Comics Go Hollywood Online

8/18/2019 Comics Go Hollywood Online

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Storyboardsfor DC’sTHE NEWFRONTIER

The unseenX-MEN FILM

JACK “KING”KIRBY INHOLLYWOOD art gallery, and more!

THEJOKER:FromComicsTo Film

C O M I C S G O

JEPH LOEBon writingfor HEROES and MARVEL

The following preview is by the editors ofTHE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR • BACK ISSUE • ALTER EGO

ROUGH STUFF • DRAW! • WRITE NOW and

All Ages Admitted

Secrets behind your favorite on-screen heroes!

TWOMORROWS PUBLISHING


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Since 1994, TWOMORROWS

PUBLISHING has been celebratingthe art and history of comicswith its award-winning line ofmagazines and books aboutcomics. By covering all aspectsof the creative process, anddocumenting the fascinatinghistory of comics, we’veestablished ourselves as theindustry authority on the inner workings of the medium.

Now, for FREE COMICBOOK DAY, our regular magazine editors have assembledto produce this all-new 32-pageguide to comics’ influence inHollywood, created just for thisgiveaway! In it, DRAW!magazine’s MIKE MANLEY (akey artist for DC and MarvelComics) gives you a look behindthe scenes of storyboarding for the hit DVD “JUSTICE LEAGUE:

THE NEW FRONTIER”! WRITENOW! magazine’s DANNYFINGEROTH (a major Marvel

Comics writer) presents an inter-view with HEROES and comicsscribe JEPH LOEB! ALTER EGOmagazine editor ROY THOMAS(former Marvel Comics editor-in-chief and top writer) unveils his never-produced X-Men screenplay(co-written by veteran comics writer GERRY CONWAY)! PETERSANDERSON, regular contributor to BACK ISSUE magazine, documentsthe history of the Joker from the comics page to the big screen. AndI (as editor of THE JACK KIRBY COLLECTOR magazine) proudlypresent a special Jack Kirby art gallery, showing some of the manypieces he created for Hollywood-influenced projects over the years.

We also publish ROUGH STUFF magazine,showing preliminary and unpublished art bytop comics pros (along with their commentaryon it), and BRICKJOURNAL magazine for LEGO enthusiasts. So sample the features pre-sented here, and get a taste of whatTwoMorrows is all about. If you see somethingthat whets your appetite for more, consider ordering it from your local comics shop, or

online from us at www.twomorrows.com. We look forward to havingyou as a customer for years to come!

JOHN MORROWPublisher

C o l l e c t o r

TwoMorrows. Celebrating The Art & History Of Comics.TwoMorrows Publishing • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 USA • 919-449-0344 • FAX: 919-449-0327E-mail: [email protected] • Visit us on the Web at www.twomorrows.com

WELCOME TO FREE COMIC BOOK DAY,FROM THE INDUSTRY AUTHORITY ON

COMICS HISTORY AND CREATION!

TABLE OFCONTENTS

COMICS GO

HOLLYWOOD

STORYBOARDING “THENEW FRONTIER” . . . . . . . . . . 1by Mike Manley, editor of Draw! magazine

JEPH LOEB INTERVIEW . . . . . 7by Danny Fingeroth, editor of Write Now!magazine

THE UNSEEN X-MENFILM . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 11by Roy Thomas, editor of Alter Ego magazine

JACK KIRBY HOLLYWOODART GALLERY . . . . . . . . . . . 18by John Morrow, editor of The Jack KirbyCollector magazine

THE JOKER, FROMCOMICS TO FILM . . . . . . . . . 23by Peter Sanderson, contributor to Back Issuemagazine

COMICS GO HOLLYWOOD, 2008 Free Comic Book Dayedition. Published annually by and ©2008 TwoMorrowsPublishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614, USA.919-449-0344. All rights reserved. John Morrow, Publisher,Editor, and Designer. Single issues: Free at your local comic bookshop on May 3, 2008. All characters and artwork are TM &©2008 their respective owners. All editorial matter is ©2008 therespective authors. First printing. Printed in CANADA.

Cover art/colors by Mike Manley.


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1

I have to say, most days, drawing comics is a pretty cool job, and it’s also great training; very demanding innot only disciplines like composition, drawing, and inking, but also storytelling. You also have to get up tospeed if you are drawing a monthly comic and produce a consistent volume of work—it’s great cross-training. Since the late ’90s, I’ve worked in animation doing storyboards, bringing to life the exploits of someof the same characters I drew in comics—only now in the medium of animation. It seemed like a naturalstep to go from drawing comics featuring Batman and Superman into animation, doing storytelling in themedium of film.

In late October 2006 I got a phone call from an old animation buddy, Dave Bullock, who was leavingworking on Clone Wars for LucasFilm to head back down to Los Angeles to direct the adaption of the 2004DC Comics mini-series The New Frontier by Darwyn Cooke, which was being produced by Warner Brothers.The project was also being headed by Bruce Timm and Stan Berkowitz, part of the dynamic team behindmost of the great DC cartoons from Batman, Superman, and Batman Beyond to the recent Justice League. I

had worked as a storyboard artist for Warners in the past on Batman and Superman and did background work on

Batman Beyond. Both Dave and I workedon several other shows together as well,like Kim Possible, but this was the firsttime we had really gotten to work closelytogether.

ING

By DRAW! Magazine Editor Mike Manley

Top: A story sequence which clearly showshow close the storyboard artists tried to

stay to the staging in the comic.

Left: The crowd watches as the Flashmakes his entrance.

J o h n J o n e s , S l a m B r a d l e y T M & © 2 0 0 8 D C C o m i c s

© 2 0 0 8 W a r n e r B r o t h e r s A n i m a t i o n


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2

One of the things I always find interesting about adapting stories from comics to TV or movies, is howthe writers have to work to compress, eliminate or rework entire chapters to make the story flow better asfilm, and the restrictions we face in that medium due to the budget, the length of the movie/show, andissues like the infamous TV censors. One of the first notes I received before I started boarding on The NewFrontier was that the word came down to eliminate all of the smoking by the characters. It seemed Warnersdidn’t want to promote smoking even though there were plenty of characters lighting up in the comic. Youcan also see where, as often as possible, we tried to match the set-ups Cooke had in his panels. In this casethere was a scene I boarded that was pretty close to what Cooke did in the comic featuring John Jones andSlam Bradley in Jimmy’s bar having a few drinks, and watching the Flash withdraw from public life as thecrowd in the bar turns ugly in their comments. The designs of the bar came right out of Cooke’s drawing,but the sequence was also slightly expanded and a bit longer than in the comic to help play up John Jonesdecision to leave the Earth and return to Mars.

The next section I worked on featured John Jones meeting Batman in the Batcave and informing himthat he’s going to leave Earth and return home to Mars. This sequence is not in the comic but expands muchmore the difference between the two detectives’/crime fighters’ attitude toward the changing public opinionagainst the superheroes.

Top: Another setuptaken directly from

the comic.

Right: An earlier roughmodel for John Jones,

and the final modeldesign.

John Jones, Slam Bradley, Batman, Flash, Superman, Wonder Woman, Green Lantern TM & ©2008 DC Comics



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In this case Cooke’s drawing style was naturallysuited to the adaption of the project as Cooke wasanother former WB alum, having also worked onseveral episodes of Batman, so it was “old homeweek,” and I think everything seemed to click well.

Even though I didn’t get a chance to story-board a huge sequence on the DVD, I really enjoyedthe part I did do and I’m really happy to lift the

curtain a bit andfeature some of theproduction art whichmost fans never getto see.

Best,

Top left: The Model sheet for The Flash.

Top right: A storyboard featuring Bradleywatching John.

Above: The final design for Slam Bradley.

Right: An earlier design for Slam Bradley.



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Top: The Batcave design by Paul Rivoche.

Top right: More storyboards featuring Batman and John Jones.

Right: Batman’s model sheet design. © 2 0 0 8 W a r n e r B r o t h e r s A n i m a

t i o n


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5

Top and Below: The modeldesigns for Wonder Woman,

Superman and Green Lantern.

Left: More storyboards showing John Jones facing an ever stern

Batman in the Batcave.



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Above: The rough and the final character design for The Martian Manhunter’s natural form.

Right: More storyboards. Here I really tried to push the acting,

even though I didn’t have a voice track to listen to, to nuance theacting and catch the actor’s vocal performance.

© 2 0 0 8 W a r n e r B

r o t h e r s A n i m a t i o n

6

Mike Manley is editor of TwoMorrows’ Draw! magazine, and an art instructor at Delaware College of Art and Design. He has drawn for major publishers like Marvel, DC and Dark Horse, including titles such as Batman,Captain America, and The Power of Shazam!. He’s been an animationstoryboard and background designer on Kids WB shows The NewBatman/Superman Adventures and Batman Beyond, Spy Groove for MTV, Spawn for HBO, and ABC’s One Saturday Morning and Clerks:The Animated Series.


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Jeph Loeb writes comics, he writes and produces television, he writes and producesmovies, he writes and produces animation. He does material like Batman: Hush and A Superman for all Seasons that mine heroes’ classic mythos for neglected gems.

From his days at Columbia University film school, where he studied with the likes of Paul Schrader (writer of Taxi Driver and writer/director of American Gigolo and Affliction ) and Milos Forman (director of Amadeus and One Flew Over the Cuckoo’sNest ), to his work in Hollywood with people like Arnold Schwarzenegger and Michael J.Fox, to his much-lauded run as a supervising producer and writer on Smallville, to his

time as a writer/producer on Lost, to his current gig of Co-executive Producer and writer of Heroes, Jeph has worked constantly since leaving film school.The fact that in addition to his screen work, his comics work, both in quality and

quantity, rivals that of anyone who has ever worked in the industry is simply astonish-ing. The X-Men, The Avengers, Superman for All Seasons, Spider-Man: Blue , the sales record-setting Batman: Hush,the deeply personal Fallen Son: The Death of Captain America, and his latest much-anticipated series, Ultimates and The Hulk, are just part of his comics resume. Tim Sale, Jim Lee, Ed McGuinness and Michael Turner are just some of the superstar artists he has been paired with. Jeph has won four Eisner Awards and five Wizard Fan Awards.

Jeph has devised a career for himself where he has a variety of options in a variety of media, which for a working writer is the best of all possible worlds. Here, he speaks, among other things, about his role in and his feelings about the runaway success that is Heroes. —DF

DANNY FINGEROTH: Jeph, do you or Tim Kring (or anyoneelse) come to a writers’ meeting at the beginning of a seasonwith an agenda/outline for that season? JEPH LOEB: We have a pretty good idea where we are goingfor the next three seasons. Obviously, year three is clearer thanfour, etc. But, as we’re doing this interview, only the fifthepisode of year two has aired and we’re working on episode17. So the lead-time is pretty fantastic. The biggest changethis year was Kring’s idea of incorporating the volumes into aseason. So now the viewer isn’t waiting for 23 episodes tofind out who killed Hiro’s Dad. It will all be cleared up and

dealt with by Episode 11. The next volume begins with 12and ends with 18. The last pod—which we are talking aboutnow, is 19-24. More like arcs in comics that become trades.It’s working great.

DF: Was there a bible for the series before you started writing it, or did the bible come about as you were writing? JL: There were lots of notes and pages of meetings—andthat all got incorporated in a bible that is constantly beingupdated. The truth is that the folks at Heroes Wiki(http://heroeswiki.com/Main_Page) are about as good a

source as we are!

DF: Tim seems to see Heroes as his vehicle to influencethe world in a positive way. Do you (and the show’s other writers) share that outlook and sense of purpose? Does it spill over to the actors?

JL: Absolutely. It’s part of the job. Kring has an agenda tomake a difference—both politically and environmentally—and we pepper that in very carefully to what we’re trying toaccomplish. It makes for a kinder atmosphere—and hopefullya better world.

LOEB IS A MANYSPLENDORED THING

Jeph Loeb interviewed by Danny Fingeroth, editor of Write Now! magazineConducted via e-mail, October 29, 2008

Copyedited by Danny Fingeroth, Robert Greenberger, and Jeph Loeb

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The cover to Hulk #1, written by Jeph.The art is by Ed McGuinness.

The new series features an energetic takeon the incredible one, complete with

a red version of the character.[©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]


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DF: You’reCo-executive

Producer aswell as awriter onHeroes. What exactly is aCo-ExecutiveProducer, at least as far asHeroes isconcerned?

JL: The same

thing aseverybodyelse—I workto make thebest show wecan. Thatstarts with an

idea, then the break, the outline, the script, the produc-tion meetings, the casting, the production itself, postwith music and f/x and finally delivery. Kring has set upa system where while everyone works on every script,

the name of record (the credit) takes it through everystep of the way. It’s an enormous responsibility—but aterrific chance to work your craft.

DF: Do you consider yourself a Hollywood writer who

does comics, or a comics writer doing work inHollywood, or something else altogether?

JL: I consider myself a storyteller. My dad was a stock-broker for 35 years, never sold a story in his life, but hewas a storyteller. So was my son, Sam. It’s what we doand folks seem to like it.

DF: In a comic, the final product, even with input fromeditor and artist, is pretty much what the writer handsin. Is it frustrating at all to go through the TV series group writing process? JL: Well, I’d argue that for most writers, the process incomics is very hands off . They don’t have the

relationship with the artist or editor that I strive for,largely because most comics need to just get done. Thedeadline kills the creativity. It’s part of the reality ofcomics. But, it’s also why there are so many bad comics.Sorry, minor rant there. Television needs the writer’sroom. Particularly at Heroes. It’s just such a group effort,I can’t see it any other way. The greatest.

DF: One “problem” the X-Men comics had to deal withis the proliferation of mutants, so that being a mutant stopped being special. Do you have to, or think you

might at some point have to, deal with a similar issuewith Heroes? JL: Well, if we had 40 years of Heroes I might agree. Ha!Talk to me after Season 5. Besides, we kill them almostas quickly as we introduce them too! [laughs]

DF: You are, needless to say, extremely disciplined, asevidenced by all the stuff you write. Any tips for writerswho may not be so blessed with time and energy man-agement skills?

8

Hayden Panettiere was one of Heroes’ breakout stars, playing Claire, the inde- structible cheerleader. The catchphrase, “Save the cheerleader, save the world,”

helped propel the series into the forefront of pop culture. In the new season, she’s once more a cheerleader, now in California, and still gaining new under-

standing of how her amazing abilities work.[©2008 Universal Studios. All rights reserved.]

Marvel’s Ultimates, volume 3, features theUltimate universe version of the Avengers, and is written

by Jeph, with art by Joe Madureira.[©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]


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JL: Please. I’m the worst. Call Geoff Johns. He’s the onlyone I’ve ever met who can come to the office, sit down,say he’s writing this much today and do just that. Me? I

just wait until the last minute and flush it out of me!Gah! That sounds awful!

DF: What keeps you writing comics? I would imagineyou could make more money with your time if you, say, got involved with another TV series or a feature film. Or am I wrong about that?

JL: Absolutely a ton more money in TV and film. But Ido comics out of love and it’s fun. It doesn’t take nearlyas long. It can’t—given how much money I make in TVand the responsibility there. But, I’m very, very lucky that

[Publisher] Dan Buckley and [Editor-in-Chief] JoeQuesada at Marvel put up with my other career. It’s whyputting me on a monthly book isn’t such a good idea,and why I work with guys who are so slow—it works inmy favor. Now, with Hulk, we’re going to test the sys-tem because that has to be monthly. I guess... [laughs]

DF: You manage to work with a lot of different peopleand some reputedly difficult personalities (I’m talking about in comics here), yet get along well with just about all of them. What’s the secret to that?

JL: I treat everybody with respect (or try to). If you arehired to do a job, then do it. I will cheerlead for mycrews/teams because I believe in them. In comics, theworst stuff I’ve done is when I don’t know the artists—fill-ins in particular which is why I won’t do them any-more. I believe in the talented people we’ve assembled.And I’m lucky to have Richard Starkings and Comicraftwith me as my lettering and design team from thebeginning—they save my ass about every day. Thanks,Rich!

DF: How isworking onHeroes similar

to working ona big comicscrossover story? How is it different?

JL: It’s notreally similar.Big crossoversare still tryingto get themonthly book

to follow asingle plot.Heroes has atany given timesix-to-eight stories going. Eventually they will collide, butat first it’s mosaic storytelling. I like the differences.

DF: If you had to give up comics writing or TV writing,which would it be? Why?

JL: I don’t know... what would I be doing instead? If theanswer is sleeping then... see ya!!

DF: Is there any type of writing (subject, medium, genre,etc.) that you’d like to try that you’ve never done?

JL: There’s a novel in me somewhere... a play... but I’dreally have to walk away from comics and movies andtelevision to have that kind of commitment. Someday.I’m not cooked yet.

DF: Any inside info you can give about the HeroesGraphic Novel?

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Masi Oka portrays Heroes’ Hiro Nakamura, a fan of American comic books and science fiction, who embraces his newfound powers. Hiro recognizes that his

power comes with responsibility, and that awareness inspires his actions.[©2008 Universal Studios. All rights reserved.]


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JL: Well, that it’s not a graphic novel! I’ve tried to getthis clarified, but the media just took off with it. It’s acollection of the stories that were done online. Butthey’ve been all digitally remastered by Aspen (Mike

Turner’s company) and the book has covers by Jim Leeand Alex Ross. It’s like 400 pages long. I’ve seen anunbound copy and while I didn’t have a great deal to dowith it, I’m really proud of the work. Aron Coleite andJoe Pokaski really ran that show—and with JG and Richat Comicraft, Aspen, WildStorm, Nanci Quesada andChuck Kim—it all came together pretty sweet.

DF: Heroes has a very elaborate web presence. Can youdiscuss the overall web strategy for the series a little?

JL: It’s tied together from Day One. Tim and JesseAlexander hatched it and we’ve all tried to keep up withit. Since online material is a flashpoint for the WGA[Writers Guild of America] right now (this interview isbeing done on the eve of what might be a writer’sstrike), it’s hard to be very positive about the work sinceit is so fantastic... but it pays very little or nothing at all.I brought Mark Warshaw over from Smallville and heruns transmedia [the usage of material in a variety ofoutlets] initiative. It’s an enormous undertaking—every-thing from action figures to Christmas ornaments tonovels to the online experience, that falls now to Mark.

DF: I believe you share a writing studio with a couple of other writers. While it’s common for artists to share a studio, writers are generally more “loner” types. Howdid you end up in a studio situation, and how do youthink it benefits your work?

JL: Empath? It’s a treehouse. A magic clubhouse. It’skind of like Doc Strange’s Sanctum Sanctorum. You can’treally see it unless you’re “one of the few.” It’s me,Geoff Johns, and Allan Heinberg. Brian K. Vaughn has aJr. Empath card to come by anytime. Seriously, we justgo there and knock around ideas. Writing alone sucks.

So it helps to have great heads to knock around your stupid ideas. Unfortunately, Geoff’s got a movie, Allan ison Grey’s Anatomy and I’ve got Heroes, so we don’t seeeach other as much as we did. But, we’re still working toget Clea free from the Nameless Ones, don’t you worry!

DF: You’ve managed to channel the grief from the lossof your son into inspirational, creative work. Is there

anything you can say to people going through their ownloss or grief, especially anyone trying to be creative and inspired through an intensely trying time?

JL: Yikes... I’m not the person to ask about that. It’s anentirely personal experience for everyone. I miss Sammore every day. So... I do my best to incorporate our love for each other in my day-to-day. It’s never going toget better. The trick is making it less worse.

DF: Anything else you’d like to say about Heroes or writing?

JL: Just that I’m very lucky to have an audience for my

stories. I’ve never taken that for granted. I love what Ido—if I had to work in an office and hope somedaythat I got a window to look out... I’d kill myself... justBLAMMO.

DF: Anything you want to plug? JL: Some really fun comics are coming. Joe Madureiraand Chris Lichtner’s work on Ultimates is astonishing.Ed McGuinness is killing on the Hulk, and when we getdone with Ultimatum, well, it’ll be pretty wild what’shappened to the Ultimate Universe. I still can’t believe

they’re going to let us to do it! So much fun! Over onthe other side, I wrote the “fall finale” of Heroes,Episode 11—that ties it all up just before Christmas. It’sa total “you can’t do that on television” episode andI’m very proud of the work the team did and that AllanArkush, the director, did on the show. It’s somethingfolks will talk about for a while.

Heroes, as if we had to tell you, airs Monday nights onNBC, and is also viewable on line at http://www.nbc.com/Heroes/video/episodes.shtml

Danny Fingeroth is editor-in-chief ofTwoMorrows’ Write Now! magazine, author ofSuperman on the Couch, and co-author of How toCreate ComicsFrom Script toPrint. He wasGroup Editor ofMarvel’s Spider-Man line andhas written

numerouscomics series,includingDarkhawk andDeadly Foesof Spider-Man. He teach-es comics writ-ing at New YorkUniversity andThe New School.

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Stan Lee made one of his famous cameos in theHeroes episode, “Unexpected.”

[©2008 Universal Studios. All rights reserved.]


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11

THE 1984 X-MEN MOVIETHAT

MIGHT

HAVEBEEN

by Roy Thomas,editor of Alter Ego magazine

AN “X”-RATED MOVIE

Yep, that’s right. The X-Men screenplayGerry Conway and I wrote in 1984 for what could’ve become a major Hollywoodmovie a decade-and-a-half before the 2000big-budget blockbuster might easily have beenrated “X” for: extraordinary… exciting…exuberant… excessive… exaggerated…exasperating… exceptional… expressive…explosive…

Execrable? We hope not.And, finally… exterminated . ’Cause, like

the vast majority of screenplays written—even purchased , as this one was—by motionpicture producers, it never got made.

Between 1981 and 1985, Gerry and I co-wrote eight screenplays for a variety ofproduction companies and studios. Only twoof those were filmed in any form: the animatedFire and Ice (1982), produced by Ralph Bakshiand Frank Frazetta—and Conan the Destroyer (1983), starring Arnold Schwarzenegger andGrace Jones, for which we scripted the first

five drafts and received “Story by” screencredit. We two veteran comic book writers/editors found the experience (another “X”!)of writing an X-Men script to be all the aboveadjectives, at one time or another… all over aperiod of a few months in 1984. Still, as asnapshot of what it was like, in the mid-1980s, to be working on the screenplay of apotential studio movie at a time after most ofthe Christopher Reeve Superman films, butbefore Tim Burton took on Batman—and inan era when Marvel had had zero success ingetting any of its properties transmuted to the bigscreen—we thought you might enjoy listening in onGerry’s and my recent phone conversation. You can readmore about our X-Men screenplay in Alter Ego #58. Now:

X-MEN: A BARE-BONES SUMMARYOF THE 1984 SCREENPLAYby Gerry Conway & Roy Thomas

A ray of light from a pulsating green crystal rips avast trench in the Pacific Ocean floor, causing tidal

waves, destruction—and the birth of a new island.Meanwhile, as Prof. Charles Xavier (who is not wheel-chair-bound in this film) is being interviewed on TV aboutthe coming emergence of a new, special-powered race,young teenager Kitty Pryde suddenly discovers she isone of those mutants—when she angrily kicks the TV andher foot “phases” through the screen without harmingit. Her friend Bernie is amazed.

In the Pentagon, Presidential scientific advisor Dr.Danielle Cross persuades Xavier to gather a team ofmutants to investigate the menace which the recent

Top: Gerry Conway and Roy Thomas in the 1970s. Above: The entirerun of Neal Adams-drawn X-Men issues from 1969-70 was reprinted in

the 6th volume of the Marvel Masterworks: X-Men series. Here’s anearly-’80s poster by Mr. A. of the “New X-Men.”

[©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]


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catastrophic events may pose to mankind. They also meetcorporate tycoon Marcus Stonewell and his beautifuldaughter Carmilla, who disagree with Xavier’s theoryabout a new race. Moments later, TV all over the globeis interrupted by the image of a jewel-like sphere, an“amorphous entity made up of faces, faces, FACES”—this is Proteus, an entity which declares the island willexpand over the next ten days into a new continent,

called Pangaea, which will take over theplanet in the name of “homo superior,” thenext stage of evolution... operating fromEaster Island. (At present, Proteus is siphon-ing the energy of a captured albino mutantnamed Nickelby, but when he is drained, a

new source of living power will be needed.)That night, Carmilla turns her date,Harry, over to her father—whose jaws openshark-like to close over the young man’sface. Stonewell is energized by the life forceof his victim, but Carmilla does not seemto have any “special talents” and seemsinnocent of wrongdoing.

Xavier gathers American Scott Summers (“Cyclops”), Canadian Logan(“Wolverine”), German Kurt Wagner (“Nightcrawler”), Russian Peter Rasputin(“Colossus”), pretty Tokyo pop icon YoshiAkia (“Circe”), and Kenyan “goddess”

Ororo (“Storm”). (Yoshi can change objects into differentstates—as she reveals when she turns a glass of water into granite.)

Xavier has only two days to train them, at a brown-stone in Manhattan. Kitty manages to become an unofficial“X-Man.” Suspecting Stonewell (whose mind he couldnot telepathically penetrate) of being linked to Proteus,Xavier sends the youths to infiltrate Stonewell Industries.

12

Here we’ve juxtaposed the opening scene of the7/20/84 “Revised 1st Draft” of their screenplay

for X-Men with a great piece of art by Brent Anderson & Terry Austin. This was the wrap-

around cover of George Olshevsky’s ambitious1981 Marvel Comics Index, Vol. 1, No. 9A.[Art ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.;

screenplay ©2008 Gerry Conway & Roy Thomas.]


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The X-Men hijack the Master Matrix, a device being shippedto Easter Island to control the chain reaction begun inthe film’s initial scene… and the exuberant X-Men thencelebrate with a cookout which aids in their bonding.

The malcontent loner Wolverine, however, leavesthe group… and is soon seduced by Carmilla into workingfor her father. He agrees to help Stonewell regain theMaster Matrix, as long as no one is harmed. He leads a

team of Proteus agents which defeat several X-Men andblow up the brownstone, carrying off the Master Matrix(with Xavier a prisoner inside it). Kitty saves Storm frombeing killed in the blast.

On Day Nine, a new and gigantic stone headappears on Easter Island. The X-Men (minus Colossus,who was injured in an earlier incident) and DanielleCross again invade Stonewell Industries and steal amentally-controlled jet called Blackbird. They head for Easter Island as tremendous storms rage. Green beamsflash from the giant head, but Storm brings the jet to asafe landing and holds the local weather in check so the

other X-Men can operate.Nickelby finally collapses within the Master Matrix

and is “devoured” by Stonewell, who takes his placewithin it. Storming the citadel, the X-Men battle Stonewell’sright-hand man Krueger and other agents. Wolverinelearns that Carmilla is as much an evil mutant as her father, and the two lock in deadly combat—till Loganpushes her out of the huge head through its yawningnostril! Xavier gets free, but is zapped by the Matrix.

As a second Blackbird-style jet arrives bearingDanielle, Kitty, Bernie, and a recovered Colossus, the

latter protects the other X-Men from laser fire—longenough for Cyclops to overcome Proteus’ green beamwith his own optic powers. Cyclops’ blast then smashesthe stone head and its control room.

Stonewell, however, has used Proteus to transformhimself into a half-crystal entity of tremendous power.Kitty uses her phasing abilities to tickle Stonewell, disruptinghis beam long enough for Circe to turn the crystal to ice.Wolverine shows up and strikes the frozen crystal withhis Adamantium claws, causingan explosion that destroys

Stonewell. Xavier guidesCyclops in using his eye-beams to seal the fault on theocean floor and bring an endto the chaos. The X-Men—including Wolverine—will staytogether as a team.

(Now, Roy and Gerry discussthe evolution of the screen-play, in these excerpts fromAlter Ego #58:)

ROY THOMAS: Do you knowhow we first got in touch withthe people for whom we did the film? Was it [our agent]Dan Ostroff who would’velined it up for us?GERRY CONWAY: Yeah, itwas Dan. As I recall, it wasright after our Conan script

went into production. And he got the call, or he wasnegotiating with or talking to people at Orion, and our names came up. Unfortunately, they didn’t want to payour rates, so we made a sweetheart deal with them thatturned out not to be as much of a sweetheart deal aswe’d hoped. [mutual laughter ]

THOMAS: But at least we got paid... something. [mutual

laughter] Do you recall if Michael Hirsh’s company wasalready called Nelvana by that time?CONWAY: Yeah, I’m pretty sure it was. He had thatanimation company up in Canada.

THOMAS: I had heard of him because he’d co-written abook about Canadian comics, and Nelvana was aCanadian comic book character as well as an authentic folk legend. I only recently remembered the name of theother person involved in our plotting. Or, more accurately,I accidentally ran across the name on the back of another card in my Rolodex file: Jane Kagen. So was it at her

house that we had the meetings?CONWAY: No, I think it was the partner’s house—theattorney. Remember there were three of them? He had ahouse in Santa Monica where we met, and I guess shewas in Malibu.

THOMAS: I still have no memory of the attorney. Wedon’t have photos, so I don’t have any picture in mymind of any of them… and probably vice versa. Do youknow what their arrangement with Orion was?CONWAY: I think they’d sold the project to Orion, or

had some kind of an option on it. And we were their lastchance to get it off the ground, as I recall.

THOMAS: Why were we their last chance?CONWAY: Because they had run through all their devel-opment money.

THOMAS: [laughs] So maybe we weren’t the first peopleto try writing that X-Men movie for them? Well, if not

the first choice—the last choice, anyway.

James Marsden as Scott Summers/Cyclops

and Hugh Jackman as Logan/Wolverine, in scenes from X-Men 2 —or did they mostly just call that one X2? We haven’t yet seenthe third movie, but trust it was the special-

effects extravaganza that the first two were—with a convoluted plot that would do our

ol’ buddy Chris Claremont proud![Photos: Kerry Hayes/TM & ©2008 20th Century-Fox. Allrights reserved. X-Men character likenesses TM & ©2008

Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.]

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This was while our first draft of the second Conan moviewas still floating around Hollywood, and producerswere seeing that script and asking us why Dino[DeLaurentiis] didn’t make the movie based on our script instead of the 18th draft written by Stanley Mann—and we couldn’t answer them, because we verymuch agreed with them.CONWAY: Even Arnold [Schwarzenegger] asked us that.

THOMAS: Right. I remember him saying, “I liked your script da best!” at the party at Dino’s gourmet fast-food restaurant in Beverly Hills. Well, Arnold was a politician, even then. [laughs]CONWAY: He was that.

THOMAS: [laughs] I know we finished the X-Men script around the time Orion started having its real financial problems, with which I’m not too familiar. And Orion sank—maybe not without a trace, but it sank soonthereafter. Was that given as the problem, or was it just

they didn’t like our script or the approach or something?Do you recall?CONWAY: I think Orion just sort-of faded out. I thinkthey had other things on their mind, and they knew [bythat time] they couldn’t finance a film as expensive asthis one would have been.

THOMAS: I hadn’t re-read the full X-Men screenplay inyears. I keep wondering whether Michael and Jane had some idea already in mind for that particular storybefore we started. Because there are things in there,

when I started looking over it, that don’t read like theapproach we’d have come up with ourselves.CONWAY: Right. As I recall, we went through like acouple of drafts of the outline, maybe three, in which westarted out with what we wanted to do; and then, as wewere developing it, we would get pushed in differentdirections.

THOMAS: And they would tell us what they would letus do.CONWAY: Yeah, pretty much. And I think we got prob-

ably more in it than not, but it certainlywasn’t as representative as, say, the firstConan script was of what we would havewanted to do with a script like that. Iknow we got some stuff in that we werepretty happy about. I’ve always been par-ticularly fond of the Easter Island scenes,and where I guess Wolverine comes out ofthe nose of one of the giant heads.

THOMAS: It was actually the villainess,Carmilla, who came out the nose. But that

was my favorite scene, too! [laughs]Which says something about us, I guess,when the Kon-Tiki statue blowing its nosewas our favorite scene!

The word “mutants” doesn’t appear anywhere in the script. “Mutie” is used once, but it’s almost as if we were avoid-ing the word “mutant,” and I don’t recallthat. It seems rather strange to have used “mutie” and not “mutant.”

CONWAY: Yeah, it is. I don’t recall what the reasoningwas—if there was, in fact, any reasoning. It might havebeen that the producers felt “mutant” had negative con-notations, that they didn’t want to associate it with their super-heroes, so that’s possible. But I don’t know howwe could have avoided it. [laughs]

THOMAS: We kept using terms like “extraordinary

powers,” but the word “mutants” is entirely absent.Another thing I can’t imagine was our idea is the notionthat Xavier is not wheelchair-bound.CONWAY: Yeah, I don’t think that was ours.

THOMAS: Maybe they decided a wheelchair was—I don’t know—unglamorous. Bad decision.CONWAY: They hired us for our expertise and thenproceeded to ignore it.

THOMAS: Dino did the same thing on Conan , as youknow. He didn’t want our ideas, and he had none of his

own. [laughs] He just wanted to watch soccer, so wehad to sit there with him watching TV in his cabaña at the Beverly Hills Hotel till things got dull in the game,and then he would talk to us for a few minutes. Crazyway to make a movie.CONWAY: I remember we had bitter fights with MichaelHirsh because he would take our outlines and give themto his animation story editors to give notes on, and wewere like, “What are you doing?” First of all, theyweren’t even American animators. [mutual laughter ]

THOMAS: They were Canadian animators, right?CONWAY: They were the second team, you know?[laughs] It’s like, “What is that about?” And I know,with Michael Hirsh, there was a lot of hostility after thefirst few meetings.

THOMAS: Even if these things start off well, they often go badly later. But it was such a long time ago that Idon’t recall all the fights. They’re par for the course,anyway. I remember a sign I drove by for years outside some production company in L.A.: “In love and film,

Charles Xavier and his X-Men in the second film. Patrick Stewart (onceCaptain Picard, of course) as Professor X; Famke Janssen as Jean Grey; James

Marsden as Cyclops; Halle Berry as Storm… is there anybody we missed?

[Photos: Kerry Hayes/TM & ©2008 20th Century-Fox. All rights reserved.X-Men character likenesses TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. All rights reserved.]

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everything is a fight!” I recently sent Michael an e-mailabout this project for Alter Ego , but he never responded, so I presumed he didn’t want to talk about it, and that’shis right.

Along with the two drafts of the screenplay, I ranacross a copy of our outline, written in January ’84. It’svery detailed—116 pages long. It starts out with a

scrimmage football game between the mutants.CONWAY: You mean, the “extraordinary people.”[mutual chuckling ] Yeah, I remember that.

THOMAS: Oddly enough, in the treatment Professor X is in a wheelchair—so I guess we were still being allowed to follow our own best instincts at that point.Do you remember anything else about the treatment?CONWAY: Not really. Most of my memories about theproject were around the experiences of dealing with thepeople, and like the time we spent an entire day rewriting

a script and then I accidentally pulledthe plug on the computer.

THOMAS: Oh, was that on this script?CONWAY: I think on that outline.[mutual laughter ] The whole thing just vanished into the ether. Fromthat time on, I’ve had the compulsion

to save every three or four minutes.

THOMAS: I don’t recall much about the process of deciding which X-Mento use. Obviously, the most popular of the “new X-Men” were primarily going to be the group, including Kitty Pryde, who was relativelynew then.CONWAY: I know we wanted toput in Colossus, because I think we

wanted, as much as possible, tohave an international feel to theteam. That was, as much as any-

thing else, motivation in picking some of the characters.

THOMAS: We left out Marvel Girl, or Jean Grey. Shedidn’t add that much, and we didn’t want to get intothe whole Phoenix thing.CONWAY: Right. Or had Phoenix even been done atthat time?

THOMAS: I’m not even sure, without checking. Thiswas 1984. The date is on the screenplays, or I wouldn’t have been sure about that. Mostly, we used the newX-Men, including Cyclops. I don’t think we ever reallyconsidered using The Angel or The Beast or Iceman.CONWAY: No, I don’t think so. I think the characters wepicked were also ones we thought could be done moreeasily. Colossus would basically have been some kind ofmake-up and prosthetic. And Kitty appearing and disap-pearing was pretty easy.

15

Okay, so it’s a crude joke. But Gerry and Roy still love the scene of Carmilla (whowas named after Sheridan le Fanu’s female vampire in his 1871 pre- Dracula novella

of that name) spewed out through the left nostril of the mammoth new head onEaster Island. At top of page is artist Mark Glidden’s rapturous rendition of same—

juxtaposed with the page of the lads’ screenplay on which the scene occurs.

[Art ©2008 Mark Glidden; screenplay ©2008 Gerry Conway & Roy Thomas; X-Men TM & ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.]


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THOMAS: Yeah. It must’ve been the producers’ reasoning that led to the Japanese girl who was suddenly shoe-horned into the group.CONWAY: Yeah, the international thing. They figured,maybe Japan would be a big market for the film, so let’sput a Japanese person in.

THOMAS: But they didn’t want Sunfire, who was

already around.CONWAY: I don’t know what the deal was, but [thefemale Japanese mutant] was certainly in response tothat. You know, I think it’s safe to say that if there’sanything in the script that is a false note, [Roy laughs]it wasn’t you and I.

THOMAS: Maybe we did a few questionable things onour own—but if there’s something in there that seems so really off that you think, “How could anybody whoever wrote The X-Men do this?” it’s probably because it was not the people who wrote the X-Men screenplay

that insisted on it being in there.CONWAY: Exactly.

THOMAS: We ended up calling the Japanesemutant girl “Circe,” which is kind-of a strangename for a Japanese. But it fit with The X-Men.Of course, we had Storm, too. Probably “Proteus”was our name for the group that wanted to rulethe world. Do you know why we wouldn’t have gravitated, say, toward Magneto as the movies did a few years ago?

CONWAY: Again, it may be related to why theword “mutant” doesn’t appear in the script.Magneto’s big thing was The Brotherhood of Evil Mutants, you know. [laughs] And, if I remember rightly in terms of the new X-Men, he wasn’t asbig a part of it at this point. He had been more ofa first generation X-Men villain.

THOMAS: I was amazed to see scenes of thevillains’ jaws opening up like a shark’s. I had remembered them as more like psychic vampires,

but this is really a bit bloodier… even though it was supposed to be a “family” film!CONWAY: Yeah, although we probably startedout one way, [Roy chuckles] but I think that theywanted—again, this is the development process,as you know. You start out with the right ideas,and then people have their own.

THOMAS: And the same with Danielle, thenon-mutant woman, who I guess was there tobe Xavier’s love interest.CONWAY: Right, somebody that normal people

could identify with. I think the name “Danielle”probably came from you. [laughs]

THOMAS: Maybe, though I never think of “Dann”as being close to “Danielle” [my wife’s name].Let’s see, we were talking about arguments we had with the producers. I remember we put in a linethat was used humorously when Xavier hypno-tizes someone: “These are not the droids youwant.” That was a quote from Obi-Wan Kenobi

when he mesmerized someone in Star Wars. MichaelHirsh kept expressing a fear that George Lucas wouldn’t like our having a line from Star Wars in our movie.[chuckles] The funny thing is that now, more than twen-ty years later, a lot of people would still recognize that line, I think, if you did it the right way. And certainly in1984 they would have.

I remember Michael wanted a whole mess of changes

in the rewrite, and he kept pushing to take out that particular line. I recall telling him finally: “Hey, if youreally want us to work hard and get this done on short notice—let us leave the line in.” So they kind-of backed off on it. But it probably would have come out sooner or later, somewhere along the line.CONWAY: Yeah, after they fired us.

THOMAS: After they fired us and got Stanley Mann into do the next five drafts. [mutual laughter] That great scene near the beginning of the script of a surfer willinglyriding the tidal wave, or tsunami, to his own death—

that was yours, wasn’t it? Because you usually started our screenplays… you’d write the first few pages.

The last time Roy T. worked on an X-Men comic, he got a chance to script his 1969 co-creation Sunfire—even if the Japanese mutant had been temporarily co-opted by the N’Garai. Repro’d from a photocopy

of the original Karl Waller art, with Roy’s balloon placements, fromthe 2000 weekly limited series X-Men: Black Sun #3. Plot by Chris

Claremont. [©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]


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CONWAY: Yeah, and I think that one probably was a liftfrom Lucifer’s Hammer by Larry Niven and JerryPournelle. There is a bit in their novel where, after thepath of the meteor hits the Earth, I guess in the middleof the ocean, there’s this surfer who ends up surfing—and I always loved this and I always wished that, of allthe meteor movies, they had made Lucifer’s Hammer —but this guy is surfing a tsunami wave into the middle ofL.A. and ends up smashing into like the TransamericaBuilding. [laughs] But it’s like the best ride of his life!

THOMAS: After Orion opted out, do you recall if they[the producers] were still trying to shop the project around anywhere else, or was it pretty well dead in thewater at that point?CONWAY: They probably did try to shop it around, butwe were not connected with it by that point. I guess it’ssomething they’d invested some of their own money in,so they wanted to try to get it back and maybe getsomebody else to pick up this script.

THOMAS: Do you remember anything else you’d like toadd?CONWAY: Well, I remember that we signed on to doone draft, our first draft—remember, we were gettinglike half our rate. We got $40,000 for that job, and our regular rate at that point was like $75,000. And we saidwe’d only do it if all we had to do was a first draft—nooutlines, and no rewrites. So we ended up doing threeoutlines [Roy laughs] and two drafts. [NOTE: While thisinterview was being edited, I ran across a deal memofrom that period which called for a treatment and first-

draft screenplay… so it looks as if that “no-outline”notion died an early death. There’s no mention of arewrite of the first draft, however. —Roy.]

THOMAS: I have copies of an outline, the first draft,and the rewrite, so we did a lot more than we were paid for. But that’s just us. [laughs] It’s like the old jokeabout the screenwriter who tells a producer: “I’ll writethe movie for free… but I want $5000 a meeting.”He’d come out way ahead!CONWAY: Yeah, it’s taught me a lesson: never do

anything for love. It always turns out youdon’t get the love and then you don’t get themoney, either. [mutual laughter ]

THOMAS: I guess that’s why they do paydecent money to writers, to some extent. Imean, to you and me—well, okay, so wewrote that script for a “lousy” $40,000. Thereare people who’d kill to write something for that kind of money. [mutual laughter]Including us, a year earlier. But still, by that time, we had a higher rate, so we wanted it.CONWAY: Yeah, we basically took a hitbecause they assured us they were going totreat us with respect, in effect. And, in fact,

they treated us with enormous disrespect.[laughs]

THOMAS: Sure! Because, hey—we were writing for half our rate! [mutual laughter]CONWAY: Yeah. They didn’t respect us because wedidn’t hold out for our price.

THOMAS: I think the stuff about the financial deal and all of it—I think that’s at least as interesting as the other stuff. Dr. Johnson was right. He said anybody who

writes for anything but money is a damn fool. [laughs]Who would write a second movie or TV script for thelove of it? A first one, yeah, but not a second.CONWAY: Of course, if you’re going to do it for love,you want to get love out of it, you know? But we didn’tget that.

THOMAS: No, not on that project. It’s funny, I remember it as not being real pleasant—I just don’t remember theunpleasantness as vividly as you do. We’d had projectsthat were more fun, where we felt a bit more supported, perhaps, than that one.CONWAY: Well, for all the ups and downs, at least itwas a pleasant experience in certain ways, just becausewe were kept involved for a long time.

Roy Thomas is the editor of TwoMorrows’ Alter Egomagazine and is theauthor of The All-Star Companion,Volumes 1-3, aswell as other booksexamining comicshistory. He began his

career in comics asStan Lee’s right-handman at MarvelComics in 1965,becoming their star writer in the 1970s,and eventuallyeditor-in-chief ofthe company. He stillwrites numerouscomics today.

17

Mark Glidden’s slight re-conception of Ororo,based on a reading of the screenplay.

[Art ©2008 Mark Glidden; Storm TM & ©2008 MarvelCharacters, Inc.]


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JACK KIRBY INTINSELTOWN

by John Morrow, editor of The Jack Kirby Collector magazine

Jack Kirby (1917-1994) is known as the “King” of comics due to his amazingoutput during a 50-year career as a comic book artist. He’s the creator or co-creator of Captain America, the Boy Commandos, Romance comics, Kid Gangcomics, the Marvel Comics Universe (including the Fantastic Four, X-Men, Hulk,Thor, Silver Surfer, and more), the New Gods, and many others. But he beganhis career in the 1930s, working on Popeye and Betty Boop cartoons, and after leaving the comics field in 1978, he returned to a career in animation, workingon such TV series as Thundarr the Barbarian and Super Friends. But Kirby also

had numerous opportunities to work on Hollywood-related projects over the years. Here’s just a few examples ofthe impact he had on the entertainment industry.

18

Kirby created the Silver Surfer for Marvel Comics inthe 1960s, and his work on the 1977 Silver Surfer Graphic Novel (below) was the springboard for a

proposed 1970s Surfer film. It was never made, but the character finally hit the

big screens in 2007’s FantasticFour: Rise of the Silver Surfer.

[©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc.]


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19

Top: Kirby drew literallythousands of animation

concepts pieces from1978-1985 for Ruby-

Spears Productions and

other studios, but his onebig hit was Thundarr theBarbarian, shown here in

a Kirby battle scene.

Right: Kirby co-created the Hulk at Marvel in the

1960s, and even had acameo as a police sketchart in one episode of the

1970s live-action TV series starting Lou

Ferrigno. The character is slated for a new big budget film in 2009.

[Thundarr TM & ©2008 Ruby- Spears. Hulk TM & ©2008 Marvel

Characters, Inc.]


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20

Above: Jack got to use his penchant for

science-fiction during his newspaper strip adaptation of Disney’s 1978 filmThe Black Hole (shown above).

Left: Marvel Comics attempted acomics adaptation of the 1960s hit TV

series The Prisoner, commissioning Kirby to draw the first issue. But the

comic was never published.

[Black Hole TM & ©2008 Walt Disney Productions.Prisoner TM & ©2008 ITV.]

Next page, top and center: Kirby

concept boards for never-produced animated series of Hawkman and

The Phantom.

Next page, bottom: In 1978,DePatie-Freleng produced a well-

remembered Fantastic Four animated series, replacing the Human Torch with

Herbie the Robot. Kirby drew the storyboards for many of the episodes,

such as the one here, guest-starring Magneto, another character who

(along with the Fantastic Four) Kirby

co-created in the 1960s.

Following page: Kirbyalso produced an adaptation of the

film 2001: A Space Odyssey for MarvelComics in the 1970s, followed by a

related 2001 comic book series.

[Hawkman TM & ©2008 DC Comics. Phantom TM& ©2008 King Features. Fantastic Four, Magneto

TM & ©2008 Marvel Characters, Inc. 2001: A SpaceOdyssey TM & ©2008 Turner Entertainment.]


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Support the Jack Kirby Museum: www.kirbymuseum.org

John Morrow is publisher of TwoMorrows Publishing, and editor of their JackKirby Collector magazine, which began as a 16-page hand-xeroxed newsletter, andhas now morphed into an internationally-distributed tabloid-size magazine, celebratingthe life and career of the “King” of comics. The magazine’s 50th issue, which wasproduced as a book for the anniversary, is entitled Kirby Five-Oh!, and documentsthe Best Of Everything from Kirby’s 50-year career in comics; it’s now shipping.

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Imagine that youare in the year 1966 and someoneasked you who theJoker was. Whether you were a comicsfan or not, theimage you wouldprobably come up

with is that of actor Cesar Romero,disguised in agreen wig andwhiteface makeup,laughing merrily ashe concocts a newway to trick hisenemies, Batmanand Robin, on oneof America’s most

popular newtelevision series.Through theBatman televisionseries of the mid-1960s, the idea of

“camp” humor went mainstream. The show madeaffectionate but condescending fun of super-hero comicsthrough deadpan presentations of absurd dialogue andludicrous situations.

The Joker turned up on the show on a regular basis,and seemed a rather likable arch criminal. Just let him

rob banks and he’d be happy. Oh, sure, he wanted tokill Batman and Robin, but nobody else, and he never succeeded in harming anyone. But was he really anyone’sfavorite villain on the show? Weren’t Frank Gorshin’sgiggling Riddler and Burgess Meredith’s quackingPenguin both funnier and nastier? The TV show Joker was a rather pleasant chap who came in third comparedto those two.

The Joker wasn’t always like that, however. Whenhe made his debut, in the very first issue of Batmanin 1940, the Joker was not funny at all. He was a cold-

blooded serial killer who, when readers first saw him,was not even smiling. This grim-faced figure, with hiseerily chalk-white skin and green hair, looked likedeath warmed over, and when he did smile, it was amacabre sight.

In the course of this first story, the Joker commits aseries of murders, daringly warning the victims and thepolice ahead of time of his intentions. He will predictthat his intended target will die at the stroke of mid-night. Somehow, no matter what precautions aretaken—a locked room, or a police guard—the Joker’s

prophecy comes true, and the victim, poisoned, fallsdead, his features paralyzed in a ghastly grin that imitatesthe Joker’s own.

The man who originated the idea for the Joker wasJerry Robinson, who was then Bob Kane’s assistant onthe art for Batman; that first Joker story was drawn byKane, inked by Robinson, and written by Bill Finger, theunsung hero in co-creating so much of the Batmanmythos.

In part, the Joker’s face is inspired by the traditionalJoker imagery on playing cards. But Robinson was alsoinspired by a 1928 silent film called The Man WhoLaughs, adapted from a novel by the great 19th centuryFrench author Victor Hugo (best known for Les Miserables and The Hunchback of Notre Dame). Theprincipal character, Gwynplaine, played by Conrad Veidt,is disfigured in such a way that he appears always to besmiling. Certain stills from the film make Gwynplainelook menacing indeed, theimage of the Joker come

to life. (Readers who sawthe Cartoon Network Justice League two-parter featuring the Joker willnow understand why hisfront organization wasdubbed “GwynplaineEntertainment.”)

The Joker’s modusoperandi in this first storyseems to derive from anearly talkie, The Bat

Whispers, which was inturn based on a stagemelodrama, The Bat . As youmight expect from the title,this film, with its mysteriousfigure garbed as a bat, wasone of the inspirations for Batman himself. But the “Bat”in this movie is actually the villain, who, as the Joker would, sends his victims warnings, mysteriously murdersthem at the time he predicted, and leaves behind a callingcard. The Bat leaves cards with a bat insignia; the Joker

would leave Joker playing cards.Throughout the Golden and Silver Ages of comics,

the Joker never had a true origin story: We never learned his real name or saw what he looked like with-out the garish, clown-like coloring on his face andhands. Indeed, early Batman readers must have assumedhe was wearing makeup like an actual circus clown.

“THE MAN IN THE RED HOOD”The closest the Joker came to an origin story was

“The Man Behind the Red Hood” (Detective Comics23

Latin lover Cesar Romero (left)hopped from the big screen to theboob tube on ABC-TV’s Batman

(1966–1968).

© 1966 Greenway Productions. Joker ©2008 DCComics.

The Man Who Laughs,a Joker template.

© 1925 Universal Studios.

THE JOKER REBORN:FROM CLOWN PRINCE OF CRIME

TO HOMICIDAL MANIACby Peter Sanderson, contributor to Back Issue magazine


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#168, Feb. 1951), the tale of a criminal, garbed in ahood that completely concealed his face, whom Batmanhad failed to capture early in his career. In this story, theRed Hood returns years later, and Batman captures andunmasks him only to discover he is the Joker. Then it isrevealed that the Joker used to be a criminal gang leader whose sole departure from convention was to wear a redhood to conceal his identity. In his clash with Batman,the Red Hood fell into a pool of chemical wastes, whichpermanently dyed his skin white, his lips bright red, andhis hair green. Seeing his garish new appearance, theRed Hood created a new criminal persona for himself,the Joker.

The enormous success of the Batman TV show ofthe 1960s pumped up the sales of the comics, and sincethe show used costumed criminals every week, editor

Julius “Julie” Schwartz put villains like the Joker and thePenguin into the comics more frequently than he hadbefore. But the camp treatment of Batman was really nomore than a single joke that quickly wore out its welcome.The fad ended, the show was cancelled with its thirdseason, and super-hero comics sales collapsed.

Schwartz had already successfully revitalized theBatman series in the early 1960s, discarding dated, more juvenile concepts like Batwoman, Bathound, and Bat-Mite, and taking a more serious, realistic approach inboth the stories and artwork. Now, with plummeting

sales, Schwartz found himself faced with the challengeof revamping the concept again, and yet again he suc-ceeded brilliantly. This time he and his writers, nowincluding Denny O’Neil and Frank Robbins, went notonly for a more adult approach to the series, but one far darker in tone than the frivolous television series. Robinwas packed off to college, and Batman returned to hisroots from the late 1930s and early 1940s. He was again“the” Batman, the lone, driven avenger, prowling aworld that combined film noir with Gothic horror. This isthe version of Batman that we see not only in thecomics, but in film and television today.

Perhaps to make it clear that the comics weredivorcing themselves from the television version,Schwartz initially did not use any of Batman’s rogues’gallery of costumed villains in these new adventures. Butlongtime comics readers know that concepts essential toa long-running series may be discarded, but they even-tually, inevitably work their way back. The Joker was anessential part of the Batman mythos, and soon Schwartzwould find the means to fit the “Clown Prince of Crime”into Batman’s once more grim and somber world. As

with Batman, the key would be to return the Joker tothe original concept back when he made his debut in1940.

“THE JOKER’S FIVE-WAY REVENGE”

The story that set the Joker on his new path was“The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge,” in Batman #251 (Sept.1973), and written and drawn by the now legendaryteam of Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams.

“Five-Way Revenge” has a plot somewhatreminiscent of Finger’s original Joker tale. The Joker isout to murder, one by one, five people who crossed himin the past. Of course, for decades the Joker had never actually succeeded in killing anyone in the comics. But inthis story he did—this Joker wasn’t just playing gamesanymore. The Joker’s ultimate target is, of course,

Batman himself. The story climaxes with the Joker entrapping Batman in a tank with a man-eating shark.As the Joker notes, and as Adams shows us so well, heand the shark have the same sinister, toothy grin. Who’slaughing now?

After over 30 years, Denny O’Neil understandablydoes not recall exactly how the decision to do the storythat became “Five-Way Revenge” came about. “I wasn’ttaking notes. I was just working week to week. In thosedays we didn’t even have contracts or steady assign-ments. I would go in on a Thursday, stick my head in

Julie’s office, and he would give me an assignment. It sohappened that 164 of those were Batman assignments,but I was never the Batman writer.”

Did editor Schwartz propose the idea of doing aJoker story, or did O’Neil suggest it to him? “Lordknows,” O’Neil replies. Was Neal Adams involved in theplotting? “To the best of my memory, I wrote a scriptwith no discussions with Neal. There was not in thosedays that much interaction” between the writer andartist. In fact, O’Neil does not recall even knowing whowould end up drawing the story. “I think that Neal did abrilliant job, but it was a script that was done withoutreally thinking about who was going to do the art,because in those days you never knew, or if you thoughtyou knew, it might change.”

Neal Adams agrees that he did not have any inputinto the plot, but otherwise he remembers the origin ofthis new Joker story very differently. “It seemed asthough when I started to do [Batman] that people weretaking my rap seriously, and I wanted to do seriousBatman stories,” Adams says. But then he discoveredthat people thought, as Adams puts it, “you wouldn’t

24

“The Joker’s HappyVictims,” (above right)

a miniature Batmancomic produced in

1966 and distributed as a giveaway insideKellogg’s Pop Tarts

breakfast treats,exemplifies the silliness of the

Silver Age Joker.Art by Carmine Infantino

and Murphy Anderson.

©2008 DC Comics.


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want to do the Joker and Two-Face, they’re too cartoony.” Theidea was that the costumed villainslike the Joker were too associatedwith “the ‘cartoonishness’ of thetelevision show. And of course, Isaid, ‘No, no, the characters aregreat. I mean, I’m not a big fan of

the Penguin, but the Joker is afantastic character if taken a littlemore seriously. The Joker is aserious character and a goodcharacter. I don’t consider him acartoon even though he acts like acartoon, and I’d love to do a moreserious, more deadly Joker.’ Once Isaid that, Denny and Julie were offand doing the Joker.”

O’Neil came up with a Joker story that was considerably more

serious than Adams had expected.“The Joker went around killingpeople, which I perhaps thoughtwas a little bit heavy-handed,”Adams says. “But, by golly, itturned out to be pretty good.

“So,” Adams sums up, “mycontribution was more like acoachman: Go!”

“Gee, I have no idea at thispoint, so many years later, where

the actual plot came from,” O’Neilsays. “Probably out of my head. Idon’t remember Julie having muchto do with it, though I wouldn’tsay he didn’t. We worked soclosely in those days. Neither of usthought that people would beasking us questions about ittwenty [years later].”

But certainly O’Neil canreconstruct his overall method of

constructing the story. “It was just a question of tryingto do my basic trick when I begin to work with anestablished character that I think has lost its way. [It] isto go back and try to look at the essence of it and seewhat made this popular in the first place; what makesthis guy a hero, what makes this guy a villain, and thenuse that as the cornerstone of the story.

“So,” O’Neil says, evoking his thought process,“the Joker—clowns—people are frightened of clowns—trickster—irrationality. Though I wasn’t aware of it atthe time, I now know that the Joker is probably the bestembodiment of the trickster motif in all of modern fiction,

though Hannibal Lecter might be a close second.” (This,as O’Neil agrees, at least is true of sinister versions ofthe trickster archetype, as opposed to more positive andcomedic ones like Bugs Bunny.)

O’Neil thinks that it was probably then that helooked up the original Joker stories in DC’s library.“Those stories would have been available to me, and,knowing myself, almost certainly I did. I believe in doingyour homework.” He was particularly struck by BillFinger’s original Joker story in Batman #1. “That first

story in particular, in which he is a very cunning, mania-

cal killer… seemed to me a lot better than the sort ofwatered-down later versions. I mean, Batman against aguy who plays pranks? That’s not much of a dramaticsituation because there’s so very little at stake, and itdiminishes Batman, going after a guy who really isn’t allthat dangerous or all that much of a menace.”

“I didn’t quite get the violent Joker,” Adams says.“My suspicion is that Denny went back to the originalsource and picked that up, and that was a surprise tome. Yes, I wanted to do the Joker, and yes, I wantedhim to be bad, but Denny made him real bad. In fact, I

questioned the deadliness of what was going on, but heinsisted that ‘No, this is the way the Joker was at thebeginning,’ and my feeling was, ‘Y’know, we’ve come toa new time, we’re out of the ’50s, we can be a little bitbraver, let’s go for it, let’s go for the gusto.’”

Adams’ task was to find a way to translate thecaricatured face that Bob Kane and others had given theJoker into his own, more realistic art style. “To make thatold-style Joker face, it almost takes a cartoon. So I felt,why don’t I take my memory of the Joker and my refer-ence of the Joker from the various guys who had done

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The O’Neil/Adams Joker of “Five-Way Revenge” made Cesar Romero adistant memory. Courtesy of Shane Foley.

©2008 DC Comics.


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it, including Jerry Robinson and Dick Sprang, take thosetwo as my models and then try to make a Joker that waslike those, that would emulate those, but was on a realface, so I could contort a real face and make it thosefaces. So that was my goal, to find a way to do that.And, gee, I think I succeeded.”

In The Man Who Laughs, Gwynplaine’s smile wasliterally carved into his face. In the comics, though, the

Joker was fully capable of other facial expressions; infact, he is grimly frowning when he is first shown inBatman #1. So it is interesting that Neal Adams andanother celebrated Joker artist, Marshall Rogers, eachcame to believe that the Joker, like Gwynplaine, couldnot stop smiling.

“The thing about the Joker is that he was a regular guy and he went through this experience that he cannever change,” Adams says. “He can’t wipe that smileoff his face. One of the things that bothers me aboutmany, many artists’ renditions of the Joker—and I’mtalking about good artists—is they have the Joker frown.

Well, he can’t frown. According to the rules as I under-stand them, he can’t wipe that smile off his face so hecan’t frown.

“It would just be real cool to have a smiling Joker no matter what emotion he’s expressing—anger or sad-ness or pathos,” Adams asserts. “To have that smile onhis face to me is what the Joker is all about. I’d like tosee that more. I think that is almost key to the character.If you don’t have to have a smile on your face, you canput makeup on it, you can color your hair another color.You’re not really so terrible. But if you can’t stop smiling,

that’s terrible.”Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams’ work on the

Batman had tremendous influence on later writers andartists on the series. They were the writer and artist whomost powerfully set the style for the Batman stories thatfollowed, in comics, movies, and television over the nextthirty-plus years.

As one of those successors, Steve Englehart,observes, “Neal Adams’ Batman, and Denny, havingwritten them—those things are firmly in my brain asbeing a wonderful thing. If they hadn’t done such a

good job… I don’t know if I would have been as inter-ested in doing the Batman.”

ENGLEHART AND ROGERS’ DETECTIVE COMICSBill Finger’s Joker in Batman #1 was coldly cunning

and calculating. Even as the Joker became more of amerry prankster over the decades, his plans, however fantastical—starting an underworld newspaper, devisinghis own utility belt—had rational purposes and a certainlogic. The O’Neil-Adams Joker was a killer once more,but a rational one. This was about to change, courtesyof another classic writer/artist team who took O’Neil and

Adams’ work with the Joker to the next level. They wereSteve Englehart and Marshall Rogers, who, in the 1970s,together created Batman stories for six issues ofDetective Comics, culminating with the Joker two-parter in issues #475 and #476. Yes, it was merely six issues,and yet they stand as the greatest six-issue run inBatman’s history, the “definitive Batman” that summedup the first nearly forty years of the character’s history.

Having made a great reputation for his innovativework at Marvel on Avengers, Captain America, and

Doctor Strange, Steve Englehart intended to spend ayear writing DC characters he loved before leavingcomics behind. He ended up writing Justice League of America and Mister Miracle at DC. “But I wanted to dothe Batman, too. I told [DC publisher Jenette Kahn]going in that I was only going to be there for a year,’cause I was going to get out of comics forever at thatpoint. And so I knew I could do one year of Batman, and

it was going to be the essence of Batman. I was going todo everything with it that I could possibly get into it.”And how could Englehart do what he calls “the definitiveBatman” without doing his greatest foe? “Yeah, it wasalways going to end up with the Joker as the ultimate[villain], at the end of it.”

Befitting his mission to capture Batman’s “essence,”Englehart set about doing his research. Back then therewere no archive editions of Golden Age stories, but helearned about DC’s remarkably complete library. “I said, Iwant to get Xeroxes of the early years of DetectiveComics and of Batman, which, of course, even then cost

a fortune. I would never have been able to buy them or find them anyplace else. And so somebody went to thelibrary and Xeroxed all of these early Batman stories.Denny O’Neil in fact thought that was a good idea, andhe had a second set sent over to him at that time. I wasable to really immerse myself in Bob Kane and BillFinger’s original idea. I was back in that 1939/1940/1941 era of the Batman, really trying to figure out whois this guy, who would he be if he existed.

“And the Joker in those days was this homicidalmaniac. He was not the funny clown; he was not the

guy with the Ha-Ha-Hacienda, and all that kind of stuff.He was this crazed creature of the night in his own way.And so, yeah, that’s the guy that I wanted to do. To me,a year before any of this came out, I was thinking this iswho the Joker really is, and who the Batman really is.”

Englehart did not just want to copy what Kane andFinger had done in their early Batman stories. “I said,that’s the essence; now I have to build something out ofit that will work in this modern day and age.”

This applied to the Joker as well. Finger’s Joker andO’Neil’s Joker had been killers, but they were cunning,

rational masterminds. Englehart saw the potential to takethe Joker concept further. “My sense of it was if youreally got to the essence of the Joker, he still had another dimension to go, which was to become completelyinsane. I saw the potential and I thought it was perfectlylegitimate to go there.

“I thought, I can be true to what this character wasset out to be, but I can do stuff with it now that theydidn’t do then. Whether they couldn’t or didn’t think ofit, I don’t know.

“And how exactly I figured out some completelyinsane plot about laughing fish, that’s sort of lost in the

mist of time.” So, in “The Laughing Fish” [DetectiveComics #475, Feb. 1978], the Joker strides into a gov-ernment office and shows off what we might now call afeat of genetic engineering. He has somehow managedto develop living fish with mouths set into a smile like hisown: Joker-fish. Now the Joker wants to copyright thefish, to make sure that no one tries to copy his brilliantachievement. Now actually, I suppose that nowadaysthere really is a question about how genetic engineerscan register new breeds of plants or animals as their own

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discoveries; perhaps the patent office would be moreappropriate. But in “The Laughing Fish,” the staffers inthe government office can do no more than explain tothe Joker that there is no provision in the law for copy-righting one’s visage, even on a fish.

Outraged, the Joker launches a campaign of murder right out of Finger’s first Joker story: Once again thereare the warnings, the unpreventable murders by Joker

venom, and the corpses with the evil grins. Times havechanged, however, and now the Joker commandeerstelevision instead of radio to issue his threats of murder.“That’s the essence of what I thought the Joker ought todo,” says Englehart; “He’s not rational.” In those sameissues, at one point, one of the Joker’s henchmen annoyshis boss, so the Joker abruptly pushes him into oncomingtraffic, killing him on a whim. Thisbrief incident was a shocker, a signalto the reader that this was not just amurderous Joker, but an utterlyunpredictable one, with no loyalty

even to his own men, capable ofdoing anything, and willing to kill just to give himself a good laugh.

“Everyone involved in that proj-ect was right on the peak of their creative abilities,” says Englehart.That included, of course, penciler Marshall Rogers, whom Englehartnever even met until after he drewthose stories. Englehart’s Detectiverun had actually started with two

issues that were drawn by Walter Simonson and inked by Al Milgrom,in which Englehart introduced hisnew leading lady, Silver St. Cloud,and the corrupt politician, BossThorne. Editor Julie Schwartzneeded to find a new art team for Englehart’s remaining issues.

As for Englehart, he wasalready gone, not just from DCbut from the United States. “I

wrote all these scripts in advanceand then left the country,”Englehart says. “I knew I wasonly going to be there for a year.I cranked out everything I couldcrank out and then left.”Englehart had no say in who theartist would be. “In those daysyou worked with whoever youwere given. You didn’t really say,‘I want to work with this guy,’or come in with a package.”

Enter Marshall Rogers, whodied in 2008 but reminisced in2008, “Well, it was a proverbialright place at the right time.”Rogers had done two or threebackup stories for Detectiveinvolving a villain called theCalculator, who battled various DC heroes(and later gained a larger profile in theminiseries Villains United ). “Then that

small series was to culminate in a full issue story ofBatman teaming up with all the heroes who had foughtthe Calculator. And since I was the last artist to do thebackup, Julie Schwartz gave me a shot at doing the full-length story. Right time, right place.” Fans respondedpositively to Rogers’ work. “So I was offered the chanceto be the regular artist on the Detective title, which I jumped at.”

Reading Englehart’s scripts, Rogers recognizedexactly what Englehart wasgetting at: “I felt he hadgone back to the essenceof what the Batman wasabout.” And likeEnglehart, Rogers too

started to

Marshall Rogers’ recreation of the cover to February 1978’s Detective #475.Courtesy of Ken Danker (www.monstercollectibles.com).

©2008 DC Comics.

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research the early Batman. “So I was going back to lookat a lot of the original material that was done by Kaneback in the ’40s and getting inspiration from that. Andwhen I got the first Joker script, I immediately went backto the Jerry Robinson stuff.”

Studying the early Joker stories, Rogers decided thatthe artists had drawn not what he calls the “plasticized”figure the Joker had become in later, “but a real person

with a grotesque face. So that’s what I wanted to bringto the character,” Rogers said, asserting that he wantedto bring back “the human horror that was under thatwhite face, and I did want to bring back.”

Like Adams, Rogers was under the impression thatthe Joker’s smile was permanently fixed on his face.Indeed, Rogers said it was “very difficult, having himalways smile all the time.” During the interview it waspointed out to Rogers that even in Batman #1 the Joker does not continually smile. “I’m thinking back to other stories that impressed me as a kid,” Rogers mused, “andhe wasn’t always smiling, come to think of it, but it was

what had stayed with me from all my childhood reading.”It seems the image of the Joker’s grin is so powerful thatpeople assume that it never changes.

There is another influence on Rogers’ depiction ofthe Joker that has often been noted over the years.Rogers explained that he always had a mirror in front ofhis desk while working. “Because on a comic-bookdeadline you don’t all the time have the luxury of havingmodels pose for you, so I became my own model for anything that was needed at the time, and I would try tocompensate as needs required. But for the Joker, I guess

a lot of compensation wasn’t needed, because manypeople have mentioned that they see a similaritybetween me and the Joker.”

Impressed with Englehart’s conception of the Joker,Rogers said, “The thing that I did want to do as a story-teller was to try to keep what Steve had written as intactas I could, because he did write a very maniacal charac-

ter, and I triedto bring thatacross.” Rogersexplained that

“the Joker, evenwhen I wasyoung, seemedto be theBatman’s perfectcounterpoint.And it never seemed to cometo any fruitionin the earlier stories that Ihad read.”

Rogersagrees withEnglehart’s basicconceptionsof both theBatman and theJoker. “I do seethe Batman as asingle-mindedcharacter, [striv-

ing] to bring some peace and rest to a world that goescrazy around him, to paraphrase some of Steve’s work inour job. I consider the Joker to be the one who tries tomake the Batman’s world go crazy. They each have anobjective that clashes, is the best way I can put it.”

Englehart’s vision of the Batman and the Joker made it possible for Rogers to realize his own concep-tions of the characters. Rogers said that Englehart’s

Joker’s “character was based in his motivation, and I just visualized that motivation for the reader. But if themotivation hadn’t been there, the character wouldn’thave been the same.”

BATMAN: THE DARK KNIGHT RETURNSThe most influential Batman story of the last

twenty-five years is surely Frank Miller’s landmark 1986miniseries, Batman: The Dark Knight Returns, whichpresents a fifty-something Batman in a Gotham Cityturned into a nightmare of contemporary urban crimeand blight. Not surprisingly, Miller not only redefined

Batman in this series, but his arch-nemesis, the Joker,as well.

At the start of The Dark Knight Returns, BruceWayne, having retired as a costumed crime-fighter yearsago, is a hollow shell of a man, possibly an alcoholic,and possibly with a death wish. Similarly, when we firstsee the Joker in The Dark Knight Returns, he is not evenrecognizable. His white skin looks sallow, and his facesags with depression. But once the Joker hears thatBatman is back in action, Miller gives us an extremecloseup of the Joker’s mouth, as it twists into the familiar

grin. There is one more thing, too: The Joker says theword “Darling.”

With that one word, Miller indicated that theJoker’s murderous obsession with Batman had a homo-erotic side. Writer Grant Morrison picked up on this andcreated controversy at DC when he tried, unsuccessfully,to put the Joker in drag in his graphic novel ArkhamAsylum.

Commenting on Miller’s Joker, Denny O’Neil, whoedited The Dark Knight Returns, says, “Batman and theJoker at this point are classic characters. I’ve seen maybe

ten productions of Hamlet in my life. Richard Burton’swas real different from Mel Gibson’s, which was realdifferent from Laurence Olivier’s. After a while, itbecomes a matter of interpretation. There’s no right wayto do it. There is only the way that works here and nowfor this project. So I think that Frank’s interpretation ofthe Joker is perfectly valid—it’s Frank’s interpretation. Hecertainly did it well.” O’Neil also points out that TheDark Knight Returns and its version of the Joker are notin DC’s continuity.

O’Neil interprets the Joker quite differently. “There’sa lot of reasons why I wouldn’t make the Joker gay, and

one of them is to not play into that old stereotype of thevillainous homosexual. But paramount is that that’s notthe way I see him. I think the Joker is so screwed up thatanything as normal as sex is beyond him.”

Perhaps what really put an end to the interpretationof the Joker as gay was the introduction of HarleyQuinn, the Joker’s girlfriend, in the 1990s, first inBatman: The Animated Series and later in the canonicalcomics. “I applaud the efforts of the people who createdHarley Quinn,” O’Neil says, “but I really can’t see the

28

With one word. . .a new light is cast upon the Joker’s

Bat-fixation in Batman: The DarkKnight Returns (above). Art by Frank

Miller and Klaus Janson.©2008 DC Comics.


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Joker having a girlfriend. They did it well, because theJoker is obviously just using this woman. There maynever have been any kind of consummation. I think ofthe Joker as asexual.”

BATMAN: THE KILLING JOKEProbably the most disturbing tale in the Joker’s his-

tory remains Batman: The Killing Joke, written by Alan

Moore, illustrated by Brian Bolland, and first publishedby DC in 1988. It is also noteworthy for the new possibleorigin that Moore devised for the Joker. It was in themid-1980s that DC began rebooting the continuity of itsseries, deleting decades of past stories from the canon.Moore, however, did not discard “The Man Behind theRed Hood,” but instead elaborated upon it in a way thatradically reinterpreted the events of the original story.

The Killing Joke projectoriginated not with Moore,however, but with BrianBolland, who had had a great

success in the early 1980swith the Camelot 3000 maxi-series for DC. Bolland recallsthat someone, possibly execu-tive editor Dick Giordano,asked him what he wanted todo next for DC. “So Ithought, ‘Aim high. I’d like todraw my favorite character and have it writ

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