Is This Thing On? XXIII
Aftershocks and What's Next
You’re reading 20th Century Refugee, a newsletter that's been published more frequently as of late, thanks to my interview with Keith Giffen reappearing in Back Issue! # 157. What can I say... when I've got something to promote, I promote it! But who am I? I'm Glen Cadigan, of course, but you already knew that since you're a subscriber. If you're not, I can only assume that you wandered in here via a link somewhere else. And let's rectify that situation by pushing the button below...
Diamonds to Dust
In my last newsletter I mentioned that Diamond Comics Distributors filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection, and the fallout continues. Luckily, the publisher of my comic book related work, TwoMorrows Publishing, was able to land on its feet with a new deal in place with Lunar, but not without taking a hit. All of the money that Diamond owed TwoMorrows for December and January is gone. That's not an insubstantial amount of capital: according to an article at Bleeding Cool, it clocks in at $62,752.81. That’s a lot for a small, Mom & Pop operation to be owed. For a basis of comparison, Dark Horse’s losses are $70,968.14, Fantagraphics are at $92,859.04, and Image has lost $25,666.87.
To make matters worse, there's a lot of TwoMorrows inventory still in Diamond's warehouses, so if you want to buy something with the TwoMorrows logo on it, try their website first, okay? Because if your store fulfills an order for, say, The Life & Art of Dave Cockrum, neither TwoMorrows nor I will ever see a cent of that money. The same goes for Amazon -- anything you buy there comes from Diamond.
Upcoming products will find their way into stores through Lunar, but past products are now trapped by bankruptcy proceedings. Hopefully all the little lost copies will find their way home to TwoMorrows sooner rather than later, unless a bankruptcy judge who doesn't know what he's doing decides that possession is nine-tenths of the law and thinks that they're Diamond's property instead.
With dozens of creditors ahead of it, it's unlikely that TwoMorrows will ever see the money owed to it. To try and recoup those lost funds, they had an emergency sale that included selling file copies of their long-running mags Alter Ego, Back Issue!, The Jack Kirby Collector, etc., as lots, some of which were full (or near full) sets. Their "Rainy Day Sale" is still on, in which you can buy bundles of all of the aforementioned mags for half price. Availability depends on what's in stock, so it's everything they have on hand at 50% off, you just have to buy all of it on a title by title basis.
If you've been paying attention, January was when my Keith Giffen interview was published. So only subscriber copies and orders processed by their webstore generated revenue; everything that went through your local shop was like giving it away for free, except people still had to buy it. That's not a sustainable business model, and I hope Lunar is quick on the draw when it comes to putting money back into the pockets of their clients.
What's Next?
I promised an announcement here last newsletter, but the Diamond bankruptcy has thrown everything for a loop. What I was going to announce has been pushed back a couple of months, so instead I'll just remind people that my novel, The Strawman, is still slated to go on sale this fall (September 30th, to be exact). Next newsletter I'll get around to what I was going to share with you this newsletter, and maybe we'll all be in the mood to celebrate by then.
Keith Giffen the Fourth
When I originally took Harry Broertjes up on his offer to republish his Keith Giffen interview (not to be confused with my Keith Giffen interview) right here in my newsletter, I figured it'd be one-and-done. But then I reread it and I thought it'd take about three installments to get to the end. Well, this is the fourth part, and the end still isn't in sight. (Not that that's a bad thing, right?) By my estimate, one more chapter after this should do it. And like I keep repeating, his interview is the perfect complement to my interview, as it goes into detail about Keith's return to The Legion of Super-Heroes in 1988, which was mostly glossed over in my interview. Together, they are as complete a review of Keith's Legion of Super-Heroes career as you are ever going to see, and if you're here, that's probably of interest to you.
If you're just joining us, Parts 1, 2, & 3 can be found here, here, and here. And if you want to buy my interview, remember what I said and go directly to the publisher's website to purchase yours, and pick up some other things while you're there, why don'tcha?
HB: What about your other projects? Justice League, Invasion...
KG: Justice League, Invasion, a horror story that I can’t say too much about at this point because it’s still in the formative stages, but it’ll be a horror story, and not EC horror. More along the lines of David Cronenberg than Tales of the Crypt.
HB: This will involve DC characters.
KG: Yeah. Again, I don’t want to mention anything more, but it involves a DC character, and I’m going to be plotting and penciling this, and I’m debating whether I’ll have the inclination or the time to ink it. But I’d like to do as much as I can on this project and see if I can control what finally gets out there. There’s an Aquaman miniseries I’m plotting and breaking down that’s got Curt Swan doing some of the most fantastic work that I’ve ever seen on it. Bob Fleming is dialoguing it.
HB: Who’s inking Swan on that?
KG: Some new guy whose name I forget. [Al Vey — GC.] But he’s doing a pretty good job. Curt’s such a bitch to ink because it’s so beautifully rendered, and it’s the rare artist who can come in there and really get it right. Murphy can get it right, and possibly one or two other people have come very close. George Klein was really good, too.
Ragman is stalled at this point because of Invasion, and the horror book that they want first. But Ragman is up and coming.
There’s a secret origin of the Justice League of America coming up in the Secret Origins book. No Wonder Woman, but Black Canary, so that’s really the only variation. And no, it’s not a laff riot. It’s Justice League of America, it’s not the JLI.
HB: Who’s drawing that one?
KG: Eric Shanower. Pencils and inks. It’s gorgeous, absolutely gorgeous.
HB: The Blue and the Gold [the proposed Blue Beetle-Booster Gold title]?
KG: No, I have nothing to do with that. I’ve nothing to do with The Blue and the Gold or Mr. Miracle’s book or any of the other individual offshoots of Justice League International. There might be another Justice League-oriented book coming out of Invasion — we’re keeping our fingers crossed.
HB: Can you talk about that?
KG: No, because we’re really not sure what it is at this point. Possibly another core group, because there are so many [JLI] embassies around and we would like to focus on some of the international aspects of the group. I think that’s about it. I think I’ve touched all the bases of the stuff that I’ve got coming. Oh, and the Creeper miniseries, which is plotted. We’re just looking for a penciler at this point.
HB: What’s the deal with Video Jack?
KG: Video Jack, as of issue #6, is history. The original agreement was to go six issues and then we’d see if we wanted to do it or if Epic wanted to do it. Cary [Bates] and I got involved in other projects, and the sales weren’t really that strong at that point, so Video Jack ends as of issue #6 with one full story, like we originally intended it to be. I’m taking less and less of a hand in it as it goes on, which, again, was the original intention. I helped to plot and break it down, and to do all sorts of video realities, and we passed them on to other artists for other video realities. I think in the latest issue [#4] we’ve got Joe Barney and the guy who did ‘Mazing Man, [Stephen] DeStefano. After that we’ve got Carmine Infantino and Al Weiss along with my pages, and then we’ve got our big sixth issue wherein we’ve got this incredible fight scene with such diverse people as Bill Wray, Walt Simonson, Trina Robbins, Michael Gilbert, Neal Adams and on and on and on — each doing one page, pieces of a fight scene that slips through all these different video realities.
HB: What was your and Cary’s thinking on Video Jack? That book, at least in my case, was real hard to get into.
KG: My thinking on the book was that the first six issues were one whole story, and just like when you’re reading a novel, you sometimes don’t really get what’s going on till you’re three-quarters of the way through. It’s like the first 12 issues of Justice League International. That’s one long story, and until you read “Max’s Story” at the end, you have no idea what was going on back with the Royal Flush Gang, where that Ace came from. Who’s this man, Maxwell Lord? We tied up a lot of loose ends. Video Jack was a lot like that in that it was meant to be a little harder to get into than the average comic. It was meant to pull people back to find out what’s going on. How well we succeeded or failed is up to the readers. I don’t know. I think we did pretty good.
HB: What’s it like working with Cary? You both have that Legion connection, even though it’s been years and years since Cary worked on the Legion.
KG: I like working with Cary a lot. Cary, when he stepped down off the Superman books and The Flash, had to prove himself all over again. And he did it with flying colors as far as I’m concerned. If people who are reading and enjoying JLI are not reading Captain Atom, they are only reading half of JLI, because there are certain things going on in Captain Atom that are only going on in Captain Atom, but that are JLI-related.
Back to Cary. He did Captain Atom, Silverblade, Video Jack and other upcoming projects. He’s really proving himself to be an A-team writer, just as good as anyone else in the business.
HB: So you wouldn’t mind working with him again?
KG: I’d love to work with him again. We probably will work together again sometime in the future. He’s really open to things. We sit down, we bounce ideas back and forth and back and forth and back and forth. I just keep getting wilder and wilder. But he goes for them — and then, as he’s putting it all together, he’ll fine-tune it, sand off a piece here, smooth off a piece there until he gets it into the kind of shape that the reader will accept, that doesn’t go beyond the bounds of reader comprehension. I’ll work with Cary any time, and he’s got more ideas than half of the writers in this business. In other words, he’s one of the guys who doesn’t have to worry about giving away an idea, because there’s another one right behind it. And besides, he’s got a nice, wonky sort of humor.
HB: What about your editors? You’ve got Karen Berger on The Legion, you’ve got Andy [Helfer] on JLI...
KG: Well, Karen is Karen. Karen hasn’t changed from the first time around. She’s leery of me, of some of the things that I do, and every so often she’ll call me and say, “Why did you do this?” and makes me explain the whole thing before it goes through. But Karen is fine. I have no problem with her.
Andy’s a madman, Andy’s out of his mind. Just look at JLI and understand that he watched this thing evolve in the direction it went to. And there was no guarantee this thing was going to take off. We were in the middle of Dark Knight mania, man, and The Punisher, and we came out with a book with a very obvious tongue-in-cheek flavor. So he took a real big chance on that one. He’s a little maddening and frustrating sometimes. He has to know what’s going on at all times. He seems to be cut from the Julie Schwartz mold of editor, which is not an insult at all. It’s a compliment in that they want to know what’s going on and why it’s going on, and they will not put up with prima donnas. “You’re doing the book, let’s hear the story. I want typed plots, I want full stories, no glossing, no vamping your way through or giving the book over to eight pages of fight scenes because you’re too lazy to come up with a plot twist.”
So I’ve been lucky. I’ve always worked with editors I get along with, and who seem to be willing to listen to a different point of view.
HB: One thing the people are going to want to know about is the deal with the Legionnaires’ costumes. You’re going to be putting quite a number of them through changes. Let’s run through them here, one by one. We’ve already talked about Ultra Boy...
KG: Ultra Boy is supposed to be in black leather, folks. He will be back in black leather, and that is a metal epaulet on one shoulder, even though it’s colored to look like leather. The shirt is the same, though. I like the symbol. I kept the shirt, I kept the belt. So to me it’s sort of like an extension of the current costume. It’s not thumbing my nose at this costume. Everyone said, “Never change this one,” and I didn’t change it just because people always said, “Never change this one!” It wasn’t a spiteful move on my part. It was just that I thought he doesn’t look like a street punk. And his body language has not been a street punk’s body language. Let’s get back to that tough guy from Rimbor who’s probably had experience with drugs.
HB: He’s in a good position to have experience with drugs even now. He can go out, he can get himself high as a kite, and if an emergency comes up, “Hey, I’ll just turn on my invulnerability here,” and all the effects go away.
KG: Yeah, visually he should be more of a punk. I also gave him more of a street punk utility kind of haircut. We’ll see if that works.
HB: But not the ducktail he had originally.
KG: No-o-o-o. No Brylcreem. They don’t make Brylcreem anymore.
HB: What about Sun Boy? You’ve got him with an earring...
KG: One earring. I like Sun Boy’s costume. I don’t see anything wrong with Sun Boy’s costume. It still functions well. The only thing I was thinking of doing was taking the tunic and opening the front up and putting the sun emblem on a shirt underneath — a body shirt underneath so it would give him sort of a bulkier appearance. But I’m not going to do anything with Sun Boy at this point. I look at the costume. I see it works. The most radical thing I ever did to Sun Boy was bring back the vertical lines on his shorts. That was it. Maybe I’ll toy around with the sun emblem, make it look more like a sun instead of like a star. But I still don’t know what to do about his hair.
HB: Phantom Girl.
KG: Phantom Girl: Totally new look. The costume is not red, it will be white, don’t worry. Slippers, sort of a half jacket black and white costume. The one big barrette is back instead of the two smaller ones. I’ve frosted the top of her hair, dropping a little zip-a-tone in there. We’ll see how that works out.
HB: Who else? Shrinking Violet?
KG: I haven’t even thought about her yet. I was the one who put her back in the green mini-dress. But I think I might turn the dress into sort of a loose-sleeved blouse with a belt cinching it so that instead of being a skirt, it would sort of like an overhang from under the belt, and bring the tights up to give her a sleeker look. You know, cover her legs.
Brainiac 5: A different haircut so he won’t look like such a dork, pockets on the uniform at different points on the overalls, and updating that belt to make it look more Thirtieth Century-ish and not like an elevator button. As for #51, I am sorry it had to happen that way, but his costume is not Kelly green from the waist up. It was a misunderstanding on everyone’s part because I had them unzip the front of his overall, but the turtleneck would have remained in place — I figure it unhooks like a priest’s collar. But I never put a coloring note in there, so it’s my fault.
Lightning Lass: A little sleeker look, a hip belt and the white lightning things on her shoulders, I extended them so they actually overhang the shoulders. Basically the same haircut — I like the sort of overhang in the front of her hair.
Shadow Lass: Exactly the same costume, but enough texture put in so that it’s kind of obvious that it’s velvet.
Polar Boy: We removed the beanie cap and the inner tubes around his neck. The inner tubes over his shoulders are now fur — the original fur idea has come back. And I don’t know what else I’ll do with him now that Paul says he’s going to toy with it some more in one of his plots.
Dream Girl: A different, layered kind of a haircut. I stole Kevin’s [Kevin Maguire’s] hairstyle from Green Flame, which Mike DeCarlo then inked in such a way that it doesn’t look like it was stolen — so that was an admission I didn’t have to make here. God damn!
Blok: I drew him once in that thing that he’s wearing now. Never again! He’ll just keep changing his look, but eventually he’s going to evolve quite dramatically.
HB: What about Wildfire?
KG: Yeah, what about Wildfire? I was going to put him back in the visor, but then I thought, knowing his personality all along, he’s finally gotten a way to achieve his human form and he’d never go back into a containment suit. I have no idea what I’m going to do with him at this point. I certainly don’t like the Firestorm look to his head, but I haven’t really had time to think about it. He hasn’t featured prominently enough in the book for me to do anything with him.
Dawnstar, I’m going to bounce around different ideas, but I’ll probably end up coming back to the outfit she’s got now. I want to see if I can get something that looks a bit more American Indian minus the slut appeal.
You know Rond Vidar is a Green Lantern now. I put him into a nice little Green Lantern uniform.
I don’t know if I’ll do anything with Mon-El. This is all contingent on Paul saying, “Go for it.” I don’t know if I’ll put Mon-El back into his uniform again. Maybe variations on it, but I think he should be somebody who sort of dresses for the occasion.
Saturn Girl, I put her in street clothes. She’s got a totally new haircut that people are going to hate. I just don’t like the Donna Reed cut.
HB: So what does it look like now?
KG: It’s a very short cut — a businesswoman’s cut, almost. That’s the best way I can put it. Short, but a little bit longer in the front — it sort of hangs down at an angle, with a layered look.
Also, Polar Boy, when I took off his headpiece, I gave him back that sort of Jack Frost spiky kind of hair, like icicles.
Timber Wolf’s going to stay basically the same because I don’t know what to do with him.
HB: Nobody seems to have known what to do with him for a long, long time.
KG: And other characters. I guess as I have to do them and they feature prominently in an adventure, I’ll play around with them a bit. I’ll tell you one thing right now: I hate drawing Tellus. If I had my way, he’d be the next one for the body bags. I don’t like him at all. I don’t know why. And Quislet, I’m just totally confused about. I still don’t know what’s going on with him, but we’ll see. And Bouncing Boy’s got a mustache. I gave facial hair to Star Boy, and he’s gone, so I figured, ol’ Bouncing Boy, [it was his turn]. Now he looks like Oliver Hardy.
HB: It’s very easy to picture that.
KG: It works, and he’s fat again. I’m not talking muscular fat, I’m talking fat!
HB: What kind of influences come into play when you start fiddling around with the looks of the Legionnaires? Is it stuff you see on the streets when you go into New York, is it magazines, or is it coming straight out of your imagination?
KG: What I do is, my wife picks up these magazines like Elle, and my daughter picks up even weirder ones, fashion magazines, and I’ll flip through them. If I see something that catches my fancy, I’ll rip it out and tack it to the board, and I’ll play with it because I’ll then have to take this hairstyle and try to project it a bit further. What’s the next step for this [style]? What would be the Thirtieth Century version of this? Sometimes it even requires bringing it down a bit because things tend to go in trends. Who’s to say that the 1950s look five times removed might come back in the Thirtieth Century? You can never tell.
But mostly, it’s fashion magazines and stuff I see on the street, people at the office trying to put on the latest look. Same thing with the uniforms and street clothes.
HB: What about the influences on your artistic style itself? You’ve gone through a number of changes over the years. What brings these about?
KG: Boredom, mostly. And again, each assignment dictates its own approach. With The Legion now, and specifically since that whole Comics Journal thing, I’ve made it a point of working in a vacuum. I’ll flip through comics to see what’s currently going, but I won’t bring ‘em home. I don’t remove myself totally — I’m still aware of what’s going on — but I won’t allow myself to reach that point of fanaticism to where your judgment is warped, for lack of a better way to do it. Or you lose your sense of judgment and you can’t see the forest for the trees, and you step over that line. I’ve always said about the Comics Journal article that I’ll accept the rap for the crime, but I will not stand for the motivation that was given for it.
With The Legion right now, I’m trying to take all the stuff I learned since I left the book, and trying different approaches, and now focusing back and pulling in some of those [approaches to something] closer to standard comic books. With The Legion, you can’t do anything but the basic, standard comic book. You can put little pieces in there, but it’s such a complicated book. And I’m still applying what I’ve learned to it. So it’s not the old Legion stuff, but again, it’s not the stuff people are terrified I’ll do. It’s sort of a combination. God knows, everyone up at DC likes it. All of a sudden, they are saying, “Wow, with this you can do anything.” So we’ll see how the fans out there respond to it.
HB: There were those couple of issues of Justice League you did that didn’t seem to go over too well, at least judging from what people were saying in the comics shop I go to.
KG: No, it didn’t go over very well at all, and it was a mistake on my part. I tried to force the Justice League to fit my approach instead of tailoring my approach to what I know the Justice League required. That was wrong on my part. It should have been much closer to what was going on before — much, much closer. I shouldn’t have accepted the assignment if I wasn’t willing to work within the parameters — the parameters that I, myself, had set up for the book. So it was just a stupid move on my part.
HB: But then, that’s how you learn about those things. If you hadn’t done that, you wouldn’t be aware of the problems now.
KG: If I hadn’t done that, I’d be trying to do it to The Legion now. At least I’m aware of it. My last hurrah with that was Legion #45, the big issue where I did those few pages, and I just whack-whack-whack-whacked ‘em. But now I’m making an effort to come closer to what the fans want. People will pick up The Legion and go, “Wow, it’s just like the old days again.”
Of course, it’s not exactly. Larry [Mahlstedt] isn’t along, but I think if they look at the work and see where it’s coming from, they’ll realize it’s not the esoteric stuff. But then, who knows? The fans might look at it and say, “Bring back LaRocque.” And it’s really funny, too, that people are so unaware of the incredible amount of difference that DeCarlo made on that book. Look at the latest issues of The Flash that LaRocque is on that Larry’s inking, and then look at the last issues of The Legion where DeCarlo inked, and you’ll see that Mike contributed a lot. Not to slight Greg, but he belongs on The Flash, man.
That’s it for this time around. Next time, the postponed announcement, plus Keith Giffen — The Finale!
‘Til then,
Glen