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Thursday, September 2, 2010
David Yurkovich, NOT "Less Than"
David takes a few out to talk with Caleb about his upcoming collection from Top Shelf and more...
Nothing "Less Than" Fun
David Yurkovich came to the attention through... well let me let his bio speak for me. A BRIEF HISTORY ... Sleeping Giant Comics was launched in 1995 with Death by Chocolate, a 32-page one-shot that introduced audiences to the bizarre, often surreal works of David Yurkovich. Prior to publication, Yurkovich submitted Death by Chocolate to the Xeric Foundation and was subsequently granted funding for the project. Since then, Yurkovich has self-published over a dozen books and, since 1998, has turned his attention to the graphic novel format. He is presently working on Altercations, a graphic novel scheduled to publish in late 2001. A Death by Chocolate collection is also in the planning stages for 2001.
Okay, so after that cheat I'm going to take the bull by the horns and throw some real questions to David and see what we get back...
Caleb Gerard (CWN): “Less Than Heroes” is a collection of… Well, clarify this for our readers.
David Yurkovich (DY): Less Than Heroes collects the first four issues of an alternative super-hero series published in 1996-1997 by Sleeping Giant Comics, my self-publishing imprint. The series was initially published as “ThresholDY: 18th and Market Streets” and “ThresholDY: The Stamp Collector.” The super-heroes known collectively as Threshold would later be renamed the Super-Heroes of Philadelphia (The SHoP). This first volume of Less Than Heroes presents a definitive version of the early Threshold tales; definitive in that I spent several months reassessing the art and doing a considerable amount of reworking and fine tuning, and in addition we added some hard-to-find stories from a few small press anthologies.
CWN: You are the creator of a whole new superhero universe… what is different about yours then the ones at DC or Marvel?
DY: This super-hero universe I’ve been building is a lot more, I guess down to Earth is the most accurate way of defining it. It all takes place on our Earth, today. There are no parallel or alternate Earths. The heroes age naturally. That is, the characters age in real-time. Everyone is 8 years older today than they were in 1996 when the comics were first published. The super-hero world in the Less Than Heroes universe is all rather businesslike. Each major city has it’s own super-hero team. The cities finance the teams—they are a part of the operating expenses just like police, fire, trash collection, etc. There isn’t a lot of good Samaritanism going on. These folks are heroes first and foremost, but they are protected by specific contracts and clauses. Threshold, the characters who star in the first volume of Less Than Heroes, are Philadelphia’s official super-hero team. Threshold is a quartet of heroes—Mr. Malevolence, The Cosmopolitan, Meridian, and Recoil. They’re not bad at what they do, but they’re not exactly professional, and they’re far from unstoppable. If these guys die, they stay dead. No resurrections. No back from the dead stuff. You die, you die. I hate the dictum in comics that no one ever dies and no one ever stays dead. Jean Gray died in X-Men 137. I have no idea what she’s doing alive today or why she was brought back or when.
There’s a lot of humor in the Threshold stories (at least, I hope there is). These guys all have goofy little quirks. Recoil is obsessive-compulsive about dental hygiene, Cosmopolitan is a magician but his spells and incantations are largely based on pop culture, Mr. Malevolence is the “boy scout” of the team but he still goes shopping in his costume, and Meridian writes children’s books in her spare time. The team loves to snack. They eat quite often. There’s a lot of “down time” for these guys, so they try to fill the time doing stuff most of us would do in our spare time. Though for a super-hero team they don’t do much in the way of working out or honing their skills as a “fighting unit.” The stories are much more about the individual relationships the characters have with one another and their supporting cast members.
CWN: Are your heroes “super” in the Superman sense or more in the Batman vein?
DY: I’d be hard-pressed to classify any of the individuals who comprise Threshold, The SHoP, the NYSS, or any of the other teams within this comic book universe as “super.” I’m trying to keep things toned down a bit. You’re not going to see stuff like Mr. Malevolence wrapping a giant chain around the island of Manhattan and pulling it along, or Meridian turning back time to save the life of a colleague. Heck, Recoil, one of the main characters, has no super-powers at all. He lied on his application and faked his way onto the team. No one checked his references—an HR breakdown I think I heard.
CWN: Most of the Big 2 universes have a central hero or team, does yours?
DY: I guess that would be either Threshold (The SHoP) or the New York Super-Hero Syndicate (NYSS). NYSS is just one of the many “Syndicate” teams that populate the U.S. in this comic book universe I’m developing. They’re the most respected team of all the Syndicate teams—kind of like the benchmarks among the super-hero units. Threshold (The SHoP) are really little fishes in this vast ocean of “professional” heroes. They’re looked down upon by the Syndicate teams, especially NYSS. All of the Syndicate teams were formed by The Establishment, a small, Los Angeles-based company founded by a couple of retired super-heroes. These guys saw a need for organized crime fighting (this would have been in the early 1980s) and so they began recruiting all of the independent super-heroes and saying to them, “Hey, how’d you like to get paid for what you do, have a nice headquarters, health benefits, and be under contract?” So pretty soon all of these various super-heroes are joining up, and The Establishment is developing these teams and packaging them and selling them to the major cities in the U.S. But in Philly, there was a budget crisis. So to save money, the mayor hired Threshold (who aren’t affiliated with The Establishment). So they’re kind of these “indy” heroes in a world of “professionals.” Threshold/The SHoP is my central team.
CWN: So ShoP are scabs? Or would “independent contractors” be a better description?
DY: Independent contractors would be a better description. The SHoP/Threshold cast aren’t as respected by the Establishment heroes, but they’re not exactly considered scabs either. The NYSS and other Syndicate teams realize there are independent heroes out there; they just don’t respect them much, if at all.
CWN: Is there a tone or theme that you’re focusing on?
DY: There are different themes in each story. The themes vary. Anti-big business is a major theme; the little guys against the establishment. Anti-big government. Misguided/misplaced love. The overall theme, I guess, is that it’s all “real.”
I always liked the notion that was developed a long long time ago in Marvel comics that the Fantastic Four would “phone in” their adventures to Stan Lee and Jack Kirby and that Lee and Kirby would then chronicle the adventure for the FF comic book. Somewhere along the way that idea got lost, probably because as more and more characters were developed, and more and more guest stars appeared. I assume it became unfeasible to believe that EVERY character in the Marvel universe was “phoning in” his or her story. But that is what would have had to have been happening. However, if the Human Torch phones in the latest FF story to Stan and says, “oh, and Spider-man was there, too” and we see in the FF story Peter Parker changing into Spidey, then how is it that the public doesn’t know Spidey’s true identity? They couldn’t keep to that concept and have the “fourth wall” hold up. It was a great idea that just had to be let go as the Marvel universe grew. But that’s the way it all goes down in the Threshold/SHoP/NYSS universe. It’s all happening and I’m just chronicling it. If you read this first Less Than Heroes collection you might say to yourself, “Gee, this is all fine and dandy, but what’s Meridian’s real name? What’s Recoil’s real name? What’s Mr. Malevolence’s origin?” Well, I don’t know the answers to those questions. They haven’t told me. I’m only going with the information presented to me, and for certain flashbacks am speculating based on whatever is available as resources (newspaper clippings, etc). Most of this stuff is being done as if it all has happened (or is happening now) in my city where I live. It’s important to me not to make things too over the top because once it loses its believability then what’s the point? It’s like Superman. Why develop an omnipotent character and then not use him to his full potential? Why didn’t Superman end the Nazi terror during World War II? Do we really think the Man of Steel would have stayed stateside for genocide? Why didn’t the Fantastic Four use Dr. Doom’s time machine to prevent 9/11? It just reaches a point where it’s no longer believable; that’s what I’m trying to avoid. Not that my guys don’t enjoy their flying car and all, just that they can’t fly around the world and reverse time.
CWN: So, you, David, are part of the story as well?
DY: I’m not in the stories. On the Sleeping Giant Comics Web site (www.sleepinggiantcomics.com) I published a transcript of a “meeting” between the Threshold/SHoP team members and me. It’s under the Wide Awake section of the Web site and is entitled “The Threshold/Yurkovich Tapes.” It’s a transcript of my last face-to-face meeting with the team, and it explains why there was a gap in publication in the original series. The idea was that Recoil, Meridian, Cosmopolitan, Mr. Malevolence and I would meet occasionally. They’d brief me on their exploits, and I’d develop them into comics (much like what Lee and Kirby were doing with the FF in the early days). Well, as it turned out, the team, particularly the Cosmopolitan, had various concerns over my portrayals. I don’t think they expected me to be as brutally honest in my adaptations of their exploits as I was, but as I explained it to them, I just depicted what they told me. It was a kind of a Spinal Tap/Marty DiBergi sort of misunderstanding.
CWN: This material saw print before, what is different this time?
DY: The art has totally been cleaned up. Let’s face it, you get better with experience. These pages are reworked and in some cases redesigned completely. The change is dramatic. I also rewrote and redesigned all of the in-between newspaper pages—these are full-page newspaper headlines that serve as links between each chapter. I think fans will like the changes and the updated newspaper pages should help new readers link up the stories easily. Also, there is a sub-plot running throughout each issue about a group of seven or eight super-villains who live in New York. These guys and gals have been getting trounced for years by the NYSS and they’re getting sick of it. So they decide to move to Philly figuring life would be a lot safer. The sub-plot was kind of lost when these were released in the 90s because the issues were published a bit sporadically. Here its very viable and fun.
CWN: Any new material included in this collection?
DY: In addition to the main stories, there are some supplemental materials and short stories that accompany the collection. The introduction is a remake of a short Threshold story called “The Walking Tour.” This was done several years back in an anthology entitled BLIP (The Book of Little Independent Publishers). It was a four-page story to introduce the super-hero universe that Threshold inhabits, and it was narrated by the team members themselves. It’s been rescripted and pretty much redrawn entirely to work as the book’s introduction, and I’m quite happy with the rewrite, which adds a good deal of humor to the piece, and the new art. There is also a seven-page story starring Mr. Malevolence. It was first published in a very obscure anthology, Son of Rampage. Here also, I did some much-needed script edits and retouched/redrew much of the art. It was a good story at the time it was originally done; it’s better now.
In addition to the sequential pieces I’ve penned an essay that addresses the issue of aging super-heroes in comics and offer a few solutions to this ongoing problem Marvel and DC must face every decade or so, or maybe the essay is just an homage to my favorite comics from the silver and bronze age; the reader can decide.
To top off the nice package there are a few new pin-ups, endpapers, and stand-alone illustrations. Matt Wagner did a fantastic pin-up for the collection, so did Dean Hapsiel, and Nick Bertozzi. These guys did amazing interpretations of my characters; it was extremely flattering and humbling. Plus Brett and Chris at Top Shelf really know how to produce great books, as I’m sure you know; I’m extremely pleased with the product, and I’m confident fans will be, too.
CWN: Do you hope that this will lead to getting new stories out there?
DY: I certainly hope so. I’ve a wealth of material ready to put into production. It’s written, it’s ready to be adapted sequentially. I recently started writing my first LASS (Los Angeles Super-Hero Syndicate) story. Threshold/The SHoP are but one team in the Less Than Heroes world, and I’m anxious to explore new characters in different cities. The success or failure of Less Than Heroes volume 1 will largely dictate whether that happens.
CWN: You, also, have done a “little” research into the history of superheroes in the U.S. give me some info on this.
DY: In the DCU, it’s kind of a given that the Superhero Big-Bang occurred with the arrival of Superman. With Marvel, it happened with the launch of the Fantastic Four. In the comic book sandbox I’m playing around in, the Big-Bang occurred early in the 20th century, on the dawn of the Great Quake that rocked San Francisco. It was on that morning that the first “super-hero/super-villain” altercation occurred. When I started working on Altercations, my books on the history of super-heroes, I structured the books to contain a total of 10 chapters, one for each decade of the 20th century, with the idea of providing an overview of a specific battle featuring the hero (or heroes) of each decade. For some of the stories, I wanted to provide a bit of a historical backdrop, so yeah, I chose specific points in history in which to present the tales, a sort of super-hero historical fiction. One story occurs during the New York coal shortage, which occurred around 1913 or 1914 and resulted in many people simply freezing to death. Another tale occurs during Prohibition, another during the Cold War era. My attempt was to “ground” the stories to specific points/events in time, and to speculate on how these “super” heroes would react in these different eras. Though really, in both the book Less Than Heroes and the book Altercations I’m just dramatizing events that “really” happened in this super-hero universe.
CWN: Why negative world events?
DY: That’s a very good question. In the case of Altercations, it’s probably because I was searching for specific “big” events from each decade. However, not all of the “altercations” occur in the backdrop of negative world events. About 70% of the stories in Altercations 1 and 2 aren’t linked to specific events in US history. One story is linked to the origin of the Fantastic Four from the 1960s, certainly a positive world event. But the stories that are linked to tragic events (such as the San Francisco earthquake) are more memorable to me, and I think these events fit well as story tapestries for these larger-than-life super-hero/villain confrontations. And I think that whenever good confronts evil, even though good may win, it is, at least while in progress, its usually a negative event.
CWN: Given your knowledge of the industry what do you feel is missing from today’s superhero comicbook scene?
DY: I would like to see more diversity. For example, no matter how I look at it, it seems there are just way too many Spidey comics. Way too many X-Men books. It’s too saturated and too much is going on. Add to that the various “alternate” universe tales of these heroes, and it’s just a lot of confusion. What is the “Ultimate” line but a glorified Earth-2? Call it for what it is.
Getting back to the endless stream of books that feature the same character, if you were to chronicle Spider-Man’s adventures, Peter Parker would be in costume about 22 hours a day. He’s just way too busy. So I’d like to see fewer Spidey books and a lot more new characters. Does Marvel still do creator-owned stuff? I don’t really know, but I don’t recall seeing anything on the stands from Marvel in a long time that wasn’t a Marvel property.
I’d like to see a return of the Epic line. Before it lost its focus, Epic was brilliant. I’d like to see more diversity in the writers and artists and a bit more risk taking. I don’t think launching an “Max” line of titles where every other line of dialogue the protagonists and antagonists spout is “F this” and “F that” is really doing anything to advance the genre or add any longevity to it whatsoever. And the “titillation” factor of characters like Elektra is just, well, it’s just silly. If you wanna do a porn comic then just do it; don’t present these pseudo-porn titles and call them comic books. Sheesh.
I’d like to see an end to some of the long-standing hero-villain confrontations. Move on already. Tell us a new story with a new villain. I haven’t found a Fantastic Four story worth reading since Walt Simonson left the series. That was, what, 10 years ago?
I guess what I see missing is imagination. It’s been replaced with sex, sin, obscenity, and sure sellers. I’m bored.
CWN: So, in your opinion, there is no room for “mature” superheroes? But don’t your heroes grow-up as well?
DY: It all depends on one’s definition of “mature.” Watchmen is, in my opinion, the best treatment ever done of mature super-heroes. And it was all done pre-Vertigo, so it’s equivalent to an MPAA PG rating. With regard to sex and language, it’s tame by today’s standards. But its smart, fully-realized, and timeless. Lee and Kirby’s Fantastic Four was the template for good super-hero storytelling in the 60s; Byrne and Claremont’s X-Men the 70s; Moore and Gibbons Watchmen the 80s. I think the 90s and beyond have been lacking the template. There have been good attempts recently at portraying mature super-hero storytelling, but nothing comes close to the aforementioned projects.
My characters grow up. They age. Hopefully they improve with age. But in 10 or 15 years, they’re going to have to step down. They can’t do the job forever and still exist in “real time.” I read in an old issue of The Comics Journal that in the late 70s/early 80s Jim Shooter decided to kill the entire Marvel universe. He wanted to just kill everyone off and have new men and women take up the reigns. I don’t know if this story is true or not, but I read it in the Journal so I’m guessing it probably happened. And of course all of the writers and editors objected vehemently to this idea and so it never became a reality. And it’s probably a good thing it didn’t. Shooter’s plan was too extreme. However, if you get to a point in Fantastic Four where the Human Torch finds he simply cannot maintain his power any longer, he could, logically, step down. I think a gradual replacement of these characters would go a long way to adding to their believability. I’ve lost count as to the number of times Steve Rogers has been “retrofitted” into the Marvel universe. And really, I’m not proposing anything new. There have been changes in the FF line up, and Steve stopped being Captain America for a time. But the changes never last; they’re never permanent, probably because of legalities over licensing deals.
So I’m all for the ageing process. If you mean mature as in skin, sin, and obscenity, no, I don’t think it has much of a place in super-hero comics.
CWN: Do you think that the “doom and gloom” that circulates among fans and pros is well-founded?
DY: Are you referring to the belief that comics are a dying industry? I dunno. There’s a weird vibe in LA that you may have noticed. Comics are very popular and insofar as Hollywood is concerned, comics are becoming a huge source for ideas in Hollywood. I don’t think comics are going to be going away anytime soon. At the same time I don’t think the industry will be as popular as it was in, say, the 1940s. But, even if Marvel and DC’s “powers that be” decided one day to stop publishing comics altogether, there are plenty of companies that would pick up the slack. Or, if the fan base shrinks to the point where it isn’t profitable for anyone to be doing comics, the medium would still survive. The people who love producing comics will find other jobs in other industries, but they’ll continue to do their own stuff on a small-press sort of basis. As always, whether the industry continues largely depends on whether it continues to attract new readers.
The Hollywood success of movies like X-Men, Spider-Man, Hulk, etc., has no doubt raised the public’s awareness of comic books, but I can’t say whether that has resulted in these same individuals actually purchasing comics at all or with any regularity. I don’t really have too many friends who are regular readers of comics, and those friends I do have who read comics from time to time tend to read more obscure stuff like EC titles or indy stuff by Drawn & Quarterly. Heck, I don’t even read new comics on a regular basis. I feel like I already know what’s inside the cover. I’d rather pick up an old comic on eBay or at a convention.
CWN: It is all kind of incestuous…
DY: I think every comic book fan is a would-be comic book creator. Look at the old letter columns in 1960s Marvel and DC comics. Lots of folks who wrote to these companies went on to work for them. We’re a small group and we’re dedicated. But we cannot remain an incestuous group and thrive. Comics need to reach out to larger audiences with new types of material (e.g., Blankets, Palookaville, and, um, Less Than Heroes).
CWN: Top Shelf, who’s putting out “Less Than Heroes”, is not known for it’s superhero publications, why did you take the book there?
DY: I didn’t. Brett at Top Shelf read Altercations 1. It was recommended to him by a fellow at his local comics shop. Shortly thereafter, Brett contacted me and asked that I send him my other self-published comics. Soon after we toyed with the idea of Top Shelf doing a series of compilations. Brett was very jazzed about my slant on the super-hero genre, which is why I think he wanted to bring this collection to life. Less Than Heroes is a little bit mainstream and it’s a little bit alternative. Ideally this collection will attract readers who don’t typically buy the kind of alternative books Top Shelf is producing, or Top Shelf fans who might not read super-hero comics. In the long run, if the first compilation does well, we’re hoping to release future volumes of Less Than Heroes, collecting both previously self-published material as well as new and unpublished material.
CWN: How does your “universe” differ from the Astro City one?
DY: Well, I haven’t read Astro City since the initial mini-series, which was something like 7 or 8 years ago. I liked the series a lot at the time, but it’s difficult to find time to read what’s out there and still have time to produce your own work. I also don’t want to be influenced by other comic book writers and artists, so I stopped reading new comics around the time the Astro City ongoing series was getting off the ground. I prefer 1960s and 1970s stuff; it’s great material and as much as I enjoy it, I know it’s not going to influence me creatively. I’m not about to start drawing like Herb Trimpe or Don Perlin even though I’m fans of both of these guys. It’s difficult for me to make a comparison between the Less Than Heroes world and Astro City because I’m so unfamiliar with Kurt’s series.
CWN: If you were given the chance would you work on a “big 2” book, and which one?
DY: I would love to do an Invaders series. Marvel’s 1970s Invaders series about a super-hero team (the core of which was Captain America, Human Torch, and Sub-Mariner) and their exploits during WWII was really short lived. I think there were a couple of mini-series in the 80s or 90s, I believe. Roger Stern wrote an amazing three-part Invaders story in a short-lived publication called Marvel Universe that apparently no one read. But I would loved to have seen the first series extended, or, dare I say, extend it myself. I’ve been delving into war history a good deal lately. The great thing about a series like Invaders is it’s gonna run throughout the war years, so you can kind of pace out the stories nicely, touch on key battles, and inundate the readers with this wild mix of fiction and history.
CWN: Time is very important to you isn’t it…
DY: As a point on a history of the world timeline it’s pretty important to me, yes. As a writer, I’m finding history to be more and more a source of inspiration—writing from historical events, or learning about characters from various points in history and weaving them into new works of fiction.
CWN: Given your history bent, what is your opinion/review of “The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay”?
DY: So much has already been written and said about this novel, I doubt I can add anything interesting. It’s a breathtaking, provocative, brilliant, funny, and stunning body of work. Michael Chabon must have invested a ton of time doing background research, and it certainly shows. Everyone should read it, especially comic book fans, history fans, and fans of good writing. It shows too that comics can take shape in or influence many more forms than the traditional ones. Fiction, essay, film, there’s so much comics can inspire.
CWN: Ever read “Superfolks”?
DY: I haven’t. I’d never heard of this book until maybe 6 months ago. So lately I’ve been searching for it because it’s been recommended by several friends. I’m always searching for various stuff on eBay—old comics, esoteric books, fanzines, etc. I did bid on a copy of Superfolks a few weeks ago but was sniped. I’m sure it’ll turn up again—everything turns up on eBay sooner or later.
CWN: Where do you see American comics in the hierarchy of sequential art worldwide?
DY: I think American comics fare as well in the hierarchy as the comics of any other nation. We’ve had excellent “founding fathers,” so to speak--Will Eisner, Alex Toth, Alex Raymond, Hal Foster, Jack Kirby, Wally Wood, Al Williamson, Johnny Craig, etc. The comic book is like jazz, a purely American art form.
CWN: Why do you feel that comics don’t get the respect here in the U.S. that they do in most other countries?
DY: Well, they certainly do seem to be more respected in other countries. The problem is the stigma with the term “comic book.” Individuals who don’t read them or haven’t read them have pre-programmed notions as to what they are, and typically those notions are that comics are “funny books for kids.” The media continue to perpetuate the stereotype by invariably using headlines like “WHAM! POW!” to comment on the latest super-hero property in development or to profile local comics creators in newspapers. I blame it all on the 1966-1968 TV-series Bat-Man. “Holy victim blaming, Bat-Man!” Hey my heart goes out to Adam West, but more than anything, I think that show really served to dumb-down America’s perceptions of comic books and super-heroes. And because its 120 episodes been in syndication for over 30 years, new audiences are constantly being introduced to it, so the stereotypes continue. You can do a very grim, very serious Bat-Man movie, but in the end, people see Adam West on a television commercial and what goes through their minds is “WHAM! POW!” and the perception that comics are for kids.
Also, I don’t know if the plain old act of reading is that popular in the US today. We’re TV junkies, and it’s hurting the industry.
CWN: Victims of our own standards?
DY: Unfortunately our standards are very low, as anyone who watches network television with even the slightest bit scrutiny will note. MTV is actually developing a reality show called “Who wants to be a super-hero?” or something equally inane. Reality television will be the death of modern civilization. We get more channels, more shows, and more distractions. There are plenty of more exciting things to do than read books and comics—ask anyone who owns a PS2.
CWN: Could a “phonebook” comicbook work in the U.S. as it does in places like Japan?
DY: I think we’re much more into the portable. I think the phonebook comic book in the US would probably go the way of the 8-track or beta-max rather quickly.
CWN: And yet it is a standard in Asian markets with reported monthly sales sometimes exceeding the whole of Marvel or DC…
DY: That’s amazing. But I think the whole attitude toward animation and comics is regarded quite differently in nearly every other developed country than in the US. I’m not sure why that is. Certainly US culture has permeated foreign markets, but comics seem to have the respect in other countries that they lack here in the US. Weird. Though really, it’s easier to just blame it all on Mr. West and Lorenzo Semple, Jr. Also, in the US, pop culture is typically limited to the “25 and under” group, whereas in Asia, I believe it transcends age much more. You get people in their fifties reading comics and carrying Sanrio backpacks.
CWN: Superhero comics have, from time-to-time, tried to have real world relevance, do you think that that these really work?
DY: Oh, certainly. I think the 1960s Spidey drug story was a good attempt at bringing real-world relevance into the mainstream comics-reading population. Likewise, the O’Neil/Adams Green Lantern/Green Arrow drug story was also well done, actually better than the Spidey story. These are kind of regarded today as tame or watered down. But I think it’s important to remember the context during which these were published. Look at what else was being done in the mainstream and then make the comparison. Those were some very powerful stories for their time.
Stories of real-world relevance are often among the best I’ve read. Stuff like, “The Kid Who Collected Spider-Man,” which deals with terminal illness and “Demon in a Bottle,” which tackles alcoholism, both addressed difficult issues realistically. Bill Mantlo’s Cloak & Dagger series was also quite well done in its depiction of runaways, drug pushers, etc.
Conversely, take a real event like 9/11. How do you, as a publisher, put your super-heroes in the middle of ground zero in New York? How do you put 9/11 into your comics universe for a month or so and then return to business as usual? In that regard, I think it would have been best to just keep 9/11 out of the stories. Spider-Man 36 had about as much real-world relevance as a paper clip. I’m sure everyone involved in the production of that comic had good intentions; I don’t doubt that for a moment. But what did Spider-Man 36 ultimately do? Dr. Doom, a ruthless monarch/dictator, sheds a tear? What did this book ultimately do? Check eBay. There are plenty of people profiting off of the 9/11 attacks by way of Spider-Man 36. CGC profits from idiots slabbing their copies of the comic. Profit-hungry sellers profit by selling their slabbed copies for upwards of $100 each. So in that regard the only real-world relevance is that a few people are profiting from a major tragedy.
CWN: So those that work only work in relation to the world in which they inhabit? Or is more a matter of placing them in context (meaning that GL/GA was more relevant because Superman was fighting space aliens while The Flash was beating-up on Captain Cold)?
DY: I think it was more a matter of a few writers, writer/artist teams like Denny O’Neil and Neal Adams for example, who wanted to put a social message out there. It didn’t matter that they were doing GL/GA at the time. They could have been writing Superman, Wonder Woman, Plastic Man. Likewise, it could have been Peter Parker, not Tony Stark, who developed an alcohol dependency (Lord knows he’d been screwed with enough to warrant it). You could do stories on domestic violence story, drug abuse, racism, religious fanaticism, or age discrimination in a comic book like Micronauts or ROM: Space Knight and make them socially relevant. The message is what matters, not necessarily the character or characters who are delivering the message.
CWN: Returning to your history knowledge (darn, can’t stay away from that area) do you ever read comics with an eye on how they’ll fit into the history of this period in comics?
DY: With few exceptions, I usually only read comics from the 1960s and 1970s. So I’m always looking at them and assessing or wondering “what was going on at the time this was published?” It’s always interesting to read the letter columns from 1960s Marvel comics. The 1970s letter columns are okay, but I think it’s pretty common knowledge that a fair amount of those letters were fabricated by the staff working on the titles at the time. The 1960s letter columns are far superior. The language is different and the attitudes. If you’ve read the letter columns in Alan Moore’s 1963, those parodies are dead on! The letter columns in 1960s DC war books are always interesting as well. Writers were very impassioned with regard to what they were looking for in their war stories; a lot of the letter writers were servicemen or former servicemen, so you get some very interesting points of view.
CWN: I miss the LoCs that aren’t all “gosh I love you” and were more about how the comic affected the reader.
DY: I wrote to a bunch of comics in the 1980s. Some of my early letters were embarrassingly awful because they were full of fan-boy gushing. Others that I wrote a bit later were a bit more constructive, discussing what I felt worked and didn’t work story- and art-wise, and why. As a creator I love getting letters from readers. It’s great to know you’ve done something that instigates a response. I’ve made some friends through it, too.
CWN: Comicbooks (heroes and others) are making huge waves in Hollywood lately, what has been the best and which has just fallen flat?
DY: American Splendor was fabulous. I’ve never even read an issue of the comic, but it’s such an engrossing movie, you don’t have to have read the comic to enjoy the movie. League of Extraordinary Gentlemen fell flat, but, you know, the movie on the screen contained virtually no resemblance to Alan’s story, so go figure. Hollywood needs more people who are die-hard fans to be involved in the making of the movies—this is why the Spider-Man movie did so well. Sam Raimi made a lot of changes to the origins and the characters, but he remained faithful to the overall spirit of the comic book.
CWN: I’m sure you’ve read “JLA/Avengers”, were you looking forward to this presentation?
DY: I didn’t read this series and I’ll tell you why. Like most fans, I’d been waiting for this series forever. I have the issue of David Kraft’s Comics Interview from the early 1980s that discussed the series at length. Somewhere along the wait, I just kind of lost interest in both teams. I’ve really cooled off of mainstream superheroes because, with very few exceptions, nothing much ever changes. Costumes change. Powers change. Loyalties change. But by and large, nothing really changes. Or, if it does change—if a writer comes along and does a really innovative run, sooner or later, his or her successor is going to “rewrite” history so that those tales never occurred. Crossover books are terrific items for fans, but somewhere along the way I’ve stopped being a fan of new stuff, so I’ll have to be content with Perez’s old Avengers and JLA comics. However, I’m open to persuasion.
CWN: Do you think, perhaps, you’ve become jaded by involvement?
DY: I always tell people that 1. I love super-heroes, 2. I love writing and drawing super-hero comics, and 3. I hate super-hero comics. It’s a strange conundrum. For me, everything changed in the late 80s and early 90s when I decided to stop writing to my favorite comic book teams and jump into the fray and publish my ideas. It’s kind of difficult for me not to become jaded because as much as I love to read and study comic books, I feel as though every hour that I do is an hour that I could have spent developing and honing my own comic book mythology. It becomes a love-hate relationship of sorts. About the only exception is Palookaville, Seth’s comic book that is published all-too-infrequently by Drawn & Quarterly. Seth is probably my favorite contemporary comic illustrator. It’s easy to lose myself in Palookaville because it’s so different from what I’m presenting in comics and from the stuff I typically absorb myself in.
CWN: Here’s where you get to open up to the readers… what haven’t I touched on that you’d like to talk about?
DY: I would like to mention that volume 1 of Less Than Heroes is dedicated to Bill Mantlo. Throughout the 1970s and 1980s, Bill was a prolific writer for Marvel. He wrote a long run of The Incredible Hulk series, worked on virtually every Marvel character at one point or another, and transformed Micronauts and ROM from toys into strong-selling monthly comics. When I was a kid collecting comics, the only letter I ever wrote was to Bill, and he wrote back to me, which blew me away—I mean, the guy was doing something like four or more books a month on average and took the time to write to me. In addition to writing the Hulk, Bill also wrote Marvel Team-Up, Iron Man, Peter Parker the Spectacular Spider-Man, Cloak and Dagger (which he also created), Jack of Hearts, and tons of other titles. Every time I attend a comics convention, I make a point to do a bit of shopping. When I return home, usually with a stack of 70s comics, Bill’s name is inevitably in the credits of many of them. I hope Bill will someday receive the recognition he deserves in the industry because I feel he’s certainly deserving of it.
And in closing…
Well, um, I hate George W. Bush and want every true believer out there to vote for John Kerry. Save your Nader or Green Party vote for another year. This ain’t the time. Let’s end Bush’s war and end his four-year reign of debauchery. ‘Nuff said!
Thanks for the interview, Caleb, and for the great set of questions!
david
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April 22, 2008:
February 4, 2008:
November 20, 2006:
A Comic-Con without the Captain
