Mark Belkin interviews Joe Staton

Joe Staton is not only a legend in the comics industry, he is also one of the nicest human beings you will ever meet. It is always a pleasure to speak with him about his past, what he is doing presently, and what he is going to be working on in the future. And if you’re lucky enough to meet his wonderful wife, Hilarie, then you are twice as lucky to meet two of the nicest people on the comics circuit today.

His list of work for DC is massive. Batman, Green Lantern, All-Star Comics, Justice Society, Huntress, World’s Finest, Millennium, Power Girl, and so much more. Originally from North Carolina, Joe has made New York his home state for more than 30 years, and can be found at conventions all around the country. We were lucky enough to speak to Joe at a convention recently.

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Mark: Thank you, Joe, for joining us today.  First question -- how did you meet up with Steve Englehart and end up working together on Green Lantern? 

Joe: Basically, he was assigned as the writer for Green Lantern. I had come back to DC from First comics. The plan when I came back was that Len Wein would be writing and editing Green Lantern. Somehow -- by the time I got back -- Len was gone and Andy Helfer was editing, and I guess Andy had assigned Steve writing duties. 

Mark: When I spoke with J.M. DeMatteis, he said that Andy was very influential on his Justice League run. Was Andy very influential on your run with Green Lantern? Was he a 'hands on' editor? 

Joe: Um... yes, and sometimes a bit more 'hands on' than Steve would've preferred. Steve had lots of good ideas, and Andy had some ideas of his own.

Mark: Steve was a very rebellious soul from my understanding...

Joe: Well, an independent soul, yes.

Panel from The Green Lantern Corps #201 (1986)

Mark: So you got to work on Green Lantern -- and I know one of the big things to come out of your run was Guy Gardner. Defining the 'bowl cut' for generations. How did that come about? What was your mindset in drawing Guy Gardner?

Joe: Steve was setting up a whole new approach to the [Green Lantern] Corps, and Guy had been almost entirely written out [of the mythos] -- he really didn't exist anymore. So basically, Steve developed a whole new Guy Gardner character based on that name and just that position in the corps. His idea was -- certainly in contrast to Hal [Jordan] who was such a good guy and such a stable character -- Guy would be a real contrast.

I picked up on what Steve was doing with it, and the way we'd brought Guy back is that he was in this intensive care facility -- he was pretty much brain-dead. When he came back, he had been in custodial care -- and my idea was that the crew (the people who worked at this facility) would basically come around a give him a bowl cut, like, once a month. And when he came out of his coma it's his haircut and he just stuck with it. It's an institutional look.  

Mark: It is. I heard they're making a Green Lantern Corps movie, and I know for a fact, that they will probably use the bowl cut. So a whole new generation of people will get exposed to that idea.

Joe: <laughs> ...the idea of ugly haircuts...

Can you make out the bowl cut in this silhouette?

Mark: So you got to illustrate the death of Earth-Two Batman in 1979's Adventure Comics v1 #462. How was it getting that? Because that was a pretty consequential story to be given. Did anyone talk to you about that at the time? Was there a huge "Oh my god, I can't believe this!" type-of-thing?

Joe: As I understand it, Joe Orlando was the editor, and this was to be Joe's last issue. Paul Levitz wanted Joe to go out with something consequential, so that how he got to the 'death of Batman' story. The weird thing there was that Mike Barr was the assistant editor, and when the script came to him he was horrified and Mike was, y'know, really trying to stop the whole thing. People realized this was something consequential, and then there were *other* people who thought that Batman should ONLY be killed by the Joker.... so, y'know, there were different ideas there.

From the brilliant Brave and the Bold #197. Also, about

 death and Earth-Two Batman.

Mark: Moving a little bit forward, you and Steve Englehart worked on Millennium -- which was the big cross-over series from the tail-end of 1987. How did that get handed to you guys? What was the thinking/reasoning?

Joe: Yeah, well, I know that Steve had a lot of new age ideas he wanted to work out. So, he was brought in, and he had a lot worked out. Andy [Helfer] was editing again, and Andy was always good at bringing in people from England, or Japan, or whatever... and his original plan was for Ian Gibson -- the English artist -- to do the art on Millennium. BEFORE scanning or e-mailing, before all THAT, it was FedEx ... international FedEx. But it quickly became apparent that really wasn't going to work on the very tight schedule that the book had. So, I think the book was 3 weeks late at the point I was brought into it. I wasn't scheduled to do it, I had no idea that I would be doing it. So, I was just kind of thrown into it. And Ian was told that okay well he's not doing the WHOLE job anymore, but he's still inking it. So he did stick around for the inking. I certainly would've understood if he decided not to, but he stuck with it.

Since the book was so late -- and it was at a time that there were a lot of changes going into the DC books (a lot of costumes were changing and different things) -- basically I penciled with what information I had, Ian inked with what he had, and then the whole thing came back to the production department who kind of re-drew things on the fly trying to make everybody's costume look right before it went out. 

And then there was a lot of political intrigue going on at DC at the time -- both internal politics and actual political politics. Steve [Englehart] was very left-wing in his politics and he wanted to make a lot of anti-fascist statements. I kind of share Steve's politics, so it didn't bother me. But Jenette [Kahn] leaned on Andy [Helfer] to lean on Steve, so Steve wasn't allowed to come up with the ending he had planned for Millennium. It's amazing we got it done at all.

A comic called Focus that focused on the comic crossover Millennium. Say that 5 times quick.

Mark:...and that moved onto 1988's The New Guardians series -- which you pencilled -- and that series sort of hung around for a little while. Was that series also affected by politics as well at the time?

Joe: Oh yeah. Since the whole ending [to Millennium] would've been different, and the spin-offs would've been different -- the New Guardians was kind of coming up with a spin-off book on the fly.  [laughs] That was another weird one because there were so many ethnic and political characters... and I'm fond of caricature -- like, I can't help it -- and I was REALLY worried that some of my characters were going to be offensive whether or not I wanted them to be. So, I worked with that as best as I could. It's amazing any books ever got put out.

Mark: I'd love to expand on that at some point. Before we finish up... retaining the rights to E-Man... was that always an issue? Was that an issue with First Comics (because you had to gone First Comics)? Was it an easy early-80s creator owned? Or was it difficult? What kind of difficulties did you have with that over the years?

Joe: Well, First [Comics] got the rights from Charlton [Comics], and the idea was that I'd pay First back from my royalties/income to cover their expenses, and eventually E-Man would come to me. Over the years various papers were slipped my way to sign, so the deal I wound up didn't exactly add up to what I was counting on from First. So, I ALMOST own E-Man but some of the earlier material is controlled by the remains of First.

Mark: And what happens with those remains? Who's in charge of those? Do you think those will ever be re- printed?

Joe: It's a possibility. We'll keep on trying to figure that out.

Mark: Thank you for sitting with us today, Mr Staton.

E-Man: the shape-changing superhero!

Joe Staton has been working on the national Dick Tracy comic strip since 2011, and has won Harvey Awards for Best Syndicated Strip in 2013, 2014 and 2015! He is a frequent guest at conventions, and if you see him, stop by and say hello!

-Mark Belkin

Introducing new contributor Michael Campochiaro

We're very proud to add Michael Campochiaro to our ranks of regular contributors. Michael is a seasoned veteran of retro pop culture journalism and has written for Sequart, The After Movie Dinner, Spectrum Culture and his own blog, Words Seem Out of Place. Typically we don't expect new contributors to provide an essay on why 80s comics were so influential to them, but Michael was so enthusiastic about it that we just couldn't refuse. Alright, that's all you really need in the way of introductions. On to Michael...


As often happens with obsessions formed at a young age, a friend's older sibling played a key role in kick-starting one of mine. By the early to mid 1980s I'd been reading comic books for several years already. I was just a wee lad though, content to read Super Friends, Batman, Amazing Spider-Man, and Justice League of America, mostly, plus whatever other books looked cool on the spinner rack at the local convenience store. Then, somewhere around '83 or '84, my friend's older brother introduced us to his prodigious comics collection. Now, he was a teenager and had his own bedroom/bachelor pad in their finished basement. It was filled with cool comics, movie posters, and art he'd drawn of his favorite characters. For the two of us, who were around eight or nine years old, this made him a God.

We spent countless hours on the floor in his room, completely engrossed in comics. This was also during the real independent comics boom of the early '80s, so he had plenty of issues of American Flagg!, Nexus, Whisper, and Badger, from upstart companies like First Comics and Capital Comics. We were like kids in a candy store, only our candy store stocked comics.

One day my friend's brother mentioned the local comics shop. When I expressed no knowledge of its existence, he implored me to check the place out. When I got home I immediately asked my parents to take me there. They knew comics had inspired my burgeoning interest in art and drawing, so they were fine with encouraging this growing obsession. Off I went, usually with my father, every month (sometimes twice monthly) for the rest of my childhood and on into my teen years. My father was the most patient man I've ever know This patience was on full display every time he'd wait quietly for me at the LCS, while I perused the new issues and dug through the back issue bins, lost in the four-color wonder of it all. Even the shop itself was like heaven to me: it was small and cramped and packed so tight you could barely squeeze around people in it. It was complete sensory overload for a kid like me: posters, toys, memorabilia, and of course thousands of comics.

Nexus meets the Badger: Nexus #7 (1985, First Comics)

I came of age at the exact right time to be a comic book nerd. Shortly after discovering my LCS, a succession of groundbreaking comics were released. One of these was Frank Miller's The Dark Knight Returns in early 1986. I was ten. It astounds me now to think of a ten year old not only reading, but absorbing, the brutality and despair in those pages. Yet I did, and it changed me, made me see not only comics but literature and art differently. Batman had been my favorite character up to that point and would remain so for several more years. I'd never read a Batman story like this before, though. Afterwards, it felt like I'd graduated to the next level. The next level of what, I had no idea, but some small step in the transition through adolescence was occurring.

Another book that changed my life during those years was the graphic novelization of "The Dark Phoenix Saga", collecting Uncanny X- Men #129–137. This released in '84 and I can still see it on an endcap at our favorite local bookstore. The stunningly painted Bill Sienkiewicz cover art, commissioned specifically for the collected edition, beckoning to me: "Buy me!" My mother saw how much I was drooling and said, "Let's get it." These stories had originally been printed a few years earlier, but here, in one gorgeous package was the meat of the saga. A perfect volume for a young reader like me to experience the eye-opening epic grandeur of Claremont and Byrne's Uncanny X-Men. At nine, I was hooked again, this time on the X-Men. To this day, "The Dark Phoenix Saga" remains my single favorite comic book story. I've written about it at my blog before, if you're interested.

This being a blog about DC Comics, I'll refrain from pining any further for the great Marvel Comics of my youth. I'll say this though, during those heady days of collecting as a kid, my go-to titles were always a mixture of DC and Marvel: the various Batman titles, Justice League, Green Lantern, Captain America, Uncanny X-Men, the assorted Spider-Man books, and on and on. I quickly learned that comics nerds liked to choose sides in the eternal DC vs Marvel debate, but I usually played Switzerland because I absolutely adored so many comics from both publishers. Now it's clear to me that I was attracted to DC because their heroes were so iconic, so out of this world and inspiring. They were like living myths, or at least as much as four-color characters on a page can be considered living. Marvel, on the other hand, both satisfied and encouraged my taste for outsider, marginalized characters. They were loaded with characters who reflected my own adolescent awkwardness. They were extremely relatable.

Comic books were the fuel I needed as a kid to explore my own imagination, to encourage my own artistic talents, to take things farther than I'd known was possible before. I was awestruck at the gloriously expressive art in those pages, hooked on characters that I quickly grew to see as inspirational totems (I'm looking in your direction, Rogue and Green Arrow), and constantly amazed at the fantastic adventures that comics took me on. If my comic book origin story sounds familiar, that's probably because it closely mirrors your own.

-Michael Campochiaro

We're looking forward to more Michael Campochiaro submissions in the future. In the meantime, here are some previous articles he's written on various comic book properties:

• Blue Beetle and the Last Days of the Bronze Age
• Rethinking and Re-inking Catwoman
• Hunger and Longing: Growing Up with Cloak and Dagger
• Spotlight on Steve Gerber’s The Son of Satan
• Cult Classics: BATMAN FOREVER

The Mike Grell interview: Jon Sable Freelance as the precursor for the 1988 Green Arrow ongoing series

This is actually one half of a REALLY LONG interview I conducted with Mike Grell on Friday, May 13 2016 at the Ottawa Comiccon.  I was a little nervous when interviewing Mike, so my questions were all over the place and didn't follow any real logical flow. For your reading convenience, I separated the interview transcription into two parts. The second part will deal exclusively with his work on DC comics characters. This interview was actually recorded, but the quality of the audio is a little raw, so I won't be posting it for all to listen to - but I assure you, it exists.

This webzine is very much DC-centric, and this may be my only REAL chance to gush about how great Grell's John Sable Freelance is (and possibly my only chance ever to interview Mike Grell in person), so please bear that in mind as you read through the rather long-winded interview questions.

To summarize, Jon Sable Freelance is one of those indie book (published by First Comics from 1983 to 1988) that nobody seems to have read, but all unanimously agree to being one of the 'better' indie titles of the 1980s. A quick search on the 'net doesn't really delve much about this series, so this is DC in the 80s' chance to give this series it's due. Not just as a really well-illustrated and well-written series, but also as the forerunner to Grell's 1987 Longbow Hunters limited series and then his 1988 Green Arrow ongoing series (both published by DC comics in the late 1980s).

DCinthe80s: "To start: a little bit of history on you. You enlisted in the Air Force in 1967 and were discharged in 1971. You were in Saigon in 1971 - for about a year, correct?"

Mike Grell: "Yes."

DC80s: "So you weren't in the Vietnam War per se, you were working in the Air Force and Military Intelligence?" [the US extraction from Saigon (aka: end of Vietnam) was in 1975]

Grell: "Yes, I was. But the war was going on all around me, so I wasn't a combat soldier by any means, but I was in the war. I was involved. In fact, I was almost as involved as you can get without being in the jungle."


DC80s: "You grew up in Wisconsin, so you know a lot about hunting. Actually, I read that was one of your passions - wilderness, hunting..."


Grell: "Yes, yes it is."


DC80s: "You also know a lot about weaponry - I remember, while reading Jon Sable Freelance, you going into a lot of detail about the actual weapons used in the stories. I remember reading fan mail for the book praising your attention to detail on illustrating/describing a particular combat knife or gauge/caliber of a specific weapon. You have a really advanced knowledge of this stuff."

Grell: "Well I learned to shoot when I was 4 years old. I lived in Northern Wisconsin where the area was so depressed that if your father didn't hunt, your family didn't eat meat. Hunting came naturally to me just as a way of life. It taught me respect for the game animals, it taught me a love of the wild, and I've been at it since I was just a kid."


DC80s: "I sense a lot of that is reflected in your work: Jon Sable has a history of being a big game hunter in Africa, there's the whole hunter/prey motif in the series, and in Green Arrow - in your revamped origin - Green Arrow learns how to use a bow for survival while being stranded on a deserted island. Originally, as per his pre-Crisis origin, Green Arrow was a young boy when he was taught how to shoot."

Grell: "Yeah, it's a question of staying alive. I had a line I wrote in a story where someone asks him "what's the toughest shot he ever made?" and he replied "it was a lizard at ten feet" and they asked "was it poisonous?" and he replied "No. Tasty". Because it was the shot that he had to make in order to feed himself."


DC80s: "On the topic of Oliver Queen... by the way, do you still like the name 'Green Arrow'? I remember hearing you weren't a fan of the name 'Green Arrow'."

Grell: "The name is stupid, but the character - the concept of Green Arrow - well, Green Arrow has always been one of my favorite comic book heroes. Right from the time I was a little kid. I learned how to shoot a bow when I was six or seven years old and we used to play 'Robin Hood' all of the time. The idea of a character who doesn't have super powers, but he has superior skill that anybody can learn, just really appealed to me."

DC80s:"That's like the 'everyman' idea. Jon Sable is the 'everyman' because anybody with enough training could BE Jon Sable. Warlord/Travis Morgan was an 'everyman', he didn't have any special powers, he was an Air Force pilot who crashed in Skartaris..."

Grell: "Right. He was just an ordinary guy with a big sword and a .44 Magnum... but he had the only .44 Magnum is Skartaris, so it gave him a slight edge - y'know?"

DC80s: "Starslayer was another character you created. He was a Celtic warrior who gets that cybernetic eye implant as soon as he gets picked up by that ship - but for the most part, it is feasible that a normal human being could be skilled and honed enough that he could be on par with Starslayer. I'm finding that this another major theme in your 80s work - the main character as the 'everyman'. Even Blackhawk, the feature you wrote for 1988's Action Comic Weekly, is just a 'normal' pilot..."

Grell: "It's the circumstances that cause ordinary, normal people to rise above their everyday lives that really makes them heroic - people just going about their lives and something happens to change them. And it's that change that's important - it's what makes them who they are. It what makes them interesting." 

DC80s: "Something else I've noticed in your books is the concept of 'aging'. For example, Ollie is going through a mid-life crisis in Longbow Hunters, he's saying "well, I'm 40-something, do you want to have kids?" and Dinah says "Well, no. I don't want to bring kids into this world.""

Grell: "He wants to have kids because he's feeling that biological clock ticking, and she doesn't want anything to do with it because of what THEY do. She tells him that she'd love to make babies with him, but she doesn't want to make orphans. She's not ready to hang up her costume and give up the action. She still enjoys what she is and what she does."

"The reason why I made it a point to age my characters was that early on [in the 70s] I had a discussion with Julius Schwartz over a line in a Green Arrow story in which Ollie says "something something whatever I'm not even 30 yet" and I said "that's impossible" and he said "no no no, none of our characters are over thirty because our readers can't relate to anybody over thirty. They think that over thirty is 'over the hill' " and I said "that's totally ridiculous. How long would you say Green Arrow and Speedy have been together? Could you believe that the state had awarded Green Arrow custody of Speedy? What about Batman and Robin? Are you going to tell me that the state was going to award custody of a 15 year old boy to 29 year-old male bachelor? Really?" and so when I had the opportunity to create the Warlord and then Jon Sable, I made it a point to make those characters not just over 30, but over 40."

"I took a certain amount of pride in making them just a little older than I was at the time because I was against the pervasive ageism that is so prevalent in the comic industry. And it still is. There are so many unemployed artists who just happen to pass that 45 year old mark that you just can't believe it. It happens moreso in the comics industry...  probably moreso than any other industry. Artists who are still vital and viable - guys who can draw rings around a lot of the younger crop - are out of work because they're in their forties. Or, God forbid, in their fifties. Or, in my case, in their sixties."

DC80s: "Did you ever go to Africa?"

Grell: "Yes. I've been there twice on safari."

DC80s: "Was that before or after you wrote Jon Sable?"

Grell: "More or less during. I went first in 1984 and back again in 1989."

DC80s: "And you jousted at some point?"

Grell: "Yes. I rode with a group called the Seattle Knights for almost 10 years. I've jousted, did horse-back archery, sword fighting, and all that other stuff. I used to brag that I've never fell off a horse in my life. Then when I turned 45, I bought a horse. That came to an end in a hurry - three years later I was falling off professionally doing it 3 or 4 times a day. I've never been hurt falling off a horse on purpose. I've gotten busted-up on accident a couple of times.

DC80s: "When you were shopping around your Savage Empire comic strip in the early 1970s, you had another hard-boiled detective strip called Iron Mike... is that who Jon Sable is partly based on? You've listed Mickey Spillane and Edward Burroughs as some of your early influences..."

Grell: "The Mickey Spillane influence really showed in Iron Mike. There were a couple of stories I did in Jon Sable that I lifted straight out of Iron Mike - plots I had written out and wanted to follow through with."

DC80s: "I remember reading somewhere that Jon Sable was your favorite character. He was your 'pet project' and a lot of the allure came from the fact that you were able to tell the stories you wanted to tell. I've got say, I've re-read most of the entire Jon Sable Freelance TPB reprint set (available from IDW) for the first time a few months and still really enjoy it. It really holds up 30+ years later. I don't know if it's my age or etc, but lately I've been taking an interest in Cold War espionage drama, and this book was right up my alley. The majority of the stories are framed like whodunit mysteries..."

Grell: "That's what I liked most about the Jon Sable book - I could do any kind of story I wanted. It was securely anchored to the real world and I could often draw my stories from news headlines."

DC80s: "There's a few things here that you actually predict in advance. Sable dealt with a lot of contemporary stuff (at the time of publication), when you're reading it you can easily place when it happened ("okay, this story is about the 80-something Olympics. Okay, here's Jon Sable meeting with Reagan. Here's some Russians trying to escape the soviet by getting smuggled into the U.S.") and then there's the whole Iran/Contra thing..."

Grell: "Longbow Hunters! I got a call from a radio station in NYC asking me if I'd go on air and speak live about the story connection. The reporter asked me how I was able to beat the Iran/Contra story, in print, by 6 months. I told them that, quite frankly, all I did was read the papers, looked at what was going on in the world and plugged in the various players and asked myself "what would be stupidest thing the CIA could do if they were absolutely certain they would never get caught?" and that's what I wrote about."

Reagan makes a guest appearance in Jon Sable Freelance #1

DC80s: "You're one of the pioneers of championing for creator-owned work. You were the first to join up with Pacific Comics in the 80s (Jack Kirby was the second). For First Comics, you were the second to sign up (Joe Staton was the first). Jon Sable was one of the first 3 books published by First Comics. There was WARP, E-Man, Jon Sable Freelance and then Starslayer came in not too long after that [1983]. What was that like? You were taking a big gamble and venturing into new territory (i.e. creator-owned). I know that First Comics was paying a really good page rate, but there was a risk - you were venturing and taking a gamble. You were also making a statement about 'creator-owned'. It wasn't fair that you were creating popular characters for a bigger comic book company and couldn't retain control of them." 

Grell: "Exactly. I was always a big fan of newspaper comic strips. One of the reasons I wanted to get into newspaper strips so badly is because creators owned their own material. I didn't see any reason why that SHOULDN'T be the case in comic books as well. When the opportunity to create and own my own feature arose with Pacific Comics, I jumped on it. They unfortunately did NOT live up to their pledge and promise of even regular payments, there were so many bounced cheques back in the day that I had to look elsewhere. But here came First Comics and they were making good on their promises that Pacific was unable to fulfill. And it just made a huge difference. They were offering royalties. If it hadn't been for companies like First Comics, I don't think Marvel or DC would be paying royalties today. There's no possible way."

DC80s: "First Comics needed you just as badly as you needed them, as First needed some big-name comic talent to jump on board with them to attract new readers. It was a win-win situation, really. The appeal of First Comics was that you were reading some big-name talent hence drawing you into their line of comic books."

"When you started with Jon Sable Freelance, it wasn't a code-approved book obviously, so it gave you more leeway. Frank Miller's Daredevil run for Marvel - I wouldn't say he coined 'grim and gritty' - but he had the street-level stories... and then there was kind of a lull because he left Daredevil in the early 80s, and that's when Jon Sable appeared on the newsstands. But since you weren't operating under the Comics Code Authority, you were able to be more graphic than Miller was able to...

Grell:"You know.. I'm not sure that that's accurate. I think that Sable was ahead of Miller's Daredevil." 

[Miller's Daredevil run ran from 1979 - 1983, and then again in 1985 - 1986. I was referring to Miller's first run when he introduced Elektra. So, Mike's half-right here. Still - not bad for a guy who didn't have wikipedia in front of him.]

DC80s: "What's interesting about the character of Jon Sable is that he's a very cool, laid-back guy, but then, next thing you know he's straight up murdering people on panel. (Granted, they are typically villains, assassins, muggers or enemy soldiers). But the point is, it's pretty graphic and it's on-panel. The Jon Sable has a major underlying theme of 'urban crime' - how dangerous the streets are. There's lots of implied sex in that book."

Grell: "I explored a lot of those themes in Jon Sable, but also in Green Arrow Longbow Hunters. I was taken to task in print by the New York Times and Times magazine - in the same week they ran articles mentioning Green Arrow. Unfortunately they never mentioned my name. They called Green Arrow, and I remember the quote word-for-word, 'borderline pornography pandering to the prurient interests of today's youth'. oh, it was great. it was great. I just regret that they didn't mention my name."

"At the same time, they referred to Mindy Newell (she was writing Catwoman at the time) and Mindy's name they used. She got a phone call from her father, who was a heavy-hitter stock broker with big offices on Wall Street, saying "Mindy, I'd like you to come down to the office for lunch today" and she was thinking "Oh my God, what am I gonna face now?". So she walks in, as she steps off the elevator in the main lobby of her father's firm she sees the page from the New York Times blown-up wall-sized with her name circled about 25 times in yellow highlighter. She got a standing ovation from the office staff, and a big bouquet of roses from her father. He said "Honey, I've been on Wall Street for 35 years and I've never gotten my name in the Times."

DC80s: "You also did a Jon Sable story in Green Arrow where someone named Jake Moses show up [Green Arrow v2 #15 - 16, 1989], and..."

Grell: "Yes!" [Grell's face lights up]

DC80s: "...and Green Arrow ends up having a conversation with him. Was there a reason for that? Were you trying to demonstrate something? Like, 'for all you critics comparing my Jon Sable character to Green Arrow, here's the difference...'. Jacob Moses was driven over the edge. He was nothing like the smooth, handsome man-of-the-world Jon Sable - he was a haggard, Irish mercenary. Was there a story there? Or was this just a fun way to slip Jon Sable into a DC book?"

Grell: "Yeah, there was. On the one hand it was a continuation of a Sable-type of character, and on the other hand it was my way of putting that character to rest. It would've more or less been a logical ending for a guy who lived his life like Sable did. But in reality, it was a little bit of a back-hand slap at First Comics because at the time that I left the book - well, the reason that I did so was because I knew that without me on the title it would eventually fade and die. First Comics had a 10 year publishing license for 3 years after they last published the book. My leaving the book was a way to hasten that time period instead of having to wait until that 10 year period was over, I knew that after I left the book they'd only be able to keep it going for a short period of time. And then I would get the rights back a few years after they ceased publication."

DC: "Was there 'bad blood' between you and First Comics?"

Grell: "There was at the time. It was a sheer question of economics: I wasn't being paid what I was owed when I was supposed to get my payments. The timing was perfect. Mike Gold had transitioned to DC comics and he phoned me up one day and said "I'm editing over here at DC, is there any character here that you like well enough to 'bury the hatchet' and come back to work?". I said "Batman". I had just talked to Frank Miller, maybe a week before, and he told me about the plot of his Dark Knight Returns book, and I told Mike "Once Frank's done with Batman, you can put a period at the end of the Batman sentence for the next 20 years." Of course, I'm off by 7 or 8 years now, and counting. Gold was the one who said "Green Arrow". Green Arrow has always been one of my favorite characters. "Now think about this," he said "...Green Arrow as an URBAN HUNTER". That's was it. That was the whole inspiration for the Longbow Hunters, and the angle on the character for the ongoing series that followed."

DC80s: "Was that a difficult idea to sell to DC? I remember Green Arrow as being a somewhat 'jovial' character - that guy with the trick arrows (boxing glove on the tip of the arrow) - and you were going to reinvent him as a vigilante with pointed arrows that pierce and potentially kill. How did DC handle that proposal on the character?"

Grell: "It turned out to be a really easy sell." 

DC80s: "I'm imagining it had to do with your success with Jon Sable Freelance. They saw how popular and well-written that was. Hence my point that Jon Sable Freelance was the precursor to your Longbow Hunters and, shortly thereafter, your 1988 Green Arrow ongoing series. A lot of elements from Jon Sable Freelance are apparent in Green Arrow. In both of them, your main characters get hurt. Jon Sable, he's got permanent scars across his chest - there's some continuity there because the scars are the result of one of his first adventures. In Green Arrow, Ollie's always coming back as bloody as hell and Dinah has to bandage him up. It's grounded in realism. He's not going out beating up muggers all night and coming back home unscathed. These guys are getting hurt. Same thing with Dinah - she gets into a major fight and for several issues later she's still got the exact same bruises. That's realistic. That's the allure - it goes back to that 'everyman' thing. You feel that you could realistically be this person. You can relate to it."

Grell: "Yeah, I think that's part of the job of a writer is to be close enough to reality - even in a fantasy - that your character isn't perceived as just a violent S.O.B. who has no repercussions in his life. Yes, Oliver Queen shot a lot of people with bows and arrows, but he also wound up in court. And it took a toll on him. Everything that he did took a toll. He was essentially a victim of PTSD."

DC80s: "...also another common theme in your work: Post Traumatic Stress Disorder. Jon Sable is dealing with the death of his family."

Grell: "Violence doesn't only affect the person that it happens to. sometimes it affects the person who perpetrates it"

DC80s: "That appears to be an important theme in your work which keeps it based in realism. Is Jon Sable based on Ian Flemming? His alter ego is B.B. Flemm... "

Grell: "No. The inspiration for Sable was a character who would be the EXACT OPPOSITE of Batman. He doesn't work for the greater good, he works for money - you got to pay him, he's a mercenary. He doesn't have a secret identity. The mask is only symbolic apart from the fact that it scares the hell out of the bad guys. He's not trying to disguise who he is - everybody know he's mister blood and guts. His deep dark secret is that he's a closet "nice guy" who writes children's books about a group of leprechauns living in a fairy mound in central park. The only time he wears any kind of disguise is when he has to go out into public and appear as the children's author B.B. Flemm. Which, when it's written out, looks fine. But when you say it, it's that stuff you hock out of your throat when you have a bad cold."

DC80s: "Physically, was the appearance of Jon Sable based on someone you knew? An actor, perhaps? Same question for Maggie the Cat... [a Jon Sable character that quickly became a fan favorite and received her own spin-off book]"

Maggie the Cat

Grell:"Sable was originally based on James Brolin - Josh Brolin's dad. Maggie the Cat was based in part on Grace Kelly. Grace Kelly did a movie with Cary Grant called To Catch A Thief [1955] and she's also partly based (facially) on a model/actress named Lauren Hutton."

James Brolin

Grace Kelly

Lauren Hutton

DC80s: "All the women in Jon Sable Freelance are beautiful..."

Grell: "Beautiful are more interesting than ugly ones. I'm just sayin' "

DC80s: "...especially when you are writing cold war mystery/espionage thrillers..."
    
Grell: "More interesting to me, anyways"

DC80s: "It's also interesting that Jon Sable, a guy in his 40s, his primary love interest is Myke - the really tall twenty-something aspiring illustrator..."

Grell: "Yeah, well I was married to a twenty-something girl at the time"

DC80s: "art imitates life"

Grell: "...and just like in Jon Sable, she was taller than me."

---

Again, I'm going to make a strong recommendation that you pick up and read First Comics' Jon Sable Freelance ongoing series from 1983 (written and illustrated by Mike Grell). I didn't read the entire series, just the first six trade paperbacks published, so I really can't comment on anything after that - but I can confidently tell you that the first 33 issues are better than 80% of what's currently out there on the comic book market. The series is beautifully illustrated by Grell and holds up really well as far as plotting and pacing go - some of it's pretty intense and will even surprise you. If you're the 'adventurous' type, you can go hunting through back-issue bins (issues can vary wildly in price, but for the most part you should be able to get them pretty cheap) or you can just bite the bullet (like I did) and pick up the trades from IDW.

Just lovin' those two-page Grell-illustrated splash pages

I can hardly express how grateful I am that Mike Grell gave me his time and sat down and talked with me. You can check out more of Mike Grell on his website: http://mikegrell.com.

Go to part two of this interview.

2016 Ottawa Comiccon Panel featuring Whilce Portacio, Mike Grell and James O'Barr

On May 15th 2016, the Ottawa Comiccon held a panel called Creative Talk with Mike Grell, Whilce Portacio and Jame O'Barr. For the life of me, I have no clue who the MC was. If you know, please leave a comment and I'll credit him to this line-up.

[Please note: This panel was recorded with an extremely low-quality audio recording device. I wasn't able to catch everything, but thankfully I was able to catch a significant amount. If anyone has the complete audio recording, please contact me and I'll "fill the gaps". -J]

The panel was well into a story about Portacio's first experiences on Marvel's X-Men with Jim Lee (early 90s) before I got my recorder set up...

PORTACIO: Jim Lee, myself and Scott [Lobdell] were really proud of ourselves that Bob Harras, then X-Men editor, called us up and said "Hey, someone fell out so could you do this issue in 19 days?" and we stood up, puffed our chests and said "we can do it in 14 days". And here, Jack [Kirby] does it in 2 days.

O'BARR: ...and he [Kirby] wrote it.

GRELL: At my peak I was writing and drawing a couple different books, but I think the best I ever did was pencil about 5 pages a day.

[inaudible]

GRELL: I actually fell asleep inking a page one day and the hand kept moving. When I woke up I had drawn this ball of... I don't know... snot or something like that 3/4 of the way down the page and rather than take the extra time to grind it off with an eraser, or painting over it with whiteout, I actually worked it into the design of the page.

PORTACIO: But seriously though, that is part of the job description. Because we have so little time. Let me brag a little bit - you now have concept designers for movies, animation and toys and you have animators and then you have storyboard artists and stuff. It's all the same skill set with comics. This is the way I put it: the plot that we get for that month and we have to do in 4 weeks - storytelling, designing of new characters, or whatever and writing - we get 4 weeks to do that. You put that workload to all of them, they get 4 years.

O'BARR: and we're doing, essentially, 6 or 7 drawings were they're doing 1. per page. so... it's a lot of work. At my peak - well, I can still pencil, ink and I do my own lettering too - a page a day. I don't play well with others. It's just easier if I do it myself.

James O'Barr's The Crow (1989)

MC: The thread I wanted to pursue in this discussion was the idea of independent comics.

O'BARR: You should get Kevin Eastman up here. He's the one who opened it up. The turtles opened it up for all of us. I mean, there was Marvel, DC, and Dark Horse.

GRELL: There wasn't Dark Horse. Not in the beginning. It was Pacific Comics first, and then First Comics.

O'BARR: Yeah, but they were doing full color comics trying to compete with Marvel and DC. But the turtles came out in a black and white book, and Kevin's a good friend but he'll tell you it was essentially a joke comic and it caught on. And it just kind of opened the doors for all of us. You didn't have to compete with Marvel or DC, you could do your own book.

GRELL: To understand what he just said about the 'joke' you have to fade back in time. At the time they did Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles, the most popular characters in comics were Teenagers, Mutants and Ninjas. So they very cleverly added the 'turtle' part - which I think is the secret to the whole thing. The first book was a spoof - it was a joke.

O'BARR: It was essentially a MAD Magazine excerpt... and it caught on,... then they had to create a whole universe.

GRELL: "Oh crap! We're going to have to do this for a career now!"

GRELL: The other part of the independent publishers came about through a few different auspices: Kitchen Sink Press - they had just a tremendous amount of independent material at that time. Fantagraphics, too. Pacific Comics showed up on the scene and came knocking on my door, and they knew that I had a project called 'Starslayer' that had originally been intended as a counterpart to the Warlord at DC comics. The reason it never got published over there was because of the DC implosion that happened when a massive quantity of DC titles got cancelled.

O'BARR: It's a cycle. It happens every 6 or 7 years were they just go cancel 15 to 20 titles that aren't making enough money for them. So, it's a cycle.

GRELL: So Starslayer was supposed to be on the publishing schedule for DC. It was the opposite of the Warlord - I had a modern man in a primitive society, so [in Starslayer] I had a primitive man in a futuristic society. Pacific came knocking on my door said "how would you like to do it over here? We'll give you creator-ownership - which is #1 - and a royalty. If you sell enough copies, you'll earn your advance back and we'll pay you royalties" and that was unheard of in those days. So I jumped. I was the first artist to sign with Pacific. Jack Kirby was the second. Jack's book came out ahead of mine by about 2 months. Jack could write and draw a page while I've been yammering on here about Pacific Comics. I think Neal Adams was the third to sign on. Pacific didn't last - they just couldn't hold their act together. Hard on the heels of that came First Comics.

Starslayer #5 (1982) Pacific Comics

O'BARR: They lasted quite a while. 6 or 7 years?

GRELL: James was right when said they were looking to go toe-to-toe with the big guys.

O'BARR: ...and that's when comics were still on spinner racks. There wasn't a lot of space to go around. Marvel and DC pretty much crowded them out even though they had the same level of talent. It wasn't that the material wasn't as good as Marvel or DC's, but they already had a foothold on it. There weren't the comic stores like there are now, you had to go to the drugstore and they had the spinner rack. They essentially choked them out of the business.

MC: Are those models that you guys looked at while you were thinking of Image? Like previous ideas? [directed at Whilce Portacio]

PORTACIO: No, because we were young and dumb. [laughs] I think it was Rob [Liefeld] and Todd [McFarlane] that figured out the basic idea and then we go "yeah sure". My story? My story with that was every year at that time I would go to the Philippines for a month. So, I'm leaving, I'm going to the airport, and Jim Lee calls me up and says "Oh Whilce, something BIG is happening. we're going to do something and I can't say anything now but when you get back maybe I'll be able to tell you something" so I get back a month later and Jim calls me up again and says "oh, we did it." and I asked "what did you do?" and then goes "so and so, so and so. We've formed up Image and we're going to leave Marvel. and we've already written out the press release, so we're going to do it. so we just want you on board and want to know if you want to do it." and I was jet-lagged, still. So I just asked Scott, my best friend (we went to high school together), and he just said "yeah". Again, like i said, we were young and dumb. we were really full of ourselves - which is a good thing in art. You actually have to be that way in our business because it is a solitary business and, especially in the beginning, it was like - y'know - when you're younger your parents are after you and maybe you've got a girlfriend and she wants to get serious - and they're after you like "are you really going to do this?" so you really had to be confident that you were an artist. Think about it: Jim and I especially, we were in the X-office - the top office - earning the bucks, earning the royalties, getting the audience, and should we do this? What if it fails?

Whilce Portacio Uncanny X-Men #281 (1991) art

O'BARR: So what was the reason that everyone got together and decided to leave [Marvel]?

PORTACIO: I'll give it to you in a story that doesn't touch on any of the scandal parts. [laughs] Jim [Lee] and I would go to conventions, and kids would come up and we'd sign their books. All of a sudden we started noticing their t-shirts, and they had our drawings on them. But not only our drawings - there was like 10 or 15 different t-shirts with different drawings. So, we called up Marvel and said "Hey, do you KNOW about this?" and they said "Okay, we'll have our lawyers check". Weeks later, they called us up and said "the lawyers made a deal. so you'll be getting a cheque pretty soon". And this is the way I remember it: we got a cheque. I got a cheque for $34! And then I think it was Todd who found out it was a million dollar company. so - them: corporate lawyer, right? me: no lawyer. And then we started looking at the royalties, and at the time - remember they printed out the circulation sheets in the books...

O'BARR: ...required by law

PORTACIO: ...and at the time our books were making 400 a month. and we're going "this is a nice cheque, but... what's the computation for that?" and that with other things we started realizing there's a lot more money.

O'BARR: That's 400 thousand copies, by the way.

PORTACIO: yeah, that's 400,000 copies - which even back then I think translates to about a dollar of profit per issue. so that's 400,000 bucks right there.

[inaudible]

[From memory: because Image was mainly comprised of all of Marvel's former superstars, the printers gave Image comics a printing discount on par with Marvel comics, realizing that Image could sell just as many books (if not more) than Marvel. Those gold foil and platinum limited edition variant covers? It didn't cost Image as much as you think it did to print them. A lot of their secondary market value was based on desirability and scarcity - not actual value.]

PORTACIO: Before this Photoshop thing with millions of colors and you could do all of these multiple shades, it was 4 color process. Meaning you would give them a color guide, and then some schmoe would need to cut the shape out.

[barely inaudible - I'm really trying to fill in the gaps here from memory]

PORTACIO: It was really Rob Liefeld's fault. [laughs] The real reasons multiple covers started: we all agreed that we'd start with our all-new books [WildC.A.T.S., Youngblood, Spawn] - but if you guys remember, very early on, we decided to do multiple books and bring in new artists. So this is how that happened: we're all oohing over our new books and bragging with each other about our first issues, around this time we had also bought fax machines in the office - you pay a lot for these office toys so you gotta make it worth it - so we started faxing each other all the time. All of a sudden, Rob started faxing us all these new character designs - with titles, too. And this one last fax had, like, a hundred titles and at the end it said "Hey, isn't this cool? By the way, I've copyrighted all of this". So Jim [Lee] gets on the phone and he starts asking people for ideas for titles and stuff and he sends it back to Rob. "If he's going to do this, then I'm going to do this too", Jim's thinking.

---

[One of the panelists, possibly MIKE GRELL, chimed in that while the battle of gimmick covers were occurring they thought DC was crazy for not jumping in and competing. Apparently, DC insisted on telling good stories and maintaining a solid, secure readership rather than getting 'caught up in the hype'. For the most part, this plan worked as DC's readership stayed consistent during the early 90s.]

---

[PORTACIO also told us a story about ashcans. I'm paraphrasing here and drawing a lot from memory - but if I recall correctly: Whilce explained that an ashcan was proof that you started a book - this was important because Image's production schedule was notoriously late in the beginning. An ashcan was an xerox of the first 10 or so penciled pages. Whilce went to a major convention and gave away ashcans for free from his booth that morning. They were all gone quickly. By noon, they were being re-sold by convention vendors for $40. Kids were bringing their ashcans to Whilce to be signed, and the signed copies were being re-sold for even more money. That's when the Image comics gang realized that there was a market for collectible and variant comics (gold stamp, platinum). I believe Whilce specifically gave credit to Rob Liefeld for this idea...]

Wetworks Ashcan (1993) illustrated by Whilce Portacio

---

[PORTACIO started a conversation by explaining that Wall Street was to blame for the eventual comic book boom and crash]

PORTACIO: ...so they were the first guys to buy boxes and boxes of stuff [comic book]. So Diamond and everybody was saying "oh, we've got to print more" - and that's where the experiment started happening with pushing up the numbers from 400k. All of us had warehouses full of stuff.

PORTACIO: Do you know how Todd [McFarlane] beat the toy companies? Toy companies were basically Barbie at the time...

O'BARR: Barbie and GI Joe

PORTACIO: ...billion dollar properties. As corporate goes, and we knew corporate by that time, we knew they weren't going to touch that. They weren't going to rock the boat. Todd goes, "Okay, I'm making a couple hundred thousand a month on royalties for a comic book, let me spend 300k a month and I can throw it away on toys. So I'm going to pay the top sculptors, and I'm going to pay the prices to have a lot detail that nobody else will do - and then I'll lower the price too. Because I can go on for a couple months as long as Spawn comes out and not make money on my toys.

McFarlane Toys

Thank you, once again, to the 2016 Ottawa Comiccon for organizing this event. Leeja and Denise, very big thank-yous to both of you.