department,

learning what Rozakis calls “the fine art of making Xerox copies.”

With high school about to end, the 17-year-old set his sights on

becoming a DC staffer. So with Creative Director Joe Orlando’s

encouragement, DeStefano worked up samples for a series based on

a friend in his school named Brian Mooney. As a gift to him,

DeStefano drew tales of “Mooney Man” As the artist explains,

“Mooney Man looked a lot like ’Maze, and he had a dog that would

wise crack and make snotty asides.” Except for being naked, the

canine looked a lot like ’Maze’s Denton. “It was all very silly, sort of

a MAD-inspired parody, filled with in-jokes about our life at school.”

Refining the concepts for a mainstream audience, “Mooney

Man” received a name change, Denton got clothing, and the

proposal gained a supporting cast, most of whom the artist, by

his own admission, “didn’t really have a feel for who they were

or what they did.”

Orlando rejected DeStefano’s initial proposal. However,

upon seeing his friend’s presentation, Bob Rozakis said, “I

want to write this.”

Phot

oco

urte

syof

Bob

Roza

kis.

Beginnings:Assorted DC puzzle pages / 1st published story:

“The Touchdown Trap” (starring Robin) in

Detective Comics #445 (1975)

Milestones:’Mazing Man / Freedom Fighters / Secret Society of

Super-Villains / Teen Titans (where he created Duela

Dent) / Star Trek / Super Friends / Superman: The

Secret Years / Hero Hotline (with Stephen

DeStefano) / over 400 scripts featuring the

Calculator, the Elongated Man, the Atom,

Aquaman, Air Wave, Batgirl, Robin, Green Arrow

and Black Canary, Mr. E, Dial “H” For Hero (with E.

Nelson Bridwell), and others / becoming head of

DC’s Production Department in

1981, where he developed new

comic-book formats and intro-

duced computer coloring and

separations as well as computer-

to-plate printing to the company

Cyberspace:The Daily Trivia Contest at

www.wfcomics.com/trivia

BOB

ROZAKIS

Size relation chart,drawn for the

final ’Mazing ManSpecial (1990).

© 2006 DC Comics.

© 2006 DC Comics.


The Lost

by B o b R o z a k i s

StoryWritten by and © 2001 Bob Rozakis (originallyfrom www.silverbulletcomicbooks.com. Reprintedwith permission from the copyright holder.)

“With ’Mazing Man . . . we’d work out a plot

and get three-quarters of the way through and

sometimes say, ‘No, this wouldn’t happen. They

wouldn’t DO this.’”

—Bob Rozakis, 1986

Writers, editors, and artists plot stories all the

time. Good thing, too, because if they didn’t,

there wouldn’t be too many comic books to read.

When it was time to plot an issue of ’Mazing Man,

editor Alan Gold, artist Stephen DeStefano, and I

would head to a local Bojangles fried-chicken

place and work out stories while munching on

wings and thighs, biscuits, and fries.

Sometimes we’d have an idea from the start.

Other times we’d be looking for a jumping off

point. In one particular case, Stephen had come

into the city on the subway and had seen a

magician moving from car to car doing tricks. He

suggested that this might be something we could

use in a ’Maze story.

We worked out a basic plot and I went home

to write it up. What follows is what I delivered to

Alan a few days later. Though broken down into

individual panels, Stephen was free to expand or

contract the number he needed to move the

action along. [Stephen and I worked in a variety

A 20-years-later reunion gathering of ’Maze and friends, in the samepose as their original presentation piece.

© 2006 DC Comics.


byD

anJohnson

conductedon

October

20,2005

In the early 1970s Marvel Comics began to explore the

world of horror in earnest for the first time since the

mid-1950s’ introduction of the Comics Code Authority.

Such titles as Werewolf by Night, Tomb of Dracula, and

The Frankenstein Monster, which featured the legendary

monsters of classic literature and motion pictures,

began to appear on newsstands alongside The Amazing

Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, and The Avengers. Eventually,

the denizens of the horror realm started making

crossover appearances with the spandex crowd and

became full-fledged members of the Marvel Universe.

Of all the Mighty Marvel Monsters that blurred the

line between super-scares and super-heroics, none

was more popular than Ghost Rider. After a successful

tryout in Marvel Spotlight # 5–12, the character went

on to his own title, which outlasted all of the company’s

other horror books, and his crossed paths with

Marvel’s super-heroes more frequently than the other

monsters (Ghost Rider was even a member of the

short-lived super-hero team, the Champions).

Ghost Rider’s first outing told a story that surely

could have never done before the rules of the Comics

Code Authority were loosened. In his origin tale, stunt

cyclist Johnny Blaze trades his soul to Satan to save the

life of the man who has been his “father” and mentor,

Crash Simpson, who was dying of an undisclosed

disease. After the deed is done, Blaze finds out the hard

way that those who make deals with the Lord of Hades

never come out on the winning end. Crash doesn’t die

because of the disease, but he is killed trying to break a

world’s cycling record. When Satan comes to claim

Blaze’s soul, it is only the love of Simpson’s daughter, the

lovely and pure-hearted Roxanne, which keeps Johnny

safe and forces Satan to flee. Still, Blaze does not get off

totally unscathed. He soon learns that he will be forced

to share his existence with a fiery demon, Zaratho. Thus,

the race was on for Blaze as he was cursed to ride the

highways of the night as the flame-skulled Ghost Rider.

Recently BACK ISSUE spoke with the artist who

helped kick start Ghost Rider into existence, the

legendary Mike Ploog. Even though his run on the

series was short, he left a mark that is remembered to

this day by fans everywhere of ol’ Skull Head.

—Dan Johnson

interview


DAN JOHNSON: How did you come to work on Ghost Rider?

MIKE PLOOG: When they asked me to do Ghost Rider, I jumped

at it. In my mind, the first image that came to me was the

Frazetta Ghost Rider on horseback. It didn’t take long before I

figured out that [this Ghost Rider] wasn’t on a horse, he was on

a bloody motorcycle! But that was all right. This was a new twist

and a new angle.

It was fresh and interesting and it was something that I could start

from the very beginning. I didn’t have to follow anybody else’s style.

JOHNSON: It came about at just the right time. It combined

super-heroes, which were big; horror, which was even bigger,

and bikers and the biker lifestyle, which was coming into its own

in the 1970s.

PLOOG: [The biker lifestyle] was kind of romanticized in the 1970s.

Bikers very quickly got a very bad rap, but in the 1970s, with The

Wild One and seeing all the Hollywood stars on motorbikes, it

was the thing to do. I thought it was cool because in those days

they were doing these beautiful choppers with the extended front

wheels, and I thought, "That could be fun!" But I’ll tell you, every

month you sit there and you draw motorcycles, it will drive you

crazy! Bloody motorcycles!

But Ghost Rider was a good character. [Writer] Gary Friedrich never really just came out and said it, but I got

the impression that we weren’t going to take this guy all that seriously. If you look back at some of the old Ghost

Riders, it was pretty tongue-in-cheek. The whole

story of [Johnny Blaze] selling his soul to save this

guy and then goofing up the whole damn thing,

talk about making a major mistake! It was like he

made a contract and didn’t read the fine print.

JOHNSON: Anytime you enter into a deal with

the devil, you’re going to come out on the

short end of the deal.

PLOOG: Well, to be honest with you, over

the years you sell your soul to the devil on a

regular basis, in one way or another. The

only thing about it is that you can get out of

that. When you’re actually dealing with the

devil, there probably aren’t that many ways

to get out of it. You always had that hope

that Johnny Blaze could get himself out of

this. You can’t go around the rest of your life

with a flaming skull.

JOHNSON: When Ghost Rider first appeared,

it was at a time when the Comics Code was

loosening up quite a bit and Marvel Comics

was able to do horror titles. Still, when you

have a comic book where a major character

Marvel’s original GhostRider: Frank Frazetta’scover to 1950’s GhostRider #3. Courtesy of

Heritage Comics.© 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Phot

oco

urte

syof

Her

oes

Aren

’tH

ard

toFi

nd.

Beginnings:P.S. Magazine (with Will Eisner)

Milestones:Werewolf by Night / The Monster of

Frankenstein / Ghost Rider / Man-Thing /

Abadazad

Work in Progress:The Stardust Kid

MIKE

PLOOG



DAN JOHNSON: You came on to Ghost Rider

after Werewolf by Night ended. How did youcome to work on the title?DON PERLIN: That’s a funny thing about that

one. Jim Shooter had become editor-in-chief at

Marvel Comics by then, and he had me do fill-in

books until he could find a book for me. I was

sitting there working on the fill-ins and I was

wondering what kind of book Marvel will come

up with [for me]. I figured that I would like any

book they had there, except one: Ghost Rider. I

didn’t want to draw motorcycles. About 20

minutes into that thought, the phone rang.

The call was from Shooter and he said, “Don,

we have got a book for you. It’s Ghost Rider. I’m

going to write it, and you’re going to draw it.”

JOHNSON: The book had been a bimonthlytitle, but as soon as you came on board it asbumped up to a monthly status.PERLIN: It started picking up in sales. All [the

work] I had at the time was penciling that

book, so I asked to ink an issue. After I did that,

I got to pencil and ink the book.

JOHNSON: You have always preferred to inkyour own work, right?PERLIN: Well, the thing is at Marvel you would

have a plot and once it was penciled, the story

would go back to the writer. Then they would

add the captions and the balloons. After they

look at your pictures, the writers might have

slightly different ideas than before. What

would happen is that you would leave a lot of


Don Perlin’s petrifying pair, Ghost Rider and Werewolf byNight, in a recent commissioned illo drawn for collector IvanCheung. Courtesy of the artist.© 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

interviewby

Dan

Johnsonconducted

onSeptem

ber15,2005

A Chat with Don Perlin


Ghost Rider #2 (Oct. 1973). Cover art by Gil Kane

and John Romita, Sr. © 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

Ghost Rider #7 (Aug. 1974). Cover art by John Romita, Sr.


ART GALLERY

(Art for this gallery contributed by Michael Browning, Matthew Stock, and Heritage Comics.)

A Ghost Rider sketch by Dave Simons, from the collection of

Michael Browning. Art © 2006 Dave Simons. Ghost Rider © 2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.


During the 1970s, DC Comics’ Gorilla Grodd, one of

the Flash’s greatest foes, made only one appearance

in the Scarlet Speedster’s own comic book (The Flash

#209, 1971). And yet, Grodd made many prominent

appearances in other corners of the DC Universe,

notably in several issues of Secret Society of Super-

Villains in 1976 and 1977. The highly evolved super-ape

from Gorilla City was so high profile in 1977 that you

would almost think he was being primed for his own

series. This idea isn’t so far from the truth, as a

proposal for an ongoing title featuring Gorilla Grodd

had been completed in 1976 and put “on hold” for

several months before being written off in November

of 1977. It’s a shame that Flash fans didn’t get to see

one of Barry Allen’s greatest rogues in a series of his

own, but it makes for an interesting tale of a comic

book, Grodd of Gorilla City, that never came to be.

According to The Comic Reader #131 (1976),

“Elliot Maggin and Cary Bates have written a story

called ‘Gorilla City,’ illustrated by Joe Barney and

Carl Potts. Where it will appear has not yet been

decided; apparently it is set in Grodd’s home town.”

As far as I know, this was the only time in print that

Grodd of Gorilla City was ever mentioned. I collected

and read all of DC’s super-hero books in the late

1970s and not once do I recall the series being

plugged in a DC title published at that time.

Grodd of Gorilla City was indeed written by Cary

Bates and Elliot S! Maggin, penciled by Joe Barney and

Carl Potts, and inked by Terry Austin and Bob Wiacek.

That’s quite a list of creators to pack into the credits box,

and the book’s origins are as intriguing as the reason so

many creators were gathered to complete the proposal.

“I believe the Grodd project was initiated by Cary

Bates,” recalls inker Terry Austin. “Cary rented office

space at Continuity Associates (the commercial art

The splash page to the unpublished Grodd of Gorilla City #1.All original art in this article is courtesy of Terry Austin.

© 2006 DC Comics.

by J i m K i n g m a n

business in New York City owned by Neal Adams and

Dick Giordano), in an effort to help some of the new

kids at Continuity, who were his friends, get their foot

in the door at DC. These were pencilers Joe Barney

and Carl Potts, inkers Bob Wiacek and myself.”

“I was working at Continuity Studios at the

time,” remembers penciler Carl Potts. “At the time,

Continuity was run by Neal Adams and Dick

Giordano. They had a number of young artists

working there, helping out on various comics and

commercial projects. This crew included Joe Barney,

Terry Austin, Bob Wiacek, and myself. Cary Bates

rented an office at Continuity and asked Joe and I to

co-pencil the project and Terry and Bob to ink it.

“Cary may have felt the only chance he had of

getting the project done in a reasonable amount of

time was to have several of us working on it,” Potts

continues. “Neither Joe nor I were known as speed

demons when it came to drawing comics. For some

reason we could turn out storyboard frames with

relative ease but comics was what we were really

into so we tended to sweat over every panel. That

lack of speed, combined with the fact that we were

already involved with other comics and commercial

projects, probably prompted Cary to have multiple

artists on the Grodd story.”

“I had been at Neal Adams’ Continuity Associates

for about a year doing comics, storyboards, and

animatic penciling,” remembers Joe Barney. “I was

only 20 years old, and very green; this was my first

solo penciling assignment (well, somewhat; Carl

Potts and I penciled separate pages on the book).

Cary Bates, who came up to Continuity fairly frequently,

and later rented a space in Larry Hama’s room (after

Ralph Reese left the studio), asked Neal if there were

any artists who had the free time to tackle a story he

and Elliot Maggin had written for a proposed new

book. Neal suggested Carl and myself—we were sort

of the first of a whole group of aspiring artists that

Neal took on as assistants, for a time nicknamed ‘the

Goon Squad.’ I was excited about the project, aside

from the opportunity to show some chops and

become a real professional.”

I wondered if the series was proposed at the tail end

of Carmine Infantino’s tenure as DC publisher, or just

as Jenette Kahn took over the position in early 1976.

“Carmine would have been publisher at that

time,” says Austin. I don’t remember if Grodd of

Gorilla City was intended as a one-shot or first issue

of a continuing series. The first issue was completed

but I don’t think I ever heard why it wasn’t used. I

don’t believe the time period before it was eventually

written off is significant. Work that was killed was

kept around in the editor’s files in case a use could

be found for it later, since it had already been paid

for. Periodically, I believe, the editor would search

his files and if no home were apparent for an

orphaned project, it was written off (I assume the

money paid to the creators would be taken as some

sort of tax loss), and the art returned to the artists.”


“I remember the plotinvolved the mobsmuggling drugs inbananas,” says TerryAustin, who inkedthis page over CarlPotts’ pencils.© 2006 DC Comics.

In January 1974 (cover date), Hawkman quit the Justice

League and the Legion of Super-Heroes’ Bouncing Boy

and Duo Damsel said “I do,” but the big story that

month at DC Comics was one of its super-heroes

turning killer! In editor Joe Orlando’s Adventure Comics

#431, one of DC’s weirdest heroes, the Spectre,

returned from limbo—and in the process returned to

his long-abandoned roots as an executioner of criminals.

Adventure #431’s “The Wrath of . . . the Spectre,”

courtesy of writer Michael Fleisher and artist Jim

Aparo, recast the Ghostly Guardian from his previous

Silver Age role as a cosmic crusader into the vengeful

enemy of “the vermin of the underworld,” as

he was originally conceived in 1940 before his

stories were softened by DC. Forget turning

apprehended felons over to the authorities: In

this tightly plotted, spellbindingly rendered 12-

pager, the Spectre disposes of a pair murderous

robbers by melting one, like wax, and reducing

the other to a skeleton. Ghastly demises—

and downright shocking to

audiences of the day.

In a trade paperback

appropriating the name of

that first tale (which was also

used as the title of a 1988

reprint miniseries), Wrath of

the Spectre gathers all ten of

Fleisher and Aparo’s original Adventure tales (one of

which was penciled by Frank Thorne, two others

penciled by Ernie Chua, with Aparo inks on each).

Also included are three stories written by Fleisher in

the mid-1970s but shelved when DC’s then-publisher

Carmine Infantino pulled the plug on the controversial

“Spectre” series with Adventure #440, but eventually

illustrated by Aparo in the late 1980s.

Long-time readers mostly recall this series for its

Spectre-created acts of carnage (including the Ghostly

Guardian cutting a man in half with giant scissors,

rapidly aging a woman into a shriveled corpse,

Jim Aparo at the zenith

of his career: page 6 of

Adventure Comics #432

(Mar.–Apr. 1974).

Original art scan courtesy

of Heritage Comics.

© 2006 DC Comics.

by M i c h a e l E u r y

© 2006 DC Comics.

Wrath of theSpectre

DC Comics, 2005 •Softcover • 200color pages •$19.99 US


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