DC Vertigo: The Sandman trading card set from SkyBox (1994)

With daily updates of a Sandman series coming to Netflix, it seems very appropriate to write an article about The Sandman trading card set Skybox released in 1994 -- back when just about EVERYTHING comic-related was getting it's own trading card set. The Sandman was first published by DC comics in January 1989... so there's your 'DC in the 80s' connection.

 

Comic book ad for Skybox's The Sandman Trading Cards. 1994

I don't know why DC/Vertigo/Skybox decided to release a trading card set based on Neil Gaiman's The Sandman comic book series, considering they were most likely targeting a different audience with these cards. I DO know that The Sandman was already much revered at this point and it was nigh impossible to find early issues of this series for cheap. I was late to the party and only found out about the series after it was too expensive to buy the early issues. Who was reading The Sandman? Not your average comic book fan. Actually, I'm pretty sure that collectors who read Superman, Batman, Spider-Man and X-Men on the regular stayed miles away from the series. I like to imagine the typical Sandman reader being a college-aged goth, dressed head-to-toe in black, with a big collection of Anne Rice books and Siouxsie Sioux LPs. In actuality, I think it was just anyone who liked engrossing, well-written and beautifully illustrated stories.

Originally slated for a December 1993 release but pushed back to February 1994, Skybox did something a little different with this trading card set -- these cards were released as a premium, oversized card set (each card measuring 2.5" x 4.5") -- which meant that you had to buy special, irregular-sized cardholders and plastic sheets to properly protect them. Argh, what a pain. This format of oversized cards would come to by known as widevision. What was the reason for the 3 month delay? According to Wizard Magazine, Neil Gaiman autographed 2,000 cards that were randomly inserted into packs. [A later issue of Wizard then corrected that statement and explained that Skybox delayed the set because they didn't want to release it into an already overcrowded non-sports card market. Wizard also revealed that Gaiman had only signed 500 cards, and that they would be given away free to retailers who order a case of Sandman cards via Diamond Comics Distributors.] 

In all honesty, this is a trading card set I glazed over the first time it came around. I felt it was something that would only appeal to people who were already familiar with the comic book series. In 1994 I was still very invested in the comic speculator bubble, and probably spending my money on Valiant and Image comics. If I was buying trading cards, it was most likely X-Men or Batman or whatever the 'hot' thing at the moment was.

I can't confirm if this was the FIRST widevision trading card set Skybox produced. During this same year, Skybox released a few widevision trading card sets (i.e., Star Trek: Generations, The Lion King, Superman: Man of Steel Platinum series), and then Topps appeared to have followed suit by releasing Star Wars widevision trading cards. I'm going by memory here, and I might be wrong -- if anyone who worked at Topps during that era wants to correct me in the comments section, I'd welcome it.

A sealed pack of The Sandman Trading Cards looked like this. They contained six cards per pack and retailed between $1.75 to $2.25 USD. 
Photo source: ebay.

This base set consisted of 90 UV-coated oversized cards, and the inserts were 7 gold foil cards and 1 very very rare 3-D stereo hologram card. You could also purchase a binder that included a promo card:

The Sandman Trading Cards binder. Photo source: ebay

  

Promo card

The 90 card base set is divided into two subsets. The first subset contains 50 cards showcasing cover art from the first 50 issues of The Sandman. Dave McKean's art played a very important part in defining the look of The Sandman -- his covers for this series were often surreal and abstract (usually collages comprised of photographs, paint and ink) with subjects that were out-of-focus and sinister-looking. Upon first glance, his covers made you realize that this won't be a superhero story with muscle-bound characters fighting to save the world, this will be something artistic (and possibly haunting) that will probably involve a lot of reading. I love this subset. This might be the closest we'll ever get to a Dave McKean trading card set.

A few McKean cards:

...and the reverse of the first 50 cards had a summary of the issue:

The second subset consists of 39 characters that appear in the series. Each card was illustrated by the original artist -- so that's 39 cards of original art. Mike Kaluta, Matt Wagner, Colleen Doran, Kevin Nolan, Jill Thompson, Malcolm Jones III, Mike Allred, Denys Cowan, Craig Hamilton, John Totleben, Michael Zulli and a few more I'm forgetting to name -- but pretty much everyone who worked on the first 50 issues of The Sandman have a hand in this. For some reason, Sergio Aragones (Groo, MAD magazine) even illustrated a card:

As far as character selection goes, they pretty much cover all the important players from Master of Dreams, Dream Country, A Season of Mists, A Game of You, Distant Mirrors, Convergences and Brief Lives. This set was released just as The Kindly Ones story arc was kicking off, but I was pleasantly surprised to see they were included as 'the Three Witches'. They even managed to slip in a few mainstream DCU characters that appeared in some of the major storylines:

The back of these cards contained a brief explanation of the character and the role they played in the series (probably written by Neil himself). I love that the artists are listed on the reverse of the card. Too many times have I played the 'guess who illustrated this trading card' game only to end up with no clue if I'm right or not. This is my biggest issue with this set: a small black typeface on a pink and grey camo background. I don't think it bothered me so much twenty years ago, but now I have to either strain, or hold the card really close to my face to read it:

One would presume that the most important/memorable characters from The Sandman would be included in the base set. You'd be wrong -- they were the chase cards. The chase set consisted of all seven members (including Morpheus) of the Endless. These cards are beautiful and were distributed at a ratio of 1 in every 18 packs. Each card was original art with gold foil borders. Artists included Dave McKean, Kent Williams, Jill Thompson and Bill Sienkewicz.

Which leads us to the 3-D Stereo Hologram card, found in 1 of every 180 packs. I'm a sucker for 3-D and hologram cards, and I've never seen this in person. Thanks to a kind soul on e-bay for posting this pic so I could see what I was missing:

Yup. It's Morpheus, but this image does do this hologram card justice. If you ever get the chance to see one of these in real life, take the chance. So worth it.

To raise awareness about the release of this trading card set, various promo cards were inserted into issues of Cards Illustrated magazine. Three promo cards were included in a pack, and three different packs were released (so, that's 9 promo cards in total). All of the promos re-used card art from the base set, but the reverse of the cards sang the praises of this new set rather than give issue/character summaries.  

I seem to recall two 'misprint' error cards die-hard collectors were searching for to complete their collections. The back of the card looked as it should, but the front of the card had another character card's reverse text printed on the front. Once upon a time, these cards were worth quite a bit. Now? I doubt it.

How did this card set do? According to Wizard Magazine (Wizard #35, August 1994) it sold extremely well. Retailers underestimated how well this set would do an underordered, driving the demand and rarity up. 

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To summarize: The Sandman is a fantastic series that I tend to dig out of storage every few years and read from beginning to end. These cards bring back a lot of great memories and I really dig looking at those Dave McKean covers. As previously stated, the small font with colors that blend into the background on the character cards is a bit of a turn-off -- but it's something I can live with since I spend most of my time admiring the card art on the front anyways.

 

Getting to know Richard Pace

Back in the spring of 2018, I visited the Toronto Comicon and managed to get an interview with the very talented and very charismatic Richard Pace. This audio was previously lost before it had a chance to be transcribed, but thanks to the magic of hard drive data recovery, DC in the 80s can present it for your entertainment.

Note: This interview took place in the good ole' days of comic fandom BEFORE #comicsgate exploded on social media. So if you're looking for #comicsgate drama, you won't find any here. If you're looking to hear Richard Pace talk about his trials and tribulations about how he came to be the artist he is, you've come to the right place.


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Richard Pace -- Jazz Hands! (2018) photo by Samy Osman

Justin: It was actually Mark [Belkin, co-editor of DC in the 80s] who made me aware of you. "Do you remember The Vampire Lestat?" he asked me. Back in the day, when you'd flip through Wizard Magazine and check out the comic price guides in the back, The Vampire Lestat comics were worth quite a bit back then. It was quite a niche market...

Richard: It was like when Dark Horse and IDW both started doing Buffy the Vampire Slayer comics again, after the long lapse in the license. There was Buffy frenzy. That's what it was. There was a nice crossover between the comics market and fandom for Anne Rice. That was roughly at the time she was at her most popular.

Justin: Was that when the Tom Cruise movie came out? Interview with the Vampire...

Richard: The movie came out later, because at the time we were told, as artists, that Lestat had to look like Rutger Hauer. Everyone's thinking big, beefy Rutger Hauer and how it got to wee, tiny Tom Cruise. The story is interesting: the reason why Anne Rice wanted Lestat to look like Rutger Hauer had nothing to do with how she envisioned Lestat in her head. Rutger Hauer was very nice to her at a Hollywood party, and he gave her a little pin with a compass in it that said 'may you always find your way' or something like that. Which was sweet. She was so taken with him that she said "if they ever make a movie of my book, I want YOU to play Lestat" and at that time, and we're talking about Nighthawks-era Rutger Hauer, he would've been perfect. At the time Daerick [Gross] was penciling, and I was finishing his pencils, Rutger Hauer was already aging quite rapidly....and looking more like me. [laughs]

page from Innovation's The Vampire Lestat. Pencils by Daerick Gross, paints by Richard Pace

Richard: It was really just doing that [Rutger Hauer] face, and that was fun to do. Daerick was a good storyteller and he had much more experience than I did -- and I learned a lot from him -- but he had a very different approach to drawing. His Lestat almost looked like a character by way of Greek statuary, so he had a sense of Rutger. Meanwhile, I came from a more traditional, almost academic, portrait drawing background -- both due to my college education and stuff I took before I went to college. I honestly think that one issue I did where I painted over Daerick's pencils was one of the strongest issues, despite three quarters of the way through discovered that Innovation [Comics] destroyed artwork. Which was bizarre. No one else did that. They went "Oh! We can save money doing THIS? Then we're going to do that!"

Justin: Apparently Charlton Comics did that, too. They sold comic artwork as pulp.

Richard: Yeah. Comics has a long tradition of treating artists and creators as the same way America treats migrant workers. It's like "we need you... yeah, I guess we're going to have to pay you something... but we don't have to like you... and get the hell out when you're done".

Justin: So, at this point, you're also trying to get into Vertigo comics?

Richard: Oh, I was ALWAYS trying to get into Vertigo comics. My desire to do comics was largely hinged on the fantastic art of Frank Frazetta and understanding that he did comics before he did those AMAZING paintings. To my teen-aged brain, that was "oh, I guess I should do comics before I do amazing paintings".

Richard Pace's tribute to Frank Frazetta

Richard: I had friends who were really into comics at the time. I was into comics as a little kid, and my older brother was into comics, and I kind of fell out of it -- I fell in love with art. But, I had a bunch of friends saying "You're NOT reading X-Men?" and I'd reply "What's an X-Men?" Right off the bat, I was friends with these hardcore comics fans, more Marvel than DC -- we're talking early eighties, here -- so I got hooked on anything John Byrne and Walt Simonson did. While I was there, they were telling me I should be buying this super-hero stuff and that super-hero title, I saw a Bill Sienkiewicz Moon Knight comic and went "What the f**k is this?" [in awe]. And this was towards the end of his run on Moon Knight, and he'd already started to become very experimental -- looking at a lot of Ralph Steadman and Bob Peak and throwing it into comics -- and considering I was already looking at Bob Peak and Ralph Steadman and all these other guys, and seeing it in a comic, I went "whoa, this is amazing!" Which immediately started putting me in contact with slightly older comic fans, who'd say "Oh! You should be reading Swamp Thing. Oh! You should be looking at this, and this. And by the way, Bill Sienkiewicz is now on New Mutants." So I guess I'm buying New Mutants now.

Richard: At that point, I mentally transitioned and understood that comics aren't really a stepping stone, they're a THING. They were a stepping stone back when Frazetta was working on THUNDA and all that other crap that no one remembers other than the fact that Frazetta drew it.

Richard: Comics were coming out, and you'd look at them and say "Oh my God, they're so beautifully drawn!" I mean, the color was horrible. But then things like Dark Knight Returns happened, and I took a new, appreciative look at Heavy Metal magazine and seen what the Europeans were doing; Moebius and Jodorowsky. I was like "Oh my God, this is an art form into and unto itself." I became very aware that I had to work with Alan Moore in some way. So I went to art school, at that became the thing.

Batman illustration by Richard Pace

Richard: I went to Sheridan College, here in Ontario. At the time it was located in Brampton. Which is almost like a punishment. "I want to be an artist." Well, you'll have to live in Brampton to be an artist. Oh geez, that's wonderful. Suffering for art; you start early. There was a lot of sex in college. And I honestly believe that if you're having lots of sex in college, it's because you're in Brampton -- what else are you going to do? It was such a horrible place to live, what could you do? This was before the internet. I learned a lot. It was a very intense 3 year program. Now it's a 4 year program that's apparently still as intense, but offers paperwork at the end of it -- so that's good.

Richard: After college I decided I was going to fall into the incredibly lucrative career of colorizing old black and white Laurel and Hardy films. That was just a job I could get, and I hated it. It felt like I was sinning against cinema: I am colorizing black and white stuff that no one will ever want to watch. And the company went out of business while I was working there. It was really bizarre, we had over a month's notice that this company was going out of business, and they had no plans for these short films when they were done -- they had no outlet for all the work we were doing. During that time, I was pursuing illustration work at various -- I majored in book illustration. Advertising felt too bullsh*t -- the processes and everything. I didn't see that I could actually apply that to comics at all. Editorial was too ephemeral -- too "in the head" and trying to get the high concept across. It was very much about "the single image". Book illustration has a strong sense of narrative and design to it, which in relation to my career, I'd manage to pull on the most. So yeah, I ended up pursuing book illustration work with various publishers across Ontario. That was decent money for a little bit. But I was continually trying to pursue comics work, and I think one of the first gigs I got was at Innovation.

Justin: You do horror really well. I've seen your pen and ink illustrations. I've seen your Swamp Thing. I've seen your vampire stuff.

Richard: ...also covers for Imaginary Fiends.

Imaginary Fiends v1 #4. cover by Richard Pace

Justin: I'm imagining you would've been trying to submit material to Heavy Metal Magazine or even EC Comics' Creepy (if they were still around). Or Vertigo.

Richard: Well yeah, by the time I finished college, the Vertigo imprint was in existence. They launched with Neil Gaiman's Sandman and all that stuff. Everything was there.

Justin: It was pre-Vertigo in the late 1980s, and the imprint officially kicked off in the early 1990s...

Richard: It was Karen Berger's 'horror corner' of the DC Universe. When it became successful and viable enough, they decided to launch the Vertigo imprint. So it was like "Okay, THAT's where I have to work". So, I got to work at Innovation, and then I worked -- at an even worse company -- called  Millennium doing The Mummy/Ramses The Damned. That was a nightmare.

Justin: Were you just doing covers on that? Interiors? Inks?

Richard: They had some silver age Supergirl artist, and they had me paint his pencils. And that was a nightmare, because he pencilled for inks. So there's no understanding of three dimensional form in his pencils... so I was guessing. And then they had me paint an issue, and were like "Now we want you to paint a full issue in less than a month".

Justin: I tried to dig up those issues.. I could NOT find them anywhere...

Richard: ... oh please don't. They're best served as landfill. If they can be recycled into toilet paper they'd have a better use than what passed for art at the time. I mean, they paid next to nothing, and I had next to no time to do it, and it was Anne Rice's The Mummy -- it was a piece of garbage book. It was one of her first books, and it didn't sell until she became Anne Rice, and then you read it and think "Oh God! That probably never should've sold." It was bad. It was terribly bad.

Justin: You tried for Vertigo, and I guess that wasn't panning out...

Richard: Well it wasn't happening, yet. I'd send in samples. I'd do a Vertigo set, and then a superhero set -- bouncing back and forth.

Justin: What did your superhero sets look like?

Richard: I'd do a set of samples for X-Men, Green Lantern... I liked Green Lantern as a kid. I love Green Lantern. I'd love to do a Green Lantern story, but it would be so unrelated to what they're doing with Green Lantern nowadays fans would go 'huh?'

Justin: On your Facebook feed, you had a poll about your favourite DC villains. And then you did the illustration with Two-Face, and you had all the heads in the background. I figured 'this guy really know his DC', because you had a few obscure characters mounted on the wall if I recall correctly. A few lesser-knowns...

Two-Face illustration by Richard Pace

Richard: When I decided that comics were going to be 'my thing', I started volunteering a lot at local comic shops, and that was before the modern age of ONE distributor, when every region had its own REGIONAL distributor. I became friends with people who worked at the distributors, I became friends with the people who ran comic shops. I had friends who ran multiple shops in Winnipeg (it's where I was from), and they told me how it worked from their end. I figured any information about how the industry works will only make it easier for me in the future -- hahaha. I knew full well I had to know the comics, I had to know what publishers were doing. I knew that being aware of obscure characters made it easier to talk to people who were looking to resurrect older characters -- because that was the carousel that was existing in the 80s and 90s. Something would lie dormant for two or three years, and then come back as a new thing. If you're coming back with Hawkman, what Hawkman characters do you know? If you're a big enough name, they don't care if you don't know -- but, if you're nobody, and they can't get a big name, they start caring whether you know the character or not.

Richard: You have to immerse yourself in whatever you're doing, and take seriously what you're doing, because otherwise the fans are not going to respond well to it. The commission was Two-Face with a bunch of heads, and the initial take was Batman, Robin and all the super-hero heads. And I said "Well, it's Two-Face"... and that's how that piece turned into half hero heads and half villain heads,and the room changing, and the weird reflective.

Justin: There's another great Batman piece you illustrated with Batman fighting Killer Croc in the sewer...

Batman vs Killer Croc by Richard Pace

Justin: So, from Millennium you got into Marvel comics?

Richard: Oh yeah, so I was trying to get Vertigo work -- I was going to New York City -- and...

Justin: Were they [Vertigo] just shutting you down? Like "no, no-no, no"...

Richard: Well... they looked over my stuff and said "You've got promise"... blah blah blah... "Your stuff's nice", so I went to Marvel and I already had contact with one editor there, and he liked my work enough that he gave me this book that was about to be cancelled called Terror Inc. It was ostensibly a horror book. And this was the first I'd hear, and I'd hear it several times again over the years, "Wow! You do horror really well! You should be working at Vertigo!" and I'd say "Well, I'd like to work at Vertigo, but they're not giving me anything." They replied "We'll HAPPILY give you a job until you get a job at Vertigo."

page from Marvel's Terror Inc #9 (1993). Pencils by Richard Pace, inks by Jason Temujin

Justin: Okay, so Marvel recognised you were great at horror and wanted to keep giving you work, so they put you on New Warriors? [laughs]

Richard: So I did Terror Inc, and then I did a few other small things here and there, and of course the whole time I'm talking to every Vertigo editor I can, and they'd say "Your work's kinda nice, but it's so pretty -- you should really do super-heroes". Right? And I go to Marvel, and Rob Tokar [editor of New Warriors] was looking for a new penciller on the book. Darik Robertson -- he's amazing and had a super strong run of New Warriors -- was leaving. Rob said "I have a bunch of artists I want to try on this book, you're a longshot -- I can't just GIVE you the series, but I can give you about two issues worth of work." He already pointed out the new favourites and said "one of these guys are probably going to get the gig". After I turned in my pages, he went "Wow! You should draw this book, but you should REALLY be working for Vertigo!" Somehow, I stole the job from the other contenders. This was also at a time when writer Fabian [Nicieza] was feeling like he was running out of steam on the book, and he wrote an issue specifically for me because he also said "Wow. You should really be working for Vertigo." At one point he said that if he was writing Doctor Strange, that's I'd be his first pick for Doctor Strange, but not for New Warriors. He wrote a very horrific issue of New Warriors just to take advantage of me being on the book -- it was actually my favourite issue in the run. There's a super-villain team called the Psionex, and there was a psychic guy and we had him go crazy -- so I got to draw that, and it was fun. It was a lot of fun to draw that issue.

page from Marvel's New Warriors #53 (1994). Pencils by Richard Pace, inks by Bruce Patterson

Richard: After that, Fabian left and a new writer came on board. He [the new writer] loved the characters in a way that I did not. The best way to look at super-heroes is to see them as plot devices. For example, Thor does certain things. so either put him in a story where Thor does what he does best, or put him in a situation where he's completely out of his element and a story gets generated from that, because you have an extant world where these pieces are already in place. I saw New Warriors as an ongoing concern of 'what can we do with these characters? let's put them in awkward situations'. The new writer that came on board, to me, had a very much 'fan-service' approach to the characters. He loved the characters too much. He loved this boy/girl team who were one character called Turbo -- horrible costume design -- and conceptually horrible as characters, as I saw, as a creative to work with. The new editor [Tom Brevoort] knew that this writer wanted this book for a long time -- he was stumping to take over from Fabian for ages -- and this was the situation at Marvel: you gave editors work because that was their income; they'd made more money from writing books than editing. So they got their editing job done, and then they wrote. So it wasn't totally decided if he was going to be the regular writer or not. I got his first script and it was pretty bad, from my standpoint. I'm sure it did what he wanted it to do. I'm sure Tom was happy with it. It was about the Rwandan genocide..

Justin: That's pretty topical...

[Interviewer's note: I was actually a big New Warriors fan and had been reading the title since 1990's issue #1. I left the title sometime around mid-1993, so I never got this far into this series. This was all new information to me.]

Richard: I felt that the significance of the situation -- putting super-villains in the mix of it as ANY of the cause of what was going over there was horrifically ill-advised, and it wasn't particularly well written, either. Basically he was putting super-villains to make sure that people in, essentially, a refugee camp suffered worse. So, they're already in a refugee camp, and super-villains show up and start beating the crap out of them. And they were the stupidest, stupidest villains... like Cut & Dry: one guy cuts everything, the other guy just desiccates things. I ended up drawing this one guy who had a massive, gigantic, stupidly huge fist. I think his name was 'Hammer' and the other guy was 'Anvil'. It was like weird team-up things. It was grotesquely stupid, on top of a badly advised excursion into that was already human horror.

panels from New Warriors #54 (1994). Pencils by Richard Pace, inks by Bruce Patterson

Richard: I mean, dammit, if you're going to do Fabian's New Warriors -- and I read the whole run to make sure I understood what the characters were about before I took on the book -- it was basically taking kids and saying 'super-powers don't make the world better, but we're going to try'. So here's a real world situation where NO ONE can make it better, and then you have American super-heroes show up and beat up American super-villains. Why? Because there's a bad guy. It's so asinine. So I quit after that issue. Through the script, I wanted to make sure there was no doubt [that I did not like this story], he kept on putting instructions that said "don't do like an Image book and put a big splash page", so I put in double-spreads, I made all the talking heads in tiny postage-stamped sized panels across the bottom -- I really had zero respect for what this writer did. Apparently he was incredibly upset with me for ruining his first issue of New Warriors, but I was thinking "dude, you ruined it on your own". It was abysmally bad. It was an insulting story. You could've used New Warriors to show how futile thinking one person could change something was. Absolutely. You could've had the New Warriors arguing different interventions and showing why there was a stalemate -- why no one was able to step in. You could've done that. The New Warriors had no problem getting in there. Okay? If they had no problem getting in there, then why didn't they fix it? Because there were super-villains there. What the hell?!?

Justin: Did you leave Marvel after that?

Richard: All at once, there was a whole bunch of things that ended up happening: I did some other work for Marvel, I started writing and drawing a mini-series about Vampirella at Harris comics , I also started working on The Invisible Man at Dark Horse. The whole [Dark Horse] Famous Monsters line got cancelled.

Justin: ...and then there was Pitt.

page from Full Bleed Studio's Pitt: In The Blood (1996). Art by Richard Pace

Richard: The New Warriors stuff paved the way for me. The work I did with Dale [Keown] is probably still my happiest work in comics. Dale trusted me -- and he let me do stuff -- when no one else did. It was great. It went from writing and drawing the one-shot [Pitt: In The Blood] to taking over writing the book [Pitt Crew]. That was really flattering -- I saw my job as "I'm going to give Dale fun stuff to draw". I saw that as my primary job: make interesting stories that are fun for Dale to draw.

Justin: Another project you worked on was the 2000 Batman: The Doom That Came to Gotham Elseworlds book.

Richard: Yeah, that was one of the last things I did.

Justin: But you wrote that? You didn't illustrate it?

Richard: Well I started drawing it, and I started writing it. I wrote an outline. I was supposed to do a Hellboy mini-series that I thought would've been better as a one-shot. Then Mike [Mignola] had too many people that said 'yes' to doing Hellboy one-shots, so he said 'okay, we're not going to do any of that.' We were still friendly and everything. So I had this idea, I was toying around with this Elseworlds idea of "What if HP Lovecraft had created Batman?" It was just an idea I had sitting there, not doing anything, so I sent it to Mike and said 'what do you think about this?' and he loved it -- and he pitched it to DC, and Archie Goodwin loved it and it was a 'go' project. I had outlined the whole four issue mini-series, Mike picked it up, he was going to write scripts for my outlines

Gotham by Gaslight Batman. art by Richard Pace

Justin: So was that your first DC work?

Richard: Nah, there was an issue of Starman I did. That was fun. James Robinson is probably one of the best writers I had ever worked with. Again, it's one of those things where I think I stepped up a bit -- this was after I did the Pitt one-shot -- where I got to ink myself in an extended way.

Justin: You also did Transmetropolitan in 2011...

Richard: That was just a pin-up. That was a fun pin-up to do, it was for the Hero Initiative (for the Comic Book Legal Defence Fund). I was very happy to do that. Warren [Ellis] and I had talked several times about working together. We had a few close calls at Caliber -- "the small black and white company that couldn't".

Justin: [laughs]

Richard: Well, y'know, they published a lot of books that didn't make any money.

Justin: I just thought it was a clever play on 'The Little Engine That Could'.

Richard: Well, I mean, they were the birthplace for a lot of talents that went out on to great things (i.e. The Crow, Big Bang Comics, etc...)   -- because they would publish ANYHTING. But because they published anything, there was not much there...

Justin: ...you got a lot of crap among the gold, too.

Richard: Yeah. So Warren and I and had a couple of close call of working together, so I was very aware of Transmetropolitan and I was very happy to get in there.

Justin: ...and then you started illustrating covers for...\

Richard: Vertigo! Imaginary Fiends!

Justin: So you finally DID break into Vertigo.

Richard: Well, it was really weird... a little over a year ago, I met Tim Seeley -- I already liked Hack/Slash [Devil's Due/Image comics], I really loved Revival [Image comics], so I was glad to meet him... and he liked my work, and he had an Image project he wanted to place, and he wanted to know if I was interested [of course I was], but then he started working at DC comics. He got a lot of work at DC... I believe he's still under an exclusive deal with DC? So one of his ideas became a Vertigo pitch, so I was either up for interiors or cover... and they decided that they'd let me do the covers. And that was fun. So, I was FINALLY working for Vertigo, and I did those six covers for Imaginary Fiends.

Swamp Thing pen and ink illustration by Richard Pace

Justin: And so I heard through the grapevine that you might have another Vertigo project coming up in the works, but you can't talk about it....

Richard: ... I can't talk about it, but the details will be unveiled at San Diego (aka SDCC) this year. I signed a six-issue contract for a Vertigo project starting in the fall.

Justin: Have you read the script?

Richard: I have the first issue script, it's nuts -- in the best possible way. Nothing has been leaked yet. Initially I was told that I should be ready to start drawing right away, but I think they are moving it from late summer to fall. So, they bought themselves a month of me not drawing.

Justin: How excited are you?

Richard: I'm very excited! I'm working at DC/Vertigo, it's going to be a monthly book, and this will be my first monthly since New Warriors back in 1994.

Justin: So if it's DC/Vertigo NOW... then it's going to be all BRAND NEW characters?

Richard: Yeah, it's going to be all-new characters.

Interviewer's notes: The rest of the interview was me fruitlessly trying to guess what his new project would be about, while Richard gleefully dodged my questions and left me with more questions than answers. Ultimately, he was describing his new project with writer Mark Russell, Second Coming, which was revealed prior to SDCC by DC comics that summer.

Vertigo promo poster for a series that never happened.

Caving under excessive conservative pressure, DC comics dropped Second Coming at the 11th hour and the rights were reverted back to Mark Russell. Russell and Pace took their series to AHOY comics, where it is currently being published.

I wanted to leave this interview on a high note, and post a few more samples of Richard Pace's amazing artwork. Richard is easy to talk to and always has terrific stories, so if you see him at a convention be sure to stop by and chat.

As always, thanks to the generous reps at Touchwood PR for allowing us access to the Toronto Comicon for these great interviews.

-Justin Francoeur

Death of the Endless with The Beatles. artwork by Richard Pace

Mr Freeze mixed media illustration by Richard Pace

Robin the Boy Wonder ink wash illustration by Richard Pace

Rorschach illustration by Richard Pace

Batman in the Rain mixed media illustration by Richard Pace

Hot off the press! Our 3rd zine! The Vertigo Issue!

Presenting our newest 'zine!

The DC in the 80s crew (Mark and Justin) have been hard at work producing the next issue of Baxter Stock, the official 'zine of DC in the 80s. We put some sweat and some tears into it (no blood) and we think it's pretty dope.

wow! cover by Josh Bayer!

This issue we’ve dedicated to Vertigo. With its origins in 1984 and Swamp Thing, until its endings, which seems to be any day now (check the internet), we have explored what DC in the 80’s fans thought was important.

If you're an American resident, for $5 USD (includes shipping), we will send you a 24-page* black and white 'zine (on 32lb paper, oooh la la) that includes:

-pin-ups by Richard Pace, Łukasz Kowalczuk, James Whiting, Christian St. Pierre, and our very own Mark Belkin
-cover by Josh Bayer, back cover by Raymond Lowell
-art by Tony Wolf, Erik Tramontana, and Tony McMillen
-interviews with Josh Bayer, Art Young (Senior Editor for Vertigo), Tom Veitch (Animal Man) and Richard Case (Doom Patrol)
-...and all that other 'zine stuff you'd come to expect (articles, reviews, etc)

If you're a Canadian resident, for [whatever the current currency exchange rate for USD to CAD is] (plus shipping) will get you the same deal as seen above.


To order, send us an e-mail at dcinthe80s@gmail.com


Yes, this is our THIRD 'zine. You can scope out our first and second zines by clicking on the links. We may have a few left in stock...

FOR A LIMITED TIME you can buy all three zines (yes, this includes the 3D zine with 3D glasses) and have it shipped to you for $17.50 USD. This applies to US residents only. 


*the 24 pages include the front and back cover, naturally

Tom Veitch's notes on his Animal Man run

DC in the 80s was incredibly lucky to have Tom Veitch's notes on the issues he wrote of Animal Man v1 back in the early 90s (issues #33 - #50).  For your viewing pleasure, we've also included the cover of the issues (all covers illustrated by Brain Bolland).

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#33: "I am the man of deep ungodly powers!"

Awakened from his Pete Milligan-induced coma, Animal Man is restored to status quo – he’s Animal Man with the family and the job as a stuntman. However his powers are not working as they should. And Maxine is acting rather feral. We also begin to realize that there is a shamanistic/mystical element to Animal Man’s powers – a connection to a Native American shaman living in a house trailer. Apparently this old Indian gives Animal Man his animal powers by connecting him to the Morphogenic field (the M-field) from which all animal instinct and power comes from.



#34: "Requiem for a Bird of Prey"

Maxine, because of her connection to her father, is also connected with the M-field. And when her dad feels aggressive animal instincts, she shares them, growling like an animal and tearing her toys apart with her teeth. Animal Man finally realizes that his powers are not under control and he is hurting living things – when he flies, birds of prey mysteriously die.



#35: "Dead Dogs on Ice" (Day of Dread II cover)

Story starts to kick in. Animal Man and Travis Cody, who shot Animal Man’s son Cliff with an arrow, become friends. Travis (educated at M.I.T.) is building an M-Field Meter:

TRAVIS: Ever hear of the morphogenetic field?

ANIMAL MAN: Uh … yeah.

TRAVIS: Of course you have … Sheldrakes’ theory. Animal essences, modalities, genetic templates … all meshing over a great vat of life energy. …It’s like earth is one big animal … and you and me are like leeches on the big animal, ya dig?

ANIMAL MAN: Uh…yeah. I…uh…dig. … Somebody once explained Sheldrake’s theory to me. I accept it … but it’s just a theory … I mean, theories are nice, but I work with feelings and energies I can sense. There’s no words involved in what I do.

TRAVIS: I’m hip to that. I have super powers myself, ya know?

ANIMAL MAN: Oh, really?

TRAVIS: Yeah, but let’s talk about you. Your link to the M-field is all screwed up right now. And when ya fly, the nice birdies drop from the skies …

They argue a bit, then Travis lays an interesting idea on ANIMAL MAN:

TRAVIS: Have you ever asked yourself this? How come the birds use aerodynamic wings to fly, but Animal Man flies without lifting a finger? What’s this so-called “bird power” you talk about? The birds don’t have it! The poor creatures have to flap their wings!

ANIMAL MAN: Uh … you’ve got a point.

TRAVIS: Damn right I do … Now who’s the smartest, me or you?

So they become buddies and experiment with drawing electrical energy off an electric eel. This leads to Animal Man, via his connection to the eel, drawing lightning from a storm …



#36: "The Call of the Wild"

Animal Man, in a moment of clarity while watching a humpbacked whale breech the ocean surface off San Diego, feels “that great freedom and power at the heart of animal consciousness” …

TRAVIS: "You're going to be the most powerful being on the planet."

Animal Man adds unusual powers by focusing on different animals. (I did a lot of research on animals at this time.) So, for instance, by focusing on a lizard that shoots venom from its skin, Animal Man can shoot powerful toxin from his hands. Then he buys a van “to carry all the special animals I’ll be taking with me on jobs.” Meanwhile Travis is initiated by “Mr. Rainbow” – the old shaman’s mystic messenger.



#37: "The Zoo At World’s End"

ANIMAL MAN (in captions): “I’m the only superhuman with the powers of every animal that ever lived … And I’ve just begun to scratch the surface of the possible. For awhile I thought I’d lost it … but by using the individual creature as a power lens, I bypass the negative effects I experience when I touch the M-Field directly…”

But the old Shaman has other ideas for Animal Man. He breaks the clay Animal Man statue with a hammer, and Buddy gets a huge influx of M-Field energy … which unfortunately kills every animal in the San Diego Zoo!



#38: "The Penalizer"

A comic book within a comic book, Penalizer is introduced. This is Cliff’s favorite comic, and it’s a parody of Marvel’s Punisher. I was told the editor of Punisher taped the cover of Penalizer to his office door! Meanwhile Travis has a wild theory he has been “contacted by angels” and there’s a giant starship buried somewhere in upstate New York. He believes that after he finds and boards the starship, the end of the world will begin! Issue climaxes with a battle between Animal Man and Mr. Rainbow, who takes the form of a monster.



#39: "Master of Wolves"

Travis arrives at the old shaman’s trailer in upstate N.Y. Meanwhile wolves attack the San Diego Comicbook Convention. And Animal Man rips off his clothes and runs with the wolves through San Diego.



#40: "Bear Claw Soup”

A War of the Gods cross-over issue. Not a lot of connection to the other DC tie-in series. But an interesting story about the reappearance of the vampire town of Rosewood, Illinois, which drowned in Swamp Thing #37-39. And Buddy battles bear poachers as he is initiated to “the center of morphogenetic power”…



#41: "The Stone That Cracked Open the Earth Like An Egg"

Rereading the series now, I see that with #41 the writing shifts into high gear. There are a couple of reasons for that:

-One, I was getting a better internal sense of the characters.
-Two, we were getting tremendous positive feedback from the readers.
-And three, I was learning a lot from watching David Lynch’s Twin Peaks show. Lynch knows how to tell a character-driven story. As a writer, he helps you break the old story-telling patterns that Hollywood (and comics) have burned into your brain since you were a kid.

In this issue the old Indian shaman is revealed to have done six years at Attica for killing a white cop. “He just looked the cop straight in the eye and said one word and the guy exploded like there was a bomb in his stomach.” The shaman’s nickname is “The Stone”. His full Indian name is “Stone That Cracked Open the Earth like an Egg.” We find out on page 18 that he is also called “The Stone Who Sits at the Heart of the World.”

Another story point in this issue is that “the bad guys” are mapping superhuman DNA. I’m not sure if this had come up in other comics at this point, but it’s one of those “inevitable” ideas – you know, the cloning of Superman, the GMO-ing of human embryos, etc. And one of my favorite parts is when Animal Man describes to his wife Ellen (who is nicely shirtless) his inner experience of animal powers: “My power took on a whole new dimension. There was light … ecstasy … I knew things. … There was meaning in the power … like truth … you know, like seeing how everything is connected. Like there’s an eye that watches over everything … a great intelligence … and I merged with it. For an hour I became that intelligence … this god-like intelligence at the heart of nature.”



#42: "Men Without Eyes"

A good action story involving genetic clones who are fitted with cyborg brains. Also introduced “the knacker man”, a guy who collects roadkills and dead farm animals and sells them to the gene lab.

The head of S.T.A.R. labs, Buck Samson, is a sort of “government villain” type, who believes the old Indian shaman is leading “a conspiracy to destroy the world masked as sacred ritual and belief.”

Last but by no means least, Animal Man takes the form of a bear. In the next issue he will mate with a young shamaness who also takes the form of a bear.



#43: "Tiger, Tiger, Burning Bright"

Not so much a “retcon” of Animal Man’s origin as an attempt to integrate the previous stories with my “deeper” view of animal powers and the morphogenetic field. “In the safety of bounded awareness he toys with reality … he plays the games of children … he tries to understand … he invents authority figures … alien … unhuman … he tries to explain everything until the fear is gone … he dreams his own ‘origin story’ … he dreams sickly yellow magicians and tricksters to explain everything that occurs outside his tiny awareness …everything he is not permitted to know. Everything he is not permitted to see … fanciful images to describe what cannot even be looked at.”

Then Animal Man is standing in space with old Stone, the shaman, who welcomes him to the innermost realm of animal power … “Greetings my son. Welcome to the hidden place, where the old men of the beginning dwell forever…” This, of course, is me plugging the whole series into my metaphysics and mystical ideas about the nature of bodily consciousness! (Considering the liberties Peter Milligan took with his Burroughsian superheroes – Notional Man, Front Page, and Nowhere Man – I figured I could kick out the jams, metaphysically speaking.)



#44: "Who Is That Masked Woman?"

Ellen goes to work for Wonderful Publishing Company, where Les Decker writes and edits Penalizer Comics. Includes a great little amateur Penalizer story written and drawn by Animal Man’s son, Cliff. The animal-powered DC superheroine Vixen appears and battles Animal Man. For the moment, she’s plugged in to the whole shaman story-arc. (Her connection to the morphogenetic field has been explored by other writers in other DC comics.)



#45: "Penalizer Gets Real"

"The Beat of Darkness" in which we learn that Les Decker, writer-editor of Penalizer Comics, is a crime fighter who puts on a Penalizer costume and hunts down drug dealers and such. All tongue-in-cheek, of course, and a send-up of the comics biz.

I meant this story to be a template for the possible series about Penalizer, which I never got around to writing and proposing. (Tom Peyer was definitely into the idea too.) We also learn how Decker shamelessly steals ideas from Cliff’s amateur submission, including the name of the villain, “Doctor Darkness”. Last but not least, a new character is introduced – “the screenwriter” who will script a movie about Animal Man. Another send-up – this character is myself, based on photos I sent to Steve Dillon.

#46: "A Rage of Fathers"

With 1950s DC character Tomahawk on the cover. The art by Steve Pugh I find awesome.

Page one scene of teen Buddy Baker puking on front lawn is based on something that actually happened to me – I came home drunk, got out of car and threw up on the lawn, and my dad was sitting on the front porch reading a newspaper! (Fortunately my father was nicer than Buddy’s.)

Here we learn that Buddy, as a youth, met old Stone, the shaman, while on a hunting trip with his father. He calls Stone “my real father” and together they find a giant metallic “cocoon” that contains Stone’s enemy, the Antagon.



#47: "The Shining Man" (in three parts)

Maxine in the power of B’Wanna Beast. Great scene of Travis Cody in cyberspace, where he learns that Buck Samson is turning himself into a superhero by manipulating his DNA. B’Wanna Beast merges with Antagon and battles Animal Man.



#48: "The Meaning of Flesh"

Rainey Fox, the movie director, gets fried by the Antagon.

B’Wanna channels the Antagon: “I am sent forth from the unitary aeon … to bring judgment upon all that dares to live. I am the self-begotten, the source of incomprehensible undoing.” Then he takes a bite from an apple.

Buddy carries Maxine to join the Animal Masters. (She is one herself.)

…More Cody in cyberspace. Buck Samson’s hitman, Moonlight Jackson, kills Cody’s friend, the woman Kami.

Sweat lodge scenes, Stone shows up to announce the coming battle between the Antagon and the Animal Masters. And then Stone takes his friends into the micro-universe to hide from the Antagon.

When Antagon (aka: B’Wanna Beast) shows up and finds them gone, he is seriously angry – “And when the darkness saw their infamy, his mind mingled with the dark root of his incorruptible anger, and he was like a whirlwind upon the face of creation …”



#49: "The Hot Heart of Abstract Reality"

Screenwriter (me) eats a piece of pie in Ellen Baker’s kitchen while she washes dishes. He writes in his notebook: “The Animal Man movie will get made, if I have to kill everybody in Hollywood to get it done! …Yesterday I saw (director) Rainey Fox get wasted by that dark power. It was beyond belief. It cooked my brains…” (The pie is a reference to Agent Cooper and Twin Peaks.)

In the microworld we see that grotesque dust mites are the “guardians of the threshold” … Tristess, shamaness and Animal Master, says something that cuts to the core of Buddy’s search for himself – “A warrior must awaken to a true identity … an identity that cannot be contained in mirrors and costumes and names … Stone has been trying to get that across to you … you have failed nearly every step of the way.” This triggers something in Buddy, as he confront the gigantic dustmite: “I can feel everything going wide open … no fanfare, no explosions, no shouts of conquest … suddenly I am not focused in a body. Fear vanishes, my eyes open in the great vastness of the M-field … I am as wide as all the worlds, deep as the whole field of living energy from which all forms appear …” And so forth.

If you read my other DC series, you will see this kind of awakening to “natural superman consciousness” is my main theme – in Clash, The Nazz, and My Name is Chaos. My plan was to do that with Superman himself, but as I recall editor Mike Carlin resisted the idea.

Now Travis is dead, and trapped in cyberspace. Buck Samson has had his own superhero apotheosis, awakening to the power of mind-over-matter and giving himself the name Metaman. “Metaman” is a character I invented for a comic my brother Rick was doing for DC. I decided to add substance to the name and reincarnated him here, in Animal Man, and I destroyed him as well.

Now the Animal Masters gather in Labrador. Old Stone tells the story of the origin of the Antagon, who is a kind of anti-creator and annihilator … “even the anti-Christ”. The Animal Masters, on the other hand, are given the power to create animals! The struggle between the Animal Masters and the Antagon has been going on for millions of years!



#50: "Journal of a Plague Year"

The whole 18-issue story is an impossibly vast yarn of light vs darkness, good vs evil, creation vs destruction … And it comes to a head is #50, a double-issue, with myself as a main character and voice-over.

Here, in “real life”, the writer meets the Antagon and witnesses the destruction of half of Vermont! We see Metaman vs. the Antagon, we see Moonlight Jackson die, we see the Animal Masters rally and destroy Antagon, we see Maxine get her powers under control, and oh by the way we see Tom Veitch hit on Ellen Baker, who says “I don’t know what it is about you … I feel that somehow I am contained in you. But that that’s all it is. I could never love a person like you …” And enter Buddy Baker aka Animal Man, who proceeds to beat up the writer (me)…

ELLEN: Buddy … please, just tell him to leave.

ANIMAL MAN: Right. Pack your toothbrush and get out of my life, creep!

Veitch tries to get physical with A-Man, even kicks him in the balls. Next thing you know Veitch is sailing through a window and ending up face-down on the front lawn.

ANIMAL MAN: Cheer up, pal. It could have been a lot worse. Now get up. You and I are going to be friends.

Closing narration in which I describe working on the screenplay with Buddy, and then Buddy sharing some of his secret thoughts …

ANIMAL MAN: I’m still sort of ordinary, you know. But when I lay down at night and close my eyes I see the world … the animals … men … from a place that can’t actually be described … an uncreated place that’s not of time and space … I’m not alone there. There are others. Stone is there, living on… And then something dark surface in the well of thought … a feeling of great dread… I see him, the Antagon, the one who cannot be destroyed because he is destruction. He can only be contained. …For the moment he is our prisoner … but I sense he’ll find a way back into the world. He’ll take a new form, a new name. He’ll become something we don’t recognize, something we can’t control.

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Again, a big thanks to Tom for sharing his notes on his Animal Man run -- which included a few items that I completely overlooked the first time.

Justin