1985 memories With Chaykin Simonson Cowan and Sienkiewicz

Episode Transcript
Available transcripts are automatically generated. Complete accuracy is not guaranteed.
Speaker 1 (00:00):
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Speaker 2 (01:18):
League of Word Balloon listeners. Hey folks, my name is
Dean Haspiel, and I'm here to talk about comics being made.
In nineteen eighty five, when I was seventeen going on eighteen. Yeah,
we're about to have a bunch of real hot dogs
of the industry discuss comics with us. Actually wrote up something.

(01:45):
Someone's going to read this real quickly and then we'll
have a nice, lively conversation. In nineteen eighty five, I
was a senior at Lagordio High School, seventeen going on eighteen.
My good buddy Larry O'Neil was insisting Howard chaken and
alerted me that Bill and Kevich, who was working down
the hall, wanted an assistant too, which is how I

(02:05):
eventually wound up helping out Bill Howard and Walter Simonson
on their comics. In nineteen eighty five, Dennis Cowen was
there too. I learned how to use a ruler, an autograph,
craft tint, employ insect panels, and exploit the narrative real
estate of the blank page. And I witnessed Bill use

(02:26):
an old tea bag like it was paint. I got
turned on too, Jim Thompson, Katzahiro Otomo, and Warren Zevon.
Nineteen eighty five was the year I lost my virginity
literally and became a cartoonist professionally. So with that a
little introduction, I want to bring on these other guys.

(02:48):
And I don't know, I can't see them. I don't
know what's going on here. Oh wait, there's there's Howard.
I don't know if you heard me. There's Bill Dennis
nodding his head. Oh, and I know Walter is having
an issue logging on, but you go, Walter. Oh okay, already, okay.

Speaker 3 (03:09):
Already, already. I'm still getting off on the professionally and
and virginity stuff that.

Speaker 2 (03:15):
Was nineteen eighty five. Well, I know you love to
talk about that, Howard. For some reason, I.

Speaker 3 (03:20):
Love the virginity dance. I can't help it. It's the
best we might have.

Speaker 2 (03:24):
Save that for later.

Speaker 3 (03:25):
I may, I may I'm I'm not wear any pants,
so I'm not sure I want to do it.

Speaker 2 (03:29):
Guys, So great to see you, guys. Man, this is
kind of amazing, and we'll have to I guess Walter
gets in. Yeah. Well, what I want you guys to
do is to help bring us back in time, okay,
and set a tone for what the comics in your
see was like in nineteen eighty five, thirty five years ago,

(03:51):
the last time all five of us wants Walter hops
back on shared the same space. You were all navigating
mainstream and dependent comics while breaking new ground. And what
I want to do is I want to discuss what
you were doing back then and get a piece of
your mind. You know where you were coming from and
what you were where you've been going ever since. So

(04:14):
with that in mind, anyone who cares and knows about comics,
knows your legacy, knows that you guys are you know,
masters and innovators of the form, the comics form. And
I want you to briefly introduce yourselves and tell us
what you were working on in nineteen eighty five and why,
and if you don't remember, I think I can tell you.

(04:34):
So we'll start with Dennis.

Speaker 4 (04:35):
Oh no, why what was I in nineteen eighty five,
I was doing most of my stuff, I think DC
Comics at the time, and I think that was the
time when I was working on title that started with V.

Speaker 5 (04:53):
So I was either doing Vigilante right, well, literally me.

Speaker 6 (04:59):
And I got two issues of each and the last
will be killed booth books. Yes, that's right, I'm just
a book killer.

Speaker 2 (05:11):
Yeah, well, you were brought on I think you were
brought onto the end of the series for V if
I'm correct.

Speaker 5 (05:15):
I was because they were going to kill the book.

Speaker 2 (05:17):
So they're killing the book and then and and then
you had a couple of issues of of Vigilanti. And actually,
I don't know if you know, but recently is it
James Gunn who's taking over Suicide Squad is doing Peacemaker
that's loosely based on I think an iteration that you drew. Well, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 5 (05:39):
I have a vague memory of Vigilante.

Speaker 2 (05:43):
He drew one issue of a three issue arc that's
that featured Peacemaker that where he was kind of going
bananas and going little nuts, and so I think that's
the iteration. So maybe you'll be getting a paycheck. I
don't know, I.

Speaker 5 (05:55):
Remember thinking when I was drawing it. I remember thinking,
I'm not drawing a pun, I'm joining the Vigilante, like.

Speaker 2 (06:02):
It's right, yeah, I should be driving.

Speaker 6 (06:05):
Why am I joining the Vigilante like like it was
like the redheaded stepchild of like that kind of character.

Speaker 2 (06:13):
Yep. But and also, if I'm correct, I remember you
loosely basing Vigilante on Clint Eastwood.

Speaker 5 (06:21):
Right, Yeah, yeah I did.

Speaker 2 (06:22):
Yeah that was cool.

Speaker 6 (06:23):
I limited drawing knowledge and and and whatever. I was
a big Clint Eastwood fan back then, so like when
I just make him Clint Eastwood, I mean he's the
vigilante furnisher.

Speaker 2 (06:35):
Dirty Harry, dirty Harry, Right, I mean absolutely nice ski sweater,
say what really nice speA sweaters. So, Howard, when I
entered the studio, you don't even working on Flag for
a year or so, I think, yeah, right, so that's
what was your main gig. So nineteen eighty five, that's

(06:55):
what you're working on. But like, how did you arrive
to that? Like I don't remember your earlier work. I
think I was introduced to you through Flag, but obviously
you'd done a bunch of comics before that.

Speaker 3 (07:06):
For First First Comics made me a financial offer that
made it possibly be for you get off, for me
to get out from under the death that I had
accrued working for Byron Price. And because Price had put
me into a financial holding, just fucked me forever. Friends
don't let friends work for Byron Price. That was the
gold we had and and and first made me this offer.

(07:29):
And I have no idea why they had confidence in
me that was worth their while. But they also went
to other talent for room. I have no respect so
that I'm sort of lumped in with that crowd. But
you know, they did it, and I had, and I had,
I had spent a couple of years away from comics
after a a spirit of disagreement with with the editor
in chieved at Marvel and where we're best friends now

(07:55):
fuh and uh and the book and it seemed and
it achieved. It was a success, a success to stem,
but but not really of any real real commercial consequence.
It never really achieved a commercial land base.

Speaker 2 (08:14):
Well you you were being paid a pay check regardless
of sales, right.

Speaker 3 (08:18):
Yes, yeah, and I did, okay, And I also owned
the material, and material that's right reverted back to me
because of a clause in the contract. And that was
that was that was a blessing.

Speaker 2 (08:30):
It really was.

Speaker 3 (08:30):
It hasn't made often any real way, but it demonstrated
that I had value. That That's really the real function
of the Flag Book was to put me on the
map as a guy who would whould would finally developed
the cattle to go with.

Speaker 2 (08:43):
The hat mm hm.

Speaker 3 (08:45):
And you know I and I was an awful person
in a big mouth, but but I finally managed to
create a body of work that justified my obnoxiousness and
and that and that really was a life saving experience.

Speaker 2 (09:00):
It really want and that was your first foray in
to create her own comics basically, right, I mean you've
done Starbucks.

Speaker 3 (09:09):
I mean we you know, all of us had done material.
We'd known for various places. I mean I mean Friedrich's
book and you know, and some stuff for heavy metal.
You know, all of us, and you Epitt was there.
There was all sorts of things, and there were a lot.
I mean, the eighties was a real buzzy time. And
I mean I mean, I mean Dennis and Bill come along.

(09:32):
I mean, these guys came came from the blind side.
I mean I told this to Sincappa. He's heard me
say this right, Dennis as well, that what really happened
was Dennis and Bill and Frank to a certain extent,
although John was our age, he was sort of in
that crew as well came along and then superhero comics

(09:52):
to their will, which none of our generation believed was possible.
And and that's really the key to but what ultimately happened
in the mid eighties a new a new way of
thinking about about that that sort of mainstream character comes.

Speaker 2 (10:08):
Along, you know, and also editors, I think.

Speaker 3 (10:13):
Literally that's all Bill and Dennis and Frank, right, because
John John is like it's like a great traditionalist coming in.
S Kevig comes in. He's doing all this incredibly fucked
up ship and reinending the way a page looks. I mean, Frank, Dick, Goo,
Eisner and Kane, right, And it's just no one and

(10:38):
because and it coincided with the fact of stand losing
interest in running the game and just basically being being
the presence as opposed to the creative presence. You look
at look at what Electro Assassin, you look at Moonnight,
you look at what Dennis was doing even on stuff
like like V and then and then they look at
and then then Miles Center going, these guys bent the

(11:00):
material here there will in a way that none of
my generation could have considered.

Speaker 2 (11:03):
Do it well, I mean we could if we could
talk to Bill for a second. I remember entering the
studio and at the time, my buddy Larry O'Neil, Danie
O'Neill's son was working for you Howard as an assistant,
and then he got he got. He told me that
Bill down the hall was suddenly looked for an assistant,
and I was like, I raised my hand and came
or running. And I was such a fan of I

(11:26):
remember reading Moon Night and then there was that issue
hit it and I think I've talked to Bill about
this before, like where he literally pivots like there is
a huge something, something just happened, something changed, you know,
And I love to talk to Bill about that, but
also get him into nineteen eighty five, and it occurred
to me I didn't realize that Love and War, your

(11:46):
Kingpin comic was done in nineteen eighty three or eighty two,
or came out in eighty three. Bill, if you can hear.

Speaker 5 (11:55):
Me, He's moving slight eighty three.

Speaker 2 (12:00):
Yeah, that came out before you did. Elect your sad.

Speaker 7 (12:02):
Can you hear me?

Speaker 2 (12:03):
Yeah, I can hear you. I can hear you.

Speaker 3 (12:09):
What's up?

Speaker 2 (12:10):
We can hear you?

Speaker 7 (12:11):
Can you hear me?

Speaker 5 (12:12):
But yeah, okay, all right, it's.

Speaker 6 (12:18):
A little well, it's it's a little chopp.

Speaker 1 (12:24):
On my end.

Speaker 8 (12:25):
I don't know if it's the way you got through,
and I don't know if it's me or if it's
if it's just.

Speaker 7 (12:31):
System systemic.

Speaker 5 (12:34):
But anyway, we're okay.

Speaker 2 (12:40):
Bill is always breaking something breaking Comico. Okay, tough, I
can't help himself.

Speaker 3 (12:50):
I love the fact that it's the young guys who
are sucking up technologically.

Speaker 5 (12:53):
Yeah, yeah, that's.

Speaker 3 (12:59):
But know I mean relevantly, yes, of course, of course.

Speaker 2 (13:05):
But Bill, if you can hear us in you're less choppy,
like you were working you had already completed, uh the
Kingpin Love and War story where you literally cut out
wallpaper and put it on the kingpins, the drawing of
the Kingpin, like I kind of insane. You just pulling
from other sources constantly to stay with the forum. You know,

(13:29):
all right, you're moving around, You're getting a better signal.

Speaker 6 (13:32):
Now he's sideways, see you're feeding right. It's like it's
like it is like a Bils and kevinch comic.

Speaker 2 (13:44):
Means something that's right done. Absolutely, you all like that.

Speaker 3 (13:51):
I am so slap happy. This is the most entertainment
of that old day.

Speaker 2 (13:57):
I think he's gonna try try to hop back in
or something. All right, And where's Walter? Damn it?

Speaker 5 (14:03):
Did he ever show up?

Speaker 2 (14:05):
No, he's not. He's trying to get.

Speaker 3 (14:07):
In centers and saying he's talking with Walter.

Speaker 2 (14:11):
Oh he is, okay, Well all right, so oh man,
tell Bill.

Speaker 1 (14:24):
To try his uh iPhone instead of his uh macafe
or iPad if he's on his iPad.

Speaker 7 (14:32):
Can you can you hear?

Speaker 6 (14:34):
Try your phone iPad? Said, try your phone instead of
your iPad.

Speaker 2 (14:43):
Amazing.

Speaker 5 (14:45):
Oh you're in trouble now, try your iPad instead of
your phone.

Speaker 1 (14:49):
Yeah, it's guys, it's when it's UH. When it's Safari,
it doesn't work well with stream Yard. I'm Joe in
the pro shop. I'm sorry that I got to tell
you that.

Speaker 3 (14:59):
Sorry. Maybe that's why that's why I always use my
my desktop, because I'm on Firefox on my desktop and
Safari on my I pack.

Speaker 5 (15:07):
Yeah, I'm just that's that's better, all right.

Speaker 7 (15:16):
I'm gonna try. I'm gonna try logging in on.

Speaker 5 (15:18):
My doing on your computer?

Speaker 7 (15:27):
All right, I'm gonna try that. Let me try. Let me.

Speaker 2 (15:33):
Now you're doing Now you're doing fine.

Speaker 7 (15:36):
I'm gonna try logging in.

Speaker 2 (15:38):
Okay, all right, while while you're doing that, let's let's
while we have these two guys.

Speaker 7 (15:43):
But now you're looking up my nose. I'm holding.

Speaker 8 (15:46):
Holding the damn phone because it's uh, this center was
is just a complete But are you.

Speaker 3 (15:54):
Combing your beard with with my.

Speaker 5 (15:57):
I'm going to text Bill on his nose.

Speaker 3 (16:00):
I've got a bag scratcher here, so I'm using it.

Speaker 2 (16:02):
I love it. So wait, Dennis, what did what did
you hop onto? Because I know later on you worked
on like the question and then milestone happened. But what
was your transitional period after doing those? Like you weren't
on a regular book, you know.

Speaker 5 (16:20):
On a regular book.

Speaker 6 (16:22):
I was just being given just stuff to do. I'm
trying to remember what happened. I must have gotten the
question after.

Speaker 5 (16:31):
That, right and when the Bill start thinking, you did.

Speaker 6 (16:34):
All those before then, and that's and being vigilante that
was like part of the DC you know stuff I
think I may have done like the Batman's didieth anniversary
comic Okay, you know that three parter thing with Sam Ham.

Speaker 5 (16:51):
I may have done that next.

Speaker 2 (16:52):
All right, right, right, right right, okay, I.

Speaker 6 (16:54):
Was like eighty five, eighty six, and then I think
I did the question after that.

Speaker 2 (16:58):
Well, I mean time so your studio to let the
folks know they're listening to this. Howard had was in
Upstar Studios with Walter and previously I believe and Howard
it was Frank Miller, Jim Starlin.

Speaker 3 (17:13):
The originally the original group was me, Starlin, Simonson and Myerk.
Myrak deed to leave and didn't tell anybody, but said
Jim Sherman could come in. The narcissism of white people.
The I didn't say it out loud that I and
thank you very much and uh and then uh Starlin

(17:35):
left and moved upstate and Frank moved in and that
that was the longest run there were the four of us.
Sherman was there with mostly hanging out with Weiss. Simonson
would show up. I was there at seven in the morning,
and uh, I had to start smoking my day early
because I had a big as rated film. So it

(17:58):
was great. I I love that time in my life.
I truly did.

Speaker 2 (18:02):
And then down the hall. Uh was a different company
that had like a back room where Dennis Bill and
Michael Davis. I remember we're in the back room there.
And do you guys ever name your studio?

Speaker 5 (18:14):
Dennis, It wasn't. It wasn't. I'm sorry, it wasn't a
come in, come in's he? Howard?

Speaker 6 (18:23):
Is that my Howard?

Speaker 5 (18:24):
That's my it's my wife. I know, but I can't
come on camera.

Speaker 6 (18:26):
I'm in a Onesie's in a onesie. Hashfield who when
he was seventeen. This is the nineteen eighty five pen.
Oh my god, well we were doing in nineteen eighty five?

Speaker 5 (18:40):
Who's Frozen? It was frozen? But he's smiling, Nicholas handsome
Howard thinking.

Speaker 2 (18:47):
I was only getting better looking?

Speaker 5 (18:49):
Huh, what what's up? Hey? Bill?

Speaker 2 (19:02):
But did you name the studio, Dennis?

Speaker 5 (19:04):
We did well.

Speaker 6 (19:04):
Actually our studio was not down the hall, I think
was right next door.

Speaker 5 (19:09):
Yeah, yeah, right next door.

Speaker 3 (19:11):
It was a print was a print was a print.

Speaker 6 (19:13):
Shop that owned this space that was right next door.
Very nice guy who rented to us. Crazy people. It
was me Bill and and and and Michael. Bill was
always the most serious among us.

Speaker 5 (19:29):
He was more like.

Speaker 6 (19:30):
Howard and like he was there early and get to work,
you know, and actually work. I would kind of half
assed work. I don't know what Michael was doing.

Speaker 2 (19:40):
But I remember what Michael was doing.

Speaker 3 (19:42):
He was.

Speaker 2 (19:44):
On an alien comic or a space comic. And I
think it was like eight pages for epic and I
don't think he ever finished it. I don't know what
it was.

Speaker 5 (19:51):
I don't know if he ever did.

Speaker 9 (19:53):
I know that, Like, my main goal for being at
that studio was to go next door to upstarts and
Bob her Howard and Walter and Jim Sherman while he was.

Speaker 6 (20:04):
There, you know, and Frank when he when he when
he was there. I was kind of around when all
that stuff was.

Speaker 5 (20:12):
Going on, you know. But when we were there was when.

Speaker 6 (20:15):
Howard, Walter, Jim Sherman and and and and and and
Frank were there.

Speaker 2 (20:22):
That's one of the questions I wanted to ask, unless
Bill can answer the nineteen eighty what he was working
on nineteen eighty five? Are you able to talk? Bill?

Speaker 8 (20:31):
Bill?

Speaker 5 (20:31):
Can you talk yet?

Speaker 7 (20:35):
Can you guys hear me?

Speaker 2 (20:35):
All? Yeah, I can hear you.

Speaker 7 (20:38):
Yeah, Okay, I I am Are you hearing me?

Speaker 2 (20:42):
Yes, we can hear you.

Speaker 3 (20:45):
We can hear you.

Speaker 7 (20:46):
I think, Uh, I think I was working on.

Speaker 8 (20:51):
Oh okay, all right, Well I'm trying to log into
uh into the uh the site on my laptop here.

Speaker 5 (20:59):
Uh, did you get an email connection?

Speaker 3 (21:02):
Thing?

Speaker 2 (21:02):
I was?

Speaker 8 (21:03):
I thought I was working on New Mutants, finishing up
the run.

Speaker 2 (21:09):
You were on New Mutants and then started working on Electrostassin,
because that's what I heard.

Speaker 5 (21:14):
He was finishing New Mutants and onto Electra Assassin.

Speaker 10 (21:17):
You're right right, like finished up.

Speaker 2 (21:27):
And if you want me to help. One of my
one of my questions I have is because you were
next to each other, you clearly were sharing ideas and
influencing each other. At some point, Dennis, you had Bill
inking you on a lot of projects, right, Howard. I
think you turned Bill onto craft Tint because you started
using that New Mutants and I remember taking pages home

(21:47):
and craft hinting some of the New Mutants pages. Is
that true? Oh? I think so?

Speaker 11 (21:52):
I mean Bill can I thought, I mean I got
introduced to it by by Roy Crane's stuff, right and
all sickles and of course would he right?

Speaker 3 (22:04):
Don't picked up on that for me?

Speaker 2 (22:06):
Well, when I got there, you were you were using
it obviously on flag craft Tint which to explain to
the viewers. That was like the gray tone that you
could get on your artwork. It was a certain kind
of paper that had you would could develop with, uh
you know, a liquid and you would get two different
like you know, versions of it, like one that was
do it tend to shade right? Right? And then when

(22:30):
Bill started working on the after the Bear story and
it was doing the Legions story, you decided to kind
of depart and do something a little bit different because
you're gonna get a little more psychedelic, I believe, and
and kind of this fractured mind. And he started using
craft tint on a lot of that artwork, uh, that

(22:51):
I helped apply. And then at some point Bill wasn't
coming in as much because I think you lived in
Connecticut or something, and I was coming and hanging out
with Dennis and Michael and then doing the same thing,
hanging out down the hall with Howard and Walter and
Jim Sherman. And I think Howard took pity on me
and decided to get a second assistant.

Speaker 5 (23:14):
The tamage Bill.

Speaker 3 (23:19):
It's Bills.

Speaker 2 (23:24):
There. He is.

Speaker 3 (23:26):
Say a couple of words that's coming.

Speaker 6 (23:29):
Yeah, did you have a green thing please this on
a second.

Speaker 2 (23:35):
Let me he's always got something.

Speaker 5 (23:37):
Look at that green thing? Is there a green what can.

Speaker 2 (23:42):
You hear me?

Speaker 8 (23:44):
It's judging is it? Is it live or is it.

Speaker 2 (23:50):
I think he's I think he almost left the matrix.
I think he's a crack and the matrix right there
and Bill scream so much.

Speaker 3 (23:58):
More fun than I see you guys so much.

Speaker 2 (24:04):
I love to see. We got to get Walter, and man,
where's Walter?

Speaker 3 (24:07):
Let's talk about I'm always not here the fucking.

Speaker 8 (24:12):
So?

Speaker 2 (24:13):
What was it like working in that same environment? And
also Bill, we were just catching up with everybody's working
nineteen eighty five, You're working on new mutants, you started
Electro Assassin, you'd already done Love and War, and you
were literally trying everything. As I mentioned in my introduction
if you heard it, I watched you take a used

(24:34):
T bag and like start to ink a panel with
it or do something.

Speaker 8 (24:38):
Oh yeah, it makes great, great beige tones and flesh tones.
It actually really does well.

Speaker 2 (24:48):
It was incredible to watch, Yeah, because just watching you
just experiment and just like just reach and pull something
from the side and just do something on your page
was incredible. Even recently when we hung out in Baltimore
a few years ago at that the Museum of the
Art Museum. I believe with Locus Moon, the Locus Moon
guys just watching you just just play with ink and

(25:11):
just it. It was like your art to me is
intimidating to look at and figure out how you do it,
But to watch you play it makes me want to play,
you know, It's less intimidating.

Speaker 8 (25:22):
It's it's kind of a oh really, well that's great.

Speaker 2 (25:24):
That's an interesting paradigm. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (25:27):
I mean the only thing that I can do to
explain that is that I make mistakes every you know, nanosecond,
and then I'm fixed. I'm trying to fix it. So
it's fucking up, fix it fucking up. And so it's
just it's like a snowball. It's just whatever whatever leaves

(25:47):
the mark and seems to draw whatever I'm trying to come,
you know, translate. If it looks right, then I leave
it alone, and then of course until of course I don't,
and then I get shits the bet, you know.

Speaker 2 (26:00):
But in a weird way, there's a chaos factor to
your art, whereas I feel like with Howard there was
such structure and such a skeleton and owns to his
You know, did you guys, how'd you influence each other
in nineteen eighty five? You're walking into each other's rooms
and can you talk about that?

Speaker 8 (26:18):
Well, Howard's work. I mean, I I'd known. I've known
Howard's work since I think he was doing Fafford and
Mauser and I was really I think there was. I
think I pretty much went through a whole period where
I was shelter shut up.

Speaker 3 (26:38):
Ah, Yes, the depressive sunshine is with us.

Speaker 2 (26:42):
I'm pretty cranky right now. Don't talk with me.

Speaker 3 (26:45):
We talk about you.

Speaker 5 (26:48):
He's got cranky. That's that the technology kind of cranky.

Speaker 2 (26:56):
I was exactly right.

Speaker 5 (26:58):
Yep, yep, I know that.

Speaker 10 (26:59):
Look we all going to.

Speaker 8 (27:01):
You know, I'm threatening a hamster on the wheel right now, Walter.

Speaker 3 (27:06):
We've been basically talking about sink heavage because he couldn't
get on worth a ship. Now he's on and now
you're here.

Speaker 7 (27:12):
So the band is We planned this, Walter.

Speaker 8 (27:16):
We planned it this way, didn't we.

Speaker 10 (27:18):
That's right, we're getting the band back together already.

Speaker 2 (27:23):
This is this has not occurred since in thirty five years.
You know, this is the first time that we are
in a shared space like this. It's pretty it's like it's.

Speaker 8 (27:32):
Like it's like you know.

Speaker 7 (27:35):
Yeah.

Speaker 2 (27:36):
Anyway, So Walter, just to catch you up, we're talking
about nineteen eighty five and and all the work that
everyone was doing in eighty five.

Speaker 8 (27:44):
And Bill was just like I said, in terms of
the influence, like I mentioned, being familiar with with certainly
with Walter's work, but with Howard, like d C the
work he was doing on and the Gray Mouser. I

(28:04):
just remember never having seen anything like it. And then
when there was a certain design.

Speaker 2 (28:13):
Oh, come on, I was gonna ask you.

Speaker 8 (28:21):
Again.

Speaker 2 (28:25):
I'm sure Bi will be back. I'm sure Bill be back.

Speaker 3 (28:28):
But he'll be back not knowing we haven't heard him.
Will just pick continue to speak.

Speaker 2 (28:32):
That's right.

Speaker 8 (28:36):
I'm putting the gun to my own head.

Speaker 2 (28:38):
And we only have twenty five minutes left before they
kick us off.

Speaker 8 (28:42):
Well, i'll fix it. I'll fix it right after that.

Speaker 2 (28:45):
Okay, that's right.

Speaker 8 (28:47):
You know you know how it goes. It's like finding
the reference you need after you're done turning in the panel.

Speaker 10 (28:55):
Here's my best story about that I did MetalMan had
to Dross Stone Hinge. This is like what seventy five
No internet no web. I didn't have a lot of
books back then. Trying to find Stonehenge pictures. I had
a dictionary had a picture of Stonehenge. It was like
that big, but it was big, less than an inch high,
but it was clear. It made I was worked out fine.

(29:18):
Two weeks later, I'm in the Strand bookstore. I find
a whole shelf of time life books of the Neolithic,
of Age, early man, Neil Pale, all that stuff, and
one of them is about Britain, stone Age in Britain.
And I open it up and in some of these
things I have a chapter, and then a short chapter,

(29:39):
and then a photo essay, a short chapter, a photo essay.
The last photo essay in the book is Stonehenge, Stonehenge
in the Ring, Stonehenge in the Dawn from below. I said,
all right, so I bought the book. I've never had
the draw stone Hinge again, I do. I am all set.

Speaker 2 (30:05):
That's amazing that one of the things we had to
do for Howard was to clip out reference and put
in a foul cabinet.

Speaker 10 (30:11):
Now you have the Internet, you know I would have
inside my career.

Speaker 2 (30:17):
Now, yeah, well.

Speaker 8 (30:22):
I know that being in Westport, the Westport library had uh,
Robert Fawcett, Albert dorn a, slew of illustrators are like
clip clip files. Uh in their in their private they
had a separate room set up. That's cool for for illustrators.

(30:45):
Some some of the illustrators, like Mark English, he would
call in what he needed and the librarians would pick
out the reference. He'd pull up in his car, the
librarians would hand him the envelope and he'd drive off.

Speaker 10 (30:57):
You know, well that I needed this stuff.

Speaker 8 (31:01):
Yeah, yeah, but let me if I could. I'd like
to go back to the question one of the earlier
quest because I'd like to make some kind of fucking
contribution here instead of just uh yes, yeah. How Howard's
work that he did with Byron uh the uh the

(31:23):
flowers wrote the flowers about having them shot whatever, And
I think there were a number of different ones that
he did, and I remember thinking, uh, I mean it
was a real huge influence on me, so uh, you know,
so it showed that, you know, that painted stuff was possible.

(31:44):
Although my goal was to try to get like subvert
the comics like themselves like it, because as opposed to
a graphic novel like like what Howards was doing with
with Byron, or with like even with Marble, with Love
and War. I was trying to get into the actual

(32:05):
comics and even take the superhero stuff and try to
bring an illustrative quality to it.

Speaker 3 (32:13):
Yeah, I was talking about about bending the material to
your will as it was by it, you.

Speaker 2 (32:20):
Know, yep, yep. But how did you know to have
the balls to do that? Like honestly, like less unless
it was a free for all. And maybe in the
nineteen eighties editors gave you a lot more latitude than
they do today.

Speaker 8 (32:32):
There was a subversive aspect to the editors. If I
had tried to come into comics with the style I
developed that I sort of pushed for towards the New Mutants,
I wouldn't have been hired. I actually had to kneel
Adams Trojan Horse my way in, and then it was like,
you know, I felt like, you know, some kind of

(32:54):
weird Edward Snowden meets Hunter Thompson.

Speaker 2 (32:58):
You know.

Speaker 8 (32:59):
Once I was in, it was like, oh, I have
the keys to the executive washroom, you know, let me
go in there and and uh, you know, and just
play because and I don't know if if anybody else
has has felt this way when they come to some
kind of crossroads. But I had, certainly with myself with
the with the clone thing. I was in love with

(33:21):
with comics and also art, but comics were my thing,
and I felt like I was either gonna do all
the kind of comics I wanted to do, or I
was going to get out. I mean, Howard mentioned earlier
that he had gone and gotten out of the medium
and came back to sort of establish you know, his
own his own real voice. I mean like I think

(33:42):
like with Flags, I think you really like made it
like not only your own, but with a vengeance. You know.
I felt like he kind of came back and really grabbed.
I was doing that on on on thor and I
think Dennis was was you were pushing it to the
question at that time, right, Well that was.

Speaker 5 (34:03):
A little bit after he got into the That was
before the question.

Speaker 6 (34:07):
But what I can say is that there's three guys
on the panel who totally influenced everything I did after So,
between Howard and Walter and Bill, it's like kind of
formed my life life in a way in a very profile.
I'm looking at that and I'm freaking out a little
bit Howard was the one. Howard was Howard and walk

(34:31):
Bolt taught me like hard lessons at one like one
time me for twice each A sat me down and
literally taught me what to do and what not to do,
and what to.

Speaker 5 (34:41):
Look for, what not to look for.

Speaker 6 (34:42):
I didn't need a lot of lessons, but the ones
I got, I probably didn't need a lot. But the
ones I got they were generous, generous dog to give
me meant meant so much. Howard sat me down after
me struggling with me and Vigilante as good as they
were because I.

Speaker 5 (34:57):
Was doing stuff.

Speaker 6 (34:59):
I don't know how they felt about my work, but
I know that they would look at it and really
criticize it, and not in a mean way, but in
a great way. So Howard looked at it and said, basically,
went to my page, took out these.

Speaker 5 (35:11):
Trades papers, said you're doing it all wrong. And I'm like, well,
what do you mean I'm doing it all wrong?

Speaker 6 (35:16):
And he explained to me that comics were about shapes, tapes,
and patterns, and until I started thinking that way, I
wasn't going to ever really successfully compose an age.

Speaker 5 (35:27):
So he taught me.

Speaker 6 (35:28):
What that was with circles and squares and literally putting
shapes on top of shapes, and how that worked, what
to look for? What was Alex told doing, What were
these people doing that, I'm not doing that I should
be thinking about Stop thinking about figures, stop thinking about muscles,
start thinking about space, start thinking about structure.

Speaker 5 (35:50):
Walter did the same thing.

Speaker 6 (35:52):
He sat down and literally we joke about this a lot.

Speaker 5 (35:56):
But I was so proud of one story that I had.
It was a power man. I was so proud.

Speaker 6 (36:02):
And it was like it took place on a roller
coaster and the first page was like this giant roller
coaster I drew and it was like twenty two pages
and stuff. I killed my stuff on it. And I
remember seeing Walter and you know, he was walking me
because like I was a big deal, you know. So
I went up to Walt and say, hey, well, take
a look at it and tell me what you think.
It was so stupid and so Well actually told me

(36:22):
what he thought. It was like, oh you want to
know what I what I think? Yeah, I want to
know what you think. So right in the halls of Marble,
he broke down every panel that was wrong on every page.

Speaker 5 (36:40):
Through it.

Speaker 6 (36:41):
In the halls of marble, and I'm thinking I'm dying here.
I have to turn this thing in and it's all wrong.
I remember saying, well, I have to turn this in,
and he was like, well, you'll get it right the
next time. I mean, you can turn this is all
right reading right now, and I'm thinking, well.

Speaker 12 (37:03):
The worst pieces ship ever because I and literally the
pages are still smoking from the criticism, and.

Speaker 6 (37:12):
I'm handing into Demie O'Neill taking what they are, weaken.

Speaker 5 (37:19):
The worst, and Danny's waving the fumes away and like.

Speaker 10 (37:28):
Going, here's the sequel to that story he's read. When
we're upstart, you guys are next door. You were doing
a Batman story. I had a Batman story. I don't
know if it's the Sam Ham script. I can't remember
something pretty cool. And you bought the pages over to
me to look at. Never dynamite, we're dynamite pages.

Speaker 5 (37:50):
I don't remember any of that.

Speaker 3 (37:51):
And that's how I said.

Speaker 10 (37:52):
I said, fabulous this, You're fantastic and and you said
you reminded me I'm looking at the roller coaster job
years earlier. Yeah, and said that was the kind of
reaction I expected back when I showed you job.

Speaker 5 (38:09):
Yes, I told you. I handed to him.

Speaker 6 (38:11):
I was like, I was feeling myself. You know, I'm this,
this is really professional work man. So anyway, and then Bill,
I'm working next to Bill, and he's you know, and
and people don't know, but Bill and I have been
friends for a very long time. I saw Bill one
of the first times he came up to h d
C Comics showing his portfolio. I was there when he

(38:35):
walked in and his jacket and his blacks right, and
his portfolio looking very Westport professional.

Speaker 8 (38:42):
That's right, babe, that was That was my little l
Abner look from the.

Speaker 5 (38:47):
I was sitting in the lobby.

Speaker 6 (38:50):
I watched this guy walk in and and and and
his slacks and a and a and a and a
sport coade and.

Speaker 5 (38:56):
It's a young guy. And I'm thinking, it's wrong with him.
Why is he Why is you look like that?

Speaker 8 (39:01):
And it was I was wearing pants and nothing I
was wearing was natural fiber. Everything was polyesterical. Yeah, And
I had I had and I was wearing a brown suit.
I had pants you could play checkers on. I swear
to God, yes. And I had an Eiffel Tower tie

(39:25):
because I remember Alan Weiss going nice tie.

Speaker 5 (39:30):
Looking like okay, so you guy.

Speaker 6 (39:32):
So the other time I met Bill, and this may
have been after or before I saw him in DC.
I'm up at Continuity because I was working continuity him
sixteen or seventeen this album Far Back we Go, and
I was working as an assistant for Neil. I was
basically doing what Dean was doing, except less because I
didn't have as much parents as Dean. So mostly I

(39:53):
got yelled at by Neil but messing things up, so
it was great. I'm sitting right behind him. Bill walks
in and I guess he had an appointment with Neil
to show his portfolio or something.

Speaker 5 (40:03):
Never forget this. Joe Barney was there, Joezito was.

Speaker 6 (40:07):
There, Mike Nasser was there, and Joe, Joe bro you know,
all all all those guys. And he comes in and
he shows he needs the Bill and and and he
meets to kneel and Neil opens his opens Bill's portfolio
and puts it on a flatbed surface. I'll never forget this.

(40:28):
And he's flipping the pages slowly like this because Neil,
he's he's great, be right.

Speaker 3 (40:35):
Slipping it.

Speaker 5 (40:37):
I'm all looking like God and he's like replacing Bill Casey.
Neil would not Yeah, see, this one's good. This one's good.

Speaker 6 (40:44):
And then he gathered as all. He says, can I
look at this, Dennis, come look at it. He goes,
you see, he looks at Bill.

Speaker 5 (40:53):
He looked at it. He said, this guy, this guy's
doing it, but he's doing it right.

Speaker 6 (40:57):
By this time, Mike Nasa was there too, all gathered
around because Neil had called.

Speaker 5 (41:02):
Us all men to look at Bill's portfolio. He's doing me,
but he's doing it right.

Speaker 6 (41:07):
And he looked at kind of nassappointedly, and he looked
at me, and he looked at everybody.

Speaker 5 (41:11):
And I remember thinking, just fuck this dude, Like I
was thinking he's so great. I was thinking he's coming
up here for now, was like, this is my new son.

Speaker 3 (41:23):
I can.

Speaker 6 (41:26):
Mike Nas asked out. Mike Nas was really asked out,
like just fuck all this.

Speaker 5 (41:30):
And I'm pick.

Speaker 6 (41:33):
Remember thinking Suit just came up here and just blew
us all the way.

Speaker 5 (41:38):
And I remember Neil Adams picking up the phone.

Speaker 6 (41:41):
I remembering picking up the phone while Bill was there
and calling Jim Shooter and saying, I'm gonna send this
guy to see his name is sink Kevitch. That's how
you say, Bill sink Kevitch. He's got I'm gonna send
him right right now. Yeah, he's coming down. He's going
down right now, He's coming down right now. I was there, baby,
I remember all that. And I remember also taking Neil

(42:03):
and never called him nobody from me to say to
send me nowhere except to go get him something like
go pick this up at the store.

Speaker 5 (42:10):
That's the only thing.

Speaker 6 (42:11):
You ever had he.

Speaker 5 (42:13):
Nowhere.

Speaker 7 (42:14):
Oh my god, God.

Speaker 6 (42:16):
But it was made a splash that day that I
never forgotten because.

Speaker 2 (42:22):
It was but every time, and then you would go
on to be your regular inchor and and but I
do want Walter briefly to tell us what you were
working on in nineteen eighty five. Is that when you've
been working on thort for a little while, Is that
when you introduced the frog.

Speaker 10 (42:39):
That'd be about right. It was a couple of years in.
I started in eighty three, So what's that twenty four issues?
That's probably about the time the frog story showed up.
And it was really you know you mentioned earlier talking
to we were talking about something went by about editorial
and freedom and whatever, and I was just going to

(43:00):
say about that is that it's seem to me at
that time, up until about nineteen ninety I've said this before,
creativity and comics to me was more or less bottom up.
You got a book, you could do what you wanted
with it. Now I mean within the limits of mainstream comics,
because I was working at Marvel and DC mostly, but
you really had that book and you were on your own.

(43:22):
After that, once crossover started coming in, creativity began being
top down, and as a result, I think less interesting
to me anyway as a guy writing stories. So at
that time when I did the Frog story, you know,
nobody said boo. I mean I presented to my Ralph

(43:44):
as my ownitor at the time, Ralph Machia. I don't
think I heard from Jim Shooter on it. Really it
came out the only time I talked to Shooter. I
was going to do. Right when I was getting off
the book, I did an awe splash page issue where
thora fight's the Midguard Serpent, and I was trying to
figure out some way to do that story because it

(44:04):
was going to be so small and the Serpent was
so big, And eventually I decided that all splash pages
would do it, but I wasn't sure that was going
to be received. At that point. John Burrn had done
an all splash page issue of The Hulk, but it
hadn't been printed. He'd gotten a concertront with Denny about that,
and I think he got off the book, and that
story had not come out yet. Eventually Alan Milgrim published

(44:26):
it in what was that Marvel didn't Fanfare, But I
hadn't come out yet. I hadn't seen that, but I
knew it existed, and I had the idea to do
an all a splash page issue. I wasn't sure if
Jim would be amenable to that at the time. By
that time he was kind of exercising a more oversight
on the books than they had earlier, and so so
I stopped by his office. I just I poked my

(44:48):
head in there, you know, in the office a lot
back in those days. Poked my head and he wasn't busy,
he wasn't talking about you right then, and I told
him what I had in mind, with my usual enthusiasm
on Gusto, and he just said, sounds great, and that
was I just have anoculation against having any problem later
on down the road.

Speaker 2 (45:05):
But it worked.

Speaker 10 (45:06):
Out fine, and the issue came out well. So my
run on thor that was a book. When I first
took it over, Mark Grunwald was the editor, and Mark Goldman,
I had carte blanche to do whatever I wanted it.
It wasn't selling very well, which meant that, you know,
the good part about that was if I take it
over the book in a tank, they'd just say, oh, well,
that book was going down the tubes anyway, too bad.

(45:28):
If it did well, they'd say, wow, Simonson, what a genius.
I'm not sure I quite made the genius level, but
I did end up it sold well and that was that.
But but I really did. I've never had a book
in mainstream since then or before that, really or I
had carte blanche. I mean, what about one Huther and Archie?

(45:49):
But that was Archie was the editor, So what about Oriyan?
I thought that was such a great Last time, I
did have to do a Joker crossover in the middle
of it because they were doingsovers and it was like, Okay,
this month, you're doing a Joker crossover. And I came
over the story I really liked, So I did two
issues on it. Right, screw it, I'll just did two
issues on this, and I'd use a lot of Kirby stuff,

(46:11):
but I that one. I had a lot of freedom
on that. But that was also nobody cared about Ryan
at d C. I mean it was you know DC.
The new guys have never done very well there, the
fourth bold stuff, and so you know, I got two
years out of it, had a great time. One of
my favorite books to do. I have a feeling that
the second year I was doing it it was probably
losing money for DC, but they let me kept doing it.

(46:33):
And then finally, how did this work? My publisher, my editor,
and somebody else was a group editor. I don't remember
how DC was structured, but Paul Levits and Mike Carlon
and somebody else, oh U remember to DC and Marvel.
Eventually they took me out to lunch to tell me
they were canceling the book. And I have to say
it was very nice to have, as opposed to finding

(46:54):
a message on your answering machine or maybe an email, Ah,
your book's dead, go away.

Speaker 2 (47:01):
It was very kind of to do that.

Speaker 10 (47:02):
And so and they gave me about five four issues
to wrap it all up. I think Paul kind of
blanched I need probably full more to get everything finished,
and you kind of went but then they let me
have them and it worked out pretty well.

Speaker 8 (47:15):
That's it's interesting that you say that. I was just
thinking about every what everybody was doing in nineteen eighty
five as compared to now, where you know, like what
you mentioned about top down, bottom up. I mean, I
don't necessarily feel that the editors are really necessarily editors anymore.
They feel like they're more glorified traffic managers to kind

(47:35):
of keep the you know, the wheels on the train
of the licensing, you know, so to speak. Because there
was at eighty five, eighty four, eighty five, eighty six.
I mean, that was such an amazing time. I mean everything.
I mean, I remember when you did Beta ray Bill
and then the the the Frog. It's like, like just

(47:59):
that have set ripples through Marvel. I still remember, uh,
you know, people's response. And then with with Flag you
know that because that got on everybody's radar, and I
you know, I know obviously with you know, with what
Frank we did with Dark Knight and it was.

Speaker 5 (48:17):
No it was flag for and Daredevil it was a
dared at the time.

Speaker 3 (48:23):
Yeah, yeah, you're right.

Speaker 6 (48:26):
One of the things to working Sorry, oh sure, no,
no I was saying I was. I was just working
in comics. But I remember being influenced by that stuff
while I was working in comics.

Speaker 8 (48:39):
So yeah, well yeah.

Speaker 3 (48:43):
One of the things has to be everybody is that
we were all living in the same place. We saw
each other all the time, every day. It was the
last time that was the case because the General Express
began to change the way. You know, well before the Internet,
people were no longer required to live in this city,
and we were all we were very much a real community.

(49:04):
You know, everybody knew everybody. Everybody has stories, everybody had experiences.
We ate together, we drank together, we partied together.

Speaker 6 (49:13):
He messed up, I think we together. What they said,
we messed up together. We got mad.

Speaker 5 (49:22):
It was all of it. All of it.

Speaker 3 (49:27):
Was affordable life, you know.

Speaker 10 (49:29):
I mean part of it also, which I really one
thing I really miss about those days is that it
was great to go to the office. You got to
take your pages in because we weren't scanning stuff yet.
You took your pages in, which means you bumped into
Dennis or Howard or Bill or eighty five other guys,
and they all had to work with him, and you
could see the original art these guys were doing the most.

(49:50):
The one instance that blew me away. It was one
of his first in comics. I came into the DC
coffee and Bernie was there, and I Bernie is one
of the guys. Bernie, Howard, Michael, and probably Dan Green
were the first four guys I met on the first day.
I walked in the looking for work. Might have been
as well, what's that?

Speaker 2 (50:12):
Okay?

Speaker 10 (50:12):
Maybe he maybe it was. It was allan then and
uh uh. But shortly thereafter you go in, you go
to the coffee room, you talk to you know, your contemporaries,
you see work, and Bernie was doing swamp thing and
he pulled out swamp Thing for I think it was,
and there's an interior splash of a werewolf in there
with a guy's head down, but really the guy'd be

(50:34):
standing in the basement because it was right. It was
way low for the perspective. But what it was, Bernie,
it worked great, and it was this great full figure
of a werewolf with his back legs and that kind
of Z shape, a lot of zip A tone on it,
and it looked fantastic and it was really I think
Howard said elsewhere that you know, Bernie really set the
bar pretty much for the rest of us, and it
was just, you know, you look at it and you go, oh, crap,

(50:56):
Now I got to go home and work harder, atom.

Speaker 2 (51:00):
But it was just.

Speaker 10 (51:01):
Amazing to see to be able to walk into the
office and see that kind of stuff, and it was
very encouraging. It was intimidating, and it really made you
want to go back to your studio and work. Would
you say that when we're talking here, Frank was doing
that well, Howard was doing American Flag, and I was
doing for all at the same time out in that

(51:22):
one room which is pretty.

Speaker 2 (51:23):
And and your mutants and doing electros ass And I
mean again that the proximity, I think is what we're
talking about created a certain kind of healthy competition. I
would almost say that made you guys work harder and stronger.

Speaker 8 (51:38):
Would you say I was certainly was the case for me.
I mean, I remember when you know, Howard and I
think we we we've mellowed a bit. I mean I
think during you know, and uh uh, you know, I
have nothing but love and respect for the man. But
I remember there were some in our younger days, there
was a lot of contentious sort of back and forth.

Speaker 5 (51:59):
Assholes.

Speaker 8 (52:02):
Yeah, we did and and and the thing is is
that uh I mean we lived and breathed it, and
it was like it was it was it was passion,
you know, it was and it was.

Speaker 3 (52:14):
A competition for me was resentment. Yeah, I mean I
felt that. I mean, like like Walker said, you know,
rights and rights and s at this bar that was
none of us were able to attend. You couldn't compete
with that. And there were guys that I mean, like
Bill and I did a thing last year sometime in

(52:36):
the in the dim past before the ship hit the
fan uh at cal Arts called called vulgar Shenanigans.

Speaker 2 (52:43):
Yeah, it was.

Speaker 7 (52:43):
That was a lot of fun.

Speaker 8 (52:45):
We just had a gas it was yeah, yeah, it's
it's it's really amazing when when you know, when you
kind of get a little bit more maturity under the
belt and you kind of realize it's like a lot
of the stuff that that seemed important so much longer,
so much a while ago, as this kind of like
literally water under on under the bridge.

Speaker 3 (53:04):
But there are still people I would rather see dead.
So just be aware.

Speaker 8 (53:08):
No, no, no, I think we had a name at
least you know, one or two. But uh, but yeah,
that that is true. I mean we were all we
would see each other. Now it's like even with social
media and people posting stuff all the time, it's sort
of the public you know, square in a way, but

(53:30):
it's uh, it's not quite the same uh as as
holding the stuff in your hands and and uh uh
you know, see wearing.

Speaker 3 (53:41):
A Belgrove Snack red red Superman cap with Frank Miller
walking three feet behind me, so no one would know
that that was that he was with me. You can't
get that.

Speaker 10 (53:52):
I remember my first year or two, in the first
year when DC was still ever what nine to nine
third Avenue a election or wherever it was from the road,
and I remember there with that and it was also
there were there were still Wiener Walls back in the
city back in those days, which is a restaurant chicken
and German food. Maybe I don't remember, but we used
to go there every so often so that you not

(54:13):
only got to look at the pages people were doing
and could be excited about them, but you you know,
you bump to your friends. I mean, Continuity was like
a boys club.

Speaker 5 (54:23):
Continuity because from DC, you walk over to Continuity.

Speaker 10 (54:26):
Yep, and Marvel the same way you could walk the Continuity.
And so then you'd go out at night, and you know,
Neil taught me the beauties of a bacon cheeseburger, which
I never eat anymore. Used to be a restaurant called
the Channel four Restaurant down forty eighth Street. But it
was really it was really uh, you know, the communal
aspect of it. It was partly professional, it was partly family,

(54:48):
and that was it was. It was we I often
talk about it, not often occasionally talk about the fact
we feel we came through comics at a fabulous time
to be in comics.

Speaker 3 (54:58):
Yeah, be replicated a launch at Kenny's with Jack Gabel
when when when what's her name from from the Fast
of Life would come in and work the room, Jack
calling the waitress George Washington, you know, I mean, just
it was just brutal, Mary, Ralph, Paul Kirshner, you know,

(55:19):
all these guys, we were all of the same age.
We were incredibly vital, you know, to a certain extent,
hostile and just it was the equivalent of what stand
up comics go through trying to literally want to.

Speaker 8 (55:30):
And well, I think it's it's uh, it would stand
up comedy. It's uh, they ship talk to each other brutally,
and that's a that's a sign of affection, you know,
like you're kind of in the you're in the in
the family.

Speaker 2 (55:46):
Speaking of I knew that I was. I don't know,
grandfather dian or well liked or loved because of a
prank that was pulled on me, I don't know. I
wanted to tell the story. Walter wasn't the story.

Speaker 5 (56:01):
Well, I'm not sure.

Speaker 10 (56:01):
I think you should tell the story.

Speaker 2 (56:05):
I can tell.

Speaker 3 (56:06):
And I want to say here or now before this
is tall. I really held my own against Walter doing this. Yeah,
you remember that, Walter, do you remember that? I cringe
through it awful because I because I remember like I
had never seen I had never seen Walter get angry.

Speaker 2 (56:27):
I thought he was like the mister Rogers neighborhood of comics,
you know, like la it was. He was the nicest
guy ever.

Speaker 3 (56:35):
And and I remember like it used to be filing cabinets, babe.

Speaker 2 (56:39):
You saw the gu's right, and they had a record
player and they would play like Warren Zyvonne and Morrison
right and other stuff and you know, I get. I guess.
I brought in a Prince record. It was a forty
five of Little Red Corvette and once in a while
to be like Deane, you could put yourself, you know.

(57:00):
So I was like, thank you, you know, it's really sweet.
And then there was one day where, like I don't
know if it was Walter or Howard just kept suggesting
I put that song on again, just go ahead, you
should play you should play it. And I was like, why,
Like you guys don't like prints or whatever. You always
making fun of me. And then I decide, okay, and

(57:21):
I put on the forty five. It's playing Little Red Corvette.
I go back. I'm working on backgrounds on flag and
I start to hear like sniffling or something, and I
looked at my right and I see like Larry and
Howard both have their like faces against the boards, kind
of just laughing, kind of like to themselves. I'm like,
what's so funny? And then I hear like this like

(57:43):
a chair pull back and a stopping sound, and it's
Walter getting really physical and you know, abrasive and loud,
and he starts screaming how he fucking hates this song?
Why are you playing his mark song?

Speaker 8 (57:59):
Like?

Speaker 2 (58:00):
And I don't what to do because it's just a
print song. What did I do? You know?

Speaker 3 (58:03):
Like?

Speaker 2 (58:04):
And I was told to put it on, you know, like,
and he goes over to the record player and I'll
never forget this sound. I mean, you see it in
the movies, right, the lung is a scratch des drawing
my record.

Speaker 8 (58:16):
Right.

Speaker 2 (58:17):
Then he takes the record out and how do you
describe it? A widow? No, I folded in quarters or whatever,
hold the record in the corner. And it was like
watching like he was hulking out, you know. It was
like Bruce Banner emerging into a halt. And I didn't
know what to do. And again I'm looking to Larry

(58:39):
and Howard kind of are they laughing? What are they doing? Like,
I understand what's happening. And I just turned around and
I just went to like this robot mode of inking,
like I don't even know if I was afraid. I
was just trump something was going on. And then here
turn around, I got something. I gotta show you something.
I've got something for you. And he pulls out his

(59:00):
uh portfolio and pulls out a twelve inch version of
Little Red corvette, like the big long play with another
B side or whatever. And then everyone start us laughing
and my heart is just palpitating, you like, and then
I knew that these guys love me, and I give
that worldly news, brought you that lesson, that's right, and

(59:24):
I kept that forty five. I nailed it to above
my art table. I remember, and it kind of an
air or you know, like this sign of so that
that was. That was a beautiful moment.

Speaker 3 (59:34):
Uh.

Speaker 2 (59:35):
And but but I'd never seen Walter get so angry.
I was like what Afterwards, I was like, what a
great actor. But apparently Walter gets mad sometimes, so I
don't know, sometimes that's how you get mad. No, one
of the things I want to talk to you guys about,
And maybe this is too heavy a question, because one
of the things I wanted to ask was, Howard, don't
get upset that I'm putting glasses on. Uh, I'm getting

(59:57):
old here, Uh one of my cards? What the what
was the book industry like in nineteen eighty five? But
you've kind of been saying what it was like, because again,
a seventeen year old turning eighteen coming to us be
an assistant, I didn't know the business of comics. I
didn't know what the industry was like. If you have
anything more to say about that, please Otherwise I have
another question. Does anybody have a thought?

Speaker 8 (01:00:18):
Is that so much of what I think was being
tried by certainly by me at the time, was based
on naivete and sort of enthusiasm, like I was too
ignorant to know what could or couldn't be done, And
a lot of the prohibitions that were coming from the editorial,

(01:00:40):
like you know, the old edict of no green covers
or whatever.

Speaker 7 (01:00:46):
Like I was.

Speaker 8 (01:00:47):
Fine if they brought, you know, a rule or a
guideline that made sense, but none of them seemed to.
They were all just seemed like completely arbitrary. So it
just it was just you know, you know, going going
along and just and just seeing what worked, you know,
kind of because I think we all find our own way.

(01:01:08):
It's like, because that is one thing that that as
as sort of universal as comics are, they certainly are
absolutely more like solo artists. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:01:20):
I remember like a cover of different New Mutants, like
I think it had staples and like masking tape, like
you had broken a piece of art and taped it
back on to the cover. It was I don't know
if I.

Speaker 8 (01:01:32):
Know that was yeah, that was actually uh it was
Allegian Legion cover for New Mutants. I found a uh
there was a headshot of the actor James Kahn for
for some for some movie. And what I did was
I I xeroxed it a bunch of times to degrade it,
and so it stopped looking like him. And then I

(01:01:54):
I manipulated it, and I then I pasted that down
on the on the art and just taped and stapled
and and uh, you know sort of uh Kurt swittered
it up, you know, and.

Speaker 2 (01:02:08):
Then you you you created a character through Legion. I
believe that never looked the same twice that Warlock. Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:02:15):
Well, I think I was tired of all of the
academic stuff, of because I used to drill myself in
grammar school with anatomy. I would I was reading like
uh Anatomi like of course there was Bridgeman, but there
was another artist named Victor Perard where all of the
muscles wouldn't attach and everything else. And I remember I
would study the anatomy and then I would close the

(01:02:38):
book and I would try to draw off a memory
and I would I would see how how I you know,
I would retain it, how much I would retain it.
So when I finally came to doing uh, Warlock, I
was like, I'm going to create a character that's more
like jazz, it's like, or more musical, where it's like
there is no anatomy. It's like if you want to

(01:02:58):
put the head up here, put the head up here.
It's like it was really about more like cartooning in
a sense. Right So, and in a way, I feel
like the characters become more of a rar shock for
artists than war shock, the character Rorshock, because the way
I draw is different than the way you know, any
of these other gentlemen would draw it, or the way

(01:03:19):
you know, you know, Arthur Adams or yourself. You know.

Speaker 2 (01:03:23):
I think I've seen artists draw Warlock where they've tried
to make sense of him, and it doesn't look great,
you know, like it needs to be so skewed, almost
like you dip your elbow and ink and smear the paper
and then add something you know, chaos to it, you know.
But also what was interesting is coming to that room
and like Walter and Howard are writing their comics and
we all know, in comics drawing, you know, image is text,

(01:03:47):
so you're actually as an artist, you are also a writer,
you know, of sorts, right, because you're conveying story through image.
But these guys were already like you know, solidly writing
and drawing their stories or drawing their what they would write.
But Bill, you came to like write straight toasters, I
guess shortly thereafter.

Speaker 8 (01:04:08):
It was in I think ninety in ninety like eight
or eighty nine or ninety somewhere in there.

Speaker 2 (01:04:15):
And Dennis, I don't think you have you ever written
a comic?

Speaker 6 (01:04:19):
No, No, I've contributed to a lot of comics that way,
but I've never written my own comic.

Speaker 5 (01:04:24):
I should though, right, but I've never.

Speaker 2 (01:04:26):
Yeah, I've never.

Speaker 5 (01:04:28):
But I you know, Burker writers all the time in Milestone.

Speaker 6 (01:04:30):
That's all we did, right, I was work with Dwayne
and you know, Christopher Priest and all those guys.

Speaker 2 (01:04:36):
Kind of like a writer's room they call it today, right,
Like yeah.

Speaker 5 (01:04:41):
To this day with all that with the writers and stuff.

Speaker 2 (01:04:44):
So one of things I want to ask you, Dennis,
was I mean, I wasn't always privy to the conversation
in the room with you, Bill and Michael Davis. But
were you ever talking to Michael about or black representation
in comics and then or anything like that.

Speaker 6 (01:05:00):
Back then in the eighties, and at that time was
just probably at the very beginning of me having any
kind of awareness about anything, if even that, you know,
when I was up at next to upstarts in that studio,
I think I was just still trying to figure out, one,
what is this world of comics about? You know, I

(01:05:20):
had been in it at that time since I was fourteen.
I was like twenty four. Then I'd already been doing
it for ten years. You know, I was trying to
really figure out what it was about and didn't know
myself at all. It wasn't until so I didn't talk
to Michael about any of that stuff passing, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:05:38):
On the most superficial level.

Speaker 2 (01:05:40):
Sure, and I might.

Speaker 5 (01:05:43):
Even at that age how aware I was the systemic
you know, stuff that was going on even in comedy. Well, yeah,
I had no real grasp. But when I did, everything
changed profoundly for well.

Speaker 8 (01:05:59):
I know that when I think there were there were
times when I when you were you were out Dennis,
like I, when it was Michael and I working at
the studio and he and I would just talk back
and forth really about art and comics. And then when
when you were there, it was like we the subject
really of the sort of representation that that you that

(01:06:23):
really you did with Milestone that really didn't come up
at the time until it was just it was we
were all just working, working stiffs, trying to like like
find our way right.

Speaker 6 (01:06:35):
And yeah, the other thing I was going to point
out was that Howard's doing Flag and and and and,
and Walter's doing Thor and You're doing New Mutants, and
I'm doing Va whatever.

Speaker 5 (01:06:44):
But it wasn't like this was and Frank's doing Deribil.
But it wasn't like anyone thought we're doing extraordinary stuff
that we're not going to be doing later. It was
it was doing at the time.

Speaker 6 (01:06:55):
Does mean we're passionate about it, but it was always
going to be like this is what we did know
was of what we did.

Speaker 5 (01:07:02):
It wasn't like we.

Speaker 6 (01:07:04):
Know, this is a special time and it will never
be replicated again, okay.

Speaker 13 (01:07:10):
And so anything I was thinking back then was all transactional, young,
stupid and energetic, you know, own headed stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:07:23):
But it certainly was kind of awareness.

Speaker 3 (01:07:25):
Of I mean exactly right, I mean we were We
were all guys I think who were really lucky that
I think we shared the idea we were lucky to
have a job. It was basically making a vocation of
our avocation. Yep. We were hobbyists making a living from
our hobby basically. And uh and there's a lot of Look,
you know, we were the luckiest sons of bitches walking,

(01:07:47):
you know.

Speaker 8 (01:07:48):
You know what I mean, We're being paid to learn.
I mean, that's how I viewed it for a while,
you know, just take chances.

Speaker 6 (01:07:57):
And we were also among the last generation of artists
who like you, like you were Dean, who had assistants,
who were assistants, you know, different artists like that.

Speaker 5 (01:08:11):
Whole thing is gone.

Speaker 6 (01:08:12):
You know, but we had that way over time, we
had a lot.

Speaker 3 (01:08:18):
I worked for Woody, I worked for Guil, you know,
I worked for gret.

Speaker 6 (01:08:23):
I worked for you, I worked for Rich you know.
I did a lot of different stuff, and all that helped.
All that was prepared you to be a professional. And
even then you still couldn't really do it until until
you were doing it for years.

Speaker 3 (01:08:38):
You know.

Speaker 10 (01:08:39):
I was going to say one thing in talking about
ninet eighty five, one of the major differences then than
say in the seventies, where I mean a distribution aside,
because that was a major thing for comics from the
direct market got got underway. But I think one thing
is by eighty five that was about three years into royalties.

Speaker 3 (01:08:57):
Yes, and before.

Speaker 10 (01:08:59):
That you were being paid piece work per page, whether
it was lettering or coloring, or writing or drawing. And
when royalties came in eighty two that my income went
up by a third. It's gone back down again now,
so just you know, I didn't but it did.

Speaker 2 (01:09:18):
I ended up.

Speaker 10 (01:09:19):
I was on the X Men team Titans Crossover at
the time the decision was made to start royalties. In fact,
i'd had a discussion Chris and Terry and I talked
to Jim Shooter because we knew that the book was
going to sell really well, you know, trained monkeys have
drawn that book. We'd been fine, We've sold a lot
of copies, and we asked about doing royalties in the book,

(01:09:41):
having royalties to be a good plan, and it was
explained to us that well, there just wasn't really enough
money in comics for royalties to be given out the freelancers,
that the business would go under and that would be
the end of it, so we should be grateful for
what we had more or less. I don't remember his
exactly words, but was that was the idea that there
wasn't enough money for royalties, and and somewhere in there
d C instituted a royalty plan that was probably Paul Levitson,

(01:10:06):
maybe E Jeanette, maybe Orlando. They were kind of the
triumph it for a while, and within three or four
days Shooter and Mike Hobson had institute the similar royalty
plan at d C. And the result was that went
in before we finished the X Men Team Titans, so

(01:10:28):
we got really nice checks, and strangely enough, the industry
did not collapse after we were paid that money. But
I think it made a difference in some ways. It
may have been may have made freelance it's a bit
more cutthroat, because.

Speaker 8 (01:10:43):
It did change the whole paradigm. I think everybody started
to uy for the the higher profile stuff, and I
think I don't know if if if it was the royalties,
but didn't. I think Marvel had some kind of plan
in place before that, which I think was I think

(01:11:04):
they called it the incentive, Yeah, which is where like
if you stayed on for ten issues or something like that,
you got a certain amount bonus. Yeah, the bonus system
or whatever. But uh yeah, but but there have been
a couple of those those markers along the way. I
remember when uh, all the guys left to start Image

(01:11:25):
and then Marvel stock fell, and I remember, uh one,
the fact that there was a stock on Marble, and
two I thought that the business or the medium, it
was going to change everything. So, you know, the more
corporatization that that kind of came into, you know, the

(01:11:48):
clubhouse so to speak, became a little bit more pervasive.

Speaker 10 (01:11:53):
And also in the seventies much called a small business,
so there wasn't that much money flowing around anyway, and
that that changed over time. I don't know how there's
so much for mainstream because there's so many more comics now.
They're certainly generated thanks to movies, billions of dollars. It's
a it's a very different industry than that was back
when we were all kids doing the work.

Speaker 8 (01:12:14):
Well, the bill the billions that are being generated. You know,
having grown up, I think we can all sort of
remember the contempt and uh, you know that comics were
sort of viewed by viewed with by the vast majority
of people sort of you know, the juvenile medium blah
blah blah. And having had some experience with with the

(01:12:38):
corporate side of things and the cinematic side of things,
I I guess Marvel and Disney have made you know,
billions of dollars on their films, but very very little
of that money is taken from from that department and
translated to to comics. They there is there is a

(01:13:03):
segmentation and a bifurcation of the of the sort of
corporate structure, and I think, I mean, it's speculative on
my part, but I do feel that a lot of
the powers that be on the cinematic side sort of
view the comics side of things, one as research and development,

(01:13:23):
and also with the same a certain level of the
same kind of you know, a skance look that you know,
we kind of grew up with. You know, it's like
it's the crazy kids over there, but we're the grown ups.
You know, let us take it. Well, we're all what
to do with it?

Speaker 3 (01:13:39):
You know, Hollywood is basically made up of the guys
used to beat the shit out of us reading comic
books in grammar school, now making money off the fucking step. Yeah,
that that's really what it is.

Speaker 2 (01:13:49):
Well, with that in mind, with this in mind, that
kind of I wrote a question that kind of discusses
this a little bit. So again, put on your nineteen
eighty five hat. Well, I'm going to have to I
have to go to dinner, had pretty soon. So okay,
a couple of minutes minute, where did you imagine the
comic book industry would wind up? And what actually happened
to your career thirty five years later? What, in other words,

(01:14:13):
in nineteen eighty five, where did you think the commson
industry was going to go and what was going to
be like? And then then course correct you with what actually.

Speaker 5 (01:14:19):
Happened in nineteen eighty five. I literally thought things were
always going to be like this, like forever, like you.

Speaker 6 (01:14:27):
Know, the perfect world where I was going to have
a studio next to Howard studio as a studio with
Bill and you know, Michael and I are going to
be pals, and hopefully I would get a regular book,
you know.

Speaker 5 (01:14:39):
And that was probably as far as I took it right.

Speaker 6 (01:14:42):
I certainly wasn't thinking thirty five years and thirty five
years I'm going to be doing x Y and Z Right.

Speaker 5 (01:14:47):
I probably had aspirations of.

Speaker 6 (01:14:49):
Being like Garcia Lopez and somebody you know, or like
Howard or like that. That was it, you know, aieve
that I was. I was going to do well what it?
What happens subsequently was as much surprise to me as
anybody else, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:15:07):
But I certainly didn't, you know, I wasn't. I wasn't taking.

Speaker 2 (01:15:10):
Thirty five worths too far ahead. No, any you guys
did you think way ahead? Like was there going to
be an industry?

Speaker 3 (01:15:17):
Still?

Speaker 10 (01:15:17):
Well, I'm still hoping to be like because a love
Pez before. Yeah, I'm still working on that.

Speaker 6 (01:15:24):
I used to see him working every day at DC
because he used to stay in Andy Helper's office working
on his pages. Ross Andrew will work the next office over,
and Ross Andrew would flip his pages.

Speaker 5 (01:15:37):
Over backwards and do them reversed. M oh, pop them
over and draw them the right way with a light box.
I was like, yes, I watched him do it numerous times.
I'm like, what are you doing.

Speaker 6 (01:15:51):
He's like, well, this is the way he's going to
make sure that all the proportions are right and everything's
so he endowed backwards.

Speaker 5 (01:15:56):
Yeah, whip it over, I box it, do it right.

Speaker 2 (01:15:58):
I'm like, that's not just a Cavitch way that.

Speaker 3 (01:16:04):
I blew town in eighty five because, as I've said
publicly recently, I had no prospects and that I was
there was a potential I was going to get this
olda I'm better do something about it. I had no
idea what that was, but I recognized that I had
to do something because I did not have a footprint
that was going to be commercially successful enough for me
to be alive and not a drag on a system

(01:16:26):
at any point after retirement age. And and so I
came out West because I had some interest, and you know,
I ended up in television, worked on shit, never worked
on a show I'd watch, but made a solid living,
bought real estate and got a pension, and you know,
so and I don't live and I never and and

(01:16:47):
I never lived like it was going to be forever.

Speaker 14 (01:16:49):
I always I sort of at a certain point in
my life when I hit my my early forties, I
recognized the fact that things were not going to be
going my way all the time, and then.

Speaker 3 (01:17:00):
I better take take take care. And I did, and
then I transferred a lot of aspects of my life.
But I've always I mean, here I am. I'm seventy
years old, and I'm still doing the same shit I
was doing when I was twenty and happily south I
grow up the same pleasure from making them as I
want from reading them.

Speaker 8 (01:17:18):
Yeah, absolutely, I feel like it's just it's pretty much
the same for me. It's that I you know, it's
all it still remains perennial, perennially green for me. I
mean my goal is as a kid, when I was
seven years old and I told my father that I
was going to draw comics, you know, for for a living.

(01:17:40):
All I ever wanted to do was just draw comics.
I mean any of the other stuff in terms of
you know, the meat, trying different mediums or whatever. I
felt like once I was going to do comics then
so that was the way it was going to be
for the rest of my life, you know. And of
course that old, that old bromide about you know, if

(01:18:00):
you want to hear God laugh, tell on your plans.
I mean, I it's everybody, it's like, you know, has
has had their own bizarre, you know, circuitous path. I
mean I remember once early on I was when I
first started trying to get into illustration and uh, you know,

(01:18:21):
dabbling in that. I remember the rep that I had.
It was for some kind of hotel uh uh chain
and it had to do with a number of different
international flags and it was it was a pretty big
money job. But uh I lost out to Bart Forbes,

(01:18:45):
and I remember not being upset that I didn't get
the gig. I remember really being thrilled because I was
now getting rejected for gigs that I never would have
actually been even considered for. So it's like, hopefully that
it comes down to the point where you actually start
getting the gigs. But but you're in the you're you're

(01:19:08):
kind of in the in the big leagues, and you know, or.

Speaker 5 (01:19:13):
Yeah, bark Forbes beat you out.

Speaker 8 (01:19:16):
Yeah, yeah, yeah.

Speaker 10 (01:19:20):
I got into comics.

Speaker 2 (01:19:21):
How a wild verify this.

Speaker 10 (01:19:23):
In the seventies, we all thought comics was a dying business.
We all thought in ten years it was going to
be dead. And we loved comics and we wanted to
do them while they were still around. So we thought
we'd try to get into the business, do it now,
and at some point down the road we have to
get jobs like real adults. But we'd still have a

(01:19:46):
chance to do comics while they were around. The direct
market happened. Other stuff happened, and comics didn't die, not
then anyway. And that's about the time I quit prognosticating
on how the industry is going to go. I said, Okay,
I really have no idea. So but I like doing comics.
I like in some ways, I like working alone. I

(01:20:08):
like I love being in a studio with the other
guys working on their stuff around me. I could see
what was going on, and you can feed off the
Joe's energy. But I really like, you know, like having
my drawingboard right here in front of me, my reference
stuff like that. And I've been lucky enough to get
work for longer than I would ever have thought possible,
and I still get some, so I'm happy to keep

(01:20:31):
doing it. I would like to do as long as
I can. One of the stories I've heard, I don't
know if it's as true or not. I've been about
to look it up, is that O'maxfield Parish died at
about the age of ninety six, I believe, and he
quit painting at about the age of ninety because at
that age it was a little shaky and so he

(01:20:51):
couldn't paint the way he saw the paintings.

Speaker 2 (01:20:55):
So he retired.

Speaker 10 (01:20:57):
And I would like to retire or not while I'm
no longer able to do the kind of work that
I do. They don't eat whatever is On the other hand,
oh man, I always forget who it is. Is it Matise?
They did the giant abstract that was that Matish?

Speaker 8 (01:21:14):
Yeah, the water lilies?

Speaker 10 (01:21:17):
Well that, But he also did at the end of
his life, he was in big abstracts. They were cut paper.
He would cover the paper and then he would cut
them out and he paste them all together, and he's
almost like these giant yeah. And in the books then
all looks so impressive because they're like this big. But
there's a Matisa show in New York millions of years ago,
and these things you're hanging from the ceiling. They're gigantic
and they're just phenomenal. And apparently when he was doing

(01:21:39):
those as an old man and an old ill man,
he would lie in bed as he was ill, and
he had a mallstick and he would push. He would
have his assistant paint the paper the way he wanted
it painted, and then cut direct how should be cut?
And then he would push the piece of paper with
the mallstick around the bottom sheet until he got it
where he wanted it and have the guy glew it down.

(01:22:01):
And this is really on a sentsion I gather on
his deathbed, I mean just at his last his final illnesses,
and I thought, no, I'd be kicking and screaming on
the way out. I will not be so cool has
to be able to do that. But I thought, well,
that was just incredibly cool and an artist who found
a way to do the work he loved all the

(01:22:21):
way through, and that would be nice. I you know,
I had my brothers, That's what I would do. The
business would change around me. It's changed around me a
ton so far. Still have work, still happy to do it.
But I don't prognosticate how this is all going to
work out in the end.

Speaker 2 (01:22:37):
I would accept that.

Speaker 10 (01:22:38):
I know that all of a sudden that a lot
of the stuff I've done, even in this crappy newsprint
from Manhunter from nineteen seventy three, that is going to
outlast met.

Speaker 3 (01:22:47):
Some of those.

Speaker 2 (01:22:47):
Issues are just literally around yellow. When I'm long gone,
don't mention star Wars to Howard, though.

Speaker 3 (01:22:55):
Look, I've already written my New York Times so bit
cartoonist Howard Chicken, Guys, Star Wars comics. I I miss
having my assistance in the house. I mean my office,
my studio down here. I like the idea of having

(01:23:15):
two guys to yell at and be yelled that by
Laurel is convinced. I play my music to annoy my assistance.
She's entitled to believe this. And you know, I just
you know, I I truly do miss having Calvin and
Ramona round. I. I worked for years alone when I
first moved to California, and then I had a studio
with with Basburg and Don Cameron and Sean mcmanuts, which

(01:23:38):
is a very really a Feebriley enterprise. And I live
up in Walter's been to my place, Dennis been to
my place. You know, it's it's a I live in
a beach town. You know, you know I have I'm
the luckiest.

Speaker 2 (01:23:52):
Motherfucker, Walter.

Speaker 3 (01:23:55):
And I and my office, my studio is dynamite.

Speaker 2 (01:23:57):
It's great.

Speaker 3 (01:23:58):
But I miss having my boys.

Speaker 2 (01:23:59):
You know, that was going to be a question I
have for you guys, is do you do you miss
the studio environment? And for those of you who still
use assistance. What is the difference from nineteen eighty five
and twenty twenty besides photoshop, but it's mostly it's Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:24:16):
Well I had a I mean, I've been really fortunate
in terms of, you know, batting two out of three.
I mean, you and Amanda Condor Amanda Connor were you know,
really it's really gratifying and to see you know, assistance
go on to you know, just crush it, you know,

(01:24:40):
and just just blow everybody out of the water, you know.
And certainly, but I did have one assistant who shall
remain nameless who it was a little bit of kind
of an all about Eve scenario where it was like,
you know, like the you know, the the Robert Ford movie.
It's like, I can't tell if you want to be
like me, you want to be me, you know, and so.

Speaker 7 (01:25:02):
That kind of off.

Speaker 8 (01:25:12):
Yeah, that's yeah, I'm gonna, I'm gonna, I'm gonna. Actually,
I I did have I will refrain from mentioning. And
then because I actually had to, he left a vicious,
vicious uh stalker esque voicemail. Back when I had there
were tape machines, and I ended up having to call
the police based based on it. So uh so it was, uh,

(01:25:34):
I'm gonna, I'm gonna just let that slide because I
don't need a bunny boiler, you know. But but the
you know, I when I moved out here, it's like
I've been used to being by myself. But having bought
the house and and you know, like in the slow

(01:25:55):
process of moving in, it's it's actually, of course this
is before COVID, but I mean one of the ideas
of getting a larger place is actually to be able
to have artists come in and work in a in
a very cool environment and to bring back some of
that uh communal aspect. I mean when I was in Westport,
I had a studio at home, but I also had

(01:26:17):
a studio where I worked with with Stan Drake, Johnny Prentiss,
uh uh, Leonard Starr, you know, and Frank Bole Junior
was there as well, and you know, and and comic
artists would go out to lunch. I mean, you know,
Gil Fox would talk about his days knowing Jack, you

(01:26:38):
know how Jack he would go to Jack Cole's house
and and uh Cole would have all of the windows
shuttered because you know, all of the heroin fucked up
his eyes, you know, those kinds of stories. So it
was like a comic book, comic strip Babylon. You know.
But I I love the idea you have actually being

(01:27:00):
around on the other other artists and uh, you know,
and having an assistant because uh, but in a weird way,
it's like I'm so used to being by myself. It's
almost like I have to get get back into the
swing of things.

Speaker 2 (01:27:14):
You know, Dennis did Medison.

Speaker 8 (01:27:17):
I used to work in Westport. You come to the
studio and.

Speaker 6 (01:27:21):
Yeah, yeah, I just we take I take the train
up and we'd hang out. I hang up at Bill's
place days three or four days, and we'd be working.
We'd be working in the studio, going out, get something,
you go to the gym, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:27:33):
Work some more. I mean, I said it was going
to be like that forever.

Speaker 2 (01:27:37):
So right, you guys are such great collaborators and and
I guess this will be like a final question. I think, Howard,
you have to split for dinner soon, right.

Speaker 3 (01:27:47):
Yeah, you know, I mean I missed the four thirty
special Wolfies man, you know, okay, I.

Speaker 15 (01:27:55):
Mean my wife, my wife, we're having takeout and were well,
going back to nineteen eighty five, I don't know how
many people know this, but you, Howard and Walter were
asked to pitch to do Superman, and you both had,
I think, very different takes.

Speaker 2 (01:28:13):
If you don't mind telling the folks about your Superman ideas,
and while you're doing that, to invite Dennis and Bill
to just kind of make up what they would do
with Superman would be kind of cool too.

Speaker 3 (01:28:24):
So well, I'm going to go first because I'm going
to get out of here after, Okay, But I came
in and I was, you know, I was full of
pisson Dinneger, and my pitch basically consisted of a three
or four page sequence of of Metropolis waking up and
everybody's just getting ready to go and busy at doing
their shit and everything else. And we follow Clark Kent

(01:28:46):
and we see him getting out of bed. But then
we see have a double page spread of everybody reacting
what's going with the sound of and this is it
a tone deaf version of You've got the cool, clear
eyes of a seeker of wisdom and true that's like
a sonic boom across the city. And it turns out

(01:29:07):
in that splash as we Superman see Superman wearing a
walkman like the old days, a walkman singing to the
Frank Lesser soundtrack of out of succeed in business without
really trying, and he's flying across the city. He gets
to the deaily Planet, gets to the storage room, changes
into a scart can outfit, and we realize very rapidly
that everybody in Metropolis knows that Clark Kent is Superman,

(01:29:30):
but they are so glad to have him, they're willing
to allow him to believe that they don't know. That's
so great, that's great to say. Powers that be DC
Comics looked like a like like like a monk painting.
You know, that's beautiful exactly.

Speaker 5 (01:29:51):
I could just hear you gleefully pitching it too.

Speaker 3 (01:29:56):
Oh. I had a good time.

Speaker 5 (01:29:59):
All it.

Speaker 3 (01:30:01):
Well, gentleman. I was booked till six, so at six
thirty I gotta go. My beautiful wife is standing here.

Speaker 2 (01:30:08):
Hello, beautiful, Hey, hey sugar, he hello.

Speaker 3 (01:30:15):
The woman who owns my ass and uh, you should
to work all right, I'm out, Okay, great, great.

Speaker 2 (01:30:25):
To see great to see you, Howard, No.

Speaker 10 (01:30:28):
Thank you.

Speaker 3 (01:30:29):
This has been the best hour and a half I've
spent in weeks. And I was regretting the fact that
I had no second win and hoping I wouldn't. This
is giving me a second on. This is gonna be
keeping me up all night.

Speaker 7 (01:30:39):
Awesome going, well, man, we'll see We'll see.

Speaker 8 (01:30:43):
You, you know soon, like in real in real time,
real life.

Speaker 3 (01:30:47):
I'm not optimistic, but I'll go along with cock Eyede optimism.
I'm with you, Okay, why not? Guys?

Speaker 2 (01:30:53):
Take care? Thank you?

Speaker 10 (01:30:55):
Peace out?

Speaker 5 (01:30:55):
Can I go to you can go?

Speaker 2 (01:30:58):
You can go. You gotta go to hear Walter Superman.

Speaker 3 (01:31:02):
I go to.

Speaker 10 (01:31:06):
Dennis take care.

Speaker 5 (01:31:08):
One second. I'm gonna hear the story here, the.

Speaker 10 (01:31:10):
Story that I didn't have a pitch. I mean, not
like not the way Howard did. I I want how
this actually worked. Andy Helfer was the editor of Superman
at the time. This has got to be before burned
in Superman, so eighty five is probably about right somewhere
in there. And he asked me to go out to

(01:31:30):
lunch with him at one day and went out to
lunch and we talked about a lot of stuff. I
don't remember most of it. Superman came up, and in
the course of talking about Superman, my memory of it
is not that Andy offered me the project of the book,
or offered me or wanted to pitch my memory of it.

Speaker 2 (01:31:51):
We talked about it some, and I must have.

Speaker 10 (01:31:54):
Included the general idea, you know, if I were going
to do it, what would I want? And I gave
him figures. I said, I would this much money I
was doing for at the time it was doing well.
For this much money, I would not do it. For
this much money. I would totally do it, and for
a figure right in the middle. I'd have to think

(01:32:14):
about it. I mighta might not do it. I don't know.
And that was right. That's what I remember the extent
of our discussion about Superman. A couple of days later,
I'm in the DC offices and I run in to
Pat Pastie, who used to work with Dick Giordonna. I
love Pat, and she was over there at d C

(01:32:34):
because Dick was over there then, and she says to
me passing by on the hallway, so I hear you
turn down Superman, And I said, not that I know of,
but maybe, and that was I will if I want
to tell that story or not. Yeah, maybe I won't

(01:32:55):
tell that story.

Speaker 8 (01:32:56):
I was.

Speaker 10 (01:32:57):
I was recruited by Jeannette but but didn't. I didn't
jump on that one. I didn't decide to do it.
So and once again it was it was kind of
the way d C at that time, at least for me,
d C like this this launch with Andy, you wouldn't
know what the score was, Like, I'm not a bright guy,

(01:33:17):
so if you're going to offer me work, you kind
of have to say, hey, well we'd like to offer
you work, as opposed to saying him and then trail
off in the distance, right, because it's just gonna go.

Speaker 2 (01:33:34):
Like that.

Speaker 10 (01:33:35):
So that was kind of how that was. The recruiting day.
Evening went down as well, you know, I mean, we
Wheezy was with me, it was it was a dinner.
Weazy was with me. We wanted we understood what it
was about. Really, I mean, it was totally clear what
was going on, but there was no actual offer made
like if you come work for us, this will happen.

(01:33:58):
And you know, I was doing okay elsewhere, and you know,
for that's kind of I wasn't really high in the sky,
I don't suppose, but it was in It was indirect
enough and indistinct enough that it was not a tempting
offer nature evening. I will tell you guys about some
other time we aren't online.

Speaker 2 (01:34:16):
But you did have an idea? Do you remember the
idea I did?

Speaker 3 (01:34:19):
I did.

Speaker 10 (01:34:20):
I thought about it some and the idea I had
and I don't.

Speaker 2 (01:34:23):
I don't have.

Speaker 10 (01:34:23):
All I have is the basic idea. I did not
have any idea where I was going to go with it.
I don't I had more of it or not. All
I remember now is that one of the days we're
going to wake up, kind of like Howard's idea, except
that the other side, the other way around, we were
going to discover that Superman. All the stuff you knew
about him, well, the readers knew about him, presumably people

(01:34:45):
didn't know about it. But the little rocket ship, the
escape from Krypton, the destruction of Krypton, growing up with
the Kents, coming to Metropolis, all that stuff. None of
it was true.

Speaker 2 (01:35:00):
Yeah, that issue one would end.

Speaker 10 (01:35:03):
That kind of stuff has been done a million times
since then, maybe a Superman I don't know. So it
was more of an I think, an original idea at
that time. Whether I would have had the balls really
in the end of the first year or two made
it stick, I don't know. But also because Superman is
such a licensed character. There were there were a lot

(01:35:27):
of other aspects of it in the licensing that I
presume would have prevented that sort of thing.

Speaker 2 (01:35:33):
Sure, sure, or you do it for a year, you
do it for a year, for a year. But that
was my idea for where the story would start because
then because then Louise, Louise, you would go kill Superman later,
Well she.

Speaker 10 (01:35:46):
Did, she did, but I will say in that and
that was like a ninety two or so that when
that happened, original was going to happen, was that the Superman.
You know, we had a team of guys that people
doing Superman, the Dan Jurgen's, John Agan, artists and writers.
There were four books a month. I think Mike Carlin
is probably the only editor on God's Green Earth who

(01:36:08):
could have driven those disparate teams in the same direction
and got stories out of them. So every issue those
guys there was like a chapter in an ongoing series.
They would get together once a year or twice a
year and they have a big meeting, everybody including I
think the color is the letters, and they would sit
down for a couple of days and work out the

(01:36:28):
next year's worth of stories. They put a big whiteboard
up on the wall and they gritted out all the
issues and then start adding in all the stuff that
was going to be happening and work out a whole
year's worth of stories. And they worked out and entire
years were the stories in which Superman finally married Lois Lane.

(01:36:49):
And once they got that all worked out, Jeanette came
in to see what was going on, and she got
to look at it and said, can't be doing this.

Speaker 2 (01:36:59):
That's what do you mean.

Speaker 10 (01:37:00):
We've got a TV show coming up. It was The
Adventures of Lois and Clark.

Speaker 2 (01:37:04):
Isn't that what?

Speaker 3 (01:37:05):
Yeah?

Speaker 10 (01:37:05):
And that's going to come up. They're not married in
the show, and we don't want people to be confused
about having them married in the comic but not married,
so you can't do it. So after two or three
days of work, all that stuff went out the window,
and everybody's sitting around going, Okay, what do we do now?

(01:37:29):
And apparently he reached these kind of impasses. Jerry Ordway
would usually say, casually, leaning up against the white say well,
why don't we kill them? And that had gone by before,
but this time somebody else said, yeah, yeah, that's the ticket.

Speaker 2 (01:37:47):
Yeah, let's kill me.

Speaker 10 (01:37:49):
And they worked in fury, worked out this whole storyline.
I don't know how that one got past you that.
I don't know if she actually saw what they were
it was. It had to be done quick, and what happened,
basically was the storyline was already getting ready, were already running.
Really it was really the tray had left the station.

(01:38:10):
And the story I heard was that word began to
leak out and I guess it's the CEO of Warner Brothers,
whoever that was at the time.

Speaker 2 (01:38:20):
Was it a party now, I don't know if.

Speaker 10 (01:38:21):
This story true. This is the story I heard. It
was at a party and somebody came up to him
and said, so, I hear you guys are killing Superman,
and he went. So they got back to DC in
a hurry, and by that time it was too late.
I don't know if the books already left out of

(01:38:43):
the press and were off shipping or whatever they were,
but they were already out and the news was breaking.
I remember watching Tom Brocon's on NBC with Todd McFarland
pin up of Superman over his head that I had
had DC commission for a Superman story I had done well.
I got a bunch my friends to do a Jeff
Darrow and Todd to do Superman pin ups, guys that

(01:39:04):
didn't usually do the book, and so Todd did a
very dynamics and that's the one that was up. And
it was like the last item of the day, obviously
a slow news day. They're going to kill Superman. So
the news broke. DC above a certain level was freaking out,
and they put out the word to the PR Department,

(01:39:25):
kill this story. Not the literal comics were stuck with those.
But iverybody calls up press any of that stuff. Nothing
goes out. You don't tell anybody about it, you don't
promote it, you don't do anything. We want this story buried.
And then within a few weeks or thereabouts, maybe less,
it became clear that they had the biggest Superman bonanza

(01:39:46):
publicity since probably the first Christopher Reeve movie. Yep, it
was everywhere, and Sobey said, maybe we shouldn't be killing this,
and maybe somebody figured out, well, he won't be dead
for ever, right, and so so the I mean, the
book took off, did really well, but it was the

(01:40:07):
sort of thing that if that had gotten run by
corporate before they had done it, it would never have
happened right right in the that's right in the early
days of creativity top down rather than bottom up. Yep,
that like ninety ninety one somewhere in there. But it
became more more true as time went by. But that

(01:40:28):
was how that worked out.

Speaker 2 (01:40:29):
Yep. So So whether that's I don't race it, I know,
I know you got to split. You want to split.
Right before you split, can you just tell us a
little bit about what what's up with you now? Twenty twenty,
twenty twenty one, what's next?

Speaker 5 (01:40:45):
Well, gee, okay, I just Yill and I just finished
a Lobo story together.

Speaker 8 (01:40:51):
Yeah, it was fun. That was always fun.

Speaker 5 (01:40:53):
I mean, you know, it was like, we need this
local story right now. You and Bill can do it right,
just do use the ship you always do it.

Speaker 7 (01:41:00):
And you're like, I think, I think we're one of
your jobs.

Speaker 10 (01:41:08):
You were a lot of fun to ink. I have
actually ink one of your jobs.

Speaker 5 (01:41:11):
Yes, and it's one of my things.

Speaker 2 (01:41:13):
Was great.

Speaker 10 (01:41:13):
It was a lot of fun to do.

Speaker 6 (01:41:15):
Oh my god, inking a lot of my stuff. And
you know he's still he's still there, he's still doing it.
So we just finished and and then there's been a
couple of other stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:41:28):
We just did Rock the Vote.

Speaker 8 (01:41:30):
Yeah, I think Dennis and I have this like we're like,
you know, Page and Plant or you know, or or
Miles and Uhney. Yeah, it's like we're you know, we're
just like, I know what you want, you know what
he's going for. Whatever it's like, and we just jel
It's just we just have our own shorthand.

Speaker 6 (01:41:50):
Now I do tell people, because I have to remember
people actually watching this, that working with Bill is incredible,
but it's also intimidating because you're working with Bills and Keevi,
and even though I've known him forever and we're old
friends and stuff and I can joke around with him
and bullshit, it's still like.

Speaker 5 (01:42:06):
It's a serious thing.

Speaker 6 (01:42:07):
It's like I always use example with Keith Richards and
Mick Jack would write songs for Rolling Stones. They would
write songs and praying they were good enough for the
Rolling Stones.

Speaker 5 (01:42:19):
So they would write.

Speaker 6 (01:42:20):
Songs together and present them to the rest of the band,
right hoping that the rest of the band would say, what.

Speaker 5 (01:42:26):
Kind of bullshit is this?

Speaker 3 (01:42:28):
And you do it?

Speaker 6 (01:42:30):
So I'm like that, I'm like, okay, I'm handing this
off the bill. I don't want him to think, what
kind of bullshit is this?

Speaker 5 (01:42:37):
And he.

Speaker 6 (01:42:39):
You know, so you really it's like, you know, it's
a serious collaboration, but it's it's a serious thing.

Speaker 5 (01:42:44):
It's not like we just bluff it off.

Speaker 2 (01:42:47):
Well, you find a great partner, you know, it keeps
you on point, you.

Speaker 8 (01:42:53):
Know, Oh yeah, well, I mean it's always wonderful. I
think the one thing that I think that that gets
the fly in the ointment is when they don't give
us enough time, when they kind of have us, you know,
with our literal backs against the walls. Yeah, which is
more often than not. And then it's like it's it's like, uh,

(01:43:14):
you know, a triage unit.

Speaker 3 (01:43:15):
You know.

Speaker 8 (01:43:15):
It's like it's like, oh, I guess, I guess I
am going to have an all night or you know
at sixty two, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:43:23):
They need at the last minute. Why are they calling
us at the last minute with this thing?

Speaker 6 (01:43:27):
But then you realize it's in a way, it's a
weird kind of compliment because they could call anybody, you know, right,
but I guess they want they want a certain look,
and they want a certain one the best they know,
they know that you get it like tomorrow if they
really need it.

Speaker 8 (01:43:44):
But yeah, I think a lot of times it has
to do with reliability, reliability as well, you know, like
that certainly what we did with I don't know if
the black uh uh, the black label imprint is still
going or not. I mean when we did the question,
I mean that was that was a you know again,

(01:44:04):
a lot of fun and it was interesting working in
that different, different format.

Speaker 10 (01:44:12):
Yeah, well you have a question for you guys, really
for all three of you, which simply is in the pandemic,
are you working as quickly as you work before all
this stuff shut down? Are you able to I find
I'm slower. Maybe I'm taking more naps, sure, but I
just I don't seem to be able to concentrate in

(01:44:35):
quite the same way I was before it. I mean,
I don't know if it's really it is the whole
thing is the miasma of stuff around you, or that
I am too old? But mind that I'm I'm slower
and I like doing other stuff.

Speaker 5 (01:44:47):
In a sense, it's it's different for me, but in
a sense it's not. It's only different in that this
thing has lasted so long.

Speaker 6 (01:44:56):
But it's not in that I'm used to working at home,
you know, our used to working in solitary confinement for
days and months and months and months at a time.
It's just like the rest of the world is living
like that now, so they get to experience, but we
get to experience our whole lives, you know.

Speaker 5 (01:45:14):
So in that sense, it is not that much different.

Speaker 6 (01:45:16):
What is different is that we could always take a
break and go out and see people and do something.

Speaker 7 (01:45:21):
There was there was the option, you know, ye mention.

Speaker 5 (01:45:26):
We would go to con spend the whole weekend there
and go, oh, that's enough of that, let.

Speaker 9 (01:45:29):
Me get the studio where there's nobody around, right, But
we had that option, we.

Speaker 6 (01:45:35):
Had that that that that back unfortunately.

Speaker 5 (01:45:38):
So that's the biggest difference, and that may be for
me what would contribute to me not being as productive as.

Speaker 6 (01:45:45):
I normally would be because you just don't have that
opportunity to get away from it like you used to.
You know.

Speaker 5 (01:45:53):
Now you get away from it.

Speaker 6 (01:45:54):
And you got to get away from why are you
doing it?

Speaker 8 (01:45:57):
So yeah, I mean I've jumped with between the productivity
and like like it's uh, probably par for the course
for me. I find I find I go from one
extreme to the other. It's like, you know, I'll be
I'll just dive into it and I'll feel really excited.
And of course I've been doing a lot more pieces
with the memorial stuff, with the memorial portraits, and just

(01:46:20):
that's been depressing where it's been like this, I feel
like a ghoule. And it's like, you know, people are
dying of their natural causes, but also COVID is added
to that, and so so I find that that, you know,
some of the stuff I'm doing is like is exciting
and I love getting into it. And then it's it's

(01:46:42):
sort of like like the weekends here, let me let
me see how how much of Saturday I can I
can sleep, you know, like how much I can obliterate.
I mean I think I think I clocked in at
like fourteen hours or something like that. It's like it
was like I'm I'm shutting down, you know. It's like

(01:47:05):
you know, and you know, like be feeling like I'm
part cat or something. But but it really it really
is like a difference, you know, in terms of trying
to manifest my own enthusiasm. It's like, and I realized
that part of it is I'll find that sometimes when

(01:47:26):
the weekends come and I, you know, I've just got
nobody else I'm talking to or anything else. I'll just
go in and work. But come Monday, it's like, and
I reach out to the editors or or things start
to get buzzing again. I realized there is there is
something to be said for having that bit of connection,

(01:47:47):
you know that that there's a little bit of a
fire under your butt to get something in you.

Speaker 10 (01:47:54):
I would just add to your comment about your memorial pieces,
whether you feel like are googling out of that stuff.
Thing about that for those for me is that they
are They're both sad because they're all people we wish
we had not lost, but they're also celebratory. Oh really,
that's how I see them. A celebration of these people

(01:48:15):
that we've lost. We have lost them, but the fact
that they were around and did the kind of work
they did, or I related to them in the way
that I did. And I'm reminded that when I see
your drawing means I'm delighted by them in that way.

Speaker 2 (01:48:32):
Not that I'm delighting these guys checking.

Speaker 10 (01:48:34):
No, well, reminded, I'm sotered.

Speaker 8 (01:48:39):
And touching that. And you can't. I mean, I can't
stress just what that means to me to hear that
from you. Walk, so thank you.

Speaker 10 (01:48:44):
I'm sure I'm not the only one.

Speaker 8 (01:48:48):
Well, I think I do think that that there is
an aspect of healing. That part of the reason I
do them, and it is uh uh to try to
like do my little bit of trying to honor whoever
passed away. And uh, you know, so there is a

(01:49:09):
communal aspect to it that I think is there. But
but some of the ones were really really hard. Like
I mean, when I heard about Chadwick Bozeman, I you know,
it was like my mouth just stayed open. I couldn't.
I couldn't believe it, you know. I mean, and like
when and when RBG passed, it was it was like,

(01:49:34):
you know, just off fuck, you know, uh, for all
numbers of reasons, you know, for many reasons, and.

Speaker 5 (01:49:43):
They all have borne out. Every single.

Speaker 2 (01:49:47):
Thought would happened.

Speaker 6 (01:49:48):
Really happened like like we thought it would to the
parts of it. You're like set up a bit.

Speaker 2 (01:49:54):
So, guys, we have like a minute left. This has
been awesome. Walker and Bill, what do you guys, what's
tell us about twenty what you're doing right now in
twenty twenty one.

Speaker 10 (01:50:05):
What you're working on, Well, I'm writing the fourth round
of Ragnaroktenheim. I just figured out what I think is
going to be the ending, at least in an unpolished form,
a couple of days ago, and so I've written copious notes.
Now i'll have to do is hammer them all together

(01:50:25):
and make some sense out of them. And I've also
I'm finishing up a bunch of commissions. I never take commissions,
and because comics shut down a while back for a while,
I've taken on some commissions, most just full figures, which
are interesting. I'd kind of rather be doing stories, but
I will say I can make more money out of
the commissions. I think so very strange. I haven't done

(01:50:48):
them before. I've got about three or four left to go.

Speaker 8 (01:50:51):
That's yeah, Bill, Yeah, I mean, you know, speaking of that,
I mean, I've actually I am doing portraits. Some people
like for commissions, have actually asked me to do uh
memorial portraits of relatives who have passed, and I've also
been getting calls for anniversary UH pieces as well. There's

(01:51:12):
one rather well known comedian, you know, buddy of mine
who who who I can't mention because I I don't
know if if if you know, we'll see it. So
it's like so I can't even mention. But but I'm
doing like commissions. What I do is I did his

(01:51:32):
wife basically as Electra, you know the name. But uh
and uh and then I'm also doing this portraits as well,
which is something I love to do. But I'm also
working on on you know, the comics bug just never ends,
and I'm curious about I keep putting off and circling,

(01:51:52):
you know, the perimeter of diving into Parisian White and uh,
right with Kelly Sue, Yeah, and uh uh I think
what's going to have to happen is I just have
to dive dive in.

Speaker 3 (01:52:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 8 (01:52:05):
But I'm also playing around with a bunch of ideas
of my own, just because I really want to do
not necessarily straight toasters too, but but really be in
that in that mill you again of challenging myself and
and and also uh, I think one of the things
that does happen is that when you're in a level

(01:52:26):
of isolation, every you don't have any other distractions, so
that every line seems to mean more in some kind
of bizarre way. You put a lot more weight on
each one as opposed to you know, you're going out
and you're having a real lifetime and you come back
and go, that's good enough, and you know you let it,
you let it go. And I'm finding that that sense

(01:52:47):
of stressing over uh, the small stuff like things tend
to get magnified. And I think that some of it
is is it's it's really easy to lose was perspective
in terms of what you're you know, what you're doing.
And that's the one thing I think about having a

(01:53:09):
you know, collaboration and a communal aspect is that because
I I I reached out and I just spoke with
I hadn't spoken to Lance Hendrickson in a long time,
and it was just he's posted something about asking about
Millennium coming back on the air and I haven't spoken
him in like three years, two years, and we just

(01:53:31):
reconnected and it was just like there is that sense
of hey man, you know, we initiate. It's like where
have you been? You know, It's like and you start
to put things in in context about because I'm totally
an isolationist. I mean not in the Trumpian way, but
I'm like, you know, uh, I'm totally fine, but then

(01:53:54):
when I need to reach out, I mean, I like,
this is this is absolutely lovely. I mean I I
you know, I'm one of those just like it takes
forever to get me out there, and then I get
to the party and like they have to kick me
out when the sun's coming up and I got the
lampshade on.

Speaker 7 (01:54:09):
You know, it's like.

Speaker 8 (01:54:11):
And so this, yeah, this is this is wonderful and
it makes it makes you miss all of you guys
even more.

Speaker 2 (01:54:17):
You know, well, thanks, thanks for sharing your stories. We
could go on for hours that we were getting kicked
out of here. I'll just plug myself real quick. I've
been working on this webcomic called The Red Hook, published
by web Tune, which is a free app on your phone,
and I'm launched season four two weeks ago. It's called Blackout,

(01:54:38):
and that's what I'm working on right now. And to
answer Walter's question, I've been doing a lot of writing.
I've been very creative, so yeah, somehow the drawing is
a little bit slower at times, but the writing has
been abundant and collaborating, and it's been a lot of
I've been energized by this pandemic in a weird way.
So that may inspire me very great.

Speaker 8 (01:55:00):
Well, I mean that what what gets me is is
you know is and what this is the Other thing
that really inspires me about all of you guys is
that you know, you're I feel really fortunate to know
so many self starters. It's like where where you guys
just sort of jump into it, not knowing necessarily where
it's going to go, but you feel compelled and obsessed

(01:55:22):
to do it anyway to find out and and what
what is the the Gertrude Stein, what's the there there?
You know? And and and take that that chance. And
to me, that's that's magic, you know, and that's that
really is inspiring. So thank you guys. Than you know,
all right, the health well, and at some point we

(01:55:45):
will we will absolutely when this is this madness is over,
we will actually you.

Speaker 10 (01:55:48):
Know, uh, we'll wear wash your hands watch, yes, exactly, guys.

Speaker 8 (01:55:55):
It's good to see it. Well, is all.

Speaker 7 (01:56:01):
Great to see you have good.

Speaker 10 (01:56:03):
You guys, just stopped by the watch. Thanks for coming by.

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