Howard Chaykin: Conversations

Howa rd C h ay kin: Co n v er s atio ns

Major Works by Howard Chaykin (as both artist and writer unless otherwise noted) Sword of Sorcery #1–4 (1973); art only “Ironwolf” serial in Weird Worlds #8–10 (1973–1974); artist and co-writer The Scorpion #1–2 (1975) Star Wars #1–10 (1977); artist Empire (1978); artist Cody Starbuck (1978) The Swords of Heaven, the Flowers of Hell (1979), artist and co-writer The Stars My Destination (1979), artist “Cody Starbuck” serial in Heavy Metal (May–September 1981) American Flagg! (1983–1985 as writer/artist) The Shadow (1986) Time2: The Epiphany (1986) Time2: The Satisfaction of Black Mariah (1987) Blackhawk (1987–1988) Black Kiss (1988–1989) Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser (1990); writer/adaptation Twilight (1991); writer Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution (1992); co-writer Midnight Men (1993) Power and Glory (1994) Batman: Dark Allegiances (1996) Cyberella (1996–1997); writer Thrillkiller (1997); writer American Century (2001–2003); co-writer Mighty Love (2003) Barnum! (2003); co-writer Bite Club (2004); co-writer Solo #4 (2005) Challengers of the Unknown (2005) Legend (2005); writer/adaptation City of Tomorrow (2005) Century West (2006) Bite Club: Vampire Crime Unit (2006); co-writer Blade (2006–2007); artist War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle (2008); artist Dominic Fortune (2009)

Conversations with Comic Artistsâ•…â•… M. Thomas Inge, General Editor

Howard Chaykin: Conversations Edited by Brannon Costello

University Press of Mississippiâ•…â•… Jackson

www.upress.state.ms.us The University Press of Mississippi is a member of the Association of American University Presses. Unless otherwise noted, all images copyright © Howard Chaykin, Inc. Used with permission. Copyright © 2011 by University Press of Mississippi All rights reserved Manufactured in the United States of America First printing 2011

∞

Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Chaykin, Howard V. Howard Chaykin : conversations / edited by Brannon Costello. p. cm. — (Conversations with comics artists) Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-1-60473-975-6 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978-1-60473-976-3 (eBook) 1. Chaykin, Howard V.—Interviews. 2. Cartoonists—United States—Interviews. 3. Comic books, strips, etc.—Authorship. I. Costello, Brannon, 1975– II. Title. PN6727.C44Z46 2011 741.5’973—dc22 [B] 2010039052

British Library Cataloging-in-Publication Data available

Co n ten ts Introductionâ•…â•… vii Chronologyâ•…â•… xv Howie Chaykin Unmasked!â•…â•… 3 Dave Sim / 1975 The Chaykin Tapesâ•…â•… 14 Jerry Durrwachter, Ed Mantels, and Kenn Thomas / 1978 The Howard Chaykin Interviewâ•…â•… 26 Richard Howell / 1982 Howard Chaykinâ•…â•… 39 Paul Duncan and John Jackson / 1984 Howard Chaykin: Heading for Time2â•…â•… 57 Ed Bryant / 1985 Howard Chaykin Puts It All Back Together Againâ•…â•… 79 Kim Thompson / 1987 Howard Chaykin: Home on the Plexus Rangeâ•…â•… 109 Kim Howard Johnson / 1988 RRRRRRED2â•…â•… 116 Paul Gravett / 1988 Howard Chaykinâ•…â•… 121 Robert Hambrecht / 1988 v

viâ•…â•… c o n t e n t s

Writer/Artist: Howard Chaykinâ•…â•… 130 Hugh Surratt and Jeff Gelb / 1989 Real World Bravadoâ•…â•… 164 Kim Howard Johnson / 1994 An Interview with . . . Howard Chaykinâ•…â•… 172 Richard Relkin / 1994 Sting of the Scorpionâ•…â•… 181 Jon B. Cooke / 2001 Still Chaykin After All These Years: A Life in American Comicsâ•…â•… 188 Jon B. Cooke / 2004 My Lunch with Howard Chaykinâ•…â•… 242 Philip Schweier / 2004 An Afternoon with Howard Chaykinâ•…â•… 250 Brannon Costello / 2010 Indexâ•…â•… 289

In tro duc tio n When Howard Chaykin first began drawing comics professionally in the early 1970s, his goal was to turn his childhood hobby into a way to make a living. The scope of his ambition was defined by the comic books he had grown up reading: diverting but uncomplicated action tales occasionally elevated by the work of artists such as Joe Kubert, Gil Kane, and Carmine Infantino. Yet within just a few years, Chaykin had begun to reconsider that scope and to develop the signature visual and narrative style that has made him one of the most distinctive voices in mainstream comics. Over the course of his career, Chaykin has earned a reputation as a visionary formal innovator and a compelling storyteller whose work offers pulp-adventure thrills and sexy humor alongside a thoughtful engagement with real-world politics and culture. His body of work is animated by the belief that comics can be a vehicle for sophisticated adult entertainment—for narratives that utilize the medium’s unique properties to explore serious themes with intelligence and wit. Chaykin’s contribution to comics as an art form as well as to the comic book as a mass cultural form capable of offering both beautiful surfaces and profound depths is enormously rich. Novelist Michael Chabon, who lauds Chaykin as an “artisan of pop,” aptly compares his comics to Orson Welles’s films: “Welles and Chaykin may not have invented or pioneered all the stylistic and technical innovations on display in their masterworks, but they were the first to put them all together in a way that changed how their successors thought about what they could, and had to, and wanted to do.”1 A close look at Chaykin’s career reveals a restless talent who refuses to accept the unspoken assumptions, philosophical and formal, that govern the work produced in mainstream comics. Even his earliest work as a writer bears evidence of his attempt to inject into popular genres more complex characterization and a less simplistic approach to questions of morality, and as he developed as an artist he began exploring new ways to exploit more fully the possibilities of the comics medium in mainstream comic books—to use the

vii

viiiâ•…â•… i n t r o d u c t i o n

comics form to tell stories that both demand and reward the reader’s attention. Not long after his first work for DC on their romance and horror titles, Chaykin began to create his own characters, swashbuckling rogues including Ironwolf, the Scorpion, and Dominic Fortune who prefigured his later reluctant-hero adventurers such as Reuben Flagg. Although his work penciling the Marvel Comics adaptation of Star Wars undoubtedly reached his largest audience to that point, his dissatisfaction with material he found uninspiring and with his position in the assembly line production system is evident in his earliest interviews. He turned his ambitions instead to long-form works of a sort mostly unfamiliar to the mainstream comic book audience of the day, graphic novels such as Empire, The Stars My Destination, and The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell that were informed by his interest in classic American illustration and that afforded him the opportunity (though not always unrestricted) to experiment with the narrative possibilities of page design and color and with a range of embellishing tools far more diverse than those employed in the penciling and inking of a typical comic book. His Cody Starbuck serial in Heavy Metal, a science-fiction yarn told through lavish and intricate visual design, is perhaps the apex of this era. After a stint as a paperback cover illustrator during which he continued to hone his drawing and design chops, Chaykin returned to comic books with the series for which he remains best known today: American Flagg! A fiercely barbed but fundamentally humane science-fiction satire, the series blended irreverent wit, risqué-for-the-day sexuality, and a deeply skeptical attitude toward the ways in which consumer culture, corporate avarice, and an increasingly pervasive media collaborate to eliminate the very concept of depth from modern life. Chaykin brought everything he had learned about the relationship between design and narrative to bear on American Flagg!, developing a distinct and dynamic visual style that employed, especially in early issues, densely overlapping panels, corporate logos, and sound effects to suggest the radically disorienting nature of life in the postmodern funhouse of the series’ not-so-distant future Chicago. An immediate critical success with a farreaching influence on mainstream comics, American Flagg! is, along with Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen and Frank Miller’s The Dark Knight Returns, an essential series in the 1980s development of comic books in popular genres dealing with serious themes. But as these interviews reveal, Chaykin would likely be quicker than Miller or Moore to emphasize that dealing with serious themes does not require being so serious all the time: A recurring topic is the essential ingredient of humor in any authentic representation of adult life.

i n t r o d u c t i o n â•…â•… ix

An example of the innovative approach to page design that made American Flagg! so distinctive. From American Flagg! #1 (1983).

The success of American Flagg! earned Chaykin tremendous respect in the comic book industry and thus the opportunity to pursue a variety of radically different projects. His intensely personal Time2 graphic novels filtered autobiography through crime novels, science fiction, Broadway musicals, and jazz. Visually stunning, Time2 offered a vision of barely ordered chaos which built on and extended the innovations of American Flagg! to achieve a synthesis of form and content unlike anything else in the mainstream marketplace of the day. Less personal but no less accomplished were Chaykin’s iconoclastic and controversial takes on established corporate properties. His Blackhawk miniseries reclaimed the history of the heroic left in the United States by recasting the square-jawed World War II aviator as an antifascist communist hounded by a McCarthy-esque politician, and his The Shadow functioned both as a critique of death-obsessed 1980s Cold War culture and a wry look at the chau-

xâ•…â•… i n t r o d u c t i o n

vinism of its 1930s-era protagonist. Although Chaykin enjoyed considerable commercial success in this era, many of the interviews included here indicate that he also chafed at the restrictions of working within the mainstream comics industry: the shortsightedness of editors, the narrow tastes of the audience, the sometimes arbitrary limits on content. His erotic horror series Black Kiss—a darkly humorous and gleefully depraved tale of fandom gone horribly awry—may in some way be seen as a manifestation of that frustration. Dissatisfaction with his seeming inability to escape those restrictions motivated Chaykin to distance himself somewhat from the mainstream comics industry through most of the 1990s, an era which he spent primarily working in television and film, although he continued to remain active in comics as a writer. Chaykin’s few works as both writer and artist during this era bear the distinct stamp of his preoccupations. They include Power and Glory, a satire on superheroes as a symbol of U.S. excess and exceptionalism, and Batman: Dark Allegiances, a one-shot revisiting the pre–World War II setting and leftist politics of Blackhawk. The work he has done since returning his attention more fully to comics has been a mixture of stylish mainstream turns on titles such as Wolverine and Blade and books that are unmistakably, idiosyncratically Chaykin: action-packed and adventure-filled, but also animated by their creator’s interest in politics and history. Whether it’s the pessimistic critique of power and the media in Challengers of the Unknown, the two-fisted antifascism of Dominic Fortune, or the skeptical take on the ways technology redefines the limits of humanity in City of Tomorrow, Chaykin’s work offers as always a complex and sometimes discomfiting view of U.S. history and contemporary culture, questions of identity, and the nature of heroism. As this brief and highly partial sketch of his career suggests, Chaykin’s experience in comics is wholly unique. And as the interviews included here reveal, that experience informs a distinct and valuable perspective not only on the aesthetics of the comics medium but also on the workings of all facets of the mainstream comic book field, as well as on the economic, social, and material cultures that have created and sustained (or, some might argue, impoverished) that field. Chaykin is one of the great interview subjects in mainstream comics: Engaging, funny, and sometimes outrageous, he speaks his mind candidly and brings a diverse set of influences and an intense critical intelligence to bear on a wide range of topics. One of the most distinctive characteristics of a Chaykin interview is his relentlessly digressive style of conversation. An exchange that begins with a question about, say, his time as an assistant for Gil Kane is likely to end with an assessment of The Rockford Files, with digressions about pornography, Alex Toth, and Soviet poster

i n t r o d u c t i o n â•…â•… xi

art along the way. Chaykin’s inclination toward the winding answer should not be read as evasiveness, but rather as an indicator of a capacious imagination that compulsively draws connections amongst many ostensibly disparate topics—a trait that serves him well in the visual composition of some of his most ornately designed pages and in the construction of narratives that rarely offer a simple notion of causality or agency. A common thread throughout these interviews is the sense of Chaykin as an artist pressing at the boundaries of his field and format. Of course, given that these interviews span thirty-five years, the collection also charts his evolving sense of what exactly those boundaries are and how they can best be surmounted—or, in some cases, whether or not it’s worth the effort to surmount them at all. Although his first interviews are often characterized by a dismissive attitude toward the idea that comic books can or should be “relevant,” the interviews of the early 1980s reveal a more seasoned writer and artist who has begun to appreciate the possibilities of comics for engaging the world and for expressing a unique and personal sensibility. Yet this more complex view of the medium’s possibilities is never ignorant of the formidable challenges arrayed against it. In some cases, Chaykin holds fast to the belief that the comic book in its serialized monthly form can be a vehicle for intelligent entertainment. In others, he seems resigned to the idea that even if comic books can be smart pop, they likely will not be, and if they are, then they will likely go unread. Chaykin’s more recent interviews reveal a creator more peacefully reconciled to the field’s persistent limitations but no less intensely committed to producing challenging, personal, and ambitious work himself. Although Chaykin’s evaluations of colleagues, fans, and the field in general can be scathing, beneath his severity is an essential enthusiasm for the medium and the format, a desire for it to live up to its potential. The same attitude that moves Chaykin to (either hilarious or off-putting, depending on your perspective) vitriolic condemnations of mediocre artists and thickheaded readers also undergirds his belief in the importance of working with younger artists to better their craft, discipline their work habits, and navigate the sometimes treacherous waters of the profession. Chaykin was himself the beneficiary of a series of assistantships and apprenticeships with legendary artists of the generation prior to his—Neal Adams, Gil Kane, Wallace Wood, Gray Morrow—who helped prepare him to become a working professional, and these interviews include many accounts both of Chaykin’s work with these men and of his extensive work with his own assistants, as well as an array of insights about the hazards of the business generally.

xiiâ•…â•… i n t r o d u c t i o n

And Chaykin is well equipped to identify and illuminate these hazards. These interviews often find him commenting upon the changing nature of the comic book business from the 1970s until today, a period that has seen various attempts to organize writers and artists in the mainstream comic book field to better the usually appalling terms of their employment, to gain greater creative freedoms and more ethical monetary compensation, and to revise intellectual property rights. Chaykin’s ongoing career has taken place in an era of dramatic alterations for the industry: It began in an era dominated by Marvel and DC publishing work in a variety of pulp genres and saw their offerings narrow to focus primarily on superheroes; it includes the rise of independent publishers, controversy over a proposed rating system for comics, and the speculator boom and bust of the 1990s. All these changes have resulted in a mainstream comic book market that is in some ways radically different from the one Chaykin started out in and is in other ways distressingly similar. Many of the pieces included here feature Chaykin’s characteristically direct assessment of these dramatic changes, frequently with an eye toward how upheavals in the business of comics reverberate in the craft of comics, how they enable or foreclose possibilities to do the sort of ambitious work that he favors. Despite this ambition and his frustration with the field’s insularity and conservatism in content and form, Chaykin’s desire for comic books to do and be more also vies with his suspicion of the concept of comics as high art, a suspicion evident in his characterizations of the work and attitudes of cartoonists associated with contemporary art comics such as Dan Clowes, Harvey Pekar, and Art Spiegelman. “Democrats, Republicans, and me” is a frequent refrain from this self-proclaimed cult figure when describing his position in the world of comics.2 Though some readers may disagree with Chaykin’s description of himself as “too mainstream for the weird and too weird for the mainstream,”3 his self-evaluation identifies a central tension in his career as an artist who believes that the first duty of comics is to entertain, but that entertainment is not of necessity empty-headed: It can dazzle and delight but also point outward to engage the world in a thoughtful manner. The interviews in this volume are reprinted as they originally appeared with the exception of minor errors that have been silently corrected. The interviews are arranged chronologically in the order in which they were originally conducted to the extent that this information could be ascertained. As is the case with any frequently interviewed public figure, there is some repetition in the interviews both in questions and answers. In many cases this repetition is a useful way to apprehend the core ideas that have informed

i n t r o d u c t i o n â•…â•… xiii

Chaykin’s understanding of his work and field and those that have shaped the reception of his work, and in some other cases passages that appear to be repetitious on first glance will in fact reveal subtle and significant gradations when examined more closely. Compiling the material for this volume involved not only tracking down hard-to-find fanzines and all-but-forgotten magazines but also, in a few cases, the lucky discovery of an interview that I didn’t even know I should be looking for. I could not have done this alone and am grateful for the assistance of the following individuals who helped me locate materials and their authors: Randy Scott at the Michigan State University Comic Art Collection, Tim Barnes, Robert Greenberger, Robert Hambrecht, Jeet Heer, Ho Che Anderson, Heidi MacDonald, Tom Brevoort, Michael Gonzales, Paul Gravett, and Chris Boyd. Thanks as well to all of the authors and publishers who allowed their interviews to be reprinted here, and to DC Comics, Marvel Comics, and Howard Chaykin, Inc., for the use of the images included in this volume. Matt Fraction was kind enough to help set up the new interview with Howard Chaykin that closes the volume. Many thanks to Tracy Carr Seabold at the Mississippi Library Commission for her expert research assistance. Gina Costello deserves my appreciation for many reasons, but in this specific instance for her vital assistance with the preparation and editing of the manuscript. I am grateful to my colleagues Sue Weinstein and Carl Freedman for their advice while I was constructing the proposal for the volume and to Tom Inge for his enthusiasm for the project. Walter Biggins at the University Press of Mississippi has offered patient and wise guidance throughout the preparation of this book, and Valerie Jones has been of great help throughout the final stages of production. Finally, thanks to Howard Chaykin for his assistance assembling the chronology and for his generosity with his time throughout this process. BC Notes 1. Chabon, Michael. “The Killer Hook: Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!” Maps and Legends: Reading and Writing along the Borderlands. San Francisco: McSweeneys, 2008. 97–105. 2. See for instance Richard Relkin, “An Interview with Howard Chaykin,” Comic Culture #9 (1994). 3. See for instance Brannon Costello, “An Afternoon with Howard Chaykin.”

This page intentionally left blank

C hro no lo g y 1950

1953

1965 1967 1968

1969

1970

1971

1972

Chaykin is born on October 7 in Newark, New Jersey, to Rosalind Pave and Norman Drucker, whose relationship soon ends. He spends his earliest years on Staten Island, New York with his grandparents. Rosalind Pave marries Leon Chaykin, who adopts her son. Howard is unaware that Leon Chaykin is not his biological father until the mid1990s. The Chaykin family moves to the Brownsville neighborhood in Brooklyn. Chaykin moves to the Kew Garden Hills neighborhood in Queens with his mother, now divorced from Leon Chaykin. Chaykin graduates Jamaica High School at age sixteen. Chaykin spends the summer working at Zenith Press, his earliest paying job in the commercial art world. In the fall, Chaykin enrolls at Columbia College in Chicago. After leaving Columbia College and returning to New York, Chaykin takes a job as assistant for the artist who will become his most significant mentor, Gil Kane. Chaykin begins publishing art in science-fiction and comics fanzines, sometimes under the pseudonym “Eric Pave.” After leaving Kane’s employ, Chaykin works as an assistant for artist Wallace Wood and then for artist Gray Morrow. Chaykin’s first professional work—art for Shattuck, a racy Western comic strip for the U.S. military newspaper The Overseas Weekly—is published. Chaykin begins to work for artist Neal Adams, who advocates for Chaykin with DC Comics editors Dorothy Woolfolk and Murray Boltinoff. Chaykin pencils a Man-Thing story in Marvel’s Fear with inks by Morrow and works with him on comic strips for humor magazines. He draws his first story for DC Comics, “Strange Neighbor,” on an inventory basis; it eventually appears in Secrets of Sinister House #17 in 1974. DC publishes Sword of Sorcery #1, Chaykin’s most high-profile penciling job to date. Chaykin marries Daina Graziunas. xv

xviâ•…â•… c h r o n o l o g y

1973

1974

1975

1976

1977

1978

1979

Chaykin’s art continues to appear in Sword of Sorcery, and DC’s science-fiction series Weird Worlds features the debut of his character Ironwolf, a roguish but noble space opera hero; Chaykin also contributes to Marvel’s Amazing Adventures and, along with collaborator Steve Gerber, to “Tales of Atlantis,” a series of back-ups in Marvel’s Sub-Mariner. Chaykin begins working in freelance illustration for advertising agencies such as Benton and Bowles, J. Walter Thompson, and BBDO, a source of employment for him until 1978. Chaykin also pencils the Friday Foster daily comic strip for Gray Morrow and contributes short pieces to humor magazines such as Harpoon. He continues chronicling the adventures of Ironwolf in Weird Worlds, and his creator-owned character Cody Starbuck debuts in the first issue of Mike Friedrich’s independent comics anthology Star*Reach. His series The Scorpion premieres from publisher Atlas/Seaboard. After the second issue, editorial conflicts drive Chaykin from the title. Chaykin contributes art to titles including Red Circle Sorcery, Vampire Tales, Detective Comics, Creepy, and The Savage Sword of Conan. Chaykin’s creation Dominic Fortune, a revised version of The Scorpion, first appears in Marvel Preview #2, and his adventures continue in the pages of Marvel Super Action #1, the first Fortune story written solely by Chaykin. Chaykin also contributes to Apple Pie, Kull and the Barbarians, and Weird War Tales, among other titles. In the pages of Star*Reach, Chaykin continues to chronicle the adventures of Cody Starbuck and, with Len Wein, premieres the character Gideon Faust. He contributes work to Vampirella, Marvel Spotlight, and Marvel Premiere, including the first appearance of his character Monark Starstalker in Marvel Premiere #32. Chaykin pencils the first ten issues of Marvel’s Star Wars comic. He also contributes work to Batman Family, Conan the Barbarian, Marvel Premiere, and Heavy Metal. His marriage to Daina Graziunas ends. Empire, a graphic novel collaboration with Chaykin’s friend, noted science-fiction author Samuel R. Delany, is published by Byron Preiss. Chaykin also publishes a color Cody Starbuck one-shot and works on titles including Weird War Tales and Savage Sword of Conan. Along with Walter Simsonson, Jim Starlin, and Val Mayerik, Chaykin founds Upstart Associates, a shared workspace in New York’s Garment District. Chaykin and Leslie Zahler are married. Two graphic novel projects appear: The Swords of Heaven, the Flowers

c h r o n o l o g y â•…â•… xvii

1980

1981

1982

1983

1984

1985

1986

of Hell, a collaboration with Michael Moorcock, and The Stars My Destination, an adaptation of the science-fiction novel by Alfred Bester. Chaykin briefly works on the Gil Kane/Ron Goulart comic strip Star Hawks and contributes art for stories in titles such as Men of War, Weird War Tales, World of Krypton, and Detective Comics. Chaykin’s illustration work in this period includes art for SPI Games packages such as Deathmaze and Paratroop. Chaykin collaborates with Dennis O’Neil on a series of color Dominic Fortune stories for Marvel’s The Hulk! magazine and reteams with Samuel Delany for a short piece in Marvel’s Epic Illustrated. Chaykin also works on character design for the Heavy Metal animated film. Chaykin revives his Cody Starbuck character in a serial for Heavy Metal. He pencils the Marvel Comics adaptation of the James Bond film For Your Eyes Only, his last job for Marvel for some time after a dispute with editor-in-chief Jim Shooter. Chaykin contributes a story to Eerie. Dissatisfied with the limitations of mainstream comics, Chaykin turns his attention increasingly to paperback cover illustration, where he continues to develop his interest in graphic design. Chaykin contributes several installments of Shakespeare for Americans, a collaboration with Walter Simonson and others, to Heavy Metal, and works on a number of covers for DC’s Blackhawk. His paperback cover illustrations appear on such books as Keith Laumer’s Worlds of the Imperium and Philip Jose Farmer’s Greatheart Silver. The first issue of American Flagg! is published by First Comics; Chaykin pencils a short story by Mark Evanier for an issue of Blackhawk and contributes art for an issue of The Further Adventures of Indiana Jones. Chaykin continues to devote himself to American Flagg! After a twoissue break from art duties, Chaykin returns as writer and artist with #15. The series is awarded seven Eagles (a British comics award) and gains a degree of notoriety when a Psychology Today article singles it out as an example of a pernicious moral rot infecting comic books. Chaykin moves from New York to California. American Flagg! #26, the last issue of the series to feature Chaykin on both writing and art, is published. Chaykin contributes four pages to Marvel’s Heroes for Hope special. DC publishes Chaykin’s controversial take on The Shadow, a series which draws the ire of some longtime Shadow fans (including sci-

xviiiâ•…â•… c h r o n o l o g y

1987

1988

1989

1990

1991

1992

1993

1994 1995 1996

1997 1998

ence-fiction writer Harlan Ellison) for its perceived lack of reverence to the source material. Chaykin also publishes Time2: The Epiphany, a standalone graphic novel that he has described as his most personal work, with First. His marriage to Leslie Zahler ends. Chaykin returns to American Flagg! as co-writer with #47. The series ends with #50. Time2: The Satisfaction of Black Mariah is published with First, and DC begins publishing Chaykin’s Blackhawk mini-series, an iconoclastic spin on the World War II flying ace. Publication of the twelve-issue erotic horror series Black Kiss for Vortex begins. Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!, a new series, debuts with Chaykin as co-writer. Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! ends. Wolverine/Nick Fury: The Scorpio Connection, a graphic novel with art by Chaykin, is published by Marvel. Chaykin marries Jeni Munn. Marvel publishes Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, Chaykin’s adaptation of stories by Fritz Leiber with art by Mike Mignola. Chaykin begins working as writer on The Flash CBS television show. DC publishes Twilight, a three-issue series featuring Chaykin’s dystopian spin on the company’s Silver Age science-fiction characters, with art by Jose Garcia-Lopez. Flyer, a three-part story that teams Chaykin with mentor Gil Kane, begins in Legends of the Dark Knight. Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution, a graphic novel co-written with John Francis Moore that revisits Chaykin’s early creation, is published by DC. Marriage to Jeni Munn ends. Chaykin publishes the three-issue creator-owned series Midnight Men for Marvel’s Epic imprint and Batman/Houdini: The Devil’s Workshop for DC. Chaykin’s satirical superhero miniseries Power and Glory is published through Malibu Comics’ creator-owned imprint, Bravura. The Chaykin-written Fury of SHIELD series is published by Marvel. Chaykin begins working as a writer on the television show Viper; he contributes a short story to the Batman: Black and White anthology series and publishes the Batman: Dark Allegiances one-shot for DC. Cyberella, a collaboration with Don Cameron and the inaugural series in DC’s new science-fiction-themed Helix imprint, begins its twelve-issue run. Chaykin continues working on Cyberella and publishes Thrillkiller for DC with artist Dan Brereton. Chaykin and Brereton reteam for Thrillkiller ’62. Chaykin again collaborates with Gil Kane for the Superman: Distant Fires one-shot.

c h r o n o l o g y â•…â•… xix

1999

2000

2001

2002

2003

2004

2005

2006

Chaykin begins working as writer on the television show Earth: Final Conflict. Son of Superman, his first collaboration with writing partner David Tischman, is published by DC. Chaykin works with Tischman to produce the miniseries JLA: The Secret Society of Super-Heroes and Pulp Fantastic for DC. He draws and co-writes a backup story in DC Comics’s Orion, one of the few stories to feature his art during this era. Chaykin begins working as writer on the television show Mutant X. American Century, an adventure series set in the 1950s and co-written with Tischman for DC’s Vertigo line, begins its run. Chaykin and Tischman also collaborate on the four-issue Angel and the Ape series for DC/Vertigo. Chaykin contributes illustrations to the Michael Chabon–edited, pulp-themed McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasury of Thrilling Tales. Chaykin and Tischman co-write the three-issue Green Lantern: Evil’s Might miniseries for DC. Chaykin and Laurel Beth Rice are married. Mighty Love, a graphic novel blending the conventions of the superhero and the romantic comedy genres, is published for DC/ Vertigo; it is the first full-length work to feature Chaykin art since Batman: Dark Allegiances. Two collaborations with David Tischman, the graphic novel Barnum! (DC/Vertigo) and the miniseries Forever Maelstrom (DC), are published. Chaykin draws an Alan Moore script for Tom Strong. American Century ends with #27. Chaykin and Tischman co-write Bite Club, a six-issue miniseries for DC/Vertigo. Michael Chabon Presents: The Amazing Adventures of the Escapist #1 features a new story by Chaykin. Chaykin’s six-issue miniseries Challengers of the Unknown, starring a revamped version of DC’s Silver Age adventure team in a biting political satire, is published. Chaykin’s adaptation of the Philip Wylie novel Gladiator appears under the title Legend, with art by Russ Heath. Chaykin is featured in the fourth issue of DC’s artist showcase Solo, and his six-issue miniseries City of Tomorrow is published by WildStorm. Chaykin writes and illustrates the two-issue Guy Gardner: Collateral Damage series for DC and contributes art to a new ongoing Blade series and to New Avengers for Marvel. He also writes a JLA: Classified arc for DC, and the miniseries Bite Club: Vampire Crime Unit, another collaboration with Tischman, is published by DC/Vertigo. Chaykin’s original graphic novel Western Century West is published in Italy by Disney Italia.

xxâ•…â•… c h r o n o l o g y

2007

2008

2009

2010

Chaykin continues working on Blade and contributes art to DC’s Hawkgirl, with scripts by longtime friend Walter Simonson. Chaykin also contributes art to series including Wolverine, Punisher, and Immortal Iron Fist. Chaykin handles art for the Garth Ennis–written miniseries War Is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle and several issues of Punisher: War Journal and writes a new Squadron Supreme series. Chaykin continues to work on Squadron Supreme until the series concludes with #12. Marvel publishes the Captain America: Theater of War: America First! one-shot and a four-issue Dominic Fortune miniseries, his first return to the character since the early 1980s. The Chaykin-written Die Hard: Year One series for BOOM! Studios begins publication. Chaykin continues working on Die Hard: Year One until the series ends with #8 and contributes pencils to Marvel’s Rawhide Kid and IDW’s G.I. JOE: Hearts and Minds.

Howa rd C h ay kin: Co n v er s atio ns

This page intentionally left blank

Howie Chaykin Unmasked! D ave S i m / 1 9 7 5 From Comic Art News and Reviews vol. 3 #7/8, March/April 1975, pp. 11–16. Reprinted by permission of Dave Sim and John Balge.

Question: When did you first want to become a comic book artist? Howard Chaykin: At the age of four. And that’s about as interesting as I can get on that question. I decided at the age of four that I was going to draw comic books. It seemed like the only thing I was capable of doing. I’m not so sure about that anymore. I started at the age of four, drawing Tex Ritter comics in my kindergarten class. I wasn’t much of a storyteller, but I could do a great pinhead. I was into cowboys. Only cowboys. Back home, Channel 13 used to have nothing but Tex Ritter and Hoot Gibson films and Johnny Mack Brown. I was a Johnny Mack Brown fanatic. I’d just draw everything cowboys, cowboys, cowboys. I still can’t draw horses. You’d have a lot of “Wow, there goes a horse.” It was very Shakespearean. Shakespearean drama always had the action taking place offstage. A lot of “Clang, clash, clash. Oh my god they’ve just had the battle and Octavian has won.” So, I’m a great believer in off-panel action, especially with horses. Q: How much rejection did you face in becoming a comic book artist? Chaykin: Constant. Constant rejection. I’ve been taking my work around since I was fifteen. Typically, I didn’t start at the bottom. I had the distinct pleasure of being the only person Dick Giordano—who is one of the sweetest men in this business—ever threw out of his office. He asked me to leave rather abruptly. It was a long time. It took me five years to get work. Q: Is being able to face rejection an important part of being a comic book artist? Chaykin: I think it really is. And nobody can. Therefore we’re all completely nervous wrecks. Actually Mike Vosburg is very good at facing rejection because he’s so constantly rejected; it’s become a way of life. Some of us are 3

4â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

more secure than others. I’m a worrier. I take rejection poorly. I need to be loved. Which is an indication of why I’m such a sweet guy. Q: What is the most important development in comic books in the last five or six years? Chaykin: That’s a very rough question. Probably, when you break it down, Neal. Neal Adams. He took comics in a completely different direction. That’s about it—Neal Adams. As a person, as a symbol. Which is not to imply that Neal is the be-all, end-all god-head. But he introduced the possibility that an artist could care about his stuff, and would put work into his stuff that meant more. He’s not a young guy, but he is kind of the symbol for the young punk. And I think it’s reaching the point where it’s becoming negative. He used to do a number on the young guys that he still does, where a lot of young artists aren’t interested in showing Neal their work. Because some of us have matured to where we’re no longer interested in doing the stuff we were doing when we were under Neal’s wing. He is still into this number of trying to criticize in a very paternal way—he cuts the stuff apart. It’s rough, and I’ve seen him doing it to guys who are doing stuff that is totally outside of Neal’s realm of understanding. He’s great when it comes to realistic art. Outside of that, I find it hard to agree with a lot of his opinions. Q: You think a lot of people do take his opinions to heart? Chaykin: Yes. And so do I. Which is one of the great coincidences and paradoxes of modern science. Q: Is the comic book industry headed in an upward or downward trend? Chaykin: I think at this point it has kind of plateaued out. We’re not really moving anywhere. If you’re dealing with it in terms of a line graph, Seaboard made kind of a pimple. That lasted for about two months. And things are fairly normalized now. Seaboard had an effect, but nowhere near the effect that everyone expected it to. Q: What would have an impact on the industry? Chaykin: It’s always the same answer. Sales. If somebody discovered that for some reason comic books about kewpie dolls sold, you would see Weird Kewpie Doll Comics and things like that. They take a trend and they mash it and beat it to a pulp. Sell it. That’s the only thing that really affects situations. I don’t really foresee any great changes. Of course, tomorrow the landfill that some of the buildings are built on might cave in. Then you’d see some really big changes. Q: Has the Academy of Comic Book Arts been helping the artists in recent months?

d a v e s i m / 1 9 7 5 â•…â•… 5

Chaykin: No. I’m not a member of the Academy, but I look like one I guess. Everyone asks me ACBA questions. I think the Academy is a good thing, but it’s kind of like a retarded child. It hasn’t really proved that it can use an abacus yet. It had a job pool and that was a success. It got a lot of people work. And work in some cases beyond their means. But right now I don’t see it doing anything. It’s a very screamy little organization. I really couldn’t project any situation that would be required for it to have any kind of an impact. The organization has changed considerably since the new officers. The new officers are younger, my age. I don’t think the older guys are all that much interested in the Academy because it’s not a union, it’s not a guild. It’s kind of powerless. Q: Are there any changes in working conditions that you would like ACBA to work for? Chaykin: I tend to work for my own changes. I long ago got out of the idea of running to someone else to get help. I don’t like it. I like to take care of my own problems. I have had help. I got my first job at National because of Neal exhorting them to give me a job. That’s happened to several people. But when I’ve got a problem—a real problem—with getting screwed over, I scream and rant and take care of it myself. I don’t think I would go to the Academy. There was a situation a couple of months ago that came up, involving a couple of writers and an artist and the Academy tried to take part in it, and it wasn’t its place. It was really just a personal situation. The Academy really doesn’t have any rights or powers to deal with disputes. And I have no interest in having my problems taken care of by anyone else. Q: How long does it take you to complete an average eight- or ten-page comic book story to your satisfaction? Chaykin: I hate my work, to answer the second part. I really hate my own work. That’s an impossible question to answer. It depends on so many factors. It depends on the story, whether or not I’ve written it or someone else has written it, whether or not I care about it terribly much. When I’m working from a script, I’m usually doing it just for money and I find it very difficult to get into working from a script. So much of it is taken away from you—the opportunity to pace. Marvel is fun to work for because they just basically give you the opportunity of working from a plot. And that’s kind of neat because you pace it yourself. What Gil Kane says is true, “So much of the writing in comics is up to the artist,” because a good artist can take a fairly mediocre story and pull it together and a bad artist can take

6â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

any mediocre story and make it miserable. He gives the example of Lt. Blueberry, the French strip, which is a fairly mediocre western story, no better, no worse. Yet the strip has an epic grandeur because of the artist’s pencils. It’s a phenomenal comic. That’s true of many things, because so much of the storytelling is in the artist’s hands. At Marvel in particular that is important. I’m interested in telling stories. I’m more interested in telling stories by way of design than I am in drawing. Q: Could you cope with being a Marvel writer? Chaykin: I’d find it very easy to make a lot of money. It’s not so much the easiest job. It’s more a situation of writers in this business—a lot of them— being failed artists. And there are writers in this business making fifty thousand dollars a year—one in particular I can think of offhand. He just grinds it out. I’m not totally nuts about the product. I don’t read that many comic books. I read the stuff that Roy Thomas writes. I read the stuff that Archie Goodwin writes. I really like their work a great deal. They are my two favorite comic book writers. I don’t like artists who do graven images of stone and I don’t like writers who think comics are a place to write purple prose. I don’t like this whole attitude of profundity that’s pervading a lot of comics today— the flippant and world-weary remarks in captions. I think it’s absurd. It’s pointless because it’s a visual medium, a graphic medium. It’s very possible in comics to be as pretentious as hell while remaining totally empty. So much of that stuff comes off that way—like gibberish. Q: Why are comics about the 1930s popular? Chaykin: Consider the exoticness of it. It’s much like the appeal of a western, I think. The Shadow or The Scorpion could be done in any period. The Shadow could be done as a western. So could The Scorpion. They could also be contemporary stuff. The Shadow TV show they’ve been working on is going to be a contemporary thing. But I would find it dull to do modern stuff. Maybe not now, but when I was doing The Scorpion, I would have. Drawing cars that are a little strange, airplanes that are a little slower—you have a different terrain to work with. The airplanes are more fun to play with. Like, you can’t do anything with a jet. With a jet, before you know it, you’re there. Take an airplane like a P-26 and you can do neat things with them, because you could actually jump out of them and maybe live. There was an air about the 1930s of hair’s breadth adventure and escape. It’s also kind of exotic—the clothes. Anyway, I’m a fanatic for Warner Brothers gangster films. Right now that is my main interest, drawing people and clothes—no muscle-bound barbarians. Q: Is it important to you as an artist to vary the terrain? Chaykin: With The Scorpion I did kind of a stylized New York City. But for

d a v e s i m / 1 9 7 5 â•…â•… 7

the most part it’s realistic, they’re all real places. Except for the fact that I put pin trees in Brooklyn because they look neat against snow. For this new strip, Dominic Fortune, I’m doing California. And I’m going to find it very good to draw the kind of terrain that Raymond Chandler wrote about. He wrote about Hollywood and Los Angeles. All those eucalyptus and palm trees and torrential rains. Sixty-five degrees in the winter time and broad streets and mountain plateaus and stucco architecture. Different layouts—a lot of mountains, a lot of hills. That’ll be fun. I’d like to take the strip to Hawaii for a while. Have the characters work on a ship. Ships are fun to draw. There’s a designer who designed a phenomenal art deco ship that is just a tear drop. Unfortunately, I don’t have enough views of it and it doesn’t look like it would stand still, ever. It’s important to the younger artists because we’re not just grinding the stuff out. We’re really into the work—with a couple of exceptions. Q: Did you handle The Scorpion differently from your other stories? Chaykin: Well, The Scorpion was the first story where I was a little happier with the inks, because I couldn’t ink before, mainly because I was too timid. I just sat down and jumped in feet first and went berserk. It was the first job that I did in that fashion. I’m now doing most of my stuff like that, going in different directions. I’m not interested in doing the kind of detailed, delicate inking—it’s just not my way of doing things. I’m better off when I’m simple. And I’m fairly simple. Q: Which is easier, writing or drawing a story? Chaykin: That’s a strange question. In terms of plotting, writing is more brain-sweat. Plotting for me is a pain in the ass. I like to do very tight plots. Even if they make no sense, I like to have a beginning, middle, and an end. I like to be able to figure out bits for it. But obviously drawing is rougher because it’s actual physical labor. A lot of writers may disagree with me, but the hell with them. Q: Do you do any work outside of comic books? Chaykin: I have at various times done illustrations for fifth-rate skin magazines. And they were fourth-rate illustrations. I would love to do some bondage illustrations for the bizarre magazines because my mother would like me to do it. I do odd stuff for myself that just gets thrown around the house—not much in terms of money. Q: Are any restrictions needed on overground comics? Chaykin: I don’t feel there’s a need. I read a review of Star*Reach where the reviewer said that the thing about Star*Reach was that all these artists given the opportunity to do underground stuff did pretty much the same thing they do overground. I don’t see what the point is, really, because I have no desire to

8â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

do really meaningful comics. I’m not into relevance—that time-worn term— I just think it’s dog shit. I’m just not interested in stuff that is going to ring true and raise up the people and cause them to storm the Bastille. I’m into comics that are fun. I don’t like doing color comics because they’re cheap looking. Black-andwhite comics look a little classier and they’re a little more fun. Q: Is Mike Friedrich’s Star*Reach the shape of things to come in the underground field? Chaykin: No. I don’t really think so. Because the people who buy undergrounds are interested basically in bad artwork, bad stories, and sexual themes. A fairly large percentage of undergrounds are bought by fairly straight morons who need something to look at while they’re thinking about getting laid. It never fails, whenever I meet someone in a social situation—“What do you do?” “I draw comics.” “Oh! Like Bob Crumb!” It’s kind of disconcerting because they don’t read anything else. They don’t know anything about comics. The very fact that Robert Crumb is now being aped and used in clothing ads, ads for tires, “Keep on Truckin’” and all that stuff—when you have something that’s been around long enough to be mediocre, you’re going to find someone who is going to find some way to maintain it a little longer. It’s like Kirby’s stuff. People are imitating him constantly and making an idol of him. Not in a sense of “He’s my idol,” but a stained glass mosaic of Jack Kirby. He’s been around a long time and his best stuff is way past him. His stuff is just the height of mediocrity. Q: What do you think of awards for people in comic books? Chaykin: The Academy Awards? We were talking about that just last week. It’s kind of weird. It’s reaching the point now in a lot of cases where it’s almost irrelevant to have a best penciller, best inker award, because that kind of maintains the attitude of comics as a factory system, as a production thing. There are people who can’t pencil for other people. I can’t pencil for other people. I have to do fine lines for my work. And there are people who can’t ink for other people. There are people like Walt Simonson who produce a single product. I will occasionally do a job that someone else will ink because I won’t be interested. Mostly my stuff is pencils and inks; me. It’s absurd to call Wrightson best penciller. It’s equally ridiculous to call him best inker. It should be broken down further than that. It should be a little more vague, because that only continues to maintain the negative qualities about comics. The way the Academy Awards for films first started, there were a couple of awards for best actor, a couple of awards for best actress. And there weren’t any more then

d a v e s i m / 1 9 7 5 â•…â•… 9

than there are now. But people understood then that there are good performances and there are good performances in a different vein. I think awards are good. People feel good about them. I don’t win many, I might add. Q: How important is coloring? Chaykin: It usually screws the final product up good. Because color comic books tend to look kind of cheap. If you do a little too much detail, if your lines around the figures aren’t strong enough, the color falls away—it just gets messy. Color just doesn’t look all that good. It just looks chintzy. Color is just cheapo, cheapo. And the separators are like little housewives up in Connecticut who basically do it on a splash and splash basis. What do they get? Five bucks a page? If that. And they occasionally get upset about such and such an artist. If they get their hands on Neal Adams, they’re going to rip his face off, for all that detail that he does. “Where’s that guy who did Swamp Thing? We’ll kill him!” I’d rather color it myself. A lot of the stuff that I do in color depends on color for storytelling, and the colorist doesn’t read the stuff. Q: What is your opinion of science fiction as it has generally been presented in comic books? Chaykin: Unfortunately, we can’t just keep doing EC stories. I don’t think there are enough good comic book writers to do original science-fiction stories. So, I like to see film adaptations, why not comic book adaptations? I’d like very much to see a good adaptation of The Stars My Destination. There are a couple of really good short stories by Alfred Bester that I’d like to see. Some stuff by Samuel Delany. Most science fiction in comics is either of the Buck Rogers school or the kind of very placid, flaccid crap EC used to put out. I loved Adam Strange, but that was superhero comics. The EC stuff was nice, it was fine for the 1950s when spacemen wore flying jackets and carried .45s. Q: What elements of Cody Starbuck make it different? Chaykin: Not much. It’s an adventure strip. I’m probably going to make a little more sense out of it in the second episode. Cody Starbuck is about a holy war, a crusade between a revived Catholic papal empire on Earth and a band of atheist freebooters on frontier worlds. It involves various religious organizations and clans. It covers a lot of other ground as well. Starbuck is basically a Conan-type character with a little less of the brutish barbarianism. He’s kind of a puritan in the sense that that is the nature of his people. The reproduction in Star*Reach #1 for my story was lousy. I wish I had the originals. The originals are in Sweden or Switzerland—one of those Scandinavian countries. The originals are considerably better than the reproductions.

10â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

From “Starbuck,” Star*Reach #4 (1978).

d a v e s i m / 1 9 7 5 â•…â•… 11

Q: Do you think that is one of the advantages of Star*Reach, that you don’t have to make total sense out of a first episode? Chaykin: That’s a great question! I don’t know. I kind of thought it made plenty of sense until everybody started telling me it didn’t. I didn’t really leave loose ends or anything. I just played with it and had a lot of fun with the story. I’d like to bring in more about the papal thing, more about the companies. Q: Has sword and sorcery as a trend passed its peak? Chaykin: I guess so; National just put out a sword and sorcery book—that’s usually an indication of the trend being passed. I don’t know why National is slow to follow up on trends. I honestly don’t know. They had my abortive book. I’ve tended to do several abortive books. They just came out with a Kung Fu book and I think that trend is passed. I have a feeling—this is totally outside of that—I have a feeling that the horror trend in general has peaked and is dying. That we’re not getting back into superheroes, but into adventure stuff, because there are certain books that are getting very shaky—not in the color books. But adventure stuff is coming back, with a weird overtone to it. I think straight horror is over. I think horror is a natural and that it will always be there, but the trend has changed so that a lot of horror books are developing character situations, getting into regular scenarios that can be followed. The Zombie stuff, the Eerie series, the Jackass or whatever the hell that is. On the other hand, Savage Tales is doing fine and so is Savage Sword. Q: Are there certain themes that can be handled best in comics? Chaykin: I think that’s one of the reasons that westerns have never done terribly well in comics, because really westerns are a cinematic thing. And pretty much everything that can be done with westerns has been done in film. I also got pretty tired of “The Kid Kid,” etc. I liked Bat Lash, but in terms of westerns they don’t do terribly well. You’ve seen what Batman looks like on television, and you’ve seen what Shazam looks like on television, and animation is absurd these days. So, yeah, I think comics are neat. Q: Who handles comic art best? Chaykin: It’s hard to say. I’m not frightened terribly much by comics. I’ve been given unpleasant sensations from comics. Kaluta’s stuff always makes me feel uneasy. He does great horror stuff—even when he’s not doing horror stuff. The good thing that the Spanish guys have brought over here is an idea that comics don’t have to have six panels on a page and always be square. I disagree tremendously with what the Spanish people do, but they also brought interesting graphics. In particular Fernando Fernandez, who does great stuff that is totally unintelligible, but it’s great to look at. It’s awful

12â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

pretty. If you’ve got any intuitive sense, you can pick things out of it that you can put in your own work. Also there’s Jose Ortiz who took over Vampirella for two issues and blew me away. Incredible work. He’s doing the Jackass just now, which is a silly strip. Q: Is sword and sorcery a trend? Chaykin: I have the feeling that it’s pretty much here to stay for a while— as much as anything else is. Marvel has really made it with Roy’s Conan. It’s effective stuff and it’s good stuff to read. I get the impression that it sells reasonably well. And I love Buscema’s Conan. I know everyone disagrees with me, but I think Buscema’s Conan is spectacular. I happen to think that John Buscema is one of the best artists in this business. Everyone kind of puts down on Buscema and I can’t understand it because he’s just so good! It’s ridiculous! I saw a fifty-page Doc Savage story that Buscema had penciled. It was so good I sat there with my mouth hanging open. Fantastic figures and natural compositions. Something that I would have done in such a contrived manner he did with so much of this offhanded approach. This room with all of Doc Savage’s boys just hanging out. They’re just talking and it’s great stuff. Neal would have shot it between one of their crotches or something. Buscema just did it very simple. Simonson and I were just sitting there crying, it was so good. Q: In retrospect, what did you think of your Ironwolf stories? Chaykin: I think they stunk. Because one of my tragic flaws is that I bore terribly easily and I find it very difficult to get into work that other people have told me to do. I find it much more enchanting to work on my own stuff. I thought [Dennis] O’Neil’s writing on it was pretty low. I was underwhelmed to say the least. Ironwolf sold pretty well. But the point is, science fiction doesn’t sell. If I were doing Ironwolf now, which I wouldn’t be because I’m no longer interested in doing science fiction, it would look a lot better, because I know a lot more. I know what to leave out. I never believed less is more. I believe it now. Q: Do you get used to things being canceled? Chaykin: Oh no! I throw a total shit-fit. There’s nobody I can go to—I won’t get any answer. I seriously doubt that will ever change. Also, I’m peanuts. That should be taken note of. I have really not aligned myself with any company on a permanent basis. I work really for myself and I do subtler stuff, I think, than the superhero stuff. Writers tend to like my stuff because I tell a story. Artists tend to like my stuff because I do odd, interesting things. But I’m not terribly popular in terms of fandom. My stuff does sell, as far as I know. I’m not a Frazetta lunatic. I don’t feel the need to maintain traditions. It’s all been

d a v e s i m / 1 9 7 5 â•…â•… 13

done before. N. C. Wyeth was terrific, J. C. Leyendecker. I’m the biggest Leyendecker fan in the world, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to sit there and do an imitation of him. I happen to like modern illustration a great deal—those of them who can draw. But I don’t feel the need to do Roy G. Krenkel. Q: Are there people coming into the business who believe the way to make it is to draw like Barry Smith or Adams? Chaykin: Yes. And they’ll get work, because publishers aren’t looking for something new. As Neal says, and it’s true, “When you get a guy coming in who is imitating another guy’s style, it is usually the worst elements of that other guy’s style.” For example, Mike Grell—Grell can’t draw. He inks like a son of a bitch. I’m afraid to hold his pages upside down because the drawings will slide off they’re so slick. Another example is Paul Gulacy who imitates the way Jim Steranko draws, which is a complete absurdity because Jim Steranko doesn’t draw. Jim Steranko is a graphics man and a phenomenal one. So here you have a guy imitating the way a guy who can’t draw draws. I get the impression that Barry is offended—and rightfully—by a lot of guys coming in using his style. Tim Conrad, Bob Gould. Craig Russell to a degree, but he’s developing in different directions. Craig also isn’t into doodling as much as Barry. I’m impressed by Craig’s stuff, a lot. Craig is doing some really nice stuff. Milgrom showed me the new Killraven and I went berserk. Great stuff. Q: Are innovative people going to come into comics? Chaykin: I think for the time being we’re going to have a lot of imitators, mostly of the hotshots. I think you’re going to see a tremendous load of guys doing Barry Smith. You never know. The guys who are doing this could all of a sudden go off on a totally different tangent. Like Smith starting out as Kirby. Like me coming in and doing Gil Kane’s stuff. Look where I’ve gone. Still doing a lot of Gil’s type stuff, but a lot of weird things as well. I judge people on the first few things they do all the time. But I’m an opinionated ass.

The Chaykin Tapes J e r r y D u r r wa c h t e r, Ed M a nt e l s , a nd K enn Th o m as / 1978 From Whizzard vol. 2 #11, Summer 1978, pp. 4–9, 16. Reprinted by permission of Jerry Durrwachter, Ed Mantels-Seeker, and Kenn Thomas.

Howard Chaykin entered comics on the same artistic wave as Jim Starlin, Walt Simonson, Craig Russell, and Mike Ploog. His talent, however, has not been in any way overshadowed or subdued by these revered contemporaries. His career includes work done for everyone from Jim Warren to the Seaboard Periodicals group. Despite all this, Howard Chaykin maintains some semblance of sanity. On the rainy evening of January 7th, Jerry Durrwachter, Ed Mantels, and Kenn Thomas telephoned Howard Chaykin for a brief interview. Major questions were also supplied by Dafydd Neal Dyar and Tom Hof.

Q: Do you prefer being called Howard or Howie? A: Howard. People in comics think that everyone should be a good guy. Carmine Infantino used to call Mike Kaluta “Mikie.” I think it’s repulsive. Every guy in comics thinks that everyone has a nickname. I don’t have a nickname. (laughing) My nickname is sir. Q: Mr. Howard? A: Howard is fine. Chaykin is okay. Hey champ. Hey buddy. Hey sport. Daddio is real good, I like that. Next question please? Q: Was it your life’s goal to be an artist? A: As far back as I can remember it’s been what I wanted to do, with kind of side trips to other things; occasional interest in wanting to be an actor, maybe a singer at one time. I wanted to do something in the creative field because it seemed like a so much better idea than working. Art always seemed to be it for me because my hands and skills were in that direction. Q: A comic artist? 14

j e r r y d u r r w a c h t e r, e d m a n t e l s , k e n n t h o m a s / 1 9 7 8 â•…â•… 15

A: Yeah. It was the only art that I was exposed to at home. I didn’t see much of painting, and I wasn’t aware of illustration as anything special until I got to be a little bit older. Comic art was where it was at for me. I was very much taken with the idea of comics. I have a very specific memory of being turned on to comics by my cousin, who I guess was about ten years older than I was. He gave me comics by the pound; he gave me a box of about ten pounds worth of comics. So I worked my way through them and I was fascinated by the color and the rhythm . . . Q: The rhythm? A: Well, just the vibrancy of what they were. They were really cheap-looking shit but they were very colorful. The Durango Kid stands out very strong in my memory, and I was sure that was a false memory. A couple of weeks ago I was at my mom’s house looking through some baby pictures, and there was me on a bed, at the age of about four, with a copy of The Durango Kid in front of me. So there’s a little reality in every fantasy. Q: What else did you read besides The Durango Kid? A: A lot of Superman comics. Mostly I read the National books. I have no conscious memory of the Batman stuff until I was about ten or twelve. I never saw Batman as a young kid, only Superman. I was very much aware of Superman and only Superman. I was never a big fan of much else. I followed the Marvel stuff and I read just about everything. Once I became a little older, I became more discretionary in what I read. As a young kid however, it was only Superman, Superboy, and that type of stuff. And of course the Archie comics. Q: Did you look at things as titles, or did you recognize the artists? A: Until I was fourteen or fifteen, I wasn’t really paying that much attention to what people were doing in comics. I knew that they were better than most people thought they were. I was aware of a certain background memory in me, that I had seen comics that were better. They would be the ECs. But they weren’t, and I wasn’t much of a fan as I didn’t go around looking for these things. It wasn’t what I spent my money on. Q: Do you make a distinction between comic art and commercial art? A: Oh, no question. People who read comics have a specific vocabulary that is very different from the vocabulary of the real world. Comic fans think of illustration as being something done with a lot of lines and a lot of detail. Illustration today is mostly graphics. Comic art people tend to think of illustration today as of the 1920s. Leyendecker was an illustrator. Rockwell was an illustrator. But, so was Randy Enos and so is Bob Peak. Fans are not really aware of what is happening to contemporary illustrators.

16â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

I was at the San Diego convention last year and ran into an illustrator named Barron Storey. I was astonished by the fact that nobody there, not even the professional artists, knew who he was. He’s one of the most important illustrators and graphic designers in the United States today. He does an average of fifteen Time covers a year. Q: Impressive. A: Not bad. I mean, he has a little more public awareness than Barry Smith. These people had no idea who he was. They’re supposed to be the illustrators. It really got me annoyed. Q: How do you account for that ignorance then? A: Comic book people tend to have blinders on about the real world. They’re not particularly interested in anything that doesn’t have barbarians and naked women in it. There’s a very juvenile idea that comics are the be-all, end-all for illustration. Q: Is that an audience that you cater to at all? A: I have to because that’s where my money comes from. However, it’s not one that interests me terribly. What it comes down to is that I try to pander to my own fantasies, and I share many fantasies with that audience. Q: Fantasies? Can you elaborate on that? A: I’m kind of selfish, self-centered, and private. The stuff I draw, paint, work on, whether it’s a literal or figurative expression of that, is that coming through. I don’t want to draw stuff that’s going to satisfy the inner urgings of an eleven-year-old in East Elephant’s Breath, Ohio. I want to make myself reasonably happy from the pleasure I receive in doing the work and seeing it. I don’t particularly enjoy doing horror stories, or superhero stories. I like drawing heroes and villains, but I don’t feel there is one right way, one set way, about doing it. I’m not particularly interested in comic books as an expression of heroes and villains; it’s a little bit too literal for my blood. Q: How about the limited edition press field? A: I’m not interested in any of the limited press, or any of that poster stuff. I’m committed until October of ’79. Unless they come to me and have a specific idea, I have no time to go out and hustle. Q: Is that how Study in Scarlet was done? A: The Study in Scarlet project was due to the people at Middle Earth, who I don’t believe are in charge of the company anymore. They called me up and asked me if I was interested. They gave me three ideas about a project, and that was the one I chose. They asked me to do something really stupid with the Study in Scarlet project, and I told them no, but that I’d do it anyway. I didn’t do the stupid thing, but I did the portfolio.

j e r r y d u r r w a c h t e r, e d m a n t e l s , k e n n t h o m a s / 1 9 7 8 â•…â•… 17

Q: What was the stupid thing? For posterity’s sake. A: I got the impression that the people who ran Middle Earth at the time had envisioned themselves as the “drug-conscious” generation. I’m a reformed member of the drug generation. They wanted me to do one of the illustrations with Holmes using the needle and I thought that was bullshit. I told them so. Q: It’s not a very important thing. A: No. The comic book market has to have a left-handed description for what the right hand is. I tell you I’m doing a project, and you ask me if it’s like this, and such and such; the lowest common denominator or idea. That’s kind of annoying. The comics market is never willing to accept that something is totally unlike anything that’s been done before. They’ve been fed and shoveled the Marvel Comics “this is the one, gang. It’s never like anything else that’s been done before; except for last month.” Q: Did the limited press people want you to draw a lot of tits and ass? A: Yes, and I’m not really interested in that type of expression. I want either hard-core pornography or something quiet and clean. One way or the other with no middle ground. It’s either fuck-me-suck-me-whip-me-kill-me or kids’ stories. That’s it. Q: Exactly what type of audience do you think Middle Earth is catering to? A: Alright. An anecdote. I did two portfolios for Middle Earth; I did the Elric portfolio and I did the Sherlock Holmes portfolio. The Elric portfolio was average and I thought the Holmes portfolio was excellent. This is a personal opinion, I’m entitled to it. Some guy came up to me that works for one of the limited edition presses (one of your drug-crazed hippie types), started giving me this rap that the Elric portfolio was okay, but the Holmes portfolio was bad, even for me. Even for Chaykin. I didn’t get off on this pimp who was basically making his money by hiring artists to do work. Assuming he even had the right to be a critic, the jerk just didn’t know his finances. The Elric portfolio, in terms of a portfolio for taking out and showing people to get work from, earned me zero outside the money I was paid to do it. While the Holmes portfolio earns me some seven or eight thousand dollars in advertising commissions. Okay? So there is a real lack of knowledge of what the world is really like. Art directors were only interested in Maxfield Parrish once. Art directors are interested in people who are capable of doing jobs on time, doing real work, being able to do a job, knowing they can trust you to get it when they

18â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

ask you for it. Most of the people out there who are working in limited edition press are in the limited edition press because they are not willing to accept the fact that it is a commercial world. Q: What about Star*Reach, Heavy Metal, and Hot Stuf ’? Do you see these publications as realistic alternative outlets for artists of integrity? A: Not really. They’re places where you can do work to keep rather than selling it to DC or Marvel comics, but they’re pretty much the same. As much as Friedrich says he wants to do an experimental book, they’re not really experimental. He wouldn’t let me do what I wanted to do with the book I’m supposed to be doing now for him. I wanted to do a total departure from anything I had done before in the book and he said “no,” on the basis of it not being commercial. If that’s an experimental attitude, I’d like to hear another one. Q: It was reported in Mediascene that when Seaboard was soliciting work they were offering total artistic control. How did your Scorpion character suffer the fate that he did? A: They lied to me. The offer of total artistic control was a flat-out lie. If someone tends to lie big you tend to believe them more than if they just niggle about it. So, they just bullshitted their way into it and then, with the second issue, I was told that I had a deadline of the 13th and then I found out that it was the third. I had to get a twenty-four-page book done in seven days. Which is . . . Q: And that’s why you called in Simonson and all those people? A: Right. When I handed the book in, I simply pushed the editor in the wall, threw the book at him, and said, “I quit,” and walked out. It was actually a very profitable adventure because of the fact that I took the book over to Marvel, had my rate raised some thirty bucks, and I’ve been very happy ever since. Working for Seaboard was a real travesty, because the whole point of Seaboard was to try to cut into Marvel’s distribution. They didn’t succeed at all, and Goodman lost a million and a half to two million dollars. Q: Wow. Where did the Scorpion come from? A: I went in there and they asked me to create another version of the Shadow or Doc Savage. I didn’t want to do either of them so I came back with that. I don’t know where he came from. I was just sitting around when I came up with the idea. I don’t remember the thought processes that put me through the character. I think it was closer to the Spider than Doc Savage. I was more interested in doing a very melodramatic ’30s character. I wanted to do a crazy villain strip and I never got around to it. The second Dominic Fortune story was actually supposed to be the third Scorpion story.

j e r r y d u r r w a c h t e r, e d m a n t e l s , k e n n t h o m a s / 1 9 7 8 â•…â•… 19

Q: Can you use a character if you want to now? Do you own those type of rights? A: Oh no, I have no rights. But I probably will anyway. It’s as simple as that. Q: What were the models for Scorpion and Dominic Fortune? A: I really didn’t model them on anybody. The Scorpion I made comic book intense, with deep set eyes and towering all of the time. I walked right over across the street to Marvel after I quit Seaboard, and told them I wanted to work for them and I said, “Do you want the Scorpion over here?” Everyone loved the Scorpion, since The Scorpion was the most popular Atlas book. So I told Len Wein, “How would you like to do a book?” He said, “Sure.” I said, “Do you want to do the Scorpion again?” And he said “Okay.” I took the Scorpion, flattened his face out and made him a little more Jewish looking, gave him a curly hair cut, a little bit shorter hair, and a lot less intense looking. Q: Do you know if The Scorpion sold at Atlas? A: As far as I know it was the worst selling book they had, but it had to go real bad to sell worse than the other shit they had. It got real nasty mail too. Q: If you receive a lot of favorable mail do you have bargaining power for more money? A: Oh no, ’cause fans don’t buy the books. The kids that buy them are in the bus station and roll them in the back of their pockets. That’s where the money comes from. Usually the rule is that if a book gets a lot of mail, it means its audience is too literate. If it’s getting a lot of mail from the typewriter, then the book is dead. It’s the crayon-written letters on construction paper that keep the book alive. Q: Okay. How did Toth help with Scorpion #2? A: The only help Toth did was that he helped pencil and ink the ten-page story called “The Scorpion.” Jeff Rovin is really a despicable character. The son-of-abitch told Toth that I was off the book and had Toth pencil and ink a ten-page Scorpion story, changing the character however he chose. Just in case I didn’t get it in on time. That was printed as Vanguard, in Hot Stuf ’ #4. Q: Do you see Toth as one of your major influences? A: Oh, without question, I’ve always swiped his stuff in terms of layout, but basically I’ve always been afraid to use his technique because I was intimidated by it. It was just so simply brilliant. Finally, I just gave into the desire and went through with it, and I did it. Q: How did you come upon that assignment with Starlin on the Nick Fury character? A: We were going to be driving to California together. This was in ’75. The two of us said, “Hey, let’s do a comic book.” So, he said, “Alright.” I said, “What do

20â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

you want to write?” He said, “Fury.” I said, “Terrific. I’ll draw it.” So we plotted it on the way out and I drew it when I got home. Q: He seems to be into something now where he just wants to do layouts. A: That’s where the money is. That’s all I’m doing, although I’m working on some other things. Q: Awhile back you did a story in Adventure, a Shining Knight story. A: That’s a long time ago. That’s about five years ago. Q: Right. Well, it didn’t appear five years ago. A: Well, I did it five years ago. Pretty awful, too. Q: I liked it. A: Well, alright (laughter). Q: It seems pretty much of a Frazetta influence. I was wondering if he was one of the people you were looking at on the way up? A: No. I got it all from the comic books. I wasn’t interested in any of those . . . Q: Well, he worked for comics. A: Yes, but his comic stuff was real inconsistent. All of this muscle shit and pretty girls, big tits and stuff. That’s not comics. You’re not learning anything about design, or layout, or telling a story, or anything. Q: Would you prefer to be the sole contributor or do you . . . A: Yes, but it’s a pain. Q: I mean, down to lettering and coloring? A: Oh no, I have no interest in lettering. The coloring looks awful; so why bother? Q: You have colored a few things, haven’t you? A: Yes, but I’m not real interested in trying to fake reality with that type of color. The thing I’m doing for Berkley is full color, but it’s painted. Not like comic book color where you’ve got to hope for the best. Q: I’ve seen a few things of yours awhile back in a skin magazine. A: That was about nine or ten years ago. I did a great deal of work for magazines that have since disappeared. They were basically black and white sketches that were a matter of half an hour’s work. They didn’t pay very quickly or very well. This project for Berkley is 107 pages of full color. I’m real impressed with it. It makes my stuff in Heavy Metal look amateurish. They’re printing an excerpt in the July or August issue. The kid’s got his style, let me tell ya. He’s alright. Q: A lot of your characters appear for the most part to be pensive loners who replace love and family with life and adventure. Does this remote, brooding image hold some special meaning for you? A: It’s just because that’s what heroes are supposed to be like. Heroes don’t do the normal love and family number, they have life and adventure. Scor-

j e r r y d u r r w a c h t e r, e d m a n t e l s , k e n n t h o m a s / 1 9 7 8 â•…â•… 21

pion and Fortune are fairly similar but they’re two very different characters. They do the same things for totally different reasons. They look similar, but in terms of temperament, they are totally different people. The same is true of Starbuck and Starstalker. They sound alike. They’re cute and they’re all funny. Big deal. Comic work. Q: You don’t give it much thought? A: Not really, no. I’m very much interested in heroes, villains, and champions. I think heroes should be good guys. It doesn’t mean they don’t have to be flawed. Q: Do you study the martial arts? A: Not at all. I’m easily the least athletic guy in the business. I look pretty good. I watch my weight and everything else, but I’m in rotten shape. I dress like a fop so nobody knows. I wear clothes that make me look terrific. Q: How accurate are your fight scenes? A: I have no idea, I’m more aware of the fact that my figures move accurately because they look like dancers and acrobats. If you have a basic understanding of the way the human figure moves, then it works. First of all, Simonson’s knowledge of the martial arts—as an actual practitioner—is nil, but he’s read up on it. Me, my people move like dancers. Q: Are you dark-haired and left-handed? A: I sure am. Q: A lot of your characters are also dark-haired and left-handed. Are you fantasizing in your work? A: No. Everybody in comics is right-handed. I do it because there just aren’t enough dark-haired, left-handed people around. Most of the great human beings in history have been left-handed people also. Let’s hear it! You’ll notice my heroes are also brown-eyed. Q: Are you Jewish? A: I sure am. Q: That’s another thing we’ve come up with. All great people are Jewish. A: What a concept. All dark-haired, brown-eyed people. You’ll also notice that all the bad guys are blond, tall, and good looking. Q: Nazis. A: That’s right. The great power play. Q: A lot of your stories portray women as being liberated . . . A: That’s because my women are all very liberated. It’s not modeled after anyone I know and it’s not really a personal ideal, but I think if more women acted like the women I write and draw about I’d be . . . Q: You’d like more women. A: Yes. I don’t like many women.

22â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Graceful action from a Solomon Kane story adapted by Roy Thomas and Chaykin. Marvel Premiere #33 (1976) © 2010 Marvel Entertainment, LLC and its subsidiaries. Used with permission.

Q: Do you consciously cast comic book characters from people you know? A: Never. Q: Then, I guess you couldn’t cite very many examples [laughter]. A: Well, I could say why. Mainly, it’s because I try to keep comic books as separate from reality as I can make them. I try to think of comic books as closet drama and cast people in my own inverted and perverse way the way they’re supposed to look according to the characterization. Q: As an artist though, do you ever draw anything outside of a business extent? A: No. It’s my job. Do actors act just for the hell of it? Do they walk out on

j e r r y d u r r w a c h t e r, e d m a n t e l s , k e n n t h o m a s / 1 9 7 8 â•…â•… 23

stage and throw out a soliloquy just for the hell of it? Did they do that thing in Streetcar Named Desire for . . . Do y’ know what I mean? Q: Good point. Did you take any art in college? A: Well, I went to Columbia College in Chicago to become a radio broadcaster. I dropped out after seven months because I decided it was a completely amoral business. I came back to New York and started working for Gil Kane. I heard through a friend that Gil needed a new assistant because his last one had died in his sleep. I went over to Gil’s and said, “okay.” He paid me not very much money to sit around and not do very much work, but I still messed up a lot. I learned enough to know that I wanted to get into comics anyway. Q: I assume that working with Kane was very helpful? A: It was wonderful to watch a guy work and understand the rhythm of what it was to do comics. That’s a real important thing not many people are aware of, that there’s a very specific emotional pattern that you go through drawing this stuff. Gil was a good one to learn it from because he wears everything he is on his sleeve. Gil is a real overt guy. He is not real subtle, neither on paper or in words. Q: Since a lot of your characters are introverted, and people always like to think that artists and writers cast themselves in comics, do you consider yourself . . . A: Whoever said I was introverted? I’m one of the few people in comics who drinks a greal deal, spends a great deal of money on stupidity, eats very well. I live a complete and total fantasy New York 1937 lifestyle. Now, while the rest of these poor assholes are starving, I’m having a terrific time. I don’t have any money in the bank but I’m having a ball. That’s not introverted. I party pretty hard, when the time is there to party. I also work my ass off. Q: Who was on Crusty Bunkers with Sword of Sorcery? A: Crusty Bunkers was Neal Adams. Neal was the foreman, doing the main heads, a lot of figure work, and trying to save ass, which he did. If you get past the flashy ink lines you realize the drawings were terrible, the proportions were ridiculous, and they were really bad drawings. Most people don’t see that. They see good inking and they go, “Ah, great!” Q: Right. Now as we all know, you’ve left Star Wars. You obviously don’t feel that’s among your better work. A: (belching) Ughhhhhh! (pause) No, I really don’t think much of it. I was taking approximately two days on an issue. Actually, that wasn’t that bad. I mean, I did the Conan in the same amount of time. I usually do eight to ten pages a day when I’m doing layouts. Q: What sort of material did you have to work from?

24â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

A: I had the movie script, which I had the breakdown on. I didn’t see any of the film. I had some four to five hundred stills, and I had the McQuarrie paintings. I had to figure out what the stills meant since they weren’t keyed. Q: Did you notice that Star Wars was almost like watching a Chaykin spaceopera on the screen, only a little bit cleaner? I’m sure he must have seen some of your work. A: Sure. I know he did because he owns a drawing I did in 1972 of Starbuck that Ed Summer gave to him. But the film was influenced by Jack Kirby, John Shonehair, and everyone else. If George wanted to make me happy he would give me $500,000 as a contribution to a worthy cause. Q: (laughter) Would you have liked more time with Star Wars or did you like just doing the rough stuff and getting paid for it? A: I didn’t like doing it, I liked doing it quickly and getting the money. It was a question of taking the money and running. I needed the work to keep me going so I could put in the amount of time I needed on this book. Q: Could you tell us how [Terry] Austin’s “Abel/Chaykin Murder Trial” came about? A: Sure. I love Jack Abel. He’s one of my favorite people in the world. Jack Abel is one of the few guys that makes working in comics a much more civilized experience. I think he’s a damn good artist and one of the best people in the business. I’ve known Jack since I was twenty or twenty-one, and he’s always been completely rude and nasty to me, and I love him. We started sniping at each other the first day we met, and he’s a riot. He’s a generally funny, brilliant guy. Terry works in the office next door to Jack, and Terry started that in the Superman/Spider-Man book, and it’s been going on ever since. It was nice to have my name in that book anyway. In twenty years I can show it to my grandchildren. Q: Do you see much happening to the medium in the future or do you feel that it is just basically on a decline? A: I think it’s going well. After a couple of years of down-sliding it’s coming up real nice. Everybody’s doing interesting stuff. The underground market is helping. I think Heavy Metal is going to be a big help. I just heard Penthouse is coming out with a new science-fiction and comics magazine and there’s all sorts of interesting things happening. I’ve got all this weird stuff coming out and all sorts of new projects. I’m going to be doing The Eternal Champion with Michael Moorcock after I finish this. That’s why I’m going to London. Then I’m working on a major sciencefiction project starting in October of next year. I can’t tell you what it is now, but it’s real hot stuff.

j e r r y d u r r w a c h t e r, e d m a n t e l s , k e n n t h o m a s / 1 9 7 8 â•…â•… 25

Q: We’ll look for it. Do you have any interest in doing the more traditional superhero, such as Superman or . . . A: I would love to do a Superman story. I would just love to draw a real punch’em-through-the-wall kicking-ass Superman, like a real lunatic in the red, blue, and yellow suit. Q: I assume your chances of ever doing that are pretty small, because I assume the people at the top think your work is too avante garde for that sort of title? A: I was asked if I wanted to do layouts on Superman. I wouldn’t want to do anything but finished art. Orlando would very such like for me to ink my own stuff, mainly because they don’t have enough inkers to go around. I’m doing the Amazing World of Krypton now, three twenty-five-page books, and I’m just handing in layouts. I don’t want to ink seventy-five pages. That’s lunacy. Q: Could you consolidate your future plans and tell us anything on what you’re doing now? A: Right now, I’m finishing up the last eighteen pages, nine boards, of a book called Empire for Berkley written by Samuel R. Delany. As soon as I’m finished with that I’m going to get married, going to England this February, stay there for a week, make plans to do The Eternal Champion #3 with Michael Moorcock, until Labor Day when I will deliver the book in England and say hello to everybody, and have my honeymoon in Italy. Then I’m coming back and I hope to do something else which is being wound up. I hope to be incredibly rich, generally famous, and nice to children. Q: Congratulations. I don’t suppose you would answer a question that we all played around with but didn’t write down, “Who are the assholes in the industry?” A: I can’t really do that. I’d love to, you don’t know the temptation I’m going through. And the list, I could be on the phone for another hour. The point is that you would be surprised at most of the answers. Q: Why don’t you give us the good guys then? A: Good-guys in the business are: Jack Abel, Dick Giordano, Terry Austin, Al Milgrom, Walt Simonson, Joe Orlando, Lenny Crow, and Neal Adams. I can’t think of any others. Those are the really terrific guys. Q: Do you have anything that you would like to add? A: I’ve had a wonderful time. I can’t think of anything offhand except that I would really love to tell you my list of the assholes in the business. Sometime call me, arrange it at the same time as you deliver that magnum of champagne, and maybe you’ll get it. Q: Okay. Thanks a lot.

The Howard Chaykin Interview R i c h a r d H owe l l / 1 9 8 2 From Comic Fandom’s Forum #10, 1982, pp. 6–13. Reprinted by permission of Richard Howell. © Richard Howell and Carol Kalish.

CFF: Okay, what I’d like to talk about mainly is the way you approach your work as an artist. CHAYKIN: Okay. CFF: What first attracted you to comic art? CHAYKIN: I was aware of comics as something I really like a lot and wanted to do when I was about four or five. My cousin gave me thousands of comics that his mother had forced him to throw away, and I liked the bright pictures; they seemed very accessible. I didn’t think of it in those terms in those days, but that’s the way it is. And I always as a kid carried it in the back of my mind the idea of doing comics for a living. And when it came time to make decisions, that’s where I went. CFF: Okay, there were many different types of comics at that point, it wasn’t just superhero or adventure? CHAYKIN: Actually, for me it was The Durango Kid. CFF: (Laughs) Oh. CHAYKIN: Western comics, like Hopalong Cassidy stuff, Superman, just the regular mainstream stuff, very much. CFF: Okay, and how did you get started in the industry? That’s a big jump deciding you’d like to do it, and actually getting in there. CHAYKIN: Well, I worked for Gil Kane as a go-fer, as a sort of office assistant; I worked for Wallace Wood, a penciller; and I worked for Neal Adams. Basically, that gave me a sense of what I needed to become a professional. CFF: That was all before any work appeared under your name? CHAYKIN: Oh, sure. And I ended up finally doing some work for Dorothy Woolfolk, when she was editing the romance line of DC comics, and then I 26

r i c h a r d h o w e l l / 1 9 8 2 â•…â•… 27

worked for Murray Boltinoff on the mystery books, and eventually got the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser strip. CFF: That was your first . . . CHAYKIN: That was my first major strip. CFF: First book you had to yourself. Did you have any actual scholastic, or however one refers . . . CHAYKIN: Art training? CFF: Art training. CHAYKIN: No. None at all. CFF: Would you think it would be necessary? CHAYKIN: I probably, had I gone to an art school, might very well not be doing comics now. I might have got into things earlier. For instance, I might have gone through what I’m going through now, which is just this interest in shifting, earlier . . . that’s it. CFF: Leonard Starr told me that he thought that if he went to art school, he wouldn’t have had to spend fifteen to twenty years learning basics. CHAYKIN: Sure. Oh, yeah. But, on the other hand, there’s many people who feel that art school teaches you to be neat and that’s it. CFF: And there’s no real encouragement toward creativity? Experimentation? CHAYKIN: Well, for example, the only person I know, there are very few people in the business, with a scholastic, academic art background. Walter Simonson, Al Milgrom, I think Jeff Jones. CFF: That’s it? CHAYKIN: As far as I can recall, that’s about it. In our age group, that about covers it. So you can see where that’s coming from. CFF: Talking with them, do they have any opinions on whether their academic backgrounds are a hindrance or a help? CHAYKIN: Knowing Walter best, I’d say the chances are there’s a lot of things . . . The things that make up the recognizable style in his stuff are fairly academic. And I think for him, it was a very positive thing. I have no real regrets. I’m curious how changes might have affected [my work], but I don’t think about it very much. CFF: What sort of encouragement did you have that you think may have helped you get into the industry? To the point . . . was your family behind you? CHAYKIN: No, I was discouraged every inch of the way. It was something I wanted to do, but I wasn’t particularly encouraged to go into it. It didn’t seem like the right way for me to make a living to them. That’s okay.

28â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CFF: At the time you started, your style was a little far-out for what the mainstream comics were. CHAYKIN: I don’t know, I thought I was fairly mundane, by comparison. CFF: By comparison to now. CHAYKIN: Well, even to then, I thought I was doing fairly banal stuff, without really getting crazy. I thought I was doing very straightforward stuff. CFF: That would have been Fafhrd . . . CHAYKIN: Yeah, I thought that was very straight. CFF: Well, do you see yourself as an artist, or a storyteller, or a fantasist, or any combination? CHAYKIN: I consider myself an illustrator. CFF: An illustrator. CHAYKIN: Yeah. Because I’m doing the job an illustrator is supposed to do. It’s to illuminate and make clearer a story, and in comics, the way to do that is to use continuity and to use several pictures to achieve an idea. That’s how I consider it. CFF: In that light, would you say the present distinction between a storyteller and an illustrator is an entirely artificial one? CHAYKIN: I don’t know that that distinction exists. How do you mean? CFF: Let’s see, well, let’s take say, Sal Buscema as an example of a storyteller. CHAYKIN: Okay. CFF: His pictures could not be taken as individual illustrations. CHAYKIN: Okay. CFF: And . . . oh, gosh . . . not Smith, because he’s a good storyteller, too. CHAYKIN: I don’t think that comics necessarily should be taken panel by panel out of context. I think a comic book page should work as a unit. I don’t think a panel on a comic book page should necessarily be able to exist independently. CFF: You talked earlier about your background of taking cinema into comics, and how that has decreased in recent years. CHAYKIN: Tremendously. CFF: What got you started on that in the first place? CHAYKIN: On the use of film? It seemed like a very easy way to learn the tools. It also seemed like an interesting way to tell a story, and at the time, it was. And I no longer consider it effective or viable for me. I’ve had this discussion a lot lately with various people, most of whom have gone through the same trip. And all of us have pretty much agreed that it’s the right thing to do to get started, because it’s interesting, and it’s a good way to learn the trade. That’s about it.

r i c h a r d h o w e l l / 1 9 8 2 â•…â•… 29

CFF: Like several of the older artists I know worked in animation before they got into comics, and they credit that as the reason why they’re able to pick the right picture in each frame, in cases where it’s argumentative whether or not that one was the right one, it still gets across what they’re supposed to do. CHAYKIN: Sure. CFF: Who are your major influences, both in the comics industry itself and outside of it? CHAYKIN: Right now or generally? CFF: How about when you started, and then we’ll move up to now. CHAYKIN: There was Kane, Kubert, Infantino, and Toth. They’re why I’m doing comics. Right now, I’m fairly influenced by contemporary illustration. By the work of Barron Storey, Bob Peak, a guy named Roy Anderson, whose work I really like a lot, a guy named David Grove. There’s a lot of contemporary guys. I like Moebius’s work a great deal. That about says it. CFF: That accounts in large parts for your slant toward layout and page design. CHAYKIN: I’d say that’s true. CFF: Do you feel that is adequate to tell a story in most cases? CHAYKIN: Design? No, it has to be done well. Because as I said on the panel earlier, I think it’s kind of dangerous to get into using the mannerisms solely for their own sake. The mannerisms have to be justified by a purpose, by a reason behind their use. Sort of split panels, multiple panel images, inset panels, characters stepping out of the picture, they’re all tools to be used for a specific purpose. And you walk a fairly fine line between getting too clever and doing interesting graphics. CFF: Okay, do you use any assistants? CHAYKIN: Yes. CFF: That’s mainly to take the . . . CHAYKIN: I work with many people. The guy I’m working with now is a guy named Peter Kuper, who I’ve known for many years. He’s been with me about two years. He’s got a credit on the Dominic Fortune strip, and he functions as a second set of hands so we can produce stuff. Peter’s also a bright boy. He lays in flat color, he does background renderings, does some preliminary renderings, and it means that I can sleep, because there is a lot of work to be produced. CFF: Yeah, and you take on a lot of work. CHAYKIN: And I don’t feel I’m losing control of the material; that’s the other thing. CFF: The finished stuff is still yours.

30â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CHAYKIN: It’s my vision, it’s my hands. I’m not ashamed of that. CFF: You feel you’re in the beginning where it counts and at the end where it counts. CHAYKIN: There are just a lot of steps in a job where it can be handled by someone else with direction. And that means that half again as much material could be produced in as much time. And there’s also just a lot of stuff that’s boring, frankly. I’m sorry, Peter, that’s the way it is. CFF: You’ve used assistants on your comic book work, then, too? CHAYKIN: Not really. I’ve had a couple of jobs that have been laid out for me by other people, but they were people who were working already, and they weren’t kids. My assistants have been Bill Pay, Joe Jusko, Steve Oliff, a woman named Susan Duncan, who is an illustrator, and Lewis Mitchell, who is a draftsman in New York City. CFF: Are those the comic book assistants? CHAYKIN: No, they’ve worked with me since Empire. Empire, The Stars My Destination, Swords of Heaven, that kind of stuff. CFF: In the cases of those books, how did you go about—this is a panel question—how did you go about getting any sort of response at all to the experimentation . . . CHAYKIN: Well, quite frankly. I haven’t got very much response at all, because I feel they’re not perceived as comics. I find myself being at conventions and, for large spans of time, being fairly ignored because I’m not handling mainstream, contemporary superhero comic book characters. And I don’t resent it, I understand it. It took me a while to accept it, but I can live with it. I don’t get invited to the big out-of-town conventions much because I’m not doing Fantastic Four or something like that, which is what the market wants. Both Walter and I have handled this big trade paperback-type stuff. Both of us expected to get, like, fêted, and be treated like tender princes and it never happened. Neither of us were terribly upset about it, just a little curious. That kind of thing. That’s a reasonably sensible response. CFF: I would say so. Do you prefer doing the big trade paperbacks? CHAYKIN: Oh, for sure. I find a lot of my attachments to the work have reversed. When I was younger, I found out I couldn’t do a job longer than eight pages, without getting really bored. Right now, I find it very difficult to get my energies moving until page fifteen or sixteen. CFF: What is the difference? CHAYKIN: For example, Empire was a hundred and twenty pages. That’s a lot of work. The Stars My Destination, volume one and two, are close to two

r i c h a r d h o w e l l / 1 9 8 2 â•…â•… 31

hundred. Swords of Heaven is sixty-four, and the Starbuck books when they’re both finished will be close to ninety pages. And I’m not getting tired at all. I left my studio on Friday and I had pages 29 and 30 well under control, well rolling. And I wasn’t losing any energy. I was really getting hot. There was some great stuff happening. What’s wonderful is that in the old days, where I’d find myself getting bored by the middle of the job, I find myself developing new enthusiasms. Which eventually improves the quality of the book in the back. I work from front to back, I don’t jump around. And what you’ve got is, there’s something subliminal worked into that, that it’s perceived by the reader as the story’s getting better. CFF: I can see that, how that can happen, yeah. CHAYKIN: ’Cause there is a sustained level of enthusiasm. In some cases, that enthusiasm becomes greater. CFF: So that’s one of the ways you feel your approach to your work has changed over the years. CHAYKIN: Yes, very much so. I like a big book. I enjoy working on long projects. CFF: Is that one of the reasons you do so few actual comics these days? CHAYKIN: Well, that, and also I don’t feel it’s worth the time or money. The money isn’t very good, the work isn’t very interesting, I’m spoiled by the trades and the process. I mean, it’s real hard to go back to working with what is basically cave painting, you know, when you’ve been playing elsewhere. It’s a lot more fun working in color. The effects just become a whole lot more interesting. It’s a lot more challenging, it’s a lot tougher. But it’s a lot more fun. CFF: Then you actually approach the layout pages differently . . . CHAYKIN: Oh, sure. No question about it. Because I’m not having to deal with hard-edged outlines. I’m not having to deal with support of color by line. Color supports itself. CFF: And that’s where the contemporary illustration influence comes in? CHAYKIN: Well, that, the contemporary illustration comes in because I don’t like painting, particularly. I’m not all that interested in painting, as an end. One of my interests in contemporary illustration is because you’ve got men using five different tools for the same piece, and that appeals to me a lot. It’s just an interesting way to go. My stuff is a mix of acrylic, pentel, magic marker, ball point pen, exacto knives, colored pencil, crow quill, regular pencils, masking tape, just anything that works. Like, uh, fingerpaint . . . CFF: This is a process you’ve been building up to.

32â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CHAYKIN: Well, it’s more, you do something and you screw it up. There’s something about the screw-up that works. You backtrack to the screw-up and find out why it worked, and you learn to do it on purpose. It’s making accidents work. CFF: (Laughs) Trial and error. CHAYKIN: Sure. Accidentally mixing turpentine with acrylic. CFF: What happens? CHAYKIN: All sorts of interesting things! CFF: (Laughs) CHAYKIN: Making resists. Using a particular kind of paint on a surface that repels that kind of paint, and seeing what happens. Painting on cellophane. Just getting all sorts of different effects. And I’m trying just about anything I can get my hands on. The Starbuck book I’m working on now reflects that, and I’m having a ball. CFF: What about the Dominic Fortune series? How would you rate that? CHAYKIN: Well, it’s nowhere near the level of the stuff that I produce for myself, simply because the money I receive for it is all the money I’m gonna see on it, and the copyright of the character is owned by Marvel Comics, and my enthusiasms are very much motivated by my participating in the profits of the job. And I thought I did a good job on the Dominic Fortune strip, but I would not expend the kind of energies that I would on some of the Starbuck material. I own the Starbuck material. CFF: And reprint rights, and things like that? CHAYKIN: Reprint rights in mainstream comics are sort of like a house joke. They don’t even tell you what you’re being paid for. Your check isn’t itemized, and frankly, it’s so small, it might buy you dinner. You know, so, it’s kind of silly to even think about it, there isn’t much there. CFF: But you’re able to get progressively better terms as you get better known as an illustrator. CHAYKIN: Well, there are no ways to improve your terms working under the circumstances at Marvel or DC simply because they are set up on a work for hire basis, and I have no objection working on a work for hire basis as long as I am paid phenomenally well, and I’m not gonna be expected to produce work that’s gonna stand the test of time. I’ve had discussions with people in power for a long time, who explained that they feel you’re supposed to do the best possible job you can, and I do, I do the best possible job I can under the circumstances. It’s the job of a publisher to exploit me, and it’s the job of me as an artist to avoid being exploited without hurting my employer’s feelings. CFF: Interesting philosophy. Very realistic.

r i c h a r d h o w e l l / 1 9 8 2 â•…â•… 33

Dominic Fortune in “Ghoul of My Dreams,” co-written with Dennis O’Neil. From The Hulk! #22 (1980) © 2010 Marvel Entertainment, LLC and its subsidiaries. Used with permission.

CHAYKIN: Yeah! I intend to be here for a while, so . . . CFF: You don’t want to get burned out so soon. CHAYKIN: Or shit where I eat. CFF: Right. Chancing on all these different reasons why you’re not doing comics any more. Mainstream comics, I should say. CHAYKIN: Sure. You have to have that definition. I’m a comic book artist. I mean, zero. Period. That’s it. CFF: Is that, as far as you’re concerned, defined more in the style you’ve worked which actually, as far as the surface goes, varies quite a bit, from job to job, or is it in the fact that you use your art to tell a story? CHAYKIN: I think it’s the second more than the first. I’m constantly amazing illustrator friends of mine of the fact that in the time that it takes them to do one finished illustration, I’ve done twelve. And it’s just that my discipline is to produce material quickly, because that’s what I’m used to in comics. Now, the Starbuck stuff, I found as I’m getting into the book, the longer I get into it, the longer it’s taking me. I’m getting really into it, and I’m really getting slow. But it’s fun. I’m having such a good time. CFF: Sounds like a pet project. CHAYKIN: Oh it is. It’s a beauty. Kid’s having a great time. CFF: I assume you’re writing this. CHAYKIN: Oh, for sure. As it stands now, I’d like to avoid doing anything I don’t write. CFF: Is that just because you want freedom of expression?

34â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CHAYKIN: No, I feel I write my stuff best. There is only one project I’ve got that was written by someone else that I’d like to do, but even there, I’m gonna do the adaptation. It’s a novel by Samuel R. Delany called Nova. CFF: Ah. Yes, I am familiar with that. CHAYKIN: And I would very much like to do the comic book adaptation of that. And I just haven’t found a publisher. CFF: I think the Baronette situation might have something to do with it? CHAYKIN: Uh, no. I haven’t been looking very hard. I’ve been rather busy. (laughs) There you go. CFF: What sort of chances are there, if you know this, for the second volume of The Stars My Destination? CHAYKIN: I haven’t the faintest idea. I finished the job over a year ago. CFF: So it’s out of your hands. CHAYKIN: Yeah. I’m an employee in that sense, and the only reason I’m asked the question is because neither Byron [Preiss] nor Norman Goldfine are down at this level, at a convention to talk. I mean, Byron is management, and you don’t see management much. CFF: Byron isn’t that communicative to us over the phone, at least, he hasn’t been to us so far. Maybe he doesn’t know much more about it than anybody else. CHAYKIN: No, he’s learned to keep his mouth shut, I guess. CFF: You’re up to a certain level of artistic exploration, which I’m sure everyone will agree, is a good deal higher than where you started out in comics. CHAYKIN: With luck I’d have to be, it’s been ten years! CFF: What sort of new vistas, as far as that goes, do you see for yourself? Do you have goals? CHAYKIN: Not really. I’m playing it by ear. I’m very happy with what I’m doing now, and frankly, I hope I hate my stuff that I’m doing now as much in five years as I hate what I did five years ago. Because it feels great to grow. All I want to do is improve my drawing, get better at that, and improve my rendering. Just keep improving what I’m doing. CFF: And that’s all done just as it’s . . . CHAYKIN: Osmotically. CFF: More practice . . . CHAYKIN: The more you do it, the better you get. CFF: Do you think being part of a studio helped, is it more direct? CHAYKIN: Only in the sense that there are people over my shoulders almost constantly. I don’t think I was all that much influenced by Jim and Val. However, I do believe I had a fairly profound influence on what they were doing.

r i c h a r d h o w e l l / 1 9 8 2 â•…â•… 35

Jim and Val, don’t worry. I kind of believe that, and Walter is going to be getting into the process of other stuff. And I’m kind of hoping that . . . I’m kind of curious to see what he’s gonna be doing. Real interested. CFF: So as far as that goes, the studio is no more of a place to interchange ideas for your work as . . . CHAYKIN: Well, it is in the sense that I’ll throw something out and somebody will say “hey, that stinks.” For example, this new one-page feature that I’ve sold to Heavy Metal is going to be a collaboration between me and Walter. And it comes out of just that sort of bullshit session. CFF: Is it an artistic collaboration? CHAYKIN: Yes. You can’t say pencil-ink, it’s gonna be more than that. We’re gonna throw things together in interesting ways. CFF: The two of you are writing it, also? CHAYKIN: Yeah. CFF: Now, you have said at the panel that one of the reasons that you’re not all that interested in drawing mainstream comics is that the superhero form does not interest you at this point in your life. CHAYKIN: Not much. CFF: Uh, what sort does? CHAYKIN: Well, in mainstream comics? CFF: In just about anything. CHAYKIN: I enjoy doing science fiction a lot because it’s an opportunity to build stuff. I would like to do some historical stuff. The Swords of Heaven has been sold in Italy, along with Starbuck, to an Italian publisher, who was totally unaware of my existence. People in Europe, I’m assuming the publication of this material will make me a little more of an aware figure over there. All the young guys over here, they’re all amazed to discover we’re not fifty. Because all the guys over there are fairly old, when they see we’re young punks . . . it’s kind of . . . but they’ve offered me King Arthur and his Knights. And I don’t think I’m gonna do it, but it’s something I’d like to do. The only reason I don’t think I’ll do it is I don’t think I could control it as much as I’d want. Because when you’re working for a European publisher, there’s a language problem, it just comes to flags. But I’d love to do some historical stuff. Really straight, in color, I’d love to do The Once and Future King. That sort of stuff. I’m also playing with the idea of a sword and sorcery strip taking place in Renaissance Florence. CFF: That would seem tailor-made for the design. Do you choose the books you want to do on setting? It seems when you’re mentioning these different books, it seems it will be set in this time period or . . .

36â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CHAYKIN: No, for example, when they asked me to do the Dominic Fortune strip in color for the Hulk book, I suggested the possibility of updating it to the fifties. CFF: And? CHAYKIN: They said I was nuts! They wanted to do it in the thirties. I felt like drawing jelly-mold cars. And doing a really fifties paranoia strip with the cold war. And getting into beatniks, sick humor, doing Lenny Bruce stories, and they just didn’t see it at all. CFF: Obviously wasn’t the reason they chose the strip. CHAYKIN: No. Well, I know why they wanted to do the strip again. It’s because Lynne Graeme really liked it and thought it would be fun to do. CFF: Okay, I guess that’s a reason. Maybe one of the reasons they were surprised to know you weren’t any older than you were in Italy was that you have a recurring fascination with the thirties. CHAYKIN: I think it’s more that the stuff we produce—well, that’s possible, as I think about it: That is possible. It hadn’t occurred to me. CFF: If they met Alex Toth, they probably wouldn’t be surprised at all. CHAYKIN: True enough. CFF: Speaking of Alex, actually, would you consider doing something along the lines of his historical work? He managed to turn out quite a number of say, movie adaptations of swashbuckler movies, and he did the Zorros . . . CHAYKIN: Again, not in the mainstream. I am spoiled. I use that phrase a lot, and it’s true. Completely turned off on my end to mainstream as a viable form for me. I just don’t like it; it doesn’t interest me . . . CFF: Does that extend to even doing more work in black and white . . . ? CHAYKIN: Yeah. CFF: Quite a lot of disenchantment. CHAYKIN: It doesn’t interest me. It just isn’t nearly as effective for me. CFF: What tools are you using now, regularly? We went through a short list before . . . CHAYKIN: Animator’s paints, acrylics, color pencil, colored inks, magic marker, pentel, india ink, graphite pencil, chart tape, masking tape, razor blades, exactos, anything that makes messes, that can be directed. CFF: Okay . . . CHAYKIN: No boogers, we’re working away from those. CFF: That’s about all the questions I have on technique. How would you describe your own technique, if you said it’s just experimental . . . CHAYKIN: Well, no. Although it sounds anarchic, it’s very procedural. It’s from layout. I lay out my stuff very small. I put it into a tracing machine and

r i c h a r d h o w e l l / 1 9 8 2 â•…â•… 37

In his “Cody Starbuck” serial, Chaykin explored the narrative potential of page design. From Heavy Metal (May 1981).

38â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

blow it up large. I pencil very loose; I ink and pencil and ink at the same time. I tend to do very loose pencils and tighten them up with a pencil and ink in pieces. Once it’s inked, my assistant erases it, and I give him four markers and tell him to lay flat color over everything. CFF: Just four? CHAYKIN: Just four arbitrary colors. For no particular reason. They’re usually blues and browns. Just so you’re not working on a white surface. Just to put color down flat. CFF: So it’s you who sets the color schemes. CHAYKIN: These aren’t even color schemes. CFF: They’re not? CHAYKIN: These are just so you’re not working on a white surface. From that point, I then give him reference material, and specific color instructions. And color. He takes the paint, washes in flats on backgrounds. It’s all worked from farthest back in the picture, to farthest forward. For example, as a specific example, let’s take an interior spaceship sequence, for a character talking, background. First thing we do is I have Peter take the color for the background, put a flat down for the floor and for the ceiling, and for the wall. And take it back from him and over that, using references consisting of photographs of dissected engine parts, insides of cars, I start putting hardware on the wall, in pencil. Once I’ve got it where I want it, I take either a pen stick, which is a kind of pentel, or a magic marker, or a brush, and start indicating underlight, shadows, shapes, holes in the wall, texture shapes. That’s finished, I take the same bit of background color that we’ve used for the wall and floor, and start highlighting stuff. I’ll give Peter the same color, add some white or yellow to it, and he’ll put in the lighter surfaces. The background is now finished, okay? I then take it and start doing the figures, working flats. Paint the figures, go into the figures with line, fill shapes out in some places constantly working from back to front. Does that tell the story? CFF: Pretty much. I think that’s about all the audience will be interested in as far as the art techniques go.

Howard Chaykin P a u l D u n c an a n d Joh n Ja c ks on / 1 9 84 From Arken Sword #13/14, May 1985, pp. 5–11. Reprinted by permission of Paul Duncan.

Dominic Fortune, Cody Starbuck, The Scorpion, Monark Starstalker, Ironwolf, Reuben Flagg. All recognizable characters that carry the hard-hitting art (and often writing) of Howard Chaykin. Wit mixes with sex, violence, and soap opera to make American Flagg! one of the best comics around. Howard kindly talked to John Jackson and myself at the Brum Con last May.

John: How did you get into comics? Howard: Just about everyone in my generation had a portfolio, most of which was not particularly good. On the other hand we all hung around DC Comics in the early ’70s, and slowly, but surely, they got used to your face and you ended up getting a job. My first couple of jobs were romance stories and mystery stories. One- or two-page fillers, and then you get up to five pages. And that’s basically it. Paul: Are all these different genres a good training ground? H: I still feel that that is one of the things wrong with the business as it is right now because there are no places to do things but high-power, high-energy comics. There is also no place for a guy who’s coming into the business to get some groundwork done. I believe it was very valuable doing all those love comics and mystery pieces because it gave me an interest in stuff other than simply drawing the collapse of galaxies, because there’s more to drawing than that. J: Did Gil Kane influence you? H: Oh, tremendously! I was his assistant. J: You never do the “under-the-nose” shot. 39

40â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

H: Oh, I do it plenty. I worked for Gil when I was eighteen. Not in any “handson” capacity, but as his flunky. I learned a great deal from Gil. He’s one of many influences, but a major one. P: What do you think of him using marker pens? Do you think it detracts from his art? H: Obviously I don’t because I use them. The tools that I use on American Flagg! are the tools Gil recommended to me. Particularly the Berol Flash 30 and the Berol Flash 32. J: I’ve never seen Duotone in a regular book before. H: I have never been very confident about my rendering in black and white. I can paint and I’ve done plenty of color work, but I tend to freeze in black and white, I wanted to have something to give the material an organic feel: to soften the hardness and angularity of my line. Also, to give me a greater range of texture and depth, and I’m very happy with it. It costs a bundle. A sheet costs eight dollars. You get two pages of comics out of a sheet, and I have to order it from Ohio in batches of fifty. So it cuts into the bucks. P: Your art is very angular when inked by yourself. What do you think of other inkers going over your pencils? H: To this day I hate the idea of pencillers and inkers. It really doesn’t mean what it says. I’ve never developed any profound facility for putting down a single line, in any form, that someone else can come in and understand immediately, and simply outline and render. My pencils are not tight pencils in the sense of looking like inked drawings only grayer. I’ve never been able to do that. I’ve always been impressed by those who can. I do very tight pencils for myself, but no one else could ink them. My pencils are a building stage. My pages, before I ink them, are gray. There’s all the drawing there, but on the other hand there’s no single line outlining a shape. I have to find that line with a pen. I’ve always felt that if I don’t take the job from start to finish, I don’t bitch. I don’t complain. P: I think a lot of your stuff has been ruined by inkers. H: You can’t say that. J: The two film adaptations you did, Star Wars and For Your Eyes Only, look a bit rushed. H: Well I’ll tell you the truth. The fact of the matter is that the Star Wars work is one I’m not particularly proud of. On the other hand you guys are looking at the Star Wars material as an epochal occurrence in the mid-’70s. I worked on the material for the film a year before the film came out. I did not see the

paul duncan

and

j o h n j a c k s o n / 1 9 8 4 â•…â•… 41

film until I had finished the first seven issues of the book. No one had any idea that the film was going to be the major media event of the ’70s, least of all me. Quite frankly the references I had to work with were Ralph McQuarrie’s designs and stills from the movie. The stills looked terrible. Everything looked very stiff and the paintings by McQuarrie looked great. And of course it looked to us that they had these great paintings and the movie was going to be a dog. And the fact of the matter is that when the movie came out it looked like the paintings. I busted my ass for the For Your Eyes Only stuff. There were likenesses throughout. I killed myself on those pencils, and I’ve got testimony to that effect from Walter Simonson and Frank Miller with whom I shared space. That job was supposed to be inked, first by Danny Bulandi, then by Armando Gil, and Vinnie (Colletta) was the one they finally found. I killed myself on that job. The reason I took that job was so that I had the option to paint the cover and that was a disaster from word one. J: Really! I thought it was all right. H: It was just a bad experience. That book was one of the reasons I left comics for two-and-a-half years. I delivered it a week early. It was not rushed. I simply got into my office at seven in the morning and did my job. I was unhappy with that. J: Talking about likenesses. In American Flagg! is Crystal . . . H: . . . my wife? It ain’t any accident. The fact of the matter is that Crystal was originally designed as an ash-blonde. When I introduced the character in the second issue, she was originally based on Carole Lombard. Leslie pointed out that there were a lot of fair-haired women, but there weren’t enough brunettes. So I made Crystal brunette, but now her hairstyle didn’t work. So I made her hair this Valentino cut. P: I think some of the other characters look like stars. Like Gretchen is based on a porno star isn’t she? H: Yes. P: Is this another in-joke? H: No. The reason for that is very simple. One of the things about erotic film in the States is that porn actresses are the only people in film today who use makeup the way silent film actresses did. In silent film because you had no access to language or dialogue much of the acting was pantomime and facial expression. That’s why makeup in silent film is so extreme. It’s the same with porn. You’ve got people who aren’t really actresses so their makeup is extreme. So what you’ve got is that they look like comic book characters. The reason I chose the woman, Julia Anderson, I think, is that

42â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

I wanted to do a woman in her fifties who was very attractive, who wasn’t button-nosed and cute in a comic book way. Women in comic books tend to all look alike. J: I like the way you’ve got double chins on some of them. It’s different. H: I’m trying to get a range of characters. I come from a very ethnic polyblock city so my interest tends to be in ethnic poly-block. I try to get in as many different types as possible. Also, you never see women in comics who are older and still attractive. I mean older people in comics are generally portrayed as fat and lost. Without any passion. I mean, look at Mayor Blitz. A man in his fifties who is obviously still very vital, aggressive, hostile, and all the other things we are. J: If the proposed newspaper strip was taken on, would it have to be watered down? H: I have no idea. J: You said yesterday that American Flagg! is only sold to a comic book audience, so only comic book people read it, which means it would be unlikely for American Flagg! to be censored. However, if there was a general outlet for the strip, wouldn’t it be censored then? H: I’m assuming that certain elements of the strip would have to be blacked out but otherwise I don’t know. You’ve got to understand that the news you get from the States about the Moral Majority is obviously gonna be somewhat sensationalized. That’s their function. They don’t have that profound an impact. Quite frankly what has impact in the States is sales. If the Moral Majority decided that something that was functionally operative on TV was offensive, boycotts of it won’t really cut a great deal of ice. People will respond to what they choose to respond to. It’s not that vital or intense a problem. It really isn’t. You’ve got to remember that in this country the media is fairly conservative, whereas in the U.S. the present media is much more liberal. For example there is a very intense adversary relationship between the news department of the CBS network and the Reagan administration. We’re talking drawn swords. P: In American Flagg! you feature a lot of political groups. H: Terrorist fraternities. P: Do you consciously leave out all the politics behind them? H: My feeling is that so much of what I’m doing in the strip is background information. I’m very much interested in small stuff. Not the minutiae, but the intimate stuff. The inter-relationships between the characters. The actual specific politics of the various terrorist groups, except where it’s particularly

paul duncan

and

j o h n j a c k s o n / 1 9 8 4 â•…â•… 43

Surprising political allegiances proliferate in the world of American Flagg! From American Flagg! #2 (1983).

relevant to what I’m doing in the story, is not particularly interesting to me. What I’m doing basically is setting up an interesting and vital background for character stories to take place. That’s what that is all about. P: It gives you a choice for later on. H: That’s it. I’m a great believer in playing by a set of rules, and what I’ve done is given myself a situation that is fairly open-ended, with certain parameters against which walls are built. That’s the safest way in the long run. J: Have you got it all written out? H: I’ve got notes. I have several files full of material that will never be used. It’s too obscure, but necessary. It’s there because it justifies what I’m doing and it means that I can generally answer questions that I would raise. On the other hand, whenever I would reach the point in writing or conceiving the material where I’m lost, I go back to my original premise and all the answers are there usually, because the concepts and situations tend to derive from the characters themselves. That’s a very handy situation. I’m very much into organization. Organization is the single most important thing about any material I do, and I like the idea of controlling and organizing the continuity because there has to be an internal logic of sorts for me to be amused. And I have to be entertained if I’m to be enthusiastic. P: How do you go about researching American Flagg! then?

44â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

H: I’m a good study and a good read and I absorb information pretty quickly, and hold onto it. I’m also a clipper. I mean I’ve got note files on different situations. For example the zeppelin hijack sequence was inspired by China’s first hijack a couple of years back. J: Where did Bob Violence come from? H: Actually Bob Violence is a character I created eight or nine years ago. I used to live in Queens in an apartment building on the same floor as Walt Simonson, Allen Milgrom, and some other people, and one night we were just sitting around in the middle of the night, around three or four in the morning, and we all started talking about silly comics. We came up with “The Adventures of Bob Violence”: the ultimate superhero. “When you’re threatened by mob violence, get a hold of Bob Violence.” And that’s basically where that came from. You will see Bob Violence sometime in the next year as a back-up feature in American Flagg!, along with “Tales of the Plexus Rangers” and “Luther & Raul.” P: So this is continuing the research you did on the characters. Actually using the background information. H: Yeah. The fact is that what makes the Flagg! stuff work for me, I think, is the consistency of the pattern. You know that something is happening on every side. I also don’t feel that it is necessary to shovel the information to you. J: Like Raul, whose origin you’ll never reveal? H: I think it’s not relevant. I know why. I’d considered laying it out in #13, and I said, “To Hell with you guys!” It’s not necessary. It really isn’t. P: Do you want to comment on your years at Marvel? I know they weren’t too happy for you. H: Well I‘ve had a career that hasn’t been too consistent, mainly because when I’m interested I’m good and when I’m not . . . I’m not a machine. I haven’t been very proud or happy with a lot of the work I’ve done. On the other hand, it’s my job and it’s what I have to do for a living. I suspect that physically speaking I’ve always been capable of doing better work than I’ve done. On the other hand, emotionally speaking I was very detached from the stuff. My feeling is, and I’ll stick with this, the two-and-a-half years that I took off from doing comics are probably the best years I’ve ever spent. It gave me a completely different focus and a different set of self-images. It also taught me a great deal about other things. It also taught me that I didn’t need comics to make my living. P: I think a lot of professional artists are very narrow-minded and think they can only do comics, but they could extend their talents to do other things like advertising, records, etc.

paul duncan

and

j o h n j a c k s o n / 1 9 8 4 â•…â•… 45

H: That’s not really true in a sense because most comic book artists in the States are prepared and emotionally trained to do nothing but superhero comics. I made my living doing advertising. I did storyboards. I did paperback covers. There are a lot of guys who can do that. On the other hand most of the guys are superhero guys, and you can’t use that technique to draw women in kitchens selling hairspray. And that’s what I’ve done. P: A lot of your work involves the pulps and space opera. H: The fact is that I created that stuff in the early ’70s. I went through a period where I was very much interested in space opera and now I’m not. The things I’m interested in now are very much different from five years ago. P: What are you interested in now then? H: Right now I’m interested in the material I’m doing in Flagg! The next few projects that I do will have a great similarity to the techniques used in Flagg! I feel that Flagg! is the first adult work I have ever done. I don’t mean adult product. I mean for me it’s the first mature material. I feel that my previous work was for school. This is the real stuff. Thematically speaking, in terms of attitude, this is what I intend to do for the rest of my life. P: You’re very interested in the style of dress of the ’40s. H: I think someone described it yesterday . . . it’s glamour. One of the things I’ve always been very comfortable with is costume. I’m a good costume designer. J: Very stylish. H: Yes. And it is something that has sustained me for a long time. I like that period of clothing. In pictures of street scenes of the ’30s, ’40s, and ’50s everybody was dressed. I like drawing people with clothes. It is more interesting, and it is another way of establishing character. J: What comics are you interested in? H: I like Love and Rockets because it’s well drawn and well written. Thor: because Walter does it and Walter has a sense of humor. No, I’m serious. Walter has invested the material with a wit that the book hasn’t seen in a long time. There’s stuff I look at, like Gil Kane’s work, which I think is some of Gil’s best work of his life. And I see the European material. Italian. French. P: Do you think the European material is more mature than American comics? H: Yes and no. We have things over them that they cannot do. Our material is considerably more vital. They are very much obsessed with the polishing of images at the expense of stories. There’s no content in terms of stories. There’s a couple of obvious exceptions.

46â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

J: There’s not much continuity. H: No. English comics are very much like American comics. The guys who influenced you guys are the same that influenced us. One of the things that came out last night over dinner was that most of the guys that are drawing British comics now are about our age (early thirties), influenced by exactly the same material and the only thing that’s different is the accent. In Europe you have very finished drawings that you have to stop and look at, and then you go on to the next one. There’s no continuity. There’s no moving force. P: Do you think the material has to be very cinematic? H: No. I think that the connection between comics and film has been far too overstated. I don’t think it’s as strong a connection as anyone would like you to believe. There are, obviously, similarities, but I think comics have a completely different set of rules. You’ve got no sound, no camera, no movement. P: But you can have layouts to imply movement. H: But why try to imitate a movie when you can develop techniques in context with comics? P: Do you think that’s a mistake a lot of people make? H: I don’t think it’s a mistake. I think it’s something you have to learn through. If you remember my early work I used to do nine-, ten-, and eleven-panel pages. That breaks all the images. You become obsessed with the minutiae of images instead of the basic overall effect of images. I now try to keep my pages to a maximum of six panels. Sometimes seven or eight, but I prefer four. Not because I’m lazy (those images are polished and finished) but because the pictures I’m doing are fairly complex, and I don’t want to make them postage stamp size. J: The panels in the first three issues of American Flagg! were very small though. H: There was a very good reason for that. It’s no accident. My feeling was that I was creating a situation where the main character was experiencing a tremendous disorientation, and I thought it was important to disorient the reader as well. I don’t think that many people were aware of the fact that in the first issue I wasn’t giving you anything. I was giving you exactly the same thing Reuben was getting. With the fourth issue it was getting simpler, because he’s been there for a couple of issues. J: Because he started to realize what was going on. P: You did an issue of Indiana Jones. H: It was fun. It was an easy job. I can do that sort of stuff in my sleep. I know

paul duncan

and

j o h n j a c k s o n / 1 9 8 4 â•…â•… 47

basic ’30s and ’40s design pretty well. They offered me the book on a regular basis. It’s basic Dominic Fortune stuff. P: You did a Dominic Fortune for Marvel Premiere, inked by Terry Austin. H: That job was pencilled in 1975 in one day. I sat down at nine one morning and worked on it right through ’til ten the next day. Twenty-five hours. J: Do you often do that? H: Not anymore. I can’t. My body just doesn’t agree with that kind of behavior. I was twenty-four years old. I was really young. I was originally going to ink that, and Len Wein was supposed to write it because it was his plot. Len never got around to it. That’s why it ended up being scripted by David Micheline, who in those days was a Len Wein Jr., and then Terry inked it. I was delighted. It was just great. P: Do you like Terry Austin’s inking? H: Yes I do. Everybody does. Terry has a very strong personal inking style that still makes you look like yourself, only laminated. P: Michael Fleisher, who does Jonah Hex, uses a lot of famous books to help him formulate his own ideas on how to write. Do you do the same sort of thing; use certain books as influences? H: Oh sure. It’s pretty obvious that the influence of issues seven through nine is Steinbeck’s Grapes of Wrath, making the dust bowl a blizzard. That’s about the extent of that. Really it’s Time magazine more than anything else. News bits that evolve into stories. P: Do you think it’s important for you to have a world and to keep it separate from everyone else’s? H: I don’t believe in the idea of a company creating an overall continuity. I can understand why fans want it that way. Children want neatness and order and arrangement. As I said earlier I want a world whose rules are functional and that’s really all that counts. I don’t want any Reuben Flagg/E-Man cross-overs. I don’t think they’d work. American Flagg! has a point of view and ethos of its own that has no function in context with other products. I think it would be silly to impose it on another product or to impose another product on it. J: Are you allowed to say “no” if tomorrow First suddenly said there’s going to be a Flagg/E-Man cross-over? H: For the duration of my presence on the book I don’t think it’s going to happen. Quite seriously, Flagg! is doing very well. There’s no reason to do that. I don’t think it’s doing well because of the characters but because of the enthusiasm that I’ve managed to invest in the material. I have no idea what the book is going to look like or read like when I leave the book. What makes

48â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

An example of Chaykin’s use of page design to suggest his protagonist’s attempt to make sense of a disorienting world. From American Flagg! #1 (1983).

paul duncan

and

j o h n j a c k s o n / 1 9 8 4 â•…â•… 49

the book work is that it’s one artist and writer doing the job. I don’t think the book can work if it was done by two people. You’d have too much opposition and too much confusion. P: How do you go about producing a story? H: My procedure is I do the plot first, outline the story, no matter how many issues it covers. I figure out where to cut it for each issue and I diagram it. For example, for the twenty-pagers I have a piece of paper with twenty squares. I do a paragraph for each page. I then sit down with my layout pad, which is full-size, and I do five pages at a time. I approach each page as a scene, and it’s just a matter of building it up. I’m very loose with the schematic. I spend a great deal of time ordering the pictures. I have an establishing shot to give you an idea of where your characters are located. Then I have a shot to show the relationship in size of the two (or three) characters, and then identifiable close-ups. One of the reasons, for example, why I didn’t think much of Thriller is that I had no idea of when it took place. Where. Who the characters were. How they related to each other in terms of physical space. And why. There was nothing to give these clues. I occasionally do ambiguous work. On the other hand all the information is there, you just have to find it. I don’t think being ambiguous is the same as being obscure or unclear. P: You put it all there, but you don’t explain it to the reader. You leave it to the reader to find out. H: Yes. Right. A lot of comics tend to view their readership as a bunch of morons. I think readers are attuned to be morons by what they read. I don’t think morons create moron material. Moron material creates a moron audience. I spend a great deal of my life on this stuff and I want more attention than six minutes in the bathroom. I think you should spend a little bit more time on it. Also you get more for your money. P: Yeah. I find I have to read it a few times. H: No. You don’t have to read it a few times. You are wrong. Read it slower. You’re used to reading comics [flipping pages quickly] and that’s it. I know it’s a difficult book to read. It’s tough, and I intended it to be. Quite frankly, I’ve been doing stuff all throughout that is a little dangerous, and I didn’t want to do a book for the same audience that was reading The Crusher. I’m doing the book for someone who wants to spend a bit more time on it. It’s dense. I mean I set up the plot for issues seven through nine on page five of #1. You just have to turn the book upside down.

50â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

J: I tend to sit there with the present issue and back issues to refer back. H: That, I can see. But that’s what books are for. You can’t refer back with a movie. On the other hand, when I’m reading I constantly look back at what I’ve read. It’s a personal relationship between you and the book, and I like that. J: There’s much more personality in the characters than most books I’ve read. H: That’s because that is the main interest. The characters aren’t there just to punch each other out. They’re characters. I try to give them as much humor, depth, and human flesh as I can. Of course they’re going to reflect my quirks and personality, but on the other hand I’m more interested in creating a world where people are not so “black hat/white hat,” as we are used to seeing. Where people, like in the real world, turn on friends for reasons that seem obscure. Where petty motivation becomes very big. People can be very small-minded and selfish and humane, and be the same person. Flagg is a moral guy but he’s also a bit of a moral weakling in some cases. In most comics the hero’ll come in, see that the situation is a swillpile and say, “Let’s do something about this.” But in real life you’d get your eggs shot off. Flagg is not stupid by any means. He’s a bright, sensitive character with a great deal of respect for his body, and a great deal of love for his own pelt, and has no interest in getting it shot to Hell. He’s reasonably cautious and doesn’t do stupid things. When he does do stupid things he pays for it. P: Do you have to have the humor to offset the violence? H: Oh, yes. No question about it. I feel that one of the things about the book that makes it work is seeing sexual content done in a genuinely humorous point of view. Without intensity. There is intensity but the main thrust is that it is kind of funny. P: I think some of the humor is wrong. I don’t think Luther should be such an idiot. H: I do. I think it makes perfect sense. I really do. Luther is a moron, and I love the character. Even though he is a moron he has a lot more compassion than Reuben has. Flagg tends to be expediently compassionate, so I think Luther fits perfectly. He’s also a good counterpart for Raul. J: I like the way Flagg is no Superman. When the sixteen-year-old girl died in #2, Superman would have turned back time until she was alive again. H: I wanted to reintroduce the idea of small human tragedy. As an audience we become inured to the concept of the destruction of entire civilizations through novas and explosions, without any real response to the stuff that’s really tragic. In the real world I’ve been known to throw temper fits when I

paul duncan

and

j o h n j a c k s o n / 1 9 8 4 â•…â•… 51

haven’t had a made bed. I mean, let’s face it, when your dinner is lousy . . . it’s the small things in life that drive you nuts. My wife works with me pretty closely. She colors the book and also comes in at the fine tuning stage and sort of cleans up after me. “How can you do that? That’s terrible.” The procedure is that after I outline it I spot the blacks and my assistant fills them in. I get it back and put in the duotone. He then erases the pencils and cleans up the borders and lettering balloons. Then Leslie takes it and goes over the artwork, making sure all the blacks are dense. It’s very hard to explain what she does. My wife was a textile designer and she has a very strong graphic sense, and she’ll tell me what to do or do it herself. There are some things that I just have to do. Like I have a personal quirk that you’ve probably never noticed, where I put a light under the nose. It’s a painter’s trick to make the nose come forward. Then we both work on the paste-ups. There are a lot of them. We are not going to draw those things three or four times over. That’d be ridiculous. P: Do you find it handy having your wife there to bounce ideas off? H: Yeah, She’s the functional aesthetics editor and good taste editor. She’s very sharp. She had all the basic stuff needed for a comics colorist with the exception of dramatic sense. She hadn’t used her coloring for anything else but decorative coloring. We fought like cats and dogs on our first two issues then I said to myself, “Why am I fighting like this? She’s coming up with things that work real well.” They were not what I would do but on the other hand they are at least as effective. And she also keeps me in check if I get too crazy or too clever. The basic climactic element of #12 was her idea. It was my story, but she figured out how to do it. The piece of dialogue. You’ll like #12. J: I like them all. H: Number 12 is one I’m particularly proud of because it looks like one thing but it’s not. A lot of what I do is contradiction. I like the idea of using dialogue to contradict the image. I’ve done that more than once. At the end of #6, for example, I’d done this whole story about these counter-espionage agents working against the Plex, when the news reports said they were working for the Plex, against the bad guys they were representing. Not a lot of people picked up on that. Most of contemporary politics is based on Doublespeak and there’s a lot of that in Flagg! I mean, I think that everybody assumed that Scheiskopf was crazy, but Scheiskopf is not crazy. He is just as sane as Flagg and just as pragmatic. Scheiskopf is less humane (and less human). He is someone who wants what he wants and is willing to step on anybody’s face to get it. I don’t regard him as pyschopathic, just self-oriented.

52â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

The conversation turns toward the business of comics. H: First is in Chicago and I’m in New York City, which is a thousand miles apart. I speak to the guys at First at least once a week, but they don’t edit me directly. I do all that at home. P: Do you prefer that? H: No, I don’t. I like working in the same city my clients are in. P: You like being directed? H: It isn’t that. Until very recently most of the major comics companies were based in New York, and when you work in comics you work in New York. There was very much an immediate response. You delivered your work by hand. Your editor told you he liked it or he didn’t like it. Everything was fine. It was the same day. There’s a sense of removal when you work away from them. The way the business has changed now . . . Eclipse in Northern California, Pacific was in San Diego, First in Chicago, DC and Marvel in New York . . . half the business is working in places other than their clients. I put my stuff into a box for the Federal Express office. It goes out and First gets it the next day. It’s the detachment from it that I don’t really like. P: You like to be part of something. H: Yeah. For example, Marvel is located almost halfway between my apartment and my office. I pass it almost every day, and it would be very convenient. It would be the cheapest bus. P: You work in a studio with Walt Simonson and Jim Sherman. What is that like? H: Very comfortable. We’ve been there for six years now. The personnel have changed, but me and Walter have been there from the beginning. There was originally me, Walter, Val Mayerik, and Jim Starlin, then Jim Sherman and Frank Miller. Frank moved out about a year ago. Allen Milgrom was there for a little bit. The schedule is that I come in before nine. Walter rolls in about noon and works late. Sherman rarely comes in at all. So actually I only really see Walter, and then only for the second half of my day. P: Does the fact that someone else is working in the same place inspire you to do better? H: Yeah. Simonson and I have known each other for a very long time, twelve or thirteen years. It’s a constant back and forth, getting up and taking a stretch and to take a look at what’s going on, and vice versa. There’s also a lot of chatting, gossiping. It’s a lot of fun. P: Do you get your artwork back? H: Of course. J: How much do you sell your original artwork for?

paul duncan

and

j o h n j a c k s o n / 1 9 8 4 â•…â•… 53

H: I don’t. I make enough money from Flagg! to well afford not to sell the art, and I rather like it. I like to look at it. J: You have it all over your wall? H: Actually, no. I have none of the Flagg! stuff on the wall. I’ve never got around to framing any of the comics stuff. We haven’t got that much wall space. Most of the stuff I have on the walls are paintings. I have one drawing on the wall, one of the few Walter Simonson originals in circulation. Actually I have a whole pile of illustrations by old American artists you guys have never heard of. I also have some pieces by friends. I have a great collection of Wrightson stuff. P: What sort of fraternity does there exist in America for writers/artists/ etc.? H: My generation had a particularly tightly spun fraternal group, mainly because we were the only guys of our age. When we came in the early ’70s everyone was either our age or fifty. We also hung out together and made the world safe for the younger guys. It’s less so now because the generations have come in after us: Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz. John Byrne has been working for as long as we have, but he was living in Canada, so nobody knew him. He’s been living in the States for a couple of years now. It’s less tight than it used to be. Leslie and I socialize with Walt and Weezie (Louise), and Allen Milgrom and his wife and a couple of other couples. We’re also older now, working harder, and also getting middle-class, and middle-aged too I might add. P: Do you think that now the independents are here the writers and artists are getting too much control? Too much power? Like they miss deadlines. H: People are always missing deadlines and the fact is that it’s a matter of accepting a few facts of life. The material has to be in at a certain place at a certain time, particularly in America where the sales of comics are directly related to the regularity of the material. I think a major factor in the success of American Flagg! is the fact that it’s been there every month with no (f)lagging in quality, and a tremendous consistency. I think it hurt Frank with Ronin, when it didn’t come out on a regular schedule. And Camelot 3000 as well. P: Have you ever missed a deadline? H: Not by anything to count. I mean the Batman annual that came out last winter was a year late. I’ve been a week late with some things, which by comic book standards is early. And I might add that I also occasionally send my covers in late because it’s difficult to shift gears in the middle of one job to come up with a cover for something two months down the line. And also because I do the covers at home, and Leslie colors them, we can make up that time later.

54â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

When I finish a job I tend to sit down for two days and not think. Just put the brain away. P: Have you ever had any problems changing stories and developing them as you go along? H: I plan my stuff out very, very tightly. When I sold American Flagg! to First, what they bought was the plot for the first year. Obviously the details of the story had to be hammered out. I believe in planning. Any good writer will tell you that the way to write a book is to know how it is going to end first. One of the reasons why I’ve always worked very successfully in comics is because writers like to work with me, because I’m a good plot man. I think it’s pretty obvious to anybody that the plots of the Dominic Fortune stories that ran in Rampaging Hulk were mine. I’m capable of doing completely logical stupid shit. The Flagg! stuff is a bit more complex, so obviously they take a bit more time. For example, the basic plot of #15 through #18 took about ten days to work out, mainly because in the middle of it I came up with an idea that was too good to scrap so I had to go back and throw away some stuff. So I wrote the second half of the story around this one idea. It is very much intrinsic to what Flagg! is all about. It’s a solid concept and I’m really pleased. P: Are you going to introduce more and more Plexus Rangers? H: You will see more of them. In the peace-keeping mission you’ll see Soviet Rangers. P: The whole world it seems is governed by the Plex corporation. Will we be seeing more of it? H: No, because it’s not very interesting. The book is about Reuben Flagg and his echelon. It is conceivable that I could have him run for president, but no. I want to do small stories. The following selections are outtakes from unpublished portions of Paul Duncan and John Jackson’s interview presented as pull-quotes in the original. One of the things that has bothered me recently about comics is that it is very incestuous. It gets its point of view from other comics. Comics are derived from pulps. It’s very obvious that the basic stories are pulp stories. And I’m just not interested. For me to do something like that I would have to put it through the kind of revisions that would make the characters aware of their presence in material that they should be ashamed of. Flagg represents me in the book. He’s nothing like me. He’s 6’ 3”. I’m not. He has the square jaw. He’s the alter-ego. He’s the voice.

paul duncan

From American Flagg! #1 (1983).

and

j o h n j a c k s o n / 1 9 8 4 â•…â•… 55

56â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

It’s a tough job. I feel a certain responsibility to solve each issue’s problem in the next issue, because there’s always things that I feel I can do better. It can drive you crazy. When you become a comic book artist one of the responsibilities you take on is doing it on time. A lot of people just don’t understand that time is one of the elements of producing the material. I’m not being paid for the work I do, but for the money my client will make with the use of my work. And when the use of my work starts costing my client money, I’m not a commercial artist. For the most part comic book audiences are more interested in badly drawn barbarians over well-drawn women on telephones. I’m more interested in the well-drawn women on telephones. Luther is a kind of Saturday morning cartoon version of Reuben Flagg.

Howard Chaykin: Heading for Time2 Ed Br ya n t / 1 9 8 5 From Mile High Futures, August 1985, pp. 3–4, 24–26. Reprinted by permission of Chuck Rozanski, Mile High Comics, Inc.

One of the most successful creator/artist/writers in comics, Howard Chaykin is only thirty-five. A Newark, New Jersey, native, he attended Columbia College in Chicago and the School of Visual Arts in New York. A professional comics artist and illustrator since 1971, Chaykin’s work has appeared in magazines from every major comics publisher. He has pioneered in the “graphic novel” medium, serving as artist for Samuel R. Delany’s Empire; The Stars My Destination by Alfred Bester; and The Swords of Heaven, The Flowers of Hell by Michael Moorcock. In 1982 he worked with then-fledgling First Comics to develop American Flagg! In twenty-five issues, Flagg! has arguably become the most famous, best-selling, and most interesting title from any of the alternative publishers. In the past two years, it has garnered nine Eagle Awards. The book has attracted the devoted readership of many non-comics readers, including such writers as George R. R. Martin, Edward Bryant, Roger Zelazny, and F. Paul Wilson. Hard Times, the graphic novel edition of the first three episodes of American Flagg! with some added material, has recently been published by First.

MILE HIGH FUTURES: First, this may be a really off-the-wall question, but I was recently shown some Blackhawk comics that Mark Evanier wrote a few years ago, for which you did the covers. It strikes me that Blackhawk, from the covers, might well be Reuben Flagg’s grandfather. Is there any possibility of that being true? HOWARD CHAYKIN: I hate that continuity shit! No. These are comic book characters, Bud. I know there’s a long established precedent of Dan Reed and Brit Reed and all those Reed people, but no. The fact of the matter is that, like a lot of my peers, I draw, occasionally, a generic hero head. Quite frankly, 57

58â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

in terms of the grandfather, it might very well have been the place where I worked the head out in the first place. If that makes any sense. As for that continuity stuff, gag. MHF: Okay, let’s get serious here. I expect you saw the infamous Psychology Today article about the— HC: Oh my, did I ever! I read it in the Port Authority bus terminal, a more convenient and logical spot . . . MHF: Indeed. One of the things the author charged contemporary comics with was a predominant cynicism. Where does Reuben Flagg come into this and where does the comic come in? Is Flagg really an innocent surrounded by cynical characters or do you see a more predominant cynicism in the magazine? How do you look at this? HC: Well, I’m thirty-four years old. I’m very much a child of the ’60s and ’70s. The idea of comics being a) particularly more or less cynical than other media, or b) responsible for an infusion of cynicism in American youth is absurd. This guy clearly, I think, makes two rather mistaken assumptions. I’ll answer the question directly in a minute, but let me rattle on. A) I think, frankly that DeMott, the author of the piece, presumed that the artists he was talking about were his age. That’s a major factor. In his mind the people who were producing this material were in their late forties and early fifties and were sort of exploiting children. I am fortunately a lot closer to my audience in age. And b) this guy thinks that comics have anything to do with cynicism? Hasn’t he ever heard rock ’n’ roll? Shit, back to 1954, rock ’n’ roll has expressed an anti-establishment, “burn down the world” attitude that comics haven’t even begun to nibble up to. I mean, come on. In directly answering the question, I have no idea. I’m reasonably cynical, but I also have a tendency to be a bit of a naif. It’s one of the problems that I wrestled with in the book from word one. Flagg is, to a certain extent, somewhat of a reflection of my personality, and reflects some of the cynicism, but also is an easily deluded romantic, which defines me perfectly. MHF: This question is not meant to sound as heavy as it is, but I’ll ask it anyway. What the hell; see where it leads. HC: You could get a really funny answer and we could get big laughs. Go for it. MHF: I was curious as to what kind of moral freight Flagg! carries as a book. HC: Be more specific because I know where you’re going but I’d rather you said it. MHF: Let me dig my own hole, right? HC: Yeah, why not? I’m not going to help.

e d b r y a n t / 1 9 8 5 â•…â•… 59

Reuben Flagg’s view of America blends realism and romanticism. From American Flagg! #3 (1983).

MHF: Probably it involves that standard question about artists and writers and whether they do have any public responsibility or not in dealing with the public through what they write or what they draw? HC: I walked away from comics in 1980. I went off and made my living elsewhere: paperbacks and editorial illustration. At the time, I had convinced myself that I had outgrown comics. The fact of the matter was that I hadn’t outgrown anything but the content of comics. The content of comics, generally speaking, bores my ass off. I am not interested in teenage power fantasies.

60â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

American Flagg! explored aspects of sex not generally acknowledged in most mainstream comic books of the day. From American Flagg! #7 (1984).

I’m interested in adult power fantasies because I’m an adult and I have power fantasies. But I am not interested in the kind of issues and problems that have been dealt with in comics. I’m not interested in the ethos expressed in most modern comics. I’m not interested in the level of craft maintained in the writing or the art. It bores my butt off. What I was trying to do with Flagg! was to create a book that somewhat compromised the position, that looked like a commercial comic book, that didn’t have the patina of the “graphic novel,” so that it could be disregarded as simply an aberration or a pimple. That it looked like a mainstream comic book, that it felt like a mainstream comic book, that

e d b r y a n t / 1 9 8 5 â•…â•… 61

it used to an alarming degree, to some people I’m sure, all the appliances and emblems of mainstream comics, down to the point of occasionally having the characters speak with exclamation points over their heads. And yet was about stuff that hadn’t even been considered in comic books before. I’m an urban boy and the issue of sex in comics has always been dealt with either in terms of the positive sense like Sierra Club post cards and pretty pictures and ethereal romance or in sort of the lustful, sneering glances of the Nazis. I don’t have a great deal in common with Nazis except for lustful sneering glances. I know a whole lot more about sex than I know about violence. Simply on the basis of personal experience. I’m more interested in sex than violence. It’s funnier. I wanted to do a book that touched new ground, simply, in some cases, for the sake of touching the new ground. In school they always told us to write about what you know. Most of the non-action sequences in Flagg! are based on experiences that I went through and the experiences of a very close friend. There’s very little that’s been made up in that sense. So I don’t know. MHF: Do you have a perception of the kind of audience that the magazine is going to? I guess what I’m getting at is— HC: Who reads Flagg!? MHF: Yeah, who reads Flagg!? I know a lot of people who, in the standard phrase, don’t generally read comics who are reading Flagg! I want to know whether this is a happy accident or to what degree you’re going beyond the regular comics readership deliberately to— HC: There’s no way you can go deliberately beyond the regular readership, other than taking the book and making the people who don’t read comic books read it at gunpoint. If they’re buying the book, they are buying comic books. The fact of the matter is that, as far as I can tell, we do have a certain percentage of readership that starts every letter with “I don’t read comics, but . . .” I don’t think it’s a humongous part of our readership. Because if it was, they’d be reading comic books. I had a real nice experience on Saturday. I went to my gym for the first time in a couple weeks and I was wearing my American Flagg! T-shirt to work out in. One of the guys who I’d never seen at the gym before asked me whether I liked American Flagg! too because it was his favorite comic book. And I told him I drew it. He was not a comic book fan. He only reads Love and Rockets and American Flagg! He hasn’t seen or heard of comic books. He’s thirty-eight years old, hadn’t done anything with comics since his late teens. He didn’t quite understand what I meant when I said I wrote it. He assumed I lettered it. We ended up having a conversation where I explained to him about comic book fans basically, about who was reading my comic book. I wish there were more of him. The impression I have is that I’m read by a lot

62â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

of people who read the independent books. It’s a cross-reference. I get a lot of loony toons, a lot of geeks; I also get a lot of very straightforward, sort of upright guys who are delighted finally to see a comic book hero with a receding hairline. There is an aspect of identification. I’m a little worried about guys of thirty-five who are entertained by the same thing that kept them happy when they were twelve. I’m serious. The idea of being perversely happy over having read the same comic book for twenty years and still enjoying it really makes my skin crawl. MHF: Are you perceiving any gender differences in your audience? I’m just wondering how this breaks down or if anybody had an idea or if you have an opinion. HC: We have a lot of mail from girls and a lot of mail from women. A couple of interesting propositions. Since I’ve had long experience with talking to strangers on the telephone, I don’t follow up on it. I’ve gotten some really lovely mail. I’ve met a lot of nice ladies, nice women, nice girls at conventions. There’s also a certain hostility. Feminists who feel the need to rail at this comic book clearly have no other problems. I really do feel that in the general sense, in the real world, I’m so small time that anybody who’s got the time to rail about my material really doesn’t have anything bothersome or worrisome in their lives so they must be looking for something . . . It’s like all those kids in the ’60s who were perfectly happy, middle-class, gentile suburban kids, who felt the need to become Indians. MHF: Are you still getting flak about preoccupation with women’s lingerie and so forth? HC: Every issue. Big deal. So I’m not obsessed with motorcycles. Come on. I mean, for example, there’s a personality poster floating around these days of a woman spread-eagled on the hood of an automobile, and it freaked me out. I didn’t understand what it meant. I’m thirty-four years old. I don’t drive a car; I never have. I’m going to be having to learn to drive a car real soon because I’m moving to America. But I don’t associate automobiles and sex. Okay? My wife and I were at this art expo some weeks back at the coliseum in New York City. There were all these sex and car posters, and they really made my skin kinda crawl. I’d always heard that guys bought cars, you know, wink, wink, nudge. But I had never made the direct connection; I feel like a bit of a naif. But it really sort of gave me the creeps. I feel my obsessions are healthy. I’m sure everybody else thinks that way about their obsessions. I don’t impose my judgment on their obsessions, leave me alone with mine. I’m not going to tell these guys they shouldn’t have women lying on automobiles except that in the summer time the things get really hot.

e d b r y a n t / 1 9 8 5 â•…â•… 63

MHF: Blister time. HC: Really. MHF: That gets into S&M. HC: Really, I mean, uck. Give me a break. Look, I’m not denying it. On the other hand, what I love is the fact that anybody who objects to it obviously doesn’t see much of MTV either. It’s also something you haven’t seen in comics for a while, particularly associated with a reasonably literate voice. In most cases that type of comic book is associated with a “hey, look at those tits” kind of mentality. And I do have an attitude of “hey, look at those tits,” but at the same time I’m reading Simone de Beauvoir, so what can I tell you? Intelligence and sex are things that have never been hung together particularly well in comics and I’m trying to do my best. MHF: You’ve already spoken to this to some degree, but just to go back a little farther, where does the genesis of Flagg! come from, as best you can determine? With most projects, it seems as though for all of us, there’s at some point, one specific seed that sort of germinated, metastasized, or whatever. HC: The fact of the matter is that the material started out as a high-tech version of Gunsmoke. The two specific parts of science fiction that are my fetishes are post-holocaust negative utopias and ultimate worlds. I love ’em. I’ve read Worlds of the Imperium more times than I care to admit. I’ve always wanted to do a post-holocaust book that was funny. You know, like a Li’l Abner and On the Beach. And I wanted to do a new high-tech version of Gunsmoke. Gunsmoke is the ultimate American mythos, down to Chester, everything else. When I introduced the element of media and television and subliminal information, that’s when it exploded. It started getting crazy. The characters started generating themselves from left field. I don’t remember the experience. I’m going through the experience again right now and I’m wondering whether, in three years’ time, I will have forgotten the genesis process of the new book. My wife gave me a little notebook to carry with me in my shoulder bag in case I think while I’m walking. Because I have a habit of having great ideas when I’m walking and trying to remember them when I get home. It’s like waking up in the middle of the night and trying to write things down. I’ve gotten lists and lists of characters and descriptions, most of them I suspect will not be used but it’s how it works. Constantly filling up pages until two ideas become a thought and two thoughts become a concept. MHF: When Flagg! started out, when did you realize that this was going to be some kind of a real success? HC: When I finished the first issue and took a look at it and I said, well, either I’ve shot my wad on this or I’ve got something hot here. I recognized that

64â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

I had something going. Simonson seemed to think that it was pretty good. Everybody at the office seemed to think it was pretty good. I had the first three issues completed and we went to a conclave of European and American artists in this city and my publisher was there. He had a pile of the first three issues as photocopies and handed them over to one of the fanzine editors. He seemed very impressed and that was when it really exploded, from that day. I’m amused now, of course, that the issue of Comics Interview that I appeared in as a last minute attempt is now being promoted as the American Flagg! issue of Comics Interview, wondering whether Richard Goldwater and Gene Pelc are well remembered for their involvement in American Flagg! MHF: I know the epiphany for me came with the first issue on about page four when I realized that I had to go back and start over. I was reading it the same way I would have read the X-Men. HC: The less is more concept has been the modus operandi of almost all the popular arts over the past couple of years. I finally came to the conclusion that, in most cases, more is more. And less is less. The only place that less is more is when you’re so good at being less that your moreness is just wonderful. How cosmic that sounds. I felt that one of the things that was wrong with comics was that we had reached a point where we were using phenomenally complex means to express phenomenally simple ideas. It was time instead to start expressing some complex ideas. The fact of the matter is that in comparison, outside the world of comics, Flagg! is just a comic book. In the context of comics, Flagg! is an extremely dense, textured, overlaid series of ideas. Face it, the basic plot of the average comic book is that one guy mistakes the other guy as a bad guy and they beat the shit out of each other for twenty-three pages. I can do that in one page. And then get on to the jokes. I also feel that I had a responsibility to try to restore some humor as opposed to stupidity to comics. Comics have become stupid instead of funny. And dulling and numbing instead of energizing. MHF: One of my real preoccupations is film and I think Flagg! has a very cinematic approach. HC: Oh, I don’t. MHF: Really? HC: No. Not at all. MHF: I guess the way I’m looking at this is that when a reader looks at Flagg! the reader is looking into layered scenes and the foreground and the background are often equally important. This is a high degree of visualization that other comics just don’t have. You’re in no way trying to go for a movie effect then?

e d b r y a n t / 1 9 8 5 â•…â•… 65

HC: No. I’m going for a comic book effect. I draw comic books. When I got started in comics, I felt that comics and cinema were alike. They were two friendly brothers. As an adult, I’ve come to the conclusion that the connection between comics and film is grossly overstated. I really do. There’s a lot of overlap, of course, but there is no more overlap between comics and film than there is between comics and the short story. It’s just a matter of different tools. By cinematic effect, I thought you meant repeated images and things like that and I occasionally do that. But I’m trying to do illustration. Most guys who work in comics don’t have the faintest idea of what a picture is. They think that drawing and picture-making are the same thing. All I’m doing is doing pictures that are a bit more complex than you are used to seeing. Rather than doing twenty-two panels on the page to express an idea as these postage stamps, I would rather do five or six panels but make sure they are damn complex so that they give a lot of information. There is primary information and there is secondary information. My feeling has been all along that comics have been getting too simple and who the hell wants to spend the kind of money they’re asking for comics for something that you can read in four minutes? I’m not a collector; I’m not interested in taking these things and putting them away for posterity. I’m buying them for entertainment, if I’m buying them at all, which I’m not. I have to assume that my audience deserves a bit more entertainment for their dollars or dollar and a quarter. I don’t like comic books that you can read through real fast; they bore me. I’m just not interested. I’m not interested in reading stupid, simplistic, simple-minded novels either, unless they are well written. I’m reading Jim Thompson now. His novels are not stupid; they’re occasionally simple-minded but they are certainly well written in a twisted sort of way. I don’t read comics much. I’m not real interested. MHF: Maybe I have been looking at this bass ackwards, in that from what you just said, you don’t see this as any extraordinary thing to put this kind of multilevel texture and detail into a comic, rather it’s a lack on the part of all the artists and writers who are not doing it. HC: I think the lack makes it extraordinary. But that it is extraordinary is embarrassing. I’ve said this more lately than I perhaps should, but the fact of the matter is that I produce what I guess is one of the five best comic books in the United States. And I think it’s a piece of shit. What’s really wrong with comics is that the rest of my peers are perfectly happy with the work they are producing, it seems to me. Obviously, people are going to say, “Ah, you’re full of shit; we all hate our work, just like you do.” But there seems to be a certain self-satisfaction rolling through the industry right now that sort of boggles my mind.

66â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

MHF: Sort of an endemic lack of ambition? HC: Well, there’s certainly ambition, but it’s for a house in the suburbs. Well, I want that suburb house too. The fact of the matter is that I’m very proud of the work I do. I work real hard at it. I feel that to a great extent I haven’t got much to be satisfied with. I can be proud of it but Flagg! has been school. It was, I think, and remains, the first adult work I’ve done in my life, the first piece of mature work I’ve done. It’s now time to do something else. The something else is in a gestation/post-gestation stage. It really is sort of floating back and forth. MHF: As Flagg! becomes a layer on layer, detail on detail, coherent future. You are doing what strikes me as the same sort of process as prose writers do when they are doing what they’re supposed to be doing, writing fiction. I’m just curious whether you have any background or interest in science fiction or futurology or any of that? HC: I grew up reading science fiction. I don’t read much of it anymore. For a lot of reasons, not the least of which is that I feel that to a great extent, science fiction has never dealt with the basic issue of how to write characters, or people, or sex, or anything other than gleaming, gaily painted spire spaceships. I grew up reading Heinlein. I thought Heinlein was just the be-all, endall of reality when I was a kid. I must have read The Starship Troopers five or six times. Like every kid I was a fascist. Heinlein defined that youth. I was a big Delany fan as well, and Moorcock. I’ve read everything Michael Moorcock has written. Bester. All the guys I work with, it’s been a real pleasure. But I don’t read much of it anymore. I’m not real interested. I don’t read fantasy much. Mainly what I read is for entertainment now; I read mostly thrillers. MHF: We’re both quite aware, I think, of the efforts over the last couple of years to get Flagg! recognized in what are previously purely prose arenas such as the Hugo and Nebula awards competitions. How do you react to that? HC: Very flattered and without a great deal of anticipation and enthusiasm. Science fiction is like illustration in terms of its relationship with comics and cartooning. In the sense that you have to take as an accepted fact that the first experience any artist in this country under the age of sixty probably had with art was with comics. The fine art of illustration, the first graphic arts, the first printed paper that that person had as an experience was comics. There is an enormous number of professional working illustrators whose first ambition was to become comic book artists. Who have now developed either contempt for the form or an overweening appreciation for the form based on their inability to do the job. It’s a peculiar form; it makes peculiar demands of peculiar skills. And the same thing is true of a lot of science-fiction writers.

e d b r y a n t / 1 9 8 5 â•…â•… 67

Their first experience with science fiction was reading Thrilling Wonder Stories and Planet Stories and that shit. But there is also a tremendous turning away from what it was that enthused you as a kid. I really didn’t think anything was going to come of it. I was delighted. Profoundly flattered. Made my day. I got real excited. I couldn’t work the rest of the day. I love recognition. I love attention, Christ! I’m afraid of dancing in public but I love people who tell me that I do it. MHF: Have you seen any backlash yet in the sense of specific, as opposed to general, elitism on the part of the prose-oriented writers? HC: I think it’s a very general elitism; I don’t think the elitism is specific. I think it’s a justified elitism. Science fiction, for the most part, is horseshit, but it’s a lot better than comics. MHF: But you haven’t been picked out for persecution. HC: Hardly. That’s silly. I only take persecution seriously from people I know. And then it’s a vendetta or grudge feud and kick out the jams. MHF: Belaboring the obvious, you’re a successful artist and writer. Tell me if I’m laboring under misapprehension here. But I get the impression in comics currently there continues to be a big move of artists going ahead and being hyphenated artist-writers. Do you have an overview of that? Do you think that all these people can both write and draw good stories? HC: I don’t think they can. Most comic book writers are marginally literate; most comic book artists are worse. I think comics still, with a very few exceptions, have been written with a very limited range of dialogue, vocabulary, and thought. Comics have been so encoded a system of writing for so many years that there are people working in comics who write comics who actually talk in comics. Names I will not mention. But there are guys around who speak in fluent Stan and Jack. It’s frightening to meet people for whom so much of their lives is their work. Like those guys you meet whose high school was the best time of their lives. Comics is not the best part of my life. It’s my job. I love it. There’s more to life than six panels a day. I think it’s wonderful; I like the idea because I think the job is of a piece. There’s a profound illiteracy floating through comic books. It’s frightening. MHF: That’s a line I’d like to pull out as a sidebar. HC: We are working in a business where the talent pool is a profound reflection of the taste of the audience. MHF: The same works for me too in prose, in science fiction. HC: That’s also true in science fiction because science-fiction professionals are not people who woke up one day and said yes, I think I’ll write some science fiction now. They’re people who grew up reading science fiction. It’s a

68â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

fan market. Just like comics. Comics has systematically eliminated any other audience except for itself. There’s an obsession with a specific kind of comic book, which we won’t mention here. And I’m just not real interested. I’m amazed and astonished at all the guys who are my age and older who can still be enthusiastic about it. MHF: Something we’ve touched on but I just want to hit it once more, belabor it. HC: No problem, I love being belabored. MHF: Oh, good, good. Aside from being something that is used to improve your art and make a living and all of the pragmatic considerations, there’s the adventure story aspect of American Flagg! and on beyond that, I have a feeling you’re using it as a medium to get at a lot of other things. I’m just curious about purposes with this book. HC: I’m not sure I’m following you. MHF: Basically, what’s the purpose of Flagg!? HC: Beyond the obvious of making my living and paying my rent and being a grown-up? MHF: Yes, exactly. I don’t get the impression that it’s strictly something there to get you a house in the suburbs. I don’t think it’s just a practice medium for you to become a better writer and artist. HC: I do. My feeling is that I do a job for a living. I spent most of the 1970s as a sort of marginally ethical character. The early ’70s let’s say. And I had an epiphany in the late ’70s, which I know Jews aren’t supposed to have but fuck it. I went through a fairly dramatic series of changes. The third aspect of which I address on a daily basis right now. I regrooved myself personally, then I did my career, and now I’m doing my body. But Flagg! really was the means to regain some attention, revitalize my career, and also to spread my wings and to see how far I could push. To stop the idea of saving this for later, maybe this will work here . . . you know. The fact is that I’m convinced, whether literally or figuratively, that there were pools going around within the certain context of comic book professionals seeing when Chaykin was going to fall off the planet. When was he going to blow this one? One of the nice things about my life over the past couple years is that I haven’t blown anything yet—of any consequence. I’ve screwed up here and there; there are a lot of things I would redo if I were doing them again on Flagg!, but for the time being I’m rather happy with the work that’s been done. I don’t give it a profound meaning beyond it’s part of my life and it’s past. I’m still writing it. I still write the book and, as I’m speaking to you right now, I’m blocking the cover for issue #29. But right now, my thoughts are more with the new book

e d b r y a n t / 1 9 8 5 â•…â•… 69

and with what else I’m going to be doing and with getting older and finding gray hairs in my temple. MHF: So there’s no sense of burnout yet with Flagg!? HC: I was burned out and then I went on a vacation. I’m feeling better now. MHF: So the lifespan is indefinite at this point. HC: I think so. I’ll be real curious to whether another artist can maintain the kind of enthusiasm and the kind of attention to detail. I think they can; I don’t know. MHF: What kind of reaction was elicited by the two issues when you had other artists? HC: Not wholly positive but hardly wholly negative. I could have been happier. On the other hand, I don’t feel I have any real right—I didn’t at that time, I believe I do now—to ask for the specific kind of enthusiasm that I would generate. It was still new to me at that time. The strip now has a life of its own. I did deliver issue #26 so there’s some volume there, there’s some content. It’s not as if it’s a twelve-issue-old product that someone’s coming in to fill in on. Now it’s got a life of its own. I do expect some enthusiasm. MHF: So it is possible that there will be other artists that will be doing work on it? HC: The new artist on the book is Bill Willingham. His first issue is issue #28. I’ll be seeing pages by him this week and I’m expecting wonders. But, hey, I’m an enthusiastic kind of guy. MHF: Speaking of enthusiasm, any film or TV interest in Flagg!? HC: That I don’t know. One of the things that my contract stipulates with First is that they function as my representative. Furthermore I distance myself from that even more by basically having my wife handle most of my business. She’s much better at it than I am. She is much less hostile than I am. And her personal involvement in it is somewhat strained through cheesecloth. So it’s less intense. I’m not really as hip as I should be, I suppose, but I’m not real upset about that either. I’m assuming that there’s action in the North Atlantic. MHF: I didn’t know whether anybody had done any party game casting of Reuben himself. HC: I’ve found Reuben Flagg. MHF: Really? HC: Yes. Actually, I didn’t find Reuben Flagg, one of my assistants found Reuben Flagg: the guy who plays on Cover Up, Anthony Hamilton. MHF: What about novelizations, that kind of thing, any word on that? HC: No, and quite frankly I’m very disappointed. I’d love to get some of that

70â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

stuff. I would love to be a real putz about it and insist on getting my first crack. And see how that went out. In terms of casting the movie, we’ve been doing that since year one. It’s only natural. MHF: Sometimes I see the independents looking into marketing as one of their major sources of income, of course. One wonders how far marketing can go. I’ve seen Masters of the Universe-type action figures and Flagg!—I’m not sure the world is ready for that. HC: Well, it depends on how you costume them. I’ve been suggesting all along that there should be American Flagg! cocktail napkins. I mean, hey, why not? Pez dispensers, things that are really valuable and vital to the American economy. I think that’s the way to go with it. I don’t have a lot of experience with cocktail napkins. MHF: One final and extraordinarily important question about Flagg! . . . HC: The last question? We’re not wrapping up, are we? MHF: No, about Flagg! HC: Oh, good. I’m having a wonderful time. This is great. I haven’t spoken about myself in a really long time. MHF: This is a special request question from a friend of mine. What about the tail, or in this case, the cat wagging the dog? How do you feel about Raul’s inordinately popular reception as a character? HC: Delighted. And not surprised in the least. I mean I created two characters that I predicted would be major fan faves and both of them are perfect examples of what I wanted out of their creation. We’re living in a cat-crazy culture; people think Garfield is funny. I’ve got a cat; my cat’s name is Cochise. He’s very well behaved; he’s well mannered; he’s very used to being with people. I thought another way to do something interesting was to do a completely familiar animal who talked. And to try to maintain a cat’s personality. A cat’s a real whore; let’s get real. They have absolutely no courage of their convictions, and they’re really slutty about life. They’ll shine up to anybody for a dollar. And Luther was the other one. When I told Mike about Luther, he said okay. I described Luther before as being the ultimate adolescent power fantasy because he’s a seven-year-old inside a walking tank that can beat up his parents. That’s basically where that’s at. MHF: I wouldn’t be that unhappy to see Luther’s holographic head just marketed as a helium balloon for parties and God knows, seeing Raul as a fourpanel daily cartoon strip in place of Garfield or Heathcliff. HC: Well, the first story that Willingham and I are going to be doing together is going to be about Raul’s hundred days, and he’s going to be a real interesting choice as the mayor of Chicago. It’s going to be an interesting experience.

e d b r y a n t / 1 9 8 5 â•…â•… 71

I only wish you could see the cover that I’m working up right now. The character is fun to write. Much more fun than most of the characters in the book. The interesting development that has happened is that to a great extent Flagg has left the center stage. The book has become an ensemble book. Which is something that I did not anticipate. I’ve never been very comfortable with books that did not have seriously pointed foci. I’m delighted about that. It’s the kind of evolution that I didn’t expect I could go through. MHF: It’s getting a life of its own now. HC: Yeah, it seems to be generating itself. MHF: And presumably can swing back, right? HC: I want to do some stories about wrestling. It’s a hot craze and I have characters that are perfect for the roles. Since I’m doing a lot of weight training these days, I know a little about working out in the gym. It’s a great environment for stories. Because it’s really smelly and a lot of texture. There’s all sorts of things going on. MHF: I’m curious about your influences, things that come into your work. Like, you mentioned the thrillers, but what do you listen to, music? What do you read? I’m going on the assumption, tell me if I’m wrong here, I assume that with you as with so many of the rest of us, that the things that go in generally roil around down underneath and they come back in some form or another. And I’m just curious as to what things enter into these new stimuli for you? HC: I grew up being a folkie; I’m the right age, I listen regularly to three basic forms. I listen to lot of late ’40s, early ’50s jazz. Specifically a lot of vocalese and bebop. I used to be a swing fan. I can’t stand most of the stuff anymore with the exception of Duke Ellington and some other bands. A lot of Charlie Parker. A lot of Lester Young. Babs Gonzales. Lambert, Hendricks and Ross are my all time favorite singers. I love Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. I love vocalese jazz. Eddie Jefferson, King Pleasure. I also listen to a lot of hot western and movie cowboy music, which is a pretty bizarre combination. Bob Wills and Spade Cooley. I also, in terms of contemporary listen to just about anything Ry Cooder does. Van Morrison. Actually Cooder and Morrison are my two major obsessions in modern times. When The Band broke up, I was pretty depressed. That about covers it. MHF: Do you go to Walter Hill movies just to hear the Cooder scores? HC: Occasionally. MHF: I can see Walter directing something to do with your work. HC: Same here. MHF: Before we get into the new stuff, is there anything that I have not touched upon that you would like to talk about?

72â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

HC: Not that I can think of. I have a reputation for being an egocentric son of a bitch. MHF: Yeah. HC: And I suppose that’s true. I still have a hard time talking about myself in anything but the most general terms because I’m also fairly private. I resent the intrusion on that privacy that has happened as a result of the attention garnered. But you have to take that, I guess, with the nice stuff. MHF: Approach-avoidance? HC: Yes, I would be very happy to be left alone. I like the money. I like the attention. I like being told that I’m God’s gift. But I don’t like the hanging on my every word for the occasional drop of a secret. It gets on my nerves. MHF: Is it getting to be a hassle? I assume you get invited to comic book conventions, and so forth. HC: Not as much as I used to, because I started turning them down all the time. For example, I’m not scheduled for a major run this summer. I’m bored. I don’t really feel that my presence has that much to do with the book. The fact of the matter is in comic books I don’t think people are buying the talent as much as they are buying the product. We’re dealing with a market, I think, that it is content obsessed—in a product that has no content. Somebody I know in the field once referred to the comic book fans’ attitudes toward comic book characters as their little friends. I shudder to think how right he was. MHF: Well, they haven’t tracked you down at your apartment yet, have they? HC: Oddly enough, some very smart people have made some very interesting discoveries, and found my apartment and my phone at least. I’m a little put off by that. Particularly in New York which is a psycho town. You’ve been here, you know what I’m talking about. MHF: I know what you’re talking about, yes. Mark David Chapman. HC: You know the psychos are out there on the street because they know you’re out there too. MHF: Let’s talk about the new stuff. Get to the good stuff. What is exciting you now that you’re ready to unveil? HC: I’m working on a new book that I would describe, very seriously, as the result of what you’d get if Damon Runyon and Philip K. Dick collaborated on a prime-time soap. MHF: That’s um, very strange. HC: You got a pen? MHF: Yes, I have a pen. HC: Write the word “time.” As in what waits for no man. Now put your pen just northeast of the “e” in “time” and write a little 2.

e d b r y a n t / 1 9 8 5 â•…â•… 73

MHF: Like a superscript, yes. HC: Read it out loud. MHF: Time squared? HC: Thank you. MHF: Okay, is this a New York comic? HC: Well, yes. You’re going to have to ask questions because I’m going to volunteer very little. If you hit the right questions though, it’ll be like priming a pump. MFH: Alright. HC: It’s a book that’s not a science-fiction book but it is about alternate worlds. It’s not about alternate worlds in the sense that it takes place in alternate worlds, it’s just about alternate worlds. It’s a . . . well, ask me some questions. You’re getting it first. MHF: One thing that occurs to me, is this going to be an ensemble book from the beginning or have you got somebody that’s the focus of this? HC: There is a focal hero, but it’s also an ensemble book. MHF: Okay. What about the adventure level? Is this going to be less actionoriented than Flagg!? HC: Probably, although more violence-oriented. MHF: If it’s more violence-oriented . . . I remember what you said about Flagg! and sex and violence and personal experience, writing from what you know. How’s your research going on this? HC: Weegee. MFH: Weegee? HC: Do you know Weegee, the photographer? MHF: No. HC: Okay. What I’m going to be doing is a book that is less—how can I explain this book? It’s really sort of difficult to high-concept it out. It’s sort of an adventure book but it isn’t really adventure. It’s more about other stuff. I’m not being purposely oblique. This is also the first time I’ve talked about it with anybody other than my wife and my publisher. It’s sort of difficult to put into words. That’s why I started with the Philip K. Dick–Damon Runyon reference. MHF: Right. HC: Multiple characters, none of them are honest, with the exception of our main focus, who is scrupulously honest to the point of being a prig. As a result of some personal problems. With a lot of sex, a great deal of sex. Because I think that life generates it. There are some peculiar relationships, a lot of crime. And writing about crime; the hero is a reporter, a columnist who be-

74â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

lieves in alternate worlds but no one else does. He is very hungry for success, for money, and for power. And who is surrounded by people who are equally hungry. Most of his friends are either musicians, actors, or thieves or criminals or murderers. And they let him be because he used to be the best shitheel around. And he’s not anymore. No talking cats. No rayguns. And no cute robots, although there might be a robot or two. Very heavy on the costume. It is an extremely urban book. A book that takes place in the street. After midnight. Nighttime. With a lot of references to my own personal obsessions. The ’30s, the ’40s, the ’50s. Lots of neon. Lots of overload in terms of design. Very highly stylized costumes. MHF: Is this any particular setting? HC: Times Square. MHF: In terms of time? HC: It’s sort of a whenever. It takes place between 1928 and 3000. It’s a Times Square where you’ll be standing on the corner facing north. You might not notice it but there will be some sailors coming off a Q-ship walking by a couple of aliens, but there’s no particular reference to it. It’s a city, it’s the city. The way people who live in New York say when they’re out of town that they live in the city. They look at you like you’re crazy if you don’t know what they’re talking about. As they always do at each other. Ask me some more questions. MHF: Let me get some hard information out of this in terms of when and who. Is there a firm schedule on this yet? HC: There’s no firm schedule. We haven’t signed anything on this yet but we’ve got a pretty good agreement there. It’s going to be with First, if it’s anybody right now. I’m real excited about it. MHF: Obviously. HC: I really am. I’ve been doing nothing but research over the past two months and character designs and a lot of note taking. I’ve got some wonderful characters worked out. Some of whom will remind people of characters in Flagg! And that’s tough. And a lot of them who won’t. The stories I suspect will be a bit more morally ambivalent than Flagg! has been. The hero is considerably less self-righteous. Since I won’t be doing the material on a monthly basis—the format will be somewhat different—one of the conclusions I’ve come to after doing Flagg! for twenty-six issues has been that I can’t produce a monthly comic book that makes me happy. I’m constantly trying to outdo myself and that causes complete exhaustion. I’m not burned out physically right now but I was three weeks ago. I don’t want to put myself into that position again. I’m going to be changing around my entire approach to comics because I want to produce forty-four-page stories that are stories in and

e d b r y a n t / 1 9 8 5 â•…â•… 75

From Time2: The Epiphany (1986).

76â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

of themselves whose characters will repeat later, but short stories. I’ve done that before and I can do it again. Only in this case I’ll be doing it about people who don’t carry rayguns. Most of their motivations are as slimy as people you meet on a day-to-day basis. MHF: I may have missed it if you said it, if you did so, but what frequency is this going to be? HC: That hasn’t been established yet. But several times a year is about the best I can say. So I’m going to be taking a lot of chances. The fact is that this market tends to buy comic books the way people tend to buy drugs. Sort of a regularity and familiarity. I got real tired of being constant and consistent and on time and being compared to people who delivered books six to eight weeks late, favorably or unfavorably is irrelevant. My feeling is that one of the tenets of taking on my job is that you deliver product on time. Because you give a million monkeys a million years and all this other shit. Comic books is a time and money proposition. You work against a deadline because that’s how you make a living. I’m tired of listening to a bunch of extremely talented, albeit emotionally retarded, prima donnas whining and complaining about the fact that they just can’t seem to get themselves down to work. Fuck ’em. You’ve got a responsibility to yourself and a responsibility to your life. Most of the people who work in comics don’t know they have jobs. And that’s why I’m taking myself off the monthly grind because I feel that I was causing a lot of damage to my physical life, my emotional life, and just generally my life itself. I don’t really want to be wagged by the dog of my job. It’s just not fair. I’m going to be reducing the frequency. I’ll be writing Flagg! and doing the new book and, I hope, working on some other projects. MHF: This is probably very premature but I assume you have things lurking on the horizon on beyond Time2? HC: Yes, I’m also going to be doing some movie work. MHF: Good. HC: And I’m probably going to be doing some painting again. As I said, I’m working on one for DC right now. I’ll be doing some covers for their sciencefiction line. One of the nice things about Flagg! is that it’s generated enough interest in me as a talent that I’ve been put into the position of people calling and saying, “Hey, how about doing such-and-such?” That’s just fine. I’ll probably be doing a job or two for Marvel which I’m sure will surprise any number of people. But, hey that’s life. MHF: Is there anything printable on the movie work you’re going to be doing? HC: Not yet.

e d b r y a n t / 1 9 8 5 â•…â•… 77

MHF: I’m only skimming the surface of what you told me here about Time2 but do you foresee anybody making any initial comparisons between the concept you’ve got here and say Grimjack? HC: I’m not all that familiar with Grimjack. MHF: Just that Grimjack takes place in a city where you could easily see the Q-ship sailors, the aliens, and so forth, walking down the street. HC: Is that true? I didn’t know that. MHF: Oh, dear. HC: Really? MHF: But that’s very action-oriented. That’s where you have lasers and swords. HC: Well, I will go out on a limb right now and say that, if that’s the case, I will make whatever adjustments I have to so that there will be no comparisons, and even if I didn’t make those adjustments, I don’t think there would be that much to compare. I think completely differently. Who does Grimjack? MHF: Tim Truman and John Ostrander, First. HC: I don’t think very much like they do. My interests and obsessions aren’t very much like theirs. That aspect of the book is the least aspect of the book. MHF: I suspect that if that aspect of it were even close then your editor at First would have said something. HC: I would assume. The book is about the quest for more money. Getting by in an enclosed environment. An environment of scum. And also, I hope, for some laughs. Because I’d like to do again a book that is occasionally funny. MHF: That has a sense of humor. HC: Because I think comics have become stupid. And I’m trying to go for laughs. Cheap laughs occasionally, but laughs nonetheless. MHF: Give me an explanation on Weegee; I’m sorry I’m not familiar. HC: He’s a photographer named Weegee. And I haven’t got access to the book that has his real name in it; hold on, I’m looking it up here. Yes, I do, how about that? [HC begins singing.] Other people put you on hold. MHF: At least I’ve got live music. HC: I don’t have the spelling of his real name. But Weegee is well known enough—oh wait! Arthur Fellig. He was a photographer of the grotesque and the bizarre, much in this city. When you think of grotesque, you think of Weegee. It’s going to be a fairly grotesque comic book with lots of laughs. How’s that? MHF: That’s fine. We’ve used up the entire hour handily here. HC: I told you we would; I’m a flaming wonderful bullshit artist. I can schmeer and schmooze with the best of them. MHF: I don’t want to take up a hell of a lot of your time but, again that ter-

78â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

rible open-ended question, is there anything else that you want to touch on before we wrap this up? HC: There nothing I can really think of. But thanks for the interest. MHF: My pleasure. Thanks, Howard. HC: Thank you.

Howard Chaykin Puts It All Back Together Again K i m T h o mps on / 1 9 8 7 From Amazing Heroes #132, 1 January 1988, pp. 23–41. Reprinted by permission of Kim Thompson.

At the age of thirty-seven, Howard Chaykin may be the oldest young turk in the comics business. A prolific, eclectic, and respected cartoonist since the early ’70s, Chaykin blindsided the entire industry in 1983 with the release of the first issue of his American Flagg! Inventive, fast-moving, erotic, bold, witty, profane, and above all funny, Flagg! instantly became one of the first great comics of the ’80s. After writing and drawing twenty-four issues of Flagg! (and scripting another five), Chaykin attempted to escape the drudgery of a monthly series. He handed over Flagg! to the tender mercies of the First Comics editorial staff and embarked on several new projects. The results were mixed: his Time2 seemed too esoteric to some, too much like Flagg! to others, and was held back by its expensive (albeit high-class) graphic-novel format. Chaykin’s four-issue Shadow series fared better commercially, but did cause a major ruckus among Shadow aficionados for its violent, profane, cynical portrayal of the hero.* Things became very quiet on the Chaykin front after The Shadow. Under the hands of the usually talented J. M. DeMatteis, Flagg! quietly degenerated into a pathetic travesty of its former self while the first Time2 sat in lonely splendor on the bookshelf. What the hell was Chaykin doing? Just about everything, it turned out. And due to the vagaries of scheduling, just-about-everything is being released within a dizzying six-month period. * On his radio talk show Hour 25, Harlan Ellison called Chaykin’s Shadow “vile and detestable” and bemoaned DC’s failure to rein in “auteurs” like him who were “mucking with legends.” A few months later, however, Ellison was screaming blue murder over DC’s attempts to “censor” Frank Miller’s portrayal of Batman and Catwoman as (respectively) a fascistic psychopath and a b&d hooker. Evidently Ellison’s train of thought had taken a side track a few stations back, although the volume of its whistle remained undiminished. —KT 79

80â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

In August, Chaykin returned to the moribund Flagg!, and, in his new role as overseer, began steering it back on track. September saw the release of the second Time2 book, The Satisfaction of Black Mariah. In October, readers got the first taste of the new Chaykin-Newell-Vosburg-Ory-Van De Walle-BruzenakMoore team on Flagg! In November, DC released the first of Chaykin’s threevolume Blackhawk series. When the final Blackhawk and the first issue of (ahem) Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! are released in January, Chaykin will have been the principal generator, in one way or another, of well over three hundred pages of material in under six months—and every page of it so far bears Chaykin’s unmistakable mark. It seemed time to check in with Chaykin (so to speak), and since the Man resides in Los Angeles and I’d never interviewed him, I reserved the pleasure for myself. This interview was conducted on Monday, November 2; it was transcribed by Mark Thompson and copy-edited by myself, with some corrections by Chaykin. NOTE: All cat incidents and resultant dialogue guaranteed verbatim. —KIM THOMPSON

AMAZING HEROES: We haven’t seen much new work from you since the end of The Shadow, which was over a year ago; now, suddenly, there’s this raft of stuff: Time2, Blackhawk, the new American Flagg! I assume it’s a case of several projects coming to fruition simultaneously, rather than some sudden burst of productivity. HOWARD CHAYKIN: Oh, yeah, no question. It wasn’t as if I was sitting on my hands in all that time; I was busy. There are always these blank times, where nothing is hitting the stands. Anybody who has been in the business long enough or who has been reading the material long enough knows that there’s always an enormous lag-time—particularly on the big, fat projects that take a long time to do. It’s just a matter of things coming together and happening at one time. AH: One of the most noticeable things about your new work is that you’ve started working with a fairly large team of collaborators. You’ve worked with assistants before, such as Larry Stroman on Flagg!, but this seems more— CHAYKIN: Well, the simple fact is that on the first graphic novel that I did with Byron Preiss years back, Empire, I did the first fourteen pages by myself and I realized that it would take me most of my life. So my then-wife suggested that I try out an assistant, and it worked out very nicely. Since then, I’ve always worked with an assistant. I did the entire first year of Flagg! without an assistant, for no other reason than because I couldn’t, for the life of

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 81

me, figure out how to work with an assistant on that material. Starting with issues #15 on, I worked with various assistants. AH: Anyone we know? CHAYKIN: Well, Larry Stroman, whom you mentioned, did some work for me. Dean Haspiel, who is a film student up at Purchase in New York along with Denny O’Neil’s son Larry; he’s doing a new book called The Verdict for Eternity Comics, and I’ve done the cover for it, as a tip of the Chaykin chapeau. A lot of it has to do with the fact that I’ve been doing this for a long enough time that it’s a combination of both formularizing and recognizing the fact that I’m bored out of my mind doing a lot of the parts of the job. It’s better to spread it around a little bit. AH: Working with assistants, do you think you lose anything? CHAYKIN: No—well, I lose some sleep, because it’s not as easy to delegate as it sounds. I’m a bit of a dogmatic, and I have a very specific idea of what things should look like. I tend to continue doing something until I get my way, and if I haven’t gotten it right the first time, then I go for the second time, and by the third time, I’ve done it myself. No, I don’t think I lose anything: there are aspects of the job that I do better than I used to, and there are aspects of the job that I’m not as good at as I used to be, because I’m not as interested in them. I like elaborate backgrounds for the sake of verisimilitude. And I’m frankly not interested in drawing them any more, because I did it for an awfully long time, for other people and for myself. So I use backgrounders. AH: How often are you surprised by the work of your collaborators? How often do they do something more than what you expected? CHAYKIN: Occasionally. Often. And often they don’t. The offer that I make to everybody who comes to work for me is that I will get you to do better work for me than you do for yourself. And that’s usually the case. I’ve fired people who didn’t. When those people feel that they’re capable of producing the quality of work for themselves that they’re producing for me, I recommend that they leave. Peter Kuper was a classic example. Pete was with me for three years. Pete has not gone on to a career in mass-market comic books; instead, he’s done some rather arcane work, and most of his clients are editorial illustration. [Fantagraphics Books is] doing a book of his stuff [New York, New York]. But I believe that Peter’s working for me had as much to do with his career as any education he might have had. Because I taught him how to think as a professional, as opposed to make pictures like a student. AH: You started out as an assistant, too.

82â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CHAYKIN: Oh, I spent a good part of the first couple of my years in comics as an assistant. I mean, I worked for Woody [Wallace Wood], I was Gray Morrow’s penciller for an awfully long time. I worked for Neal Adams. I was Gil Kane’s flunky for about a year when I was very young, and it was an invaluable experience. I learned a whole lot more about doing the job, oddly enough, from guys like Gil, for whom I did very little hands-on work, than for those I did the hands-on work for, because from Gil I learned this basic rhythm, and how to behave. And what stuff should feel like when it’s good. For that I owe him. AH: Do you want to take me on a tour of your assistants? CHAYKIN: Well, first and foremost is Richard Ory, who’s been with me for about a year. He is a guy from New Orleans, a cartoonist, an illustrator, who I basically had to beat out all of this hairy stuff that he was doing for a long time—Fleischer cartoon kind of things. He’s trimmed it out, he’s turned into a real crackerjack graphics man. He’s an obsessive, and I’m an obsessive, so we tend to get along famously on one day, and be ready to kill each other the next, but we get along. AH: He does your backgrounds? CHAYKIN: Well, he’s there. Richard does both pencils and inks on backgrounds from my layouts. Also traces photographs at my suggestion. Although we’ve got someone else to do that now. Basically Richard finds ways to make things more difficult, because he’s an obsessive and a grandstander and he likes showing off. But he’s a terrific artist. And he’s a terrific artist. And/but he’s a terrific artist. They go hand in hand. Next down the line is John Moore, who was my assistant on The Shadow. John is also my writing partner for non-comics stuff, and the colorist on Flagg! He’s a local boy from Orange County. Kind of bent out of shape and weird, like all Californians. Then there’s Tony Van de Walle. He’s someone I’ve known for a couple of years—as a matter of fact, he’s the one who introduced me to Richard. He’s from New Orleans. Been working in Atlanta. He worked with Bob Burden for a while, and with Rod Whigham on the G.I. Joe stuff. Tony’s a graphic designer. He’s sort of studio chief, in terms of making decisions about how things should be done and organized, since he’s a pretty organized guy. That’s the crew, and on a day-to-day basis, it’s mostly Richard and Tony; their skills tend to complement. AH: How did you come to choose Mindy Newell to work on Flagg!? CHAYKIN: I read some of her stuff. I liked what I read, I liked her approach to the language, and I also felt that she wasn’t tainted by the thirty-seven

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 83

phrases, you know, the old Dick-Jane-and-Invulnerable stuff. She hadn’t been around so long that she’d gotten hung up on that. And the fact that she was a woman meant that she had a slightly different point of view. At the very least. I’m very happy with what’s come in. She’s a smart woman, and she’s a good comic book writer. AH: How do the two of you work together? CHAYKIN: Well, I can lay out the entire procedure on a Flagg! I do the plot. I paginate each issue individually, and in fairly complex terms—at least a paragraph per page. Fairly elaborately laid out with some dialogue. That then goes to [Mike] Vosburg, who does layouts, thumbnails, which we then translate into full-scale layouts. Mindy writes the script from layout. I edit her script; meanwhile Vosburg is tracing off, and we take it from there. AH: Do you want to talk about what happened to Flagg! during your absence? CHAYKIN: I haven’t the faintest idea. I stopped drawing Flagg! after issue #26, and then Alan [Moore] did that issue with what’s his name, the guy from Iowa. AH: Don Lomax. CHAYKIN: Don Lomax, whom I don’t know. I’ve never been able to understand that decision. I then wrote those three issues with Joe Staton drawing. I never quite understood what the problem was after that. I thought I had laid out at least five paths the book could have taken. They could have done re-dos and sequels, ripped off the material that I did for any number of years. And instead they really didn’t do very much—except take the character and turn him into a dickless wimp without any wit. They eliminated all of the comic aspects of the material, which have always been of profound importance to me, since I happen to feel that most of the material that passes itself off as adult comics is excruciatingly humorless—actively so, because humor is perceived as an infantile function, much as toilet training. I conspicuously avoided doing material that took itself too seriously, and instead they made these rather gross attempts at angst for no particular reason. I also don’t quite understand what happened with the art team. So it was allowed to go to hell. After they’d let it slide into the toilet, [First publisher Rick] Obadiah called me and mentioned that he’d finally decided the book wasn’t going anywhere, and they needed me to come back and rework it. So, that’s what happened starting with #47—or, actually, #46, that apology issue, which I had nothing to do with, but which I thought was well done, considering. I thought Smitty [Paul Smith] did two great issues, really lovely. And Mike [Vosburg] really kicked ass on #49 and 50.

84â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

So, I was given at least some carte blanche to play with the characters, to revive them, to make them work again. It seemed to me that the only way that could be done was to wrench the characters in the same way that I had wrenched the material in the first place, so I’ve begun that wrenching process. And rather than simply ignoring the whatever-number-of-issues that have existed before it, I’m acknowledging their non-involvement in a very specific way in the first issue of the new series. And taking the characters in a different direction. I’m delighted with what’s coming down. Everybody’s just doing full-steam stuff, and I think the first issue is going to be a major-league motherfucker. I’m real happy with it: it’s funny, it’s nasty, and it’s, again, about a character who continues not to be just like your average comic book character. He’s not the nicest guy in the world, and he doesn’t have to be because he’s in charge. I’ve said more than once I’m not much for boy scouts, and I stand by my statement. AH: I understand you’re relocating the entire cast to Russia. CHAYKIN: Yeah. Yeah, what the fuck. We’re going to move the characters first to Europe, we’re going to move across Western Europe into the Soviet Union, and the premise of the book will become, Reuben Flagg as Plexus Ranger of Moscow, teaching the Soviets how to live, how to be Americans. By the standards of 1958, United States—sort of like a Populuxe, USSR. It is not a realistic Russia—this is not a comic book that is about realism. Social issues are obviously of importance to me; on the other hand, I’m not interested in dealing with them in terms of white slavery and drug smuggling and selling dope to children and crack: they are certainly issues that are of some import to me, but I feel that with my skills I can only mock and ridicule, and I wish others would feel the same. We’re going to be dealing with a rather broad comic subject. Because I quite frankly think that broad and comic is a very nice place to play in the context of comics. Introducing a new series of characters who will be fun to write and draw. And with luck the audience will respond to this. I’ve been wrong before, but I’ve also been right. Vosburg is doing some sensational shit. The book has very much the physical plant of the original series, including the return to craftint, the graphics paper, and the grittiness will be back. And if anything, the cheap laffs, large breasts, and fun for the whole family will be back as well. The book is about sex and it’s about violence. AH: But no full-frontal nudity or swearing. CHAYKIN: Never full-frontal nudity, and nobody, never swearing. [To cat outside the patio door, happily chewing on a still-living butterfly] Hey, leave the butterfly alone! Don’t eat that. Jesus Christ, it’s still alive, too. I love

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 85

science. Throw it away. Look, she’s wearing a Groucho Marx mask, I swear to God. Go on. [Pause as both continue to be mesmerized by the cat.] It’s sort of distracting—like a diorama for real life. You’re not bringing that in here, you little fuck! That’ll go great in the interview. AH: I realize that we forgot about Mike Vosburg in going over the list of your assistants— CHAYKIN: Well, Mike isn’t an assistant. Mike is a professional who’s penciling Flagg! AH: But he still comes around and works in tandem with you—or did I just happen to drop by on a day when he was around? CHAYKIN: Mike lives in the neighborhood and was dropping pages off. Richard and Tony both worked with Mike on issues #49 and #50. It’s also a social arrangement. I mean, I’ve known Mike for fifteen years. Mike and I are also both left-handed cartoonists, so we could actually work in the same room and not hit each other in the mouth. Mike and I are going to be setting up studio space together, because I like working with him. And we tend to complement each other’s personality. AH: Have you worked with Mike before? CHAYKIN: We’ve talked about it for years. Most people don’t know about Mike’s secret ability, which is that Mike draws some of the hottest-looking women in comics. And no one’s ever really given him the opportunity or pushed him in that direction. For years, I’ve been trying to get Mike to develop a full-color style so that I could represent him to Playboy and sell him as a skin cartoonist, but he resisted. On this book, I said, “Mike, we want really lots of sex and lots of violence, and we want to encourage you to do what you do best.” And he’s doing it. AH: Mike is one of those guys who never seems to have been used to the best of his abilities. CHAYKIN: No, and it’s mostly because he never moved to New York, I suspect. And he always got lost in the shuffle. He was in that sort of middle wave of fandom from the late ’50s and early ’60s. Like Ron Foss, “Grass” Green, all those guys. When Roy [Thomas] was editing Alter Ego with Biljo White. Good Lord, that’s well over twenty years ago. I am old. It’s funny, I remember an issue of Alter Ego with a Blackhawk cover by Biljo White. It was the first time I had ever seen a Sky Rocket. I thought it was the stupidest-looking airplane I had ever seen. Didn’t have any fins. AH: God, this is an Amazing Heroes–type question, but are the characters in Flagg! devel—

86â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CHAYKIN: Shit, yeah, that sure is an Amazing Heroes–type question. Unlike characters in other series, they have developed. They’ve lost their secret identities [laughs], they now can make ice cream and wear their underwear outside their pants. AH: [apologetically] I figure I should throw in one typical Amazing Heroes question once in a while just to— CHAYKIN: Naaah. The fact is, I’m talking to Amazing Heroes because there is a certain aspect of the material that I’m doing that definitely applies to what your readership is interested in. It’s a difficult question for me to answer, though, because when I write something, characters always develop; I wouldn’t do them if they didn’t. That’s what characters do. It’s the sort of question, how do TVs work? With a button or a dial. The end. An Amazing Heroes answer for an Amazing Heroes question. AH: [Laughs]. Yeah. Okay, let’s jump over on Blackhawk, then. CHAYKIN: Blackhawk. [Peeking over at the interviewer’s crib sheet.] Do I like the old Blackhawk? AH: Yeah. CHAYKIN: As I’ve said more than once, Blackhawk is the first comic book I ever stole. And it’s always had a very warm spot in my heart, in the same way, I think, that the X-Men really gets to the hearts and minds of American teenagers and post-teenagers and aging teenagers. In the sense of being the archetype of their needs. The Blackhawks were very much that for my generation in the sense that they were—I’m postwar, I was born in ’50, but the resonance of the Second World War and Korea was very much a part of my childhood. The movies I went to, the movies I watched—my father was a vet, my mom was a second-rate band singer in third-rate bands. So when I see photographs of New York in the ’40s, when I see films shot on locale—Naked City, for example—it’s the New York I recognize, and it’s very much a period that I’m aware of and have lived through the resonances of. Blackhawk was a very important part of my childhood, because they were basically fascists for us. They served our needs—in the same way that the subtext of Crime Story is, “wouldn’t it be nice to be in a time when the cops didn’t have to read the Miranda?” AH: A bit of a western, in a way. CHAYKIN: In the same way that we were talking at lunch, the idea of a towntamer. I mean, Blackhawk is the foreign legion of the air. These guys were all men of occupied countries, except Chuck. (What’s he doing there?) And it was flying around, beating the shit out of people. . . . The Blackhawk that I first saw was obviously the DC Blackhawk, the “King Condor” Blackhawk and

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 87

From Blackhawk #1 © 1988 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

“Lady Blackhawk” and things like that. But I did see the other stuff later, and I’m a big fan of the Crandall material. I thought that Pat Boyette’s two issues of Blackhawk back in the early ’70s were sensational. Because after those incredibly stupid pajama costumes they gave them, which were even worse than those red-and-black outfits, they had two issues of this book that really tried to return to some kind of scratch. It was good stuff. I’ve had the idea for the story for a number of years, but there really wasn’t any commercial way to do it. Because two or three years ago a miniseries of Blackhawk would have been about as commercial as ’Mazing Man. So, when this opportunity came up, Mike Gold asked me if I had an interesting new story for Blackhawk and I said sure. So, yeah, Blackhawk is a labor of love. It’s something I’ve wanted to do for a long time and quite frankly it’s gonna make me a fortune. AH: I guess DC’s pumping it because they see it as a marketable commodity in terms of selling it to movies?

88â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CHAYKIN: Yeah. I had written the treatment for the movie a year-and-ahalf ago. I thought it was real hot shit, and they turned it down. And now, of course, having been doing screenwriting for a lot longer time, I see exactly what their point was: it’s a piece of shit. So I have redone it completely. I’ve done a brand-new story, which bears very little resemblance to the book. One of the things I’ve discovered is, in the context of a film, you don’t have room to do the sort of characterization and involvement you do in comics. Which is wonderful in the business that constantly uses the word “comic book movie” as a pejorative. Even the worst comic book tends to have more— at least in visual terms—of an elaborate back-story, more characterization, because you’ve got characters who can have internal dialogue. Much of what I’ve done in the Blackhawk comic book is based on my original treatment of the film. It just didn’t work; it was much too complicated for a film. AH: There certainly is a lot of story in the book. CHAYKIN: Yeah, well, I like story. One of my old assistants once told me that I was over-plotting; I feel everybody else is under-plotting. It’s a gross generalization, but the basic generic comic book plot is two good guys mistake each other for bad guys and beat the shit out of each other for twenty-three pages. It just doesn’t satisfy me, and I worry, as I’ve said more than once, about men my age who are still satisfied by that, both to do and to read. So there’s a lot of story. It’s a complex story; it was a complex time. I’m also dealing with an audience that thinks that John F. Kennedy and Lincoln died within a couple of years of each other, so there’s things that have to be explained. For example, in the first issue, one of our characters pulls a weapon on someone and says, “I arrest you in the name of the United Nations.” And I had someone say to me, “Hey, they didn’t form the United Nations until after the Second World War.” And I explained that the United Nations was what we called ourselves against the Nazis, the Axis. Hence, that’s why when we won the war we called the building and the organization the United Nations. Because we had been that way for some time. He didn’t believe me. So I pulled out a Covarrubias portrait of all of the heads of state of the United Nations done in 1943, that said, “The Heads of State of the United Nations.” And he still didn’t believe me. Because it was obviously from Vogue and Vogue is a magazine put out by lunatic homos and retards . . . I have no idea. Also, because Blackhawk is a big fat comic book as opposed to a regular book, I tried to add a little bit of lagniappe. The first issue has an animated dream sequence. That’s kind of fun. The second issue has an insert from Signal magazine, which was the foreign-language propaganda wing of the SS.

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 89

And the third issue has a Life magazine page as well as a scrapbook page from a visit to New York by our heroine. So I’m having a great time with it. It’s a very satisfying book. It’s a lot of fun . . . I mean, this is not going to replace sex. It’s what I do for a living, and I’m having a very good time doing it, but if they would pay me for delivering white pages, I would rather do that. AH: What kind of reaction do you expect for your interpretation of Blackhawk? I hear there are already mumblings. CHAYKIN: Well, I’ve heard some of the mumblings third-person. And usually those involve Respect and Reverence, you know, nyeh-nyeh-nyeh. And that’s fine. I respect the material. I respect the material enough to get it done. To deliver a quality product. Those are my standards and my terms. I don’t really feel moved by or beholden to previous incarnations of the material, because we’re talking about a popular product which must be developed and re-developed every couple of years. And let’s face it, the last number of times Blackhawk has been in print, it’s been a commercial dud. Sure, there are a lot of guys my age and older, the same forty-year-old fanboys—now fifty-year-old fanboys—who are going to rake me over the coals because I haven’t paid the right lip service to whatever tribute I’m paying this particular week, the same way it happened with The Shadow. But, in the same way again, they helped me sell The Shadow so with any luck, they’ll make more noise and more screaming and more bitching and moaning. I don’t like mainstream and mass-market comic books very much. I think they’re dumb and stupid, for the most part. I am, unfortunately, also very much in love with genre fiction, and in the same way I don’t believe that violence is necessarily preceded by the word “senseless,” nor sex “gratuitous,” I don’t believe that “genre” is necessarily followed by “trash.” I like genre fiction. I read genre fiction for entertainment. I don’t read much science fiction any more, but I do like crime fiction and I see nothing to be particularly ashamed of about it. On the other hand, most comics aren’t good enough to even be held on a par with the worst genre fiction. I mean, let’s face it, most comic book writing is on a par with Manor and Award Books westerns. At best. I don’t think the comic book characters are necessarily divine in their original inception, or that going back to square one is all that great an idea. Because Blackhawk was created, what, 1939, 1940? It’s a different world. Even if you’re telling a story that takes place in that time, you’re dealing with a series of changed ethics. For example, DC is doing a special limited edition of some poster with Bob Chapman and Graphitti, with all of their characters on it. He asked me

90â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

to do Blackhawk. And they have Chop-Chop on there. I don’t know who did the Chop-Chop drawing, but I’m really pissed, because if I’d known that they were going to have that—this is me being a prima donna, okay? The one aspect of Blackhawk that I have dramatically changed is Chop-Chop, because I’m embarrassed and offended by the way comic books portray various ethnic groups, including my own. I’m Jewish—for those of you who read my stuff, it’s a big secret. I like being Jewish, I get off on being Jewish, I use it as a manipulative tool. Most of the people who work in comics, a lot of the people who write comics, are Jewish too. And these people are obviously incapable of recognizing themselves. They write these comic-opera Jews whom I’ve never met—they write Jews the way gentiles write Jews. I can’t do that. I won’t do that. I have a real hard time with the way ethnics are portrayed in comics. They’re portrayed in such broad terms that even the most liberal among us constantly ends up playing with the cliches. So what I try to do is find other aspects of the cliche to play against. When I write Jewish characters, black characters, or women characters, I try to find some aspect of my own experience. And I find it impossible to justify in 1987 writing a Chinese character who is four heads tall, walks around with a meat cleaver, has a queue on his head, and talks like Hop Sing on Bonanza. I can’t. My own quasi-liberal humanist motivations prohibit it. And there he was, with all his teeth, and the down jacket and everything. So was I little annoyed. I haven’t mentioned it to DC; I’m sure they wouldn’t understand what my problem was, considering that the first press release for the book indicates that the book takes place after the war. Nice of you to read it, guys. So that’s the only real change I’ve made, developing the character of ChopChop, and I feel that’s kind of important. Actually, the characters are all a little bit different. They’re still the same characters that you recognize, but they look more like real people as opposed to icons. Andre looked like an Englishman, like David Niven, so I made him look more like Gerard Depardieu, with a different haircut. And I made Hendricksen look more like my first girlfriend’s father, because he was Dutch, for what it’s worth. And Chuck is Italian, because I felt like it. Because all Italians in comics look like this [slicks back hair] I decided to do a red-haired, blue-eyed Italian. A lot of Italians that I know have red hair and blue eyes, because they come from the German Italy, as opposed to the French Italy. There aren’t enough ethnic characters in comics, because, face it, all these Jewish guys, who are old enough to be my father or my grandfather, created all these WASP characters with names like Jay and Bruce and Kent, and ulti-

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 91

mately their children named their children after that. So I know all these guys named Bart Weinstein and things like this. Christ, in my time, “Howard” used to be a profoundly Germanic name; Jewish boys didn’t have names like Howard. Now Howard is a classically Jew name. It means “bearer of the sword” for what it’s worth. AH: The interesting thing is that World War Two is one of the last times in the Western world where ethnicity was a matter of life and death. CHAYKIN: Yeah, and I play with that as well, in a very odd sort of way. AH: In a way that I think is going to raise some hair. CHAYKIN: I hope so. Well, it’ll raise some hairs, but. . . . I heard, for example, that Marvel was having some problems with B’nai B’rith over some Nazis expressing anti-Semitic ideas. AH: [Laughs]. CHAYKIN: All I could think of was the Roth novel The Ghost Writer, where the nominal writer’s father asks the rabbi to explain to their son why this piece of anti-Semitic dreck should not be published under his name. And I was really just delighted. What else are Nazis going to be talking about—dairy? Jesus. AH: You could have another Coonskin on your hands, Howard. CHAYKIN: If they lose it over that, boy, are they going to shit blood over the opening sequences of Blackhawk #1. AH: Two Black guys, and then Blacks and Jews at the same time. CHAYKIN: Uh-huh. Well, very simply, I had just read If He Hollers, Let Him Go and The Lonely Crusade, two major novels, one a very big hit, the other a commercial failure by Chester Himes, who is a major crime writer. He wrote Cotton Comes to Harlem, Come Back, Charleston Blue, The Real Cool Killers, Blind Man with a Pistol. And those are his non-crime novels, although they are written very much in the idiom of hard-boiled fiction. Both of them exploit the relationships between blacks and whites, the Communist Party and Jews in mid-war Los Angeles. They’re sensational books, well worth reading. And that was what gave the idea for the specific details of the opening sequence, the relationships. And hey, I’ve always taken flak for isolating particular ethnic groups as bad guys, so now I demonstrate the fact that in this particular issue, things are a little different. One of things that I discovered in my late youth was that the cliche of the black pimp and his stretch limo and everything was simply the modern version, because in the ’30s and ’40s it was the Jew pimp. So, we spread it around. You have to understand that one of the reasons that comics bore me is that they are so homogenized. Either everything is peachy-keen or everything sucks. Which is, unfortunately, really the same coin. I mentioned to you last

92â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

week that I’d read Less Than Zero, which I found one of the silliest pieces of shit that I’ve ever read, because it’s an archetypal nineteen-year-old’s worldview, and no one is more cynical than an unworldly nineteen-year-old, no matter how much money he’s got. And that very much defines the comic book audience. They’re very world-weary and they have no experience. And they very much want to believe that evil itself is an intrusion, sort of modular— like a dildo entering from the side. And the unfortunate fact of life is that we’re all perfectly capable of . . . I mean, I for example don’t consider the Germans psychopaths. I don’t consider Hitler a loony-tune, except later on. I personally believe that under the right circumstances, anyone is perfectly capable of that sort of behavior. And that fascism, nazism, it’s just ol’ human nature coming out and rearing its ugly head. AH: So you wouldn’t agree that Flagg! is a dystopia. CHAYKIN: No, I think basically Flagg! is life-goes-on. I mean that. I suppose it is a dystopia, from one point of view. But I also don’t think that now is quite the future that was planned for us when we won the War. So dystopia is all in the cataract of the beholder. Because whatever happens, happens. You go along. I consider Flagg! a funny book with an occasionally nasty wit, but I don’t consider it particularly cynical, because I don’t think it tells the audience that it’s gonna get better. Nor do I think it tells the audience that the bad guys are . . . it’s not a xenophobic book. I abhor comic book xenophobia. And I also abhor the peaches-and-light stuff. It’s just, that’s life. The villains in the book, as horrific as they may have been now and then, are based on people I knew who basically saw themselves as good guys. I don’t think that bad guys spend a great deal of time wringing their hands with glee, gloating in their evilitude. It just isn’t like that. But unfortunately, comic book fans want it to be like that, because it’s a lot easier. It’s only one of the reasons why I couldn’t do Batman, for example. AH: Of course, there’s the other extreme, that every villain is just somebody who’s misunderstood. CHAYKIN: That’s a lot of crap, too! Let’s get straight. That’s like ’60s pop sociology. Much of these problems really derive from the ’60s. Both as a result thereof and as a reaction to it. There’s a wonderful piece in the new L.A. Weekly about Beauty and the Beast, the new TV series, which I have not seen. It talks about the fact that the main premise of the show is clearly to confirm the national suspicion that it’s a good day in New York if you can get through just being mugged and raped, as opposed to murdered. I lived in New York most of my life, and I managed to avoid that particular avenue of adventure: New York is not a deadly city. The review goes on to say that the show does

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 93

this by creating this fantasy criminal underclass while ignoring the real criminals in the city, who are of course the corporate landlords who are raping the town—like any city. But then again, why would they want to do stories about themselves? They own the TV. And I guess, what it comes down to is, it’s much easier to create a series of bad-guy villains who don’t look anything like your mom and dad than it is to deal with the basic fact that we’re all capable of it: sooner or later we’re all gonna do it. Or not. So, I’m not particularly interested in the endless struggle between good and evil because I don’t feel that I have the right to identify evil. I mean, I find it difficult to write a hero who’s morally superior to me—I can identify some of those morally superior to me, but I can’t create them. I quit smoking cigarettes. When I quit smoking cigarettes, I stopped drawing heroes who smoke cigarettes. I will not leave cigarettes out of the book because smoking is a Bad Thing; nor do I feel that putting a cigarette in somebody’s hand identifies the character as an amoral character. In Blackhawk, there’s lots of people smoking, because back in those days, during the war, in my childhood, everybody smoked. You smoked cigarettes because that’s what you did. I’m not going to listen to someone complaining about the people smoking. Nor am I going to listen to somebody who misunderstands—as in an early issue of Flagg!, someone who didn’t know what the United Fruit Company was and thought it was a homophobic reference. AH: You said you wouldn’t be interested in doing Batman? CHAYKIN: Yeah. The subject of Batman is simply that the poor need someone to protect them from themselves. And to someone like me with very poor welfare parents, of a socialist orientation, brrrr [shivers with disgust], that whole idea is just horrible. Because Batman goes around and beats up the bad guys, and he’s got a right to do it, because he thinks he does. No. No. Uh-uh. Not for me. I can’t even begin to think in those terms. A character that I would write who could do that would be so confused by his own options that he would never do anything. See, my problem is, I could never justify writing a super-powered character. I work because I like the money, because I like the rush, and because I maintain my existence. If I became very wealthy, I wouldn’t work. I am not driven to work by any particular commitment to have anything to say. I would rather have a great deal of money and sit on my ass and eat. I’d rather be able to total a car a day and start fresh the next morning. I’d rather not have to deal with the basic screaming-and-yelling issues of how we’re going to get by. I don’t want to work. I do it because I have to. And what I do for a living is this. By the same token, if I had a character who had super-powers, it would be, Fuck

94â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

crime! Fuck this shit! Hmmm. What can I do to better my life? Christ, you use what you’ve got to do the best for yourself. Once you’ve made it for yourself, then you have some time left over to help people out. That’s Thursday afternoons, between four and six, your social studies period. The rest of the week, you’re amassing your ill-gotten gains. It’s your powers. Fuck ’em! Superman is clearly the adolescent fantasies of two fifteen-year-old boys: that a grownup, given massive power, will work for good. Sure. And this country elected Ronald Reagan twice. I mean, when the people at DC heard what I wanted to do with Superman . . . AH: Oh, were you one of the group that was going to revamp Batman, Superman, and Wonder Woman? CHAYKIN: No . . . Oh, you’re talking about the Metropolis line. I have no idea about that. That happened while I was involved with Flagg! and from what I hear, that’s pretty much what Dark Knight evolved out of. Anyway, I can’t do these characters that hang around striking poses. I did that when I was younger. I grew up on EC Comics, Al Williamson stuff, all these characters with locked knees. Guys who like movies about actors who enter rooms and strike poses, catch the light right. That’s silly. I saw Predator at a screening, and it takes them five minutes to get out of a helicopter dramatically. I’ve always thought guys like that were big assholes. I just can’t take that stuff seriously. My Superman entered, basically, after a five-page sequence showing Metropolis. You got a sense of a real city with people doing real things, getting up in the morning, shaving, all this stuff, intercut. Every so often, there’s this sound, a crack in the distance, which keeps getting louder. Very dramatic. And the camera begins to pull out of the city, into the harbor—because Metropolis is New York—into the harbor and looking out. All of a sudden, we hear, off-key, a voice, singing. And Superman comes flying over the horizon, singing and popping his fingers. He’s wearing shades and a Walkman unit. He’s got the score of “How to Succeed in Business Without Really Trying” on his Walkman unit, and he’s singing, “I Believe in You”: [sings] “You’ve got the cool (snap) clear (snap) eyes of a seeker of truth.” That would set the tone of how I would see Superman. Because my feeling is a guy who can shift planets on their axis, look through women’s dresses, bend steel with his bare hands, tell what’s in the fridge and bake it while it’s in the fridge with his X-ray and heat vision, is not going to be really obsessed with dealing with Luthor. He may very well have had inculcated in him as a child the idea of using his powers for good, but I’m not really interested in meeting or knowing or trusting people who haven’t grown up and matured,

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 95

even from the basic ethics of their childhood. You’ve gotta be able to bring a little bit of distance doing that. So it’s very difficult for me to take seriously questions like who’s my favorite comic book character. Or whether these characters have developed over a period of years. AH: I won’t ask you who your favorite character is. CHAYKIN: Good. Do you understand what I mean? AH: Yeah. CHAYKIN: It’s absurd. I mean, Alan Moore’s Superman was a wonderful character, but that was because Alan really obviously enjoyed Superman— like he was feeling him up. But I don’t care what anybody does to Superman. Who gives a shit? AH: So this was actually a serious proposal to DC to do Superman? CHAYKIN: They asked us. I was pretty serious. But I was also pretty serious about the money I wanted. Because I felt that doing Superman was going to be basically taking two years off from the rest of my life. It was not something that I had spent my entire life wanting to do. Superman was a character that I really loved when I was a kid, because I was a comic-book reader, and I really liked reading Superman comics, and I liked Batman comics. If I’d had the skill that I have now, I would have drawn them when I was thirteen. But I’m thirty-seven years old. I don’t read Superman comics. I can’t read Superman comics. It speaks in a language that doesn’t appeal to me. When Alan Moore writes it, it’s kind of funny—but you can usually find something worthwhile in just about everything Alan writes. Even so, Alan is also still capable, as I am not, of the kind of mindset to find serious things in guys who wear their underwear outside their pants, and masks. My one caveat with Watchmen was that I literally felt ground down by its utter lack of humor. It was like Network. Network was about an hysterical means to achieve an hysterical ends. And the film itself was undercut by it for me, because I saw the film the week that ABC achieved its ascendancy in the networks by way of Laverne and Shirley and Happy Days. Without all that hysteria. So, my feeling is that human beings living under that pressure would not deal with life in this Bret Easton Ellis way. This kind of [soulful suffering look]. It’s still sixteen-year-olds running around in grownup exoskeletons, like in Indiana Jones. And I can’t get used to that. I tend to write characters who are grown-ups who act immaturely, because I’m often childish. And I’m not ashamed of my childish behavior. I’m ashamed of my child-like behavior, because that’s manipulative bullshit. Literally acting like a ninny is O.K. It keeps you young. AH: So I guess you’re not particularly interested in what the other people are doing in Superman or Batman or whatever.

96â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CHAYKIN: Not at all. I mean, if I were to do Superman, I would have fucked with the origin as well, not quite in the same way. When I was kid, I always wanted to do Batman, because he was [drops his voice an octave] “deeper, more interesting.” But as an adult, Superman would be more fun to do than Batman, because Superman is the archetype. It’s mythic and you can have a party with it. But it would still be a job. And I would not bring to it any of the love and enthusiasm that I bring to the stuff that I created myself. I couldn’t do Batman, simply because— Now, there’s an acceptability to it with Zorro. You know, the idea of Zorro returning to old Los Angeles to right the wrongs done his people. But that, again, I think is because it’s a period piece. Living in an urban environment, growing up in New York as I did, I abhor the idea of Batman as an adult. I can’t create a fantasy and say, “Well, it’s only a comic book.” AH: What did you think of the politics of Dark Knight? CHAYKIN: I didn’t get it. I didn’t see there being any particular politics in it. Did you? AH: I thought the politics in Dark Knight were very confused. CHAYKIN: I don’t think that Frank believes that Bernie Goetz was right or wrong, but I’m not sure . . . AH: He does believe that Clint Eastwood is a moral force in his movies, though. CHAYKIN: He does? Jesus . . . Frank’s been mugged. As he so often tells everybody. I’ve never been mugged. Maybe if I had been physically assaulted I’d agree. I doubt it. AH: I’ve heard Joe Orlando came up with the Fleisher incarnation of the Spectre after he and his wife were mugged—the whole series is virtually a revenge for that. In many ways, Blackhawk is your most classically “heroic” hero. I suppose it’s the matter of the period. CHAYKIN: Yeah. Well, heroes, to me, are not brave people who behave heroically. They are cowardly people who behave heroically. Wartime creates heroes. And once the wars are over, they go back to being normal people and kill themselves. I wanted to create a character who was forced by the circumstances to behave heroically. My Blackhawk, by the way, is much younger than he looks. I see Blackhawk as a man of twenty-six, even though he looks in his early thirties, because of the wear and tear of the experience. And I also wanted to do a character that did rise to the occasion, the occasion in this case being the Second World War, which I do believe is a war that had to be fought. He is a very different char-

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 97

From Blackhawk #2 © 1988 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

acter than Flagg; certainly, he’s a very different character than the ones I’ve done before. Because he is politically motivated in a very specific way. I make no bones about the fact that he is an ex-member of the Communist Party. AH: You certainly nailed down his political background. CHAYKIN: Yeah. Well, in my research, I found that the people in that time that I admired were communists. Yesterday, when I was sitting in the hot tub, at the Highland [both laugh], I saw an episode of Between the Wars with footage of the burnings of the Hoovervilles, and the Bonus Army. In those days, America saw Douglas MacArthur as a hero. The guys who were being chased out of the Hoovervilles—those were the heroes. Blackhawk is still not a boy scout. In the second issue he does things that are anti-establishment. But he’s a soldier and it’s wartime. And I felt it was important to play the character that way. I really couldn’t do any more of a

98â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

sidewinder number on the character, just because I don’t feel that it would be appropriate. You have to understand, I still perceive the flak that I received on The Shadow as a monstrous tempest in a teapot. I just don’t see what the whole uproar was about. I don’t see what I did that was so outrageous or different, because the characters remained true to their characterization. I believe that. Come on, a man ninety years old, which is what the Shadow would be now, would have a series of attitudes and points of view, certainly in tandem with the way he behaved in terms of justice and truth. AH: You made the point that your Shadow was probably a lot closer to the original than, say, Frank Miller’s Batman is to the original Batman. CHAYKIN: Yeah! But unfortunately, I didn’t pay tribute to Bill Finger and Bob Kane while I was stepping on their characters. AH: Didn’t name a park after them. CHAYKIN: As a matter of fact, I use “Iger and Woolfolk” at one point in Blackhawk. But, I mean, have you read any of those Shadow novels? AH: No. CHAYKIN: They’re awful! They’re dreck. Come on, if you’d been thirteen years old, you might have enjoyed them. But I’m writing for an audience most of which is thirteen, if not physically, then emotionally. I know Harlan’s feelings were very hurt; Harlan took it upon himself to acknowledge me as the comic-book anti-Christ. AH: [Laughs]. CHAYKIN: And that’s fine. Again, it encouraged people to take a look at the book. I just haven’t got it in me to jerk off the audience with all that tribute junk. Because, I’m sorry, I just don’t think the material is that good. If it was to be revived, it couldn’t be revived as a time-capsule, it had to be adjusted. The reason that the Shadow is identified with the period was that it became a commercial failure. Look, Superman and Batman have both gone through enormous development and changes since 1939. I believe the Shadow would have done the same if it had continued. One of the problems that I discovered doing The Shadow is that it’s not a very physical character. I mean, the Shadow has stupid feet. With feet, he looks like an asshole. That’s why the Shadow always had surrogate heroes to do the physical stuff. AH: And then he shows up and laughs from the shadows. CHAYKIN: Right. I know that when people ask me why I did The Shadow, I’m supposed to say, “because I wanted to do it all my life, blah-blahblah.” I did it so I could move to California. It financed my move. It’s been a very profitable

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 99

book for me. The trade paperback collection of it did great. I was very happy. AH: It seems to have launched a successful new Shadow series, too. So . . . you got Blackhawk laid. CHAYKIN: Well . . . yeah! I know a whole lot more about sex than I know about violence. One of the things that I shared, I’ve discovered, with many members of my generation, was a terror of being nuked to kingdom come before we lost our virginity. I managed to get over that. The Cuban Missile Crisis took place during the week of my bar mitzvah. I had Iowa tests and I had German measles. It was a hell of a week. All I wanted to do was to get through this shit, and if the Russians blew us out of the water from Miami, that was O.K. My feeling is . . . I mean, I have not seen military service, I was in the first lottery, I had a very high number. Everyone I know who has ever served military service tells me that the only things that count are drugs and sex. Most of the guys that I know who have been through the service have got the clap so many times they’ve got a ruptured duck for it. My heroes, generally speaking, have sex lives. Much like my audience. Which is why they don’t come to comics shop signings. Yeah, if I was Blackhawk, I’d be getting laid, so [laughs] .... AH: A flying war hero in leathers. What does he do on his nights off? Sit around with the boys? CHAYKIN: I just didn’t feel that the character deserved anything less. AH: [Laughs] CHAYKIN: I mean, one of the sequences that I didn’t do was a big party when they lose their American financing. I didn’t leave it out because of any particular censorship; I left it out because to do it right would have taken three or four pages, and basically it was going to be an orgy. Why not? Yes, I got Blackhawk laid. Sorry, guys! AH: So how has DC taken all this? Getting him laid, ethnic slurs? CHAYKIN: I haven’t had any flak at all. I think that’s because nobody has read the book, because as I said, in the press release, they call it a postwar book. I’ve had no shit. I’ve been trying to talk to Jenette now for a week-anda-half, because she apparently wants to talk to me about Blackhawk for one of her publishorials. But we have not connected for various reasons. AH: This pretty much puts the lie to the idea that the ratings system was DC’s way of squelching any kind of mature or questionable material, because Blackhawk is probably the strongest thing they’ve ever published. CHAYKIN: I don’t think that was their intention with the ratings system. I think the real intention of the ratings system was to put us in our places.

100â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

The fact is, they thought Dark Knight was going to be a commercial dog, they thought The Shadow was going to be a commercial dog. Three days before The Shadow sold out, one of the editors at DC was telling a very dear friend of mine that one of the things he wanted to do was to not publish books like The Shadow because he wanted to do commercial properties. This must mean ’Mazing Man. Or Angel Love. Both of which were, I must admit, very different and unusual books. Unfortunately, they weren’t very good different and unusual books. They looked very much like the sort of books I expect to see from black-and-white comic book publishers. They had that quality. Angel Love looked like greeting cards from hell, and ‘Mazing Man looked like storyboards for a TV series that I’d never watch. So, they don’t really know what they’ve got. DC scrambled like motherfuckers to take as much credit as they possibly could for this stuff. You’ve seen their Doc Savage, right? AH: I’ve read the first couple of issues. CHAYKIN: I mean, come on. Let’s get serious. They assume that The Shadow’s success meant that pulps were back, right? O.K. So they do Doc Savage. And what do they do? Adam and Andy [Kubert] come in, [Beaver Cleaver voice] “Hey, dad, come on and give us hand with this!” I mean, really. “Let’s put on a show!” I love seeing period material with guys in the late 1940s running around with Victorian beards. This is research at the max. The ratings system was just really a means to keep some tempers in check and regain some control. I did not take it as personally as those of my friends who seemed to feel that it was a conspiracy to de-nut them. I feel that when I work for hire, I work for hire. I do work-for-hire for more money than I get elsewhere, for doing my own material. And doing work-for-hire supports my desire to produce material of my own. I don’t feel that I have anything to apologize for in the sense that I’ve done enough creative material and I’ve also done enough interpretative material. And they’re with the same level of quality and craft, and intensity and excellence in both levels. I don’t stint one client for another. But I do feel that DC was out of line, because the implication of that was simply that they had any idea of what they were doing. Which they don’t. I really do believe that the primary function of clientele in this business is to diminish the enthusiasm of its talent pool. And by this I mean DC, Marvel, and First. I don’t want to single out any one of these people. They’re all apes. I’ve spent most of my years in this business trying to avoid having adversary relationships with my clients. And I quite frankly feel that I’m pushed into that position more than I care to admit. I have a reputation of being a bad boy and a big mouth and everything else, but . . .

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 101

I’m actually fairly easy to work with, because I deliver what I say I will, and I like the work that I do. But I feel that to a great extent, much of the work is compromised by the client. For various reasons, some good, some bad. But there is a constant state of compromise. And it’s really enervating in the long run, because it makes for a very unsatisfying working relationship. AH: But so far you’re happy with the way Blackhawk’s going? CHAYKIN: Well, I’m three thousand miles away and I’m being left alone. The editorial input is, if you’ll pardon my saying so, fucking nil. I talk to them when I call them to tell them that a job is on the way, would they please send me a check. I don’t really have much editorial contact. AH: Isn’t that pretty much what happened with Flagg! too? CHAYKIN: Yes. AH: And, I guess, Time2. CHAYKIN: Well, oddly enough, I allowed myself for various circumstances to be editorially manipulated, in some sense, on the first one. To my detriment. To my regret. I don’t like the idea of editing myself, but I still continue to trust me more than I trust any of those people. I do need to be checked and edited, and I like at least having someone at least serving as conduit. But I also tend to idiot-proof myself as much as I can. AH: What happened on the first Time2? I thought the second one was a lot better. CHAYKIN: Well, I agree the second one is clearer than the first one, but I don’t necessarily feel that it’s better. I like it a whole lot. But there have been all sorts of screw-ups here and there. A lot of my sense of what I do, was to a great extent diminished by what First did with Flagg! I’ve regained it now. With Time2, I’m looking to do something that feels different and looks different from the regular mainstream comic book. So I’m trying not to do the sort of things that I did in Flagg! or The Shadow. I’m trying different things within the narrow confines of my abilities, doing some experimentation. I don’t have it in me the ability to do the kind of work that Harvey [Pekar] does, or [Art] Spiegelman does. Nor do I particularly care. I don’t feel that the specific venues of my private life make for interesting fiction. They might make for funny gag pieces, related at a party, but I haven’t got the ego nor the enthusiasm. So, within the context of what I do, Time2 is a game for me to play. I knew what I wanted in both cases. And I got closer to what I wanted on the second one, because I ignored more people. In general, that book will continue as sort of a reflection of what I’m feeling like and feel like doing at that point. It’s very consciously not aimed at an audience that’s interested in the other stuff that I do, like The Shadow or Blackhawk. The audience that

102â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

From Time2: The Epiphany (1986).

reads Flagg! could respond to Time2. But not necessarily, because Flagg! still deals with the iconic elements of a superhero comic book with more elements of soap opera thrown in. And there’s more women characters than there are men. But Time2 is different, in the sense that it’s more obscure, purposefully so. It’s about things that are specifically interesting to me, and in some cases, filtered through several layers of reinterpretation. And it’s fun. It gives me a great deal of pleasure. AH: Does it bother you that Time2 is selling one-tenth of what Blackhawk is? CHAYKIN: Bother me or surprise me? AH: [Laughs] I assume it doesn’t surprise you. CHAYKIN: Look! The Shadow outsold Flagg! two or three to one. No! No. It would bother me if I were one of those people who woke up every morning

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 103

seeing it as a brand-new day, and just waiting with my ass greased, ready to be fucked by reality. What bothers me, in truth, is that the situation exists. Which is to say, that it’s a market that responds exclusively to iconic characters, to superheroic costumed characters, to characters that behave in rather proscribed ways. I’ve described the X-Men and the ascension of that particular thematic form as the ultimate victory of Archie Comics. Because, really, what we’re talking about is Archie Comics characters in superhero outfits. With dating problems you’d kill to have. And it disconcerts me that my audience is clearly more interested in more of the same than in something else. AH: How do you explain the amazingly strong orders on Blackhawk? CHAYKIN: I think it’s the format. I think also they’re hoping for some injuryto-the-eye motifs and big tits. AH: And there’s also the fact that DC has virtually no big guns left for the winter. CHAYKIN: I don’t really pay any attention to guns, big or small. I really pay very little attention to the field. The only thing I used to like about it was the politics, and I’m three thousand miles away from it now, so it doesn’t matter. The material being produced by the market bores the shit out of me. AH: Is there anything at all that you enjoy? CHAYKIN: No. I mean, I read Steve Canyon magazine. There really isn’t much else. I read Watchmen #1–12. I read it regularly, I liked what I saw. AH: Do you wish in retrospect that you’d done Flagg! in some more upscale format, like Time2? CHAYKIN: No, because then it would never have sold. The reason that Time2 doesn’t sell as well as Blackhawk, or any of the other stuff, is that the comic book buyer in this country buys things on a comic book basis. And graphic novels just sort of exist there, like a lump. The regularity and the monthliness, the number one-ness, number two-ness, number three-ness is what really gets the material sold. I originally offered Flagg! in the graphic-novel format, and they wanted it on a monthly basis. And I’m glad they did, because I had an overweening sense of my ability to sell a book. And, bear in mind, Flagg! at its best never sold well enough to be supported by Marvel. If Flagg! had been a Marvel title, though, it would have sold three to five times what it was selling. On the other hand, it certainly wouldn’t have been the same book, because I would have had to come up with these characters and every couple of issues let them beat the shit out of them. And also I would have had to do cross-overs with Cloak and Dagger. So yes and no. But obviously, in retrospect, no, not really. Because it’s nice to see it reprinted in the same format and that way I make thousands and thousands of dollars. I’m not supposed to

104â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

say that: I do it because I’m really glad that they’re in print because the stuff is important to me. But it’s also because I make a shitload of money from it. AH: I was disappointed to see the second Flagg! collection is being redone from the original separations, rather than recolored. CHAYKIN: You’re alone, oddly enough. I understand your point. It doesn’t matter in the long run. It really doesn’t. Considering the level of taste manifested by the comic book audience [laughs] . . . I feel like a complete jerk for even having gone through the effort of having the first one repainted, quite frankly. Because it cost a great deal of money to reseparate and repaint it, and that money could have been profit. Because the audience, basically speaking . . . I’m sorry, guys, but you tend not to know shit from shinola. I would have liked to see it repainted. But, again, that would have cut into the profit end of the book. Because I would have demanded high prices to repaint. And in the long run, it has no effect on the sales. I mean, I grew up in an era in which comic artists had to have some skill and draw reasonably well. The first couple of years of my career were a joke. I was awful. I had no skills whatsoever, and I slowly but surely developed my craft and learned to do other things. And if someone had told me in the early ’70s that the premier artist of my age would be a triumphantly average mediocre Canadian talent, with utterly ciphrous skills, and no particular grasp of anything beyond a very average approach to the material, I would have laughed, because it was an era of bravura draftsmen—guys interested in bravura technique and drawing. And the audience doesn’t care. The audience no more cares about excellence in drawing than they care about excellence in rock ’n’ roll. I mean, Bon Jovi or Ry Cooder, you figure it out. AH: When is the next Time2 coming out? CHAYKIN: Probably summer of ’88. And it’s probably going to be grossly different from the first two, because I’m taking things in another direction. I want to do a story that is both very funny, even funnier than I’ve done before, trying to go for a real broad laugh, and at the same time, very, very ugly. Really nasty and unpleasant. AH: It gets more extreme. CHAYKIN: Yeah. Because it’s the place to do that sort of thing. AH: How about Black Kiss? Does that fall under that purview, too? CHAYKIN: Well, oddly enough, since so little has been said about Black Kiss, I’m interested in keeping it that way. Suffice to say that it’s going to be an erotic book. AH: . . . And a horror book. CHAYKIN: And a horror book. Well, I had originally tried to promote an

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 105

erotic book at every client that I had ever worked with. With the same sort of reaction: “[whimper] W-w-we want to, but the audience will get angry.” And Bill Marks’s approach to life is, basically, “Fuck ’em!” He feels that way about his talent, too, but, since I believe in contracts and lawyers, I’m reasonably confident that the first time Bill fucks with me he’s a dead man. Or at least, he won’t see me again. So we’re doing this book. It will be a very odd book, interestingly formatted. I think you will like it. I’m not sure the audience for the X-Men will. It’s an interesting property, very difficult to describe. It’s basically written. It’s based on a four-page outline that I wrote a number of years ago. And I have been promoting this as a film at the same time. AH: Did you ever think of doing any straight comic book writing? CHAYKIN: Yeah. My problem has been that until very recently I’ve worked with artists who clearly didn’t have the faintest idea what they were doing for a living. Working with Vosburg is really nice, and I just signed a contract with DC. I’m going to do a miniseries with Garcia-Lopez for next Christmas, called Twilight. It takes all of DC’s really stupid-ass science-fiction characters in the ’50s and ’60s, except for Adam Strange, and coordinates them into a cohesive and self-supporting universe. And it’s the story of the introduction of immortality into the human ecosystem and how it destroys stuff. These characters were very important to me when I was a kid. This way, the age of the people who accuse me of raping their favorite characters will average a lot younger. Harlan can say, “Who are these characters?” and maybe one of the cyberpunks will get pissed. AH: Are you thinking of doing more writing after that? CHAYKIN: Well, quite frankly, I’m anxious to get out of comic books like a motherfucker. AH: Why? I mean, aside from— CHAYKIN: You mean, aside from all that I’ve been saying to you for the last two fucking tapes? Well, I would like to have more expensive things to be angst-ridden about. I would like very much to stop drawing, because I don’t do it out of love, I do it out of labor. I don’t want to continue making my living from motor skills. And I would like very much to get away from comics, because I’m not interested in the audience. I would rather reach a mass-market audience. If I’m going to reach an audience that has to be lowest common denominator, I’d at least like to spread that lowest common denominator base a lot wider. Most of the film properties that I’m promoting are romantic comedies or rather vicious black comedies between romantic persons. And they have very little to do with my comic book work. I’d love to write—but I doubt if I’ll get a chance to do so—the screenplay for the Flagg! film. Because

106â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

I haven’t got the cachet to sell that kind of property. The film exists, but I’m not going to write the screenplay. AH: Who licensed it? CHAYKIN: We’re in the process of getting the t’s and i’s dotted and squared, so it’s a done thing, but I’m not going to be talking about it. The bottom line is that I very much want to work in films. And television. AH: What did you do on Robocop? CHAYKIN: I didn’t do anything on Robocop. I mean, I was hired to design the automobile, when the car was originally going to be a chopped ’75 Camaro. It wasn’t. I was also told that I’d do the poster with Tim Boxell. And the next thing both of us knew we were acknowledged and we didn’t have anything in the movie. I was a little pissed, but then I realized that because of Robocop three studios that had turned Flagg! down were now hungry to talk to us. So, thank you, Eddie Neumeier. AH: Do you think that’s because of your name in the credits, or because there was also— CHAYKIN: No, it’s because Robocop has made police-state fantasies a new and popular motive. AH: There seemed to be a distinct Flagg! influence . . . CHAYKIN: Oh, I definitely think there is. That film was clearly written by someone who had read my stuff and read Judge Dredd, and couldn’t get the rights, so he extrapolated. But that’s Hollywood for you. How many times have I done that, in comics, for example? Robocop was not a film I went crazy for. The reviewer I agree most with was either Jay Cocks or Richard Schickel in Time. Either you’ll laugh yourself crazy or when you get out you’ll want to wash. I did not find it funny. But it was a great-looking film. I’m a great fan of Paul Verhoeven. Soldier of Orange is one of my favorite films. But Robocop made the Flagg! movie possible, in the same way that the existence of the Sable comic, to a certain extent, laid the groundwork for Flagg! in the sense of a major talent doing a book that was not about a guy running around in a superhero outfit. I don’t think Sable was ever as good as Flagg!, but I do think that its existence created an atmosphere in which Flagg! could then exist. AH: Of course, no one thought that Flagg! was going to go anywhere commercially. CHAYKIN: Well, you were the first one to see that book, at that completely catastrophic American-Franco enclave at the Danceteria, remember that? I turned around and handed you the Xeroxes of issues one and two. And you went a little batshit. You were a turn-around on that. That was an important day.

k i m t h o m p s o n / 1 9 8 7 â•…â•… 107

AH: I immediately felt it was a great book, but I never thought it was going to be a commercial success. I thought it was like Mars. CHAYKIN: I thought Mars had a lot going for it, speaking of another book that I don’t think ever developed. I don’t think they ever got anywhere near the editorial help they needed. I think it would have been a wonderful book with the right kind of push. Those guys had wonderful ideas and no conduit. They had no one to tell them, “That’s a great idea, push that in this direction.” AH: Of course, in comics “editorial help” is almost an oxymoron. Moving on to another subject, I’m really amazed by your gift for creating names and words. Do they just come to you, or do you sit and play with words until they click? CHAYKIN: Both. Very much both. I mean, obviously, some just leap out. For example, I’m working on a parody of Less Than Zero, written by “Best Western Velez.” Mananacillin came out of nowhere. That’s a natural. [Out on the patio, the cat has, amazingly enough, just figured out how to open the screen door.] Whoaa! Good goin’ there, bud! I’m very impressed. My cat just opened the door. Very good, Charlene. [Chaykin rushes over to the door; the cat, startled, scoots back out into the yard.] Come on, Charlene, you dickhead, it’s a compliment. Dork. AH: All she needs is hands now. CHAYKIN: Hey, really. My gosh. Way to go. [Comes back to the interviewer.] I’m a frustrated stand-up comic, and I like comedy a great deal. I never felt confident or comfortable enough to make my living in it, but I’ve always been a reasonably witty fellow. Fairly fast on my feet. I never wrote stuff funny: I was afraid that I would fall on my face, because I thought so much of it was delivery. Then I learned about writing in rhythm. My sourcebook for names is my high school yearbook. I went to school with a very bizarrely multi-ethnic group. Many of the names in Flagg! are directly from the book. I went to school with a guy named Bob Angrilli. I also grew up—one of my favorite films is one called A Slight Case of Murder with Edward G. Robinson, in which Bobby Jordan plays an orphan. All the orphans are named after movie stars, and his name is Douglas Fairbanks Rosenblum. And as a kid, I just thought that was hysterical. I also read humorists. I love S. J. Perelman. I love Patrick Dennis. Nobody remembers Patrick Dennis. There are a number of Patrick Dennis novels that I would like to write screenplays for, because I think they would make great films. Particularly with John Hughes. I’m an inveterate punner, and I’ve got a fairly nasty, vicious wit, which has mellowed and toned itself down quite a bit since I’ve gotten older. But that’s really it. It’s a matter of thinking about how it’s done, and playing with it.

108â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

AH: I was just trying to figure out how you assembled, say, Bon Ton MacHoot. CHAYKIN: Well, what annoys me is that I found out after the fact what it means. I didn’t know that “tonton macoute” meant “big uncle knapsack.” AH: Oh, I didn’t realize that. CHAYKIN: Tonton Macoute is the Haitian secret police. But Tonton Macoute is also a Haitian folk character: he’s the bogeyman who comes and steals children in the middle of the night, and takes them away to the far land. Had I known that, I would have kept the “Tonton” and I would have made him Haitian. I changed it to “Bon Ton,” and because I thought Macoute, spelled differently, sounded Scottish, mine became a Scottish bog monster. Bon Ton MacHoot. You know, like Cool McCool. AH: I think Time2 is a sensational title. CHAYKIN: Oh, thank you. As a matter of fact, I touched myself when I thought of it. I was walking between 25th Street and 29th Street, and it was like, “Yeah!” What’s frustrating about that, of course, is that the audience reads it as [gives “take it!” gesture to:] AH: “Time Two.” CHAYKIN: Because they’re fucking morons, thank you very much. It’s been frustrating on that level alone. AH: It was pointed out to me that because of a production error on the part of First Comics, the second one is actually “Time 2” on the contents page. CHAYKIN: Yeah, that’s one of the reasons I’m going to Chicago on Saturday. Seriously. I’m really fed up. AH: Any last thoughts? CHAYKIN: Naaah. This is actually—[to misbehaving cats] stop, you fucks! How’s that for a last thought? [Laughs]

Howard Chaykin: Home on the Plexus Range K i m H o wa r d Joh n s on / 1 9 8 8 From Comics Scene vol. 3 #2, 1988, pp. 22–25. Reprinted by permission of Kim Howard Johnson.

Howard Chaykin is proudly waving his American Flagg! After creating the title for First Comics and working on it for more than two years, he says he tried to retire. But now, the writer/artist has returned to start again with Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! After years of absence, he admits it feels a little strange to be back. “It has been a while since I really looked at the book and thought about the material,” he says. “I spent time figuring out what it would take to revive Flagg! and bring it back to some semblance of what it deserved, and also come up with a solid structural basis. We’re not so much ignoring the issues that followed my original tenure as disregarding them—there is a semantic difference. Continuity means as much to me as ice hockey, and that ain’t much! I’m willing to make adjustments, rather than deal with unnecessary baggage.” Coming up in the first issues of the new Flagg! is a change of scenery set up in American Flagg! #47–50. “We’re moving a number of characters to the Soviet Union, with Flagg teaching the Soviets how to be Americans by the standards of the late 1950s,” Chaykin explains. “I’m not simply starting this out with ‘Here we are in the Soviet Union’— we took four issues to pull Flagg out of Chicago, get him to Europe, and get the new characters and situations underway with as high a level of moral outrage as I did. Frankly, this book offends and insults a good part of the comic book audience who are much too complacent, anyway.” Despite the other changes, Reuben Flagg is pretty much the same. “He’s still the basically moral guy who can be seduced by sex or power— so, he’s like anybody else. I’ve said more than once that I don’t do Boy Scout characters because I can’t write somebody who’s morally superior to me, and it’s difficult to write a lead who is morally inferior to me.” 109

110â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Not surprisingly, Chaykin admits that he empathizes with the Plexus Ranger. “Flagg was created as my in-panel persona. People who know me well recognize the voice, tone, attitude, and manner. I’m obviously not 6’2” and gorgeous with a great nose—but then, I wouldn’t make a very good comic book character! So, I created my doppelganger. “All of my characters reflect in some way the persona that I’m feeling at that point—some consider it a failure, but I just consider it my kind of consistency. I’ve taken a great deal of flak for drawing the same hero, but frankly, I feel that drawing is a skill that can be taught to morons, and it’s less relevant than having more than one idea,” remarks Chaykin. “American Flagg! is about sex and violence. Interestingly enough, whenever anyone else has come onto the property, there has been a presumption that I used full frontal nudity and foul language, neither of which I did. Bear in mind that at least a percentage of the audience took the United Fruit Company reference as a homophobic remark. That was a hurtful situation that occurred years ago, but I’m not going to adjust the book’s frame of reference to explain to the passively ignorant.” Chaykin says that ultimately, he writes to please a very tiny audience: himself. “There have to be at least a couple of guys out there like me!” he observes. “I’ve described my position in this business more than once as ‘Republicans, Democrats, and me!’ The mainstream largely regards me as hopelessly outre and avant garde, while the elitists regard me as hopelessly mainstream—so, that puts me in the middle. I’m trying to reach an audience that is at least beginning to recognize that their intelligence is being insulted by most of the mass-market material, but still enjoys it. They also find appeal in the elitist material, but they’re interested occasionally in entertaining genre fiction. That’s the audience I’m looking to find. “I don’t feel that ‘genre’ is necessarily followed by ‘trash,’ anymore than ‘sex’ is preceded by ‘gratuitous’ or ‘violence’ by ‘senseless.’ Violence is simply the outward sign of inner turmoil and trauma. Considering the state of American comics before Flagg!, any sexual content is going to be preceded by ‘gratuitous.’ We’re dealing with an audience and a talent pool that are terrified of their own fantasies and have to have them masked under five or six layers. The costumes for the Legion of Super-Heroes look like a Frederick’s of Hollywood catalogue, but with enough coating to keep people away from their own fantasies. I’m not ashamed, upset, or embarrassed about my own fantasies—it makes me a happier human being!” Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! is plotted by Chaykin, who also does the page breakdowns. “I’ve worked too many cases where a comic-book author/

k i m h o w a r d j o h n s o n / 1 9 8 8 â•…â•… 111

writer has given me a paragraph of twenty-three pages of work—the splash page is described, and then there’s a twenty-two-page fight scene. I’m not being facetious, that’s really the way it is.” Mike Vosburg does thumbnail sketches of each page, and after they’re examined, Mindy Newell does the dialogue. The finishes are then done by Vosburg, Richard Ory, Tony Van de Walle, and art director Chaykin. Colorist John Moore and original letterer Ken Bruzenak round out the creative team. “It’s too daunting a job to do alone,” Chaykin explains. “There isn’t enough money in it—it’s a small, wonderful book, but the audience is like a bunch of ravens and crows, titillated by shiny objects. The more successful talents in the business reflect, support, and share the audience’s sensibilities, not the least of which is that evil is an external force—the last time that was taken seriously was Nazi Germany, and to them, the Jews were the evil external force. I find that sort of behavior morally offensive, but it’s precisely the ethic of most contemporary action/adventure comics.” The thirty-seven-year-old writer/artist says he decided to return to Flagg! after he was approached by First Comics and asked. “I regard it as at least a tacit acknowledgement that they needed me more than I needed them,” he notes. “The material had clearly gotten out of hand, and I don’t quite know why. I felt I had left behind a very muscular property, with numerous loose ends, and nobody knew what to do with it. But we live in an age of sequels, most of which are remakes. My coming back was the combined factors of a movie deal, First wanting to have a better-looking book on the market, and the series deserving more. In its time, Flagg! was an important addition to the comic-book market.” After about two years on the original American Flagg!, though, Chaykin says he was burnt out. “I retired from the book because I was tired, physically exhausted. I delivered that book on time, twelve issues on my terms, and then another twelve, until we brought in new talent from outside. We didn’t get back on track until we had Joe Staton, who unfortunately couldn’t stay on the book too long. Flagg! had become my life, in a field where the average monthly product is two guys mistaking each other for bad guys and pounding the shit out of each other for twenty-three pages. I was trying to deliver material that justified more than six minutes on the john because I thought the medium deserved it.” He says he didn’t follow Flagg! too closely after his departure, calling the post-Chaykin series “meandering, wandering, and stupid, having no grasp of what the book is about.” One of the factors that drew him back—in addition to the challenge of reviving Flagg!—is the possibility of an American Flagg!

112â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

film, currently being negotiated. Chaykin admits, however, that his involvement with any movie will probably be minimal. “Obviously, I want to write the movie, but realistically, I have no track record in Hollywood. They may like my comic book, but I haven’t demonstrated through the work that I’ve delivered. I haven’t sold the movie. I’m not interested in obviating the presence of the film by being an asshole—I want the movie to get made. I know it won’t be a filmed translation of what I did in the comic. “I would like to participate on as many levels as possible. In my heart of hearts, I would love to write the screenplay, but I don’t think it would sell the movie—which is a realistic attitude. I don’t believe I can move laterally from my position in comics to movies because the job and language are different.” He pauses. “I designed Flagg! with the original intention of its being a film, so I would like it to look the way I visualized it—a devastated world in the middle of a depression in the next century. I saw Silverado and wanted Kevin Costner for the lead; Bruce Willis would have also made a great Flagg. “For me, the character of Flagg has to encompass at least one aspect of the movies’ Tom Jones, which is to directly relate to the audience. Flagg is Candide, and above all of the characters, Flagg is there to represent the audience. He can turn to the camera and through expression and attitude, allow the audience to collude with his feelings.” Despite the activity on Flagg!, Chaykin is not letting up on his Time2 trilogy. “I’m hoping that as soon as Flagg! is sold as a movie, the next thing will be Time2. My own idiotic fantasies of Time2 are to see it as a movie musical, with a pit band or on-camera combo, or possibly a Greek chorus of the Manhattan Transfer—I don’t necessarily think the leads should sing. It’s a fairy tale of New York, and I would love to see it happen, maybe with Mandy Patinkin or Jay Leno,” he says, noting that the third volume is underway. “When the first one came out, the comic book audience presumed that it would be American Flagg! with another outfit and bigger breasts. They were very disappointed because there wasn’t as much sex and violence. Time2 is a romantic book, and also a crime book where no one cares who did it. It’s very important to me, it’s where I’m trying to get other stuff in—it’s deliberately obscure and trying other things. I won’t say it’s ahead of its time—it’s slightly to the side of its time!” With his Blackhawk series just finished at DC, Chaykin admits a sentimental attachment drew him to the title. “Blackhawk was the first comic book I ever stole—and I mean this with no irony. It’s clearly an important book in

k i m h o w a r d j o h n s o n / 1 9 8 8 â•…â•… 113

From Time2: The Epiphany (1986).

the memories of men my age, who remember the Blackhawks as flying fascists on our side. I developed the premise five years ago, and with the advent of the Prestige format miniseries, there was a place for such a property. “I feel I developed a very true-to-the-character property that will re-commercialize the material. I’m very happy with the book. If any character I’ve ever done comes close to being a Boy Scout, it’s Blackhawk. These characters are all being revamped because they were commercial failures. I did it with The Shadow and I did it with Blackhawk. Blackhawk has not been a commercial success since shortly after DC bought it from Quality.” The upcoming Blackhawk series in Action Comics Weekly took Chaykin a little by surprise, but he says he assumes the stories will be done in accordance with his revisions. “I only found out about the revival a short time ago and know nothing about it. I haven’t seen anything of it and don’t much care. People have asked what I think of the current Shadow, and it doesn’t matter to me—this is what I do for a living.” His newest comic book work arrives in Black Kiss, a new monthly series from Vortex which premieres in May. “It’s an erotic horror book, as erotic as it is horrific, and vice versa. If any part of the audience was upset and offended

114â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

From Black Kiss #6 (1988).

by Flagg!, I would recommend that they stay away from this one at all costs! If I danced on thin ice with Flagg!, I’m going for the gold medal on this one. I’ve wanted to do an erotic comic book for years, and sex and death are so intrinsically connected in every culture—one can’t get too far away from sex without thinking about death!” Chaykin is also developing several film treatments unrelated to comic books, including romantic thrillers and adventure stories. But after viewing the Sable TV series premiere, he says he is heartened at the prospect of a Flagg! film. “I was delighted with Sable, because that show’s producer, Dick Rosetti, is looking at Flagg! We’re talking about several properties together, but Flagg! is a character that would translate into a mass-market film. In my highest of fantasies, I see it as the James Bond of the ’90s, a reasonably mature series that isn’t going to turn off kids.” In addition to Flagg!, Chaykin has also worked on a proposed Blackhawk film. “I wrote a treatment based on the comic book, which was rejected. A year-and-a-half later, after having done a number of treatments, I realized what I delivered was comparable to an eight- to twelve-hour miniseries! I rarely use captions and dialogue in my stuff—the material should tell itself in pantomime and dialogue, which is my means of preparing to write films. “I’ve just written a new Blackhawk treatment which is considerably simpler, more direct, and bears almost no resemblance to the comic—the characters and points-of-view are different. The Blackhawk I’ve developed is a Blackhawk that can be read by people who are familiar with the comic character. The film

k i m h o w a r d j o h n s o n / 1 9 8 8 â•…â•… 115

character has to be simplified because film audiences don’t know about comic books. “But Blackhawk is a labor of love for me. One thing about comics—and life in general—is that we have gurus, adults who help us along, and we cannot give it back to them. We have to find someone in the next generation to give it back to. Gil Kane, Wally Wood, Gray Morrow, and Neal Adams were my mentors, and I’ve spent a good part of my career over the last ten years giving it away. I’ve had good people working for me. That’s why I don’t think about what happens to a character when I leave,” explains Howard Chaykin with a smile. “What’s important is what I’m doing right now—and I’m having a real good time at it!”

RRRRRRED2 P a u l G r ave t t / 1 9 8 8 From Escape #14, 1988, pp. 10–12. Reprinted by permission of Paul Gravett (www.paulgravett.com and www.escapebooks.com).

Howard Chaykin’s twisted sense of humor crackles through the satirical farce of American Flagg!, which he has just exiled to a consumerized Soviet Union; Moscow gripped by an absurdist glittering neon-lit future. He grew up in New York during the Cold War, but now lives in the perpetual summer amid the jacuzzis and Valley Girls of Glendale, California. Howard Chaykin—Cowboy or Cossack? “I don’t mind, just so long as I can wear the boots.”

Howard Chaykin: I’m convinced there’s Cossack blood in me, because I’m a nice Jewish boy with high Cossack cheekbones. My family on both sides were raped by Cossacks. On my mother’s side my grandmother was Austrian of Russian and Polish ancestry, my grandfather was Polish, and on my father’s side both were horse-traders from Odessa. Both sides were of anarchist socialist leanings, “street-thinkers” is what they were called into the twenties. By the time I was growing up in the fifties in New York, that socialism had deteriorated into an FDR socialism and ultimately the family became a bunch of bleeding heart liberals, which is what they are today. My father was a vet, my mom was a second-rate band singer in third-rate bands. Basically we thought Republicans were on a par with the Anti-Christ, and most Democrats were acceptable as long as they didn’t espouse any religious beliefs. We forgave Jews for their religious beliefs in politics, but the concept of a Jewish Republican was patently absurd. Paul Gravett: You grew up during the Cold War years. How was Russia perceived then in America? HC: For my family and me there was the problem of the dichotomy of the So116

p a u l g r a v e t t / 1 9 8 8 â•…â•… 117

viet Union on the one hand as the supreme apotheosis of Leftist thought and on the other with its remaining holdovers of Stalinism and anti-Semitism. I had my bar mitzvah the week of the Cuban Missile Crisis and by that time, it wasn’t so much the Soviet Union perceived as an evil empire in my home, as much as Kennedy representing the best we could expect of the American political process. Also bear in mind that at twelve and thirteen you can’t find a more conservative bunch. If you gave kids the vote, they’d all vote for Nazism immediately, because they’re really impressed with uniforms and shiny black boots. In the debating clubs in junior high school, we’d have these long discussions about nuking the Soviet Union. We were indoctrinated by every possible means into believing—and I don’t say this damningly, this is not American self-hatred, this is just the way it was—that it was an accepted world view that everybody in the world wanted to be an American, that we were of an envied society, being an American was the highest goal anyone could achieve. Bear in mind, I was living on welfare at the time so there was an irony there. But even on welfare, our standard of living was considerably higher, as we perceived it, because we were fed on the idea of material goods. With the emblemology of these two monolithic world powers, we knew which side we were on. I believe the only way you can deal with politics in popular terms is to trivialize it to a human scale. I’ve insisted that the real issue of the Cold War for my generation was not to be nuked to kingdom come before we lost our virginity. PG: What is your fascination with Russia? HC: The first character I ever created was a Russian spaceman when I was sixteen years old at high school. His first name was Nikta, not Nikita. I love the music. I’m fascinated by the physical look and scale of the country. One of my favorite novels is a very minor western novel written in the early seventies called The Cowboy and the Cossack about a cattle-drive across Siberia in the summer of 1888 with eighteen Montana cowboys and eighteen rebel Cossacks. I have an obsession with Russia and a fear of visiting there. I’ve never been further East than Italy. Going there would be satisfying some fantasies and destroying others. As for my research, it all pre-dates 1940, books like John Abbey’s I Photographed Russia, and a lot of it’s come out of conversations over the years with Michael Moorcock, another ardent Russophile. PG: It’s becoming clear now that the “threat” of Soviet world domination has in reality been a handy justification for America to do some secret empirebuilding of her own. HC: It’s obvious that America’s an imperialist nation—it’s a military power.

118â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Chaykin’s interest in the consumerization of the Soviet Union was evident as early as American Flagg! #2 (1983).

In the sixties, imperialism became a swear word thrown back and forth between two empires. My feeling is that this country had its golden moment between 1945 and 1950 and immediately thereafter started sliding downhill. Its foreign policy has just established itself as a negation of Soviet foreign policy.

p a u l g r a v e t t / 1 9 8 8 â•…â•… 119

PG: In your American Flagg! futureworld, you’ve shifted that see-saw balance of power away from either America or the Soviet Union. HC: Yes, as I believe it naturally will. The Soviet Union has never been able to produce a consumer product that satisfies a consumer need, because without the level of competition required for that in a consumer society, you produce mediocre goods. Whereas the United States continues to pay outlandish prices to price-gouging ersatz capitalists. Capitalism is supposed to be a free market, whereas capitalists here base most of their success on price-fixing. PG: You’ve transplanted the Flagg! characters to the Soviet Union. What are they going to find there? HC: I’m not doing a realistically researched Soviet Union. I’m doing a cartoon Soviet Union, desperately trying to catch up with the world by American standards of 1958. I’m fascinated by the Soviet perception of America. The idea that the CIA would be the bad guys on Soviet television—I’d love to see that stuff! I’ve always believed that the positive future of the planet lies in the United States and the Soviet Union allying to form a co-prosperity sphere along the lines of the Axis in the Second World War. Reuben Flagg is a Candide-like character, confused by his environment, having his fantasies destroyed by the actual truth. The Moscow he’s going to is like Piccadilly Circus, it’s consumerized, covered in neon with Cyrillic lettering. “This way to Lenin’s tomb,” that kinda stuff. It’s Moscow as if Walt Disney and Molotov had gotten together. What I’m working on now is the theft of Lenin’s body to be auctioned to the highest bidder and the International Soviet Surf Invitational. The top surfer is Ian Cambridge, grandson of British agents who sold out to the Soviets in the fifties, like Philby and Burgess. So he’s a Russian whose name is Cambridge. Why not? There was a Soviet journalist touring this country a few months back, whose mother was Russian and whose father was an American World War Two veteran, and she looked and dressed like a black woman from New York City and spoke with a complete Soviet accent. Bizarre. PG: You’re doing this with your tongue very firmly in your cheek, but what are your opinions on the Americanization of Russia? HC: It shouldn’t be done, because I wouldn’t want the United States Sovietized either. The Soviet Union seems to me a hard place to live. The oppressive nature of the police, the rampant alcoholism caused by the perceived meaningless of life, the lack of competition—I like competition—these are not things I’d want brought into my system. On the other hand, they are not ready to be Americanized. They’re not a Western country; they’re Eastern. They have much more in common with Asia. Most Americans believe the Rus-

120â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

sians are just like us; they just speak a different language. That’s just bullshit. We’re all different. The problem with the Soviet Union is that it can be romanticized but it remains a fascist police state. And for what it’s worth, the United States is not a fascist police state. It’s run by a bunch of right-wing lunatics, but the body of government that the United States is based on has a number of built-in protections from that creeping fascism. It was disconcerting when Oliver North was testifying to see “Ollie for President” signs and also heartening to realize that they went away as fast as greased shit. I believe he’s lost all credibility now, but when he testifies again, I’m hoping he brings George Bush down. PG: I take it you didn’t vote for Reagan then? HC: I didn’t vote for Reagan at any time. But that has become one of the great American lies, as in “I’ve always worn cowboy boots.” You won’t find anyone who’s ever voted for Reagan. I can sign an affidavit quite frankly, and I’ve got the photos of myself going to Woodstock in my cowboy boots!

Howard Chaykin R o b e r t H a m b re c h t / 1 9 8 8 From Reflex Magazine, August 1988, pp. 18–22. Reprinted by permission of Robert Hambrecht.

Howard Chaykin sits in a Latin American restaurant on lower Broadway, leaning over the remains of a breakfast crowded with refried beans and plantains. Having finished eating, he’s trying to carry on a conversation, but competing with a salsa-blaring juke box. It was a losing contest until the owners—sufficiently bribed—consented to unplug la musica for the interview’s remainder. But Chaykin, master realist of modern comics, feels at home in the restaurant’s gritty street atmosphere. Since his professional debut in 1971, Chaykin is now one of the most creative writer/artists currently working in comics. His success is based on a knowledge of early American comics combined with a European graphic novel visual style. Nonetheless, Chaykin avoids the pitfall of repetition and is able to be innovative through a determination not to bog down in nostalgia for comics tradition. Instead of being totally dependent on the medium, the former New Yorker uses influences from bebop jazz to 1940s films; his refined style now spawns imitators. Chaykin’s own metamorphosis from fat fan boy to creator leads him to champion characters created on a “small, venal, petty, human scale.” He then thrusts them into Hitchcock-ian situations which they often don’t understand and can’t control. Chaykin abandons the Superman image of ultra-gifted entities that, for some unknown reason, chose to fight crime. Chaykin’s resurrection of his own childhood power fantasy favorite— Blackhawk—illustrates this redefinition of comic tradition. Moved from mythic fantasy, the new Blackhawk—in addition to leading a mercenary squadron—now drinks and gets laid. “Once you’re into the idea that comic books are intrinsically stories about nonsexual beings, and that characters in comics should behave in a proscribed set of ways, you’re already limiting 121

122â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

their range of character,” states the bespectacled artist. “It’s astounding that the audience would be surprised that Blackhawk, who is approximately thirty years old, and living in the middle of World War II, should have a sex life.” Because Chaykin refuses to portray clichéd comic characters, he avoids the usual God-like role models. “I find it impossible to create a particularly heroic character who is morally superior to me,” says Howard. “For example, I couldn’t write about a character who didn’t smoke when I do, or about a mad scientist who’s smarter than I am.” An overriding sense of realism emerges in Chaykin’s work, whether conveyed through a believable characterization or a historical reference. Chaykin’s artwork and plot push comics into more personally expressive realms. His upbringing as a red diaper baby—his parents were Young Pioneers in the 1930s—provides him with an understanding of the more famous leftist political debates which he incorporates in his work. At one point, Blackhawk spouts off about Trotsky/Stalin’s debate over socialism’s growth. However, born with less than a silver spoon in his mouth, Chaykin was attentive enough to the politics at home. “I was born and bred on the Lower East Side, Brooklyn, East Flatbush, Bedford Stuyvesant, and Brownsville, so I’m urbanraised. I don’t consider myself a particularly suburban guy with a garden and all that shit. I kill plants with my black thumb.” Later, a brief college stint in the turbulent ’60s (to study radio broadcasting) made him realize his own political outlook. “I came from a union family,” Howard matter-of-factly states. “I was steeped in what a lot of Americans find odd, but we were patriotic leftists. One thing that ran in the first issue of American Flagg! was a quote from Norman Thomas which had a direct effect on me in the ’60s. I was very much a part of the radical movement until they started burning American flags. That was a complete dismissal of the single most important symbol American liberalism and radicalism had. To paraphrase Thomas, ‘If you seek to change the country, don’t burn the flag, wash it.’ I listed ‘The Star-Spangled Banner’ as my favorite song when I was in the sixth grade. I was a nerd, I guess—everyone else put down ‘Traveling Man’ by Ricky Nelson. There was always a strong mix of super patriotism with leftism at home.” Yet Chaykin doesn’t use his art politically. “I’m not really interested in creating a character to reflect my political beliefs, although comics would be a powerful tool because they break things down into their simplest, most basic themes. If I were a propagandist or dogmatic spokesperson I’d consider creating a political character, but this doesn’t seem like the right time and place for it. I’m more interested in a journalistic approach.”

r o b e r t h a m b r e c h t / 1 9 8 8 â•…â•… 123

His journalistic approach to comics, combined with his new-found love for jazz, blends into his story of Lester Young’s last thirty-six hours—An American in Paris (see Reflex #5 June/July). “I originally did the thing in French for Pilote, a French comics magazine.” Chaykin recalls. “They were doing an issue using a lot of American comics artists, all about Americans in Paris. Doing that was really satisfying and made me think I might want to do more stuff like it. It was very straightforward and simple, with an almost Harvey Kurtzman–esque approach. I’d never really done that before. It was very detached, low key, and very cool without exploding nude coeds or any of that shit. I’m trying to get to a lower key and a quieter tone because when the bombast isn’t there it really becomes all the more imposing. That way, ultimately it becomes all the more offensive.” Chaykin is constantly forming new interests which can become part of his work. After reading An American in Paris, it would seem Chaykin was a jazz fan for years, but in fact he’s a recent convert, birthed while working on 1987’s Time2—a graphic novel he says was stylistically written as if “Damon Runyon and Philip K. Dick got together and wrote a prime-time soap.” Explains the artist/writer, “I’m a new-found jazz enthusiast. Time2 happens in a universe in which the Second World War never occurred and all the industrial designers of the 1930s and 40s got together to beat the shit out of each other with sacks of mud. It’s influenced by bebop. The more I did it the less I knew about the music, so I researched and found that I really liked it much more than I remembered. Then I began to develop a serious interest in jazz. I was very tired of rock. My enthusiasm isn’t developed to such a degree that I’m a proselytizer, but I’ve discovered that I liked the work better than I had ever thought I would. In fact, I’ve become a bit of a jazz Nazi at work. I drive the guys in my studio crazy, because I won’t let them play their R.E.M. records.” Excepting Howard’s love for jazz, his influences are not always so obvious. Howard’s esoteric interests—as well as his theories on comic art as a medium—often affect his work. His new monthly title, Black Kiss, is a foray into adult themes, including violence, murder, and sex. The first few issues of his Kiss follow a power-sadism plot comparable to award-winning novelist Jerzy Kosinski’s Cockpit or The Devil Tree. Chaykin admits that noting these similarities flatters him but any likeness wasn’t intentional when developing the Black Kiss. “The similarity to Kosinski’s writing was something discovered after the fact,” he acknowledges. “I first read The Painted Bird in high school as an assignment. A teacher of mine was into reading holocaust fiction, a fairly Bohemian and radical thing to do in the late sixties. She had us read The Last of the Just by Andre Schwarz-Bart as well as Kosinski. I’ve met Ko-

124â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

sinski a number of times in sufficiently degenerate places, although I’m sure he doesn’t remember me. My influences are generally more puerile than you’d guess though. I’m a great fan of hard-boiled crime writing—guys like Chester Himes, a great American writer who penned a couple of hard-boiled social realist novels which transcended their own form. Also there’s James Ellroy, an extraordinary contemporary writer—he wrote Silent Terror and the soon-tobe-released The Big Nowhere. Jerome Charyn is another great one, although not really identified with hard-boiled writing. He’s a terrific novelist in the Manhattan idiom.” Just as his writing originates from unlikely sources, Chaykin’s visuals don’t stem from obvious art forms. “I’m very influenced by the look of romance comics of the 1950s, such as the work of Alex Toth and Nick Cardy. I’m not really interested in the heavy-weight bravura draftsmen but in the graphic arts look in comics—the industrial kind of comics. Oddly enough, I wasn’t particularly influenced by the undergrounds. I love Robert Crumb and Jay Lynch’s work, and I like S. Clay Wilson’s stuff—it’s nutty. But their works aren’t influences. They’re too eccentric for me.” Chaykin draws on some really unexpected influences for a comic artist. “Other primary influences were the RKO black and whites of the late 1940s— everything from Criss Cross and Crossfire to Gun Crazy. That stuff makes me happy.” These items filter into his latest and most provocative work to date, Black Kiss. “It’s an erotic thriller about some fairly nasty people who live their lives caught up in circumstances a bit out of their control,” Howard explains. Dagmar, the first main character we meet, is “a prostitute with a strong homicidally psychopathic murder streak,” says Chaykin. Her friend Bev has gotten into a bad situation—she’s being blackmailed because of a certain reel of film. Later, we meet Cass Pollack, “our hero, for lack of a better description,” Howard chimes in. Not surprisingly, Cass is a jazz musician, but he has unfortunately been framed for the murder of his wife and child. “It’s definitely adult material,” says Chaykin, “ultimately, with a rather violent solution. In the meantime, there’s plenty of sex.” Sometimes characterized as off-beat porno, Black Kiss combines a realistic eye with the ability to recognize the crème de la crème of humor in anything— including the good old T&A bump-and-grind films and porn slapstick. “I love Russ Meyer,” he exclaims. “In an all too perfect world Russ Meyer would have directed the Superman movies, because Meyer has a real comic book artist grasp of super heroes. Meyer is also one of the most unpretentious and witty men I’ve ever seen.”

r o b e r t h a m b r e c h t / 1 9 8 8 â•…â•… 125

From Black Kiss #7 (1988).

But Meyer’s soft-core, tit-man masterpieces have little to do with the harder influences on Black Kiss. “I don’t spend as much time watching pornography as I used to, but then again, older pornography was better made. At that time, it was made by failed film makers while nowadays pornography is made by failed porno-film makers. Not much of the newer reels have made a very lasting impression on me. I can only remember the older, better stuff like Café Flesh and Night Dreams, not the bad flicks. Although, now that I think about it, two others come to mind. Dixie Ray: Hollywood Star and Amanda By Night are good porn films too.” Chaykin’s characters, style, and plot have even earned him the ire of the comic traditionalists who can’t stand anything beyond familiar “web slinging” fantasy characters. “I’m not encouraging anything, nor am I reaching an audience that’s interested in role model behavior,” Chaykin proclaims. “I feel that I’m the role model and not the comic book characters that I write and draw.

126â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

I’m an ex-immensely fat Jewish kid who grew up on welfare, who has recently transformed himself into a more socially acceptable form, and done well by it. I make my living through comics. This is an example by which all those other fat twinks can pull themselves up by their boot straps and make something out of their lives. Comic book characters, generally speaking, are paradigms. I’m not interested in doing cut and dry heroic adventure stories—even with an ersatz element of maturity—letting my audience think that being an adult is simply being a seventeen-year-old with a bit of grey at the temples.” The entire vision behind Black Kiss was carefully planned. “I set out to do an erotic comic book rather than simply doing a comic book about sex. I did a crime comic book with some element of supernatural horror that has a lot of sex in it. But it could have been a western or a romantic comic book. One thing I’m planning after finishing Black Kiss is a romance comic.” The romance book is more than a year off though, as Chaykin completes Black Kiss. Black Kiss is an idea that Chaykin had originally conceived for a porn film almost a decade earlier. The changes in both the comics and porn industry have helped it to emerge in its present comique verite format. “Literally, I was thinking of it as a premise for a porn film but I was hating what was passing as writing in porn movies. It was an esoteric idea and it never went past that. The problem is, that when porno became a home video number there was a presumed women’s market. Then they started making these dreadful Sidney Sheldon-esque films with people having bad sex unhappily— making angst movies. Actually, the best you can hope for is a strong director manipulating these people, who aren’t really actors, into pratfalling comedy. Unfortunately, that wouldn’t work for me on paper now, and most of the other sex-oriented comics tend to be stupid gag strips. I want to do something more obsessive since that tends to be my nature.” Pursuit of filmwork brought Chaykin to Los Angeles. Although he’s done work on Star Wars and Heavy Metal, science fiction isn’t his main interest. He prefers thrillers and romantic comedy. He’s writing screenplays, but, being a good union man, he hadn’t crossed a picket line during the twenty-two month writer’s strike. Now that it appears to be over, he’s working again. Continually adapting the art to reflect his personal vision, Chaykin approaches a theme and genre with a hard-bitten grit. “My romantic life doesn’t have much to do with what you see in Key Exchange or the relationships I see in most films. There are some elements of recognition, but The Big Chill, for example, had nothing to do with my life. Somebody said: ‘People are better looking than you’ll ever be and having problems you wish you had’ and that’s the way I feel about comics.

r o b e r t h a m b r e c h t / 1 9 8 8 â•…â•… 127

“I want to do mundane romance, maybe with some high-keyed stuff thrown in. I’m a commercial screen writer. I’m interested in doing it for a living, not to be a noble failure. Lots of people out there are interested in being noble failures including the average comic book writer. The average comic book writer would rather write stories about characters that are true to their memory of when they were twelve—regardless of whether anyone in the audience is interested in reading that stuff.” But reworking and updating old comic and pulp magazine characters doesn’t sit well with everyone. Says Chaykin, “I’m accused of raping characters by making alterations and changes in them—like The Shadow and Blackhawk. I adapt those characters to make them more palatable to a contemporary audience. Then I’m accused of pandering, and I think that’s a load of crap. The Shadow was identified with the ’30s and ’40s because he wasn’t developed to be a commercial entity after 1949. Had Superman and Batman been cancelled in those days, the same would be true of them. They would be objects of nostalgia. But instead, like all characters who survive, they’ve gone through changes and alterations in their time. That’s the only reason these other characters are so definitely trapped in those periods.” Chaykin’s comic art world polemics, caused through powerful character development or taboo directions in plot, are intentional. Chaykin’s awardwinning American Flagg!—the story of an embattled futuristic Chicago, degenerated into a cross between the Windy City and Beirut—reflects mores similar to Ranxerox (the ultimate Euro-cyber-punk series). But Howard has never been deterred by opinions. He simply states, “One of the things I set out to do in American Flagg! was to offend everyone.” Depicting believably crude characters is what Chaykin does best and not everyone feels comfortable with those images. “In Black Kiss I’m trying to establish, with a couple of the characters, their complete callousness towards human life. I’m portraying them as completely and totally devoid of human emotion and contact with their work as I possibly can. They’re not even amused by their own behavior. One of my assistants, the conscience of the studio, says ‘Look at this!’ every time he looks at these characters. I think it makes him feel uncomfortable. What I think disturbs him the most is that they’re nothing like comic book villains in their behavior—it is a convincing and believable element of the episode.” Black Kiss is a story of the ’80s but stylistically it has ’50s undertones. Chaykin doesn’t recreate period art but rather sees the influence as part of ’80s eclecticism. “The ’80s have really been a decade of retrieval. Without any real style of its own, it’s managed to reclaim and retrieve much of the ’50s,

128â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

’60s, and ’70s. What is called postmodernism is actually a mess of those periods. I see more and more guys walking along the street with longish hair, and more and more women with ’60s hairdos and mini skirts. We’re all becoming middle aged and in that middle age we’re reclaiming our childhood fantasies. I still dress and look pretty much as I did in the late ’60s.” An undertone of a decade is acceptable to Chaykin, but reverent recopying is not. The roles of good and evil (as the comics know them) and the pervading folk/comic images embedded in American culture are always open for discussion with Howard. “I’m offering a more convincing alternative to the regular comic book bad-guy behavior—bad guys wringing their hands with glee over how bad they are and good guys filled with self-pity because they can’t bring themselves to behave. Bad guys just think they are good guys working for the other side. I’m serious. Hitler was not insane—it’s an easy way out to call him nuts. For example, the setting in Black Kiss is the area around my studio in Glendale, and it’s as white bread and gentile a community as you’re going to find—real nice and Californian. The mall you see in Black Kiss is the Glendale mall—real American.” Hero worship and reverence for fantasy characters really irks Chaykin. “Conservative comics fans are the type of people who take Sgt. Rock seriously. In fact, Arnold Schwarzenegger is going to play Sgt. Rock, which I think is fascinating because Arnold is the current archetypal American comic hero. One of the reasons I have to do Blackhawk is because it’s a little further removed from guys running around in their underwear with masks on fighting crime. I can’t do that stuff. I was at DC comics the other day and they were preparing something for Batman’s fiftieth birthday next year. The editor asked me if I’d submit either a quote or a panel. I said I’d give him a panel because drawing Batman is the greatest challenge of my life; he was my favorite comic book character when I was twelve and I’ve never been able to draw him well. I said I’d do it but added that I’d like to include a quote about why I can’t draw and write Batman. I believe Batman is the story of someone trying to protect himself from himself and in the real world Batman is Donald Trump. Bruce Wayne is Donald Trump.” Even if Chaykin rejects superheroes he can still use elements from traditional American comics because that’s where his roots in the genre will always be. But he mixes his interest in comics with his World War II buff leanings. “Blackhawk is the first comic book I ever stole,” he acknowledges. “It’s a protofascist comic book. It is Nazis fighting for us—these guys in tight leather outfits, you know. I was a war gamer when I was very young. All the best war gamers were kids with heavy leftist leanings. We were the only ones who read

r o b e r t h a m b r e c h t / 1 9 8 8 â•…â•… 129

Von Clausewitz’s analysis of war when we were kids! We were obsessed with that period of history. I wanted to do a book about what war was really like, with the political underpinnings of the war. There were a number of people for whom the Second World War was simply an interruption of the old profit motive and the development of another.” For Howard some things never change. “There is still a phenomenal resonance of twenty years past,” he explains. “For all the talk about how our generation has become more materialistic since the ’60s, I don’t think we’re any less materialistic now than before. We just had a different style of materialism. Now, it’s just a different set of postures. We’ve just outgrown one set of rules and manifested another. If I had known that it wasn’t going to be all that different in the ’80s, I probably would have relaxed more.” Chaykin’s life at the moment pivots on work in his two favorite art forms—films and comics. Chaykin declares that comic books don’t offer the “geometrically increasing future” for him that films do. And because of his deep infatuation for old two reelers, musical comedies, and le septieme art in general, one of the giants in graphic novels could be lost. With comics becoming more seriously expressive, there’s hope for more variations in the medium. If Howard stays around, his work will continually add to that development and maturity. “I want to bring certain elements of realism from the world into my work,” says Chaykin. “I want my characters, settings and plots to be something anyone can identify with. The average comic reader’s view of the world has nothing to do with mine,” he adds forcefully. “Their idea is that the world is an intrinsically fair place in which evil is an external intrusion. That just isn’t the way I see it. Today’s world just isn’t rife with naiveté and innocence.”

Writer/Artist: Howard Chaykin H u g h S u r r at t a n d Je ff G e l b / 1 9 8 9 From Comics Interview #75, November 1989, pp. 44–77. Reprinted by permission of David Anthony Kraft, Fictioneer Books, Ltd.

Having absented himself from comics for two years, Howard Chaykin returned. This event was chronicled in Comics Interview #3 where Mitch Cohn quizzed Howard about his then-upcoming series American Flagg! And now, sad to say, Howard is on the verge of leaving comics behind once more. A lot of pulp has gone through the mill since 1983. American Flagg! hit the stands and became an instant sensation. It took the industry by storm, became First Comics’ first really big hit, and made Howard a star. With and without Reuben Flagg, throughout the expansionist ’80s, Chaykin continued to explore the mature spectrum of the medium, most notably in Time2, Blackhawk, and The Shadow. And in the last year his Black Kiss has reverberated throughout fan and prodom alike, challenging everyone’s preconceptions and expectations of comic books. And he’s not quite finished with us yet; there’s more to come! So, let’s catch up with the man who knew the job was dangerous when he took it . . .

JEFF GELB: Howard, what’s occupying most of your time right now? HOWARD CHAYKIN: Right now I’m finishing a rewrite on a screenplay called Showdown for Larry Gordon’s company at Fox. JEFF: Is this your idea? HOWARD: No, they gave us the assignment, and we’re delivering it Friday. JEFF: Who is “we”? HOWARD: I have a writing partner, John Moore, who was my assistant on The Shadow and on Time2. JEFF: Writing assistant? 130

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 131

HOWARD: No, an art assistant. I was at the San Diego Convention in ’85—I moved here in October of ’85, and one of the reasons I was at the convention was to find an assistant. When I met John, it was an extraordinary sympatico. He sent me a portfolio and—as I told him a year later—the portfolio was really a formality because he had the job. All I needed to know was that he could hold the pencil. (Laughter.) I mean, there are far more gifted guys that I wouldn’t give a job on a bet, you know. John came on on the new Flagg! crew as colorist, and ultimately became the writer with the second issue, after the writer we had hired delivered unacceptable work. HUGH SURRATT: Boy, and it didn’t miss a beat. HOWARD: I really think John did a great job, I really do. JEFF: Did he realize that his future with you was going to be as a writer? HOWARD: By no means. We’d always talked, throwing concepts back and forth, and ultimately we ended up writing a screenplay together. And we’ve been hawking it around. I’m a corporation, he’s an individual, but we are known together as Scathing Indictment Films, a division of Judeo-Christian Work Ethic Productions. (Laughter.) John’s real young, he keeps me in tune with what’s going on, but he’s also got a real “old man” spirit, so I get to feel younger, too. JEFF: What kind of story? HOWARD: A romantic comedy, called The Time of Her Life. It’s about a guy who goes back in time to change history, and another guy follows and has to stop him. It’s very sweet— HUGH: None of that sounds like you. HOWARD: That’s what everybody else says. (Laughter.) Well, that’s the whole point. You see, the problem is—Jeff, as you know, you ask me one question and then you can leave the room—(Laughter.) Since I work in a business in which most people spend their entire careers and lives having one idea, and one approach, it’s a perfectly reasonable thing to presume that I am the same. On the other hand, at thirty-eight I’m still waiting for the schmucks that I work with to stop reading the same drek they’ve been reading since they were twelve, being absolutely, cosmically, and carnally delighted by material that would bore any average adult! I have a fairly wide range of enthusiasms, since I have a life. I also recognize that I have a certain responsibility to comics and to various aspects of my profession. But only people in comics are surprised to discover that most of the material we’re promoting are romantic comedies and comedy thrillers. JEFF: Well, why have you never tried to do any of that in comics?

132â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

HOWARD: Do you honestly think there’s room in comics—in an industry which takes as a given that a guy with a mask and underwear and a gun and who talks dirty is an adult comic book—has room for anything even vaguely smacking of a sophisticated romantic comedy? HUGH: Certainly not as far as the profit margin goes. HOWARD: I do this for a job. I have no romantic illusions about comics. The thing that I am proudest about in my career in comics, is that I have managed to create a reasonably sized niche for myself without doing the accommodating stuff, and at the same time I haven’t really had any profound appeal to the other avant-garde Jews. I’ll use a phrase I’ve used before—it’s Republicans, Democrats, and me. I feel sort of lost and alone in the desert. JEFF: I agree totally, yeah. But on the other hand—and I’m not trying to get down on you—but if it isn’t the guys like you who drag comics kicking and screaming to the next level, will it ever happen? HOWARD: I don’t think it ever will happen, no. I think— JEFF: Let me interrupt you for a second. HOWARD: Okay. JEFF: Which is unusual. HOWARD: Oh, shut up! (Laughter.) JEFF: But you say you have a certain responsibility to comics—how would you define that? I would define your responsibility to comics at this point to be dragging it kicking and screaming into something new. HOWARD: Well, I think I am, quite frankly. Here, consider this: One of the things that astounds me is it’s 1989 now. Flagg! debuted in June of ’83, and since that time what I’ve brought to comics is spontaneous dialogue and a sense of characterization that is considerably off what had previously been dealt with in comic books. I consider myself a middling draftsman, a very average artist, and this is neither false modesty nor false humility, neither of which I have in any particular great load. When I’m good at something, believe me, I acknowledge it. I’m not interested in passing off bad drawing as cartooning. I happen to feel that I do a workmanlike job, and I have to work really hard to get that workmanlike level of effect. I’ve never developed a tremendous technical facility. I spent the first half of my career damning technicrats, I’m spending the rest of it wishing I could have not damned them when I was able to learn the material. I have a profound empathy for a guy like Gil Kane, who is in a very similar state. But it gets very frustrating being forced by circumstance to be quixotic when it is not in your nature, and it is not in my nature. I am a joiner, a herd

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 133

person. I like being with people, both personally and professionally, literally and figuratively. It’s very frustrating producing the material that I produce and having no fellow church members in the pew with me. JEFF: Why do you think that is? HOWARD: Because . . . well, let’s ramble and find out. (Laughter.) A lot of it has to do with the fact that people who work in comics are people who grew up reading comics, it’s a given. They don’t come to comics from, “Well, I drove a cab for awhile, I think I’ll try drawing comics.” JEFF: Yeah, but you do, too. HOWARD: What’s that? JEFF: You came to comics like everyone else. HOWARD: No question, I was absorbed by them. On the other hand, perhaps I was smarter than I thought and saw that comics, like television, was a constricting medium; that comics were the way they were only because that’s the way they were. And . . . The fact is, I produce work that embarrasses and confuses a lot of my peers, because it’s disrespectful, sensationalist, vulgar, and sordid. And it’s all of those things because— JEFF: I must have missed those books. (Laughter.) HUGH: I would say disrespectful would be Blackhawk, and possibly even sordid, and vulgar of course. (Laughter.) HOWARD: The subtitle of Time2, which First didn’t use, was Sordid Tales of Vulgar Enlightenment. Consider how frustrated—you guys read comics and you know me, you know the material—you’ve got to realize that with this plethora of articles in the mainstream press over the past year, I haven’t had a nibble of acknowledgment. If I thought that I was as good as I’d like to think that I was, I could understand how Charlie Parker felt. On the other hand, that might make Harvey Pekar cringe. (Laughter.) JEFF: Is it just the fact that we’re working off a really incestuous talent pool? HOWARD: Well, Black Kiss is the most vilified comic book in the country right now. It’s outselling its nearest competitor three to one—and if they can find anything to jerk off to in that book, I’m astounded. (Laughter.) I did the book because I wanted to see if I could sustain my own interest and enthusiasm in a book about that sort of thing. And also to get something out of my system. One of the single most important moments in my life in comic books was something that went by so fast I didn’t even know it. It happened in ’73 or ’74 at DC Comics. I was schmoozing with Alan Weiss, Mary Skrenes, and another person. We were all talking, we

134â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

From Black Kiss #2 (1988).

had only known each other for a year or so, we were just chatting, filling in the holes in our lives. The fourth person was a regular letter writer of comics who worked at DC and at Marvel for a couple of years and then sort of disappeared from the business; she occasionally appears in letter columns. And after we talked there was this beat, and all of a sudden this other woman said, “Gee, I wish I had a past.” It was an astonishingly embarrassing thing to hear. I don’t think she was conscious of what she was laying on us, but I believe that she was speaking for an enormous part of the comic-book talent pool and audience. And I think that’s a fairly salient point. There’s a wonderful contradiction—and you guys will know exactly what I’m talking about. Comic-book people want comics to be accepted as an artform, and they want to be taken seriously, but at the same time they realize that once that happens, it’s not going to be the little club anymore. So, there’s that wonderful bouncing dichotomy. On top of which, you’ve got an audience of rapidly aging guys in comics. At the conventions there are fewer and fewer kids going on their own; there are more and more kids showing up with their parents, and those parents are the

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 135

ones that are going to the conventions. I don’t think this is going to lead to a renaissance of adult comics. Instead, it’s going to lead to a lot of mainstream comic books with more guns and big breasts. And if that’s what’s going to happen, then that’s what’s going to happen. I’m sorry, Gary, but that’s life. Five or six months after Black Kiss started appearing, I got a solicitation to work for a company, one of these new companies. This is the first thing to follow Black Kiss. It’s an “in” comic book about a bar in which people come in and tell their sexual stories or whatever—work by guys who clearly have never had a date. Eric Idle’s “Nudge nudge, wink wink, say no more,” is far too real a living icon for comic books. I’m really tired of reading sex stuff by guys who have never had a date. I mean, it was bad enough reading mad scientists written by guys who never had gotten out of high school, but now that we’re writing sex it’s even worse! JEFF: And this is a book that you were solicited to— HOWARD: Yeah, and I Xeroxed the solicitation and sent it to everybody and said, “Do you believe this shit?” When Fitzgerald said the rich are different—Hemingway said, “They have more money.” It wasn’t a facile banality, he meant that money served as an emotional buffer between reality and the rich. Comic-book people use comics not as literature, not as entertainment, but as a buffer. And as a training manual for social structure. JEFF: Won’t some people, when they read some of your comments, say, “Wait a minute, he’s forgetting at least two or three guys out there that are really—” HOWARD: Of course I am. Who am I forgetting? (Laughter.) The only book that I read on a regular basis, with any real regularity, is Yummy Fur. JEFF: I love that, too. HOWARD: It’s about subjects that interest me, sex, death, and guilt. JEFF: And boy, is it horrifying sometimes. HOWARD: Chester is obviously, whether consciously or unconsciously, a master of punch lines of incredibly filthy adolescent jokes, because all of his material is adolescent scat and sex humor translated into an adult realm. JEFF: Well, let’s name some names here. What about Alan Moore, Frank Miller, the Hernandez Brothers, and Chester Brown? There must be a few others, who else am I missing? HOWARD: Well, Alan uses words better than anybody. On the other hand, I knew when I read the tenth issue of Watchmen that I was going to hate #11 and #12. JEFF: Why? HOWARD: Because I knew damn well he’d done exactly what he’d always

136â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

done, which is not bother writing the ending before he started the book. What he did was . . . he rips off a second-rate episode of Outer Limits. I was never a fan of The Outer Limits. I was a big fan of The Twilight Zone because I was the right age— HUGH: The Outer Limits always seemed like— JEFF: Monster of the week. HUGH: Yeah. HOWARD: It just never interested me. I also never saw Star Trek, because that came on when I started dating. I haven’t reread Watchmen. One of the things that happened when I signed on to do The Shadow was I saw the first issue of Watchmen in Xeroxes, so I was reading Watchmen months before anybody else was. Great stuff. V for Vendetta is swell. JEFF: But? HOWARD: No buts. He’s swell. JEFF: Pushing the envelope a little bit? HOWARD: Yeah. He’s a better writer than I’ll ever be. I’m serious. He uses language extraordinarily well, there’s a genuine poetry to his stuff— JEFF: But what I’m saying is: Are other people addressing themes that can help to drag comics into a new realm, as well? Are there any great spots out there that maybe you want to point out that people don’t know about? In fact, probably the best thing you can do is point people in the way of Yummy Fur. HOWARD: Buy Yummy Fur! Well, apparently Chester is the darling of the Harvey Awards this year. Bill Marks is upset. He’s delighted that Chester is being honored, but he was sure that Black Kiss was going to be nominated for something! I laughed and said, “Bill, grow up.” (Laughter.) Nobody ever admits they like looking at fucking, because they think they’re not supposed to like it. HUGH: Well, I’ve never known anybody like Dagmar. (Laughter.) HOWARD: Yeah, really? HUGH: Really. HOWARD: I have. JEFF: But you grew up in New York City. HOWARD: The first job I had as an artist was working in a studio called Zenith Press which made composites of fashion models, and the only people in the office who were not Puerto Rican drag queens were the boss and me—and both of us were humongously fat. HUGH: “Girls with dicks and boys with tits.” HOWARD: Right. HUGH: Good line.

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 137

HOWARD: That made a lot of people very unhappy! (Laughter.) HUGH: I thought that was great. JEFF: What do you really want to do with Black Kiss? What is your goal with that book? HOWARD: To turn out twelve issues of an interesting, provocative read, and not much more than that. JEFF: What brought you to do that book in particular? HOWARD: Specifically? JEFF: Yeah, and with Vortex. The history, Howard, give. HOWARD: Well—in the middle of the ratings situation I got real bored real fast. JEFF: You mean the DC thing? HOWARD: Yeah. I thought it was a lot of crap. I mean, bear in mind that DC is the company that was convinced Dark Knight was a commercial dog, and was convinced that The Shadow was going to go right down the toilet. DC continues to shoot itself in the foot by never knowing when its output is any good. I mean, I had the first page of Arkham Asylum read to me on the phone yesterday, by a screenwriter friend of mine, and it was one of the funniest things I’ve ever heard, but not intentionally. I’m not talking about the script, I’m talking about the plot, the artist’s direction—this guy is the most pretentious asshole I have ever read. The bottom line is DC often doesn’t know what it’s doing. They’ve always behaved in that way, and I’m really bored. At the same time, I got really bored with the guys who were against the ratings system, because there was a level of self-righteous demagoguery that was a load of crap. The only one among them who had anything good to say was Steven Grant. Grant’s letters to the Buyer’s Guide were consistently reasoned and well stated. Steve is a terrific journalist. So, I was sitting and thinking, and I had had a concept for an erotic idea, the concept being identical twins, one dick between ’em. (Laughter.) It was originally called Smoke Dreams, because I didn’t know what it was going to be about—I was looking for a genre. Should it be an erotic Western? Should it be a superhero story with a lot of fucking in it? And I decided to just do a roman noir, a contemporary noir—my first L.A. job, a story that took place in Los Angeles now, with a ’70s sensibility. And that was that. JEFF: Why Vortex? HOWARD: I was in New York City in January of ’87, at a disco called the Saint—which was gay half of the week, straight the other half—which apparently is a new thing in New York. I have no idea. They did a party to celebrate

138â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Time2, which was kind of fun. We all flew in, had a big party, it was a gas—but I was pissed because my name wasn’t on the invitation. I’m known in the business as the guy that First pays. Unfortunately, if they treat me the way they do, I’ve got to assume that they’re treating some of the field hands out there, the real work-a-day guys, like real shit. I was solicited to do a book at that party. Lou Stathis, who is an old friend from Heavy Metal days, and a sympatico dude, a guy that I can get along with real easily, asked if I was interested in doing something. JEFF: He writes— HOWARD: He’s the guy that writes the editorials, which are wonderful. He says, “How’d you like to do a book for Vortex?” We started fighting immediately. For some reason we didn’t get along for that first six months—we talked about it for a year before we actually did it. And that’s how it happened. I’ve been real happy working for Bill. JEFF: Was there ever a point at which you would have even approached Marvel or DC on it? HOWARD: No! Come on. Look, one of the things I’ve learned since Flagg! is that I do weird shit for the independents. I do the straight stuff for Marvel and DC. Time2 originally started out as a very different project called Power which I proposed to DC Comics. The negotiations just went on so long, and they kept throwing money at me! I wouldn’t have promoted American Flagg! to DC or Marvel, because at the time they wouldn’t have had any idea what to do with it. After the fact, “Why didn’t you come to us?” “For obvious reasons.” Black Kiss is not something either of those companies would have published under any circumstances, including Piranha or anything like that. HUGH: It would be tough running a subscription notice for that in the back of Batman. (Laughter.) HOWARD: Yeah. Well, look at it this way: The first review of Black Kiss appeared in Amazing Heroes following a review of Plastic Man. (Laughter.) I thought that was swell. I consider myself a mainstream talent, the mainstream doesn’t. The avant-garde guys consider me extremely mainstream because I choose to work in those themes. It’s very easy to put me out of the mainstream, when mainstream talent turns its back in embarrassment. The fact, as I was saying earlier, that in all of these articles about comics—I wasn’t even acknowledged. Now, in the comic-book world if I were to make a public statement along these lines, the first assumption on the part of the comic-book reader, “Whoa, kinda bitter! Maybe he didn’t deserve to be.” Okay, I can live with that.

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 139

By the same token, that Larry King piece, the TV piece following the New York Times, I got five calls throughout the day to appear on the King show. Because in the comic-book industry there aren’t a lot of articulate guys who are guaranteed to show up places wearing a necktie, a sport coat, and a clean shave. Most comic-book guys either look like big, fat, stolid loaves of bread, or they look like guys that your parents were convinced were trying to steal the Dodge. And, as threatening as I can be, at least in a comic-book venue, I show up not looking corporate but pulled together. And I said, forget it. I didn’t hear you acknowledge me—you’re all embarrassed. Fine, defend yourself. So that’s really that. JEFF: Well, with all of that in mind, does comics still represent the place where you want to spend a significant amount of your time? HOWARD: Not at all. I saw the writing on the wall, after I left Flagg! I mean, I’m lucky enough to sell a limited number of expensive books to a small audience. I don’t reach a mass market audience. There are a half million people who buy all of the comic books in the United States, and maybe another half million people who know those people—and I don’t think the Batman movie is going to do anything to comic books by any stretch of the imagination— JEFF: I agree with you, although we might as well use this as a quick side note—did you see it? HOWARD: No. JEFF: Are you gonna? HOWARD: Yeah, sure. I was invited to three screenings, and they were all postponed or moved or something, fine. I figure Batman will be around awhile. JEFF: That’s for sure. In the best of all worlds would you want to stay in the medium, or are you tired of the medium? HOWARD: No, I like the medium, it’s the content that bores me. I’m not interested at all. HUGH: What will you do, Howard? Venture into movies? HOWARD: Hopefully. Bear in mind, if I fuck up in film, I’m going to come slinking back with my tail between my legs, sucking up to get work! (Laughter.) HUGH: Well, this movie thing, did this come along after you came to Hollywood— HOWARD: I moved out here to get into the movies, of course. I did fine in New York. I bought my apartment real cheap, which gave me instant equity. I gave myself three years. I got my first deal, so I’m here, I’ve done it. I’m pitching like crazy. Unlike a lot of screenwriters, I don’t have to take a

140â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

nine-to-five job. I’ve got a job that keeps me writing. On the other hand, it’s also time consuming. One of the reasons I stopped drawing is, in terms of time efficiency, I make more money as a writer. JEFF: Which do you like more? Never mind the money, do you enjoy being an artist more than you enjoy being a writer? HOWARD: It’s my job. If I didn’t have to live, I wouldn’t do it. JEFF: Yeah, but you’re such a good artist! To leave that kind of talent behind— HOWARD: Watch me do it again! (Laughter.) Jeni buys a lottery ticket every Wednesday and Saturday just out of habit—if she wins, I’ll see you later. I work to live. I’m not that consumed with this stuff. There are things I like to do. I suggested to DC a couple of years back to put me in charge of editing a line of noir paperback comics. JEFF: That’s a great idea. HOWARD: They couldn’t see it at all. JEFF: Why? HOWARD: I don’t know. Look, they’re not really interested in doing anything different or interesting. I’d like to stay in comics if I could assume that I could make the kind of money that I’m hoping to make. But I think the audience is going to pass and go on and be interested in something else. Frankly, an audience that is interested in the kind of work that’s passing for real tip-top favorite right now doesn’t interest me as an audience. How seriously can I take an audience that thinks all that much of Todd McFarlane. The guy is a second-rate Art Adams, who in turn is a wonderful artist, but who is himself a second-rate Michael Golden. JEFF: For a guy who is about to jump ship, it sounds like you’ve still got a lot of oars in the water. HOWARD: Hey, I’m no schmuck! A lot of the guys in comics are looking at me wondering, “Hey, you’re getting film work?” I’m not getting film work, I’m busting my ass every day hustling, calling, businessing. Nobody gave me work because I’m a hot shit comic-book talent. JEFF: Did that help? HOWARD: It got me in. It got me an agent. My agent is the woman who was representing the Flagg! and Grimjack projects out here. But it didn’t get me work. Nobody gave me work until they saw that I could deliver 120 pages of screenplay coherently. JEFF: Didn’t they at least want to give you some storyboards? HOWARD: Oh, yeah, lots of that. They asked me to do the Dick Tracy adaptation. I said, “Sure, when Warren does the next Dobie Gillis revival.” As it turns

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 141

out, though, John will be writing the Dick Tracy stuff with Kyle Baker. I think Kyle Baker is the most important talent to come into the comic-book business since Michael Golden. HUGH: What the hell is Michael Golden doing now? HOWARD: Well, he’s going to be doing Batman with me. JEFF: That’s one of the projects we might as well talk about. HOWARD: Yeah, let’s get to that. They’ve been asking me to do a Batman story. I explained that the problem for me was that Batman was about the poor needing someone to protect them from themselves, and in the real world, Bruce Wayne is Donald Trump. Andrew Helfer starts giving me, “Come on, do it. If I get you a really good artist, will you do it? Come on. How about Michael Golden?” So I said, “Sure, I’d love to.” I had no ideas! John comes over one day, with a great idea for a Batman story without Batman in it. It’s a wonderful piece of business, a great piece. The two of us started jamming, doing the tiger in the cage ramble, and ultimately what we developed is a real exciting Batman story, five issues, and I can’t tell you much about it. It’s going to be fairly hard-boiled, fairly nasty, not in ways you would suspect. It’s going to be about stuff that’s been brewing in the city of Gotham for some thirty years. And no Joker. JEFF: Robin? HOWARD: By no means. There’ll be lots of references in it to a number of Batman stories from the ’50s. JEFF: Really? HOWARD: That’s when I grew up reading Batman. HUGH: There’ll be a big penny in the Batcave? HOWARD: Yeah, yeah. Did you ever read The Kryptonite Kid? It’s a novel about a kid playing Superman with a towel around his neck. Well, my feeling is that my Batman is that kid grown up. He fell out the window and he didn’t die. That’s basically where we’re going with it. JEFF: So, Golden has been recruited for that one? HOWARD: Michael and I have been talking. I’ve got to send Michael Black Kiss. Michael is even less interested in contemporary comics than I am. HUGH: I think I just saw him do something for Continuity. HOWARD: What, Bucky O’Hare? HUGH: Something. The last thing he did regularly was The ’Nam, which was very good. HOWARD: I like Michael’s stuff a lot. Michael wants to do an Art Deco Batman, and we’ve got a premise. I’m going to be sending him The Black Dahlia and The Big Nowhere by James Ellroy, and a number of other novels, that’s the

142â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

tone I’m looking for. And it’ll be a lot of fun. I want to make sure it’s going to be packaged as a paperback. JEFF: When you say paperback, what do you mean? HOWARD: Ultimately have it as a trade paperback. HUGH: Once it’s finished? HOWARD: Yeah. HUGH: What kind of schedule would it come out on? HOWARD: I’m going to be going to New York to work out a time frame. HUGH: So you would be looking at a monthly schedule? HOWARD: Right. I don’t want any fill-in artists, I don’t want any problems. I really want consistent continuity. JEFF: So, there is that one. What some more stuff that you’ve got coming up? HOWARD: Let’s see . . . HUGH: What about Tommy Tomorrow, Space Ranger? HOWARD: Oh, that old thing! Actually, Space Ranger is the only character, along with Adam Strange, who is not in it. JEFF: With their history of revisionism and the revamping of character— HOWARD: I thought Alan did a great job with Adam Strange in Swamp Thing, that was probably my favorite sequence. HUGH: I could see you taking the planet Rann and its militaristic, almost fascist— HOWARD: Almost? I love this restraint. (Laughter.) Rann is Burroughs’ Mars with tunics, you know. The reason I left Adam Strange out of the continuity was I felt that it should exist unto itself. I know Richard Bruning has been trying to get an Adam Strange miniseries going since Hector was a pup, and I don’t really care. I didn’t want to step on anybody’s toes. Jan Strnad asked me if he could use Space Ranger, and I said sure. What I did was I took Brent Wood, who had been Tommy Tomorrow’s copilot in the old stories, and made him an important character. JEFF: How do you even remember this stuff? HOWARD: That stuff is really nutty shit. HUGH: Yeah. HOWARD: It’s the stuff I grew up reading, and I really love that stuff. I was a big fan of Sid Greene’s when I was a kid. Very textural, very fussy. HUGH: Very textural! HOWARD: And I just love the stuff. The outline for Twilight . . . it started out as a fake letter, from one of the Star Rovers. The narrator of the thing is Homer Glint. The letter was all about what happened when immortality was

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 143

injected into the human ecosystem and how it fucks everything up. I wish I had the letter to show you—it’ll be part of the ad. Do you know who Ned Buntline is? JEFF: No. HOWARD: Ned Buntline—I don’t remember his real name—is the guy who invented the American West. He was a reporter who went West looking for stories and started making stuff up because it wasn’t interesting enough. He invented Wild Bill Hickock, Buffalo Bill Cody, all of those guys. He was the one who wrote the dime novels. Homer Glint is Ned Buntline. The tagline of the material is, “You read these stories as a boy, now you’re ready for the truth!” Glint is the guy who wrote all of those “Tommy Tomorrow” stories, all of those “Star Rovers” stories, all of those “Planeteer” stories, and this is what it’s really all about. Tommy Tomorrow starts out as the character that Peter O’Toole played in The Ruling Class and becomes the Antichrist—literally. The narrator is Homer Glint from the Star Rovers, forming a trinity with the other two. Rick Purvis dies and becomes the Holy Ghost, and Karel Sorensen becomes God. I’m having a great time with this. The artwork is coming in like I could never have imagined; it’s far and away the best thing that Garcia-Lopez has ever done. I’m flattered by the work, quite frankly. The only character that I have created for the series is an ex-wife for Tommy Tomorrow, a fairly pivotal character named Brenda Tomorrow. HUGH: She was left at home a lot, huh. HOWARD: Well, as a matter of fact, that’s what it boils down to. Trust me, it’s great shit, I’m having a great time. JEFF: It strikes me, talking about all of these projects, that you’re writing all of these things. Do you not wish to draw any of them? HOWARD: Artist shakes head no. (Laughter.) Not a chance, I don’t. JEFF: Why? HOWARD: Because it’s an opportunity to work with artists who are so much better than I am, so fuck it. JEFF: How do you feel when you open this stuff for the first time and look at the way that they’ve pictured something that you had in your head? HOWARD: In this particular case, the only thing I have going for me is that I think I’m a better graphic designer. Garcia-Lopez can just draw rings around me, he is un-fucking-believable. Gil Kane came over to the studio, looked at these pages, and the first words out of his mouth were “That son of a bitch!” (Laughter.) He is that good. And look, working with Michael Golden, what a

144â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

deal! How can you lose? With Michael Mignola, John and I are doing a new Ironwolf book, a hundred-page hardcover, and Mignola did as much work character designing this stuff as most guys do for animated cartoons. JEFF: Wow. HOWARD: If you can imagine, he’s done what is basically a science-fiction strip that looks like it was designed sometime before the War of 1812. It’s gorgeous stuff. I’m going to be writing the Fafhrd and Gray Mouser story for Marvel next summer, for Mignola. I think Mike’s stuff is just great. These guys are better artists than I am! I know how good I am; I recognize my own limitations and I don’t have any problems working within them. But I also recognize the fact that one of the reasons I look this good is because I’m compared to most of the people working in comic books. Let’s face it, being the best comic-book artist in the world is a lot like being the world’s tallest midget; big deal. (Laughter.) JEFF: How much of what I look at in Black Kiss is really your work? I don’t really understand what your studio does. HOWARD: I have a background man. JEFF: That’s it, everything else is all you? HOWARD: Oh yeah. You want me to take you through the process? JEFF: Sure. HOWARD: Okay. Very simply, I lay it out, I thumbnail the material for spacing. HUGH: Small. HOWARD: Yeah, two inches by three inches. I write a first draft from the thumbnails. I do a full size layout, very loose, tighten up the layout to get more detail, and then do the final draft from that. I then spot the balloons, send it to the letterer, get it back, and then get into the drawing. I trace off the layout, very loose and geometric. I then have my assistant work off photographs of everything—nobody fakes anything. JEFF: I’ve seen things in Black Kiss that I knew where they were, which was really fun. HOWARD: Dagmar’s house was across the street from the studio. (Laughter.) It’s a little house in Glendale. We haven’t faked anything, because we want it to feel like Los Angeles—in the same way that a lot of my stuff felt like New York. I wanted to do an L.A. that I know, which is gritty and dirty and down. I feel much more paranoid in Los Angeles than I ever have in New York. JEFF: Really? HOWARD: Sure. I’ve never had my property assaulted and abused as much as I have here. I never felt so constantly . . . every day something’s wrong with

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 145

my car. I’ve never had that much of an assault on my sensibilities, person, or property. I always end up doing more than I want to. You know, working on the cleanup. And that’s how it’s done. You have to understand, I did Flagg! #1 through #12 all by myself—including cleanup—because I couldn’t figure out how to use an assistant. I’d worked with assistants before— HUGH: And you were an assistant, too. HOWARD: Sure, I spent years. But I couldn’t figure out how to teach somebody to work with me. And I was running so late and working so fast, and Flagg! never missed a ship date in my tenure—because I was doing seven-day weeks every week. It wasn’t until I took the two issues off that I worked out a formulated system that enabled me to use an assistant. When I came back with Flagg! #15, that’s when I was using an assistant: Larry O’Neil, Denny O’Neil’s son, who is a filmmaker now, and Dean Haspiel, whose work is beginning to show up in various places. Two very urban New York street kids who every so often call me and teach me street talk. (Laughter.) I love those kids, they’re really fun. I’ve told them both that if they want a job, they’re welcome to come out here any time. JEFF: So, who are your assistants now? HOWARD: Let’s see, the shop is: Corky Lehmkuhl, who just left. Corky had a piece in the swimsuit issue, Amazing Heroes, that great Superman and Lois at the beach. Corky’s a piss. I’ve known him for years; he’s an ex big, fat, surf Nazi who is now this real thin, aesthetically gorgeous surf god. (Laughter.) Nick Dubois—all my guys have great names—who is this real tall male model type I met at the San Diego convention last year, who is also doing some animation stuff. He also works with Mike Vosburg. Nick’s a real crackerjack guy, a real solid graphics man. As a matter of fact, he did some storyboards for me for a film presentation. Richard Ory was my assistant, but he’s a crew chief now. The arrangement we’ve got at the studio is a little different than it used to be—there are now four principals. Corky and Nick are the direct assistants, but yesterday was Corky’s last day and Nick is on his own now. Barb Rausch has also worked with us. Barb and Rich . . . Let me give you the studio setup here. There are four principals in the studio, me, Mike Vosburg, Shawn McManus, and Richard Ory. We all sort of work together in different arcs. Barb is also a part of the studio; she just did a Wonder Woman piece for DC. She and Rich colored the Wolverine job that I did for Marvel, with Nick and Corky on the backgrounds. The reason there are two of them as opposed to one is Corky was part-time and Nick is new. Rich does lots of stuff. He worked with Mike on the Tales from the Crypt covers.

146â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

In the second year of American Flagg! Chaykin took Flagg on a road trip to, among other destinations, a Soviet-ized region of Canada. From American Flagg! #17 (1985).

JEFF: The ones on the TV show? HUGH: HBO? HOWARD: That’s Mike and Rich. JEFF: That’s your studio! How come they don’t credit you? HOWARD: If I had done the covers, there would have been a credit! (Laughter.) You ought to see them, they’re really good! JEFF: Is there a reason why they’re not using the originals? HOWARD: I suspect that they want to tie it in with what’s in each show. JEFF: That’s very interesting that those are out of your studio, because the last one I watched, I watched through the whole credit sequence to see who did them, and they never say. HOWARD: I was a little amazed that Mike didn’t shoot for a credit. I also thought he should have asked for more money, but that’s me. They called me on that gig, and I can’t think of anybody less appropriate for the job than me. (Laughter.) I wasn’t really interested. So, I turned them on to Mike, and Mike has been making them extremely happy. They’re real pleased with the stuff that he’s doing, and with good reason. Shawn is doing Doctor Fate. He doesn’t play much in the group. He worked

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 147

with me on a couple of the Grimjack presentation pieces—we’ll get to the movie stuff after the comics. Shawn has done some crackerjack paintings. I’m trying to get Shawn to put some color stuff together for Spy. I’ve recommended Mike and Shawn both. Shawn’s got some cartoon painting that will blow you away. He’s doing some baseball stuff that is really funny—stuff that you would never imagine that you would see from a guy doing Doctor Fate. I’m serious, this is great shit. Rich crew-chiefed the color on the Wolverine book. He was in charge of Nick and Corky on backgrounds. He art-directed Barb’s colors, and then finished them. He techniqued the shit out of it. And when I tell you that the Wolverine stuff is going to be a mindfuck, believe it. Unlike a lot of projects, there’s been a lot of consultation. We left out entire backgrounds and painted them in. It’s not that European pretentious stuff, it’s comic-book coloring but done in three dimensions. If Marvel fucks up the printing, I will shit all over the office. (Laughter.) Rich is also doing the backgrounds on Twilight, and I’ve already promoted him hard as the colorist. When they see the Wolverine stuff, there won’t be a problem. We all sort of jump into each other’s projects and have fun. It’s a very convivial group, a very comfortable crowd. JEFF: When will the Wolverine thing be out? HOWARD: Summer, after the San Diego convention. JEFF: Probably right around the time this comes out. HOWARD: Wolverine is a job that I laid out two weeks before I moved out of New York. It’s finished, it’s all in, and it’s a lot of fun. HUGH: What kind of a format? HOWARD: A big fat comic book, Marvel Graphic Novel. (Laughter.) It’s Nick Fury and Wolverine going around the world kicking ass and having a great time. My only regret is that I didn’t do Wolverine out of the costume. I based Wolverine on one of my fellow comic-book artists, and I won’t say who. (Laughter.) I loved drawing Nick Fury because he’s kind of a pelican-faced old guy. I enjoyed drawing these characters. I had accumulated a stack of reference, so I would say that 97 percent of every background shot is a cold cut shot. It moves from New York to Istanbul to Macao, it’s all the hell over the place, so my National Geographics were trashed. (Laughter.) The flashback sequences are done in black-and-white monochrome. There’s one sequence showing Nick Fury in the ’60s, and that is what James Bond is supposed to look like. It’s just great. JEFF: So, actually, this doesn’t sound like slumming at all, you really had a good time with this.

148â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

HOWARD: A better time than I thought I would. Of course it was the easiest job that I’ve done in years. (Laughter.) Because superhero comics are so iconic that it took about as much effort to produce a sixty-two-page book as it does any average one-issue comic book of anything else, because any of the actual stuff that I would consider important would be inappropriate. JEFF: It was fun for a change. HOWARD: It was easy for a change. (Laughter.) JEFF: That’s right, drawing is not fun anymore. HOWARD: It’s not easy either. You’ve got to understand, I’m not a natural draftsman. One of the reasons why I relate to Gil is we share similar problems in that sense—everything we know is a learned skill. I have no gut instincts when it comes to drawing. I’m just not that good at it! When you see my pencils, you can tell. Believe me, I just slave. HUGH: It’s funny you would say that about Gil. When you look at some of those fluid pictures of Green Lantern and whatnot— HOWARD: You’re talking about what’s on the page, I’m talking about what went into building it underneath. JEFF: What are you doing with Gil? He’s certainly a favorite of mine. HUGH: Me. too. HOWARD: Gil and I weren’t on speaking terms for a long time. JEFF: Were you one of his assistants? HOWARD: I worked for Gil when I was eighteen and nineteen, and then I didn’t speak to him for ten years because I was so intimidated. (Laughter.) Seriously. HUGH: Chaykin intimidated? HOWARD: You have to understand that a lot of what I am, I learned from Gil. Much of my storytelling ouvre, throughout the ’70s, talking to guys in the business, is Gil Kane stories from that period. Like, this is how I got my start, this is how it worked—anecdotes that have slid in. I filled in blacks, did zips, did some cleanup, but he wouldn’t let me deliver pages because he was embarrassed at my physical appearance. (Laughter.) I had long hair, I was kind of grubby looking. Well, in the middle of this, “We’re not working anymore! We’re watching Cover Girl because it’s good for you!” (Laughter.) And he says, “Now, wasn’t that great.” We started talking again in the early ’80s. He called and asked if I’d come in and fill in for Harvey Kurtzman on one of these master classes in Texas— they did a master class thing with Harvey, Gil, and Burne [Hogarth]. HUGH: Pretty select company. HOWARD: Well, it was flattering. I said to Gil, “Is this finally the acknowledg-

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 149

ment of the existence of my generation or what?” (Laughter.) I didn’t go, I was just too busy, but we started talking. We ended up eating out a lot. Last year at DC’s Christmas party Mike invited Gil to lunch, so I called him and we made up, and I’ve been talking to him every week. I was never really close to my dad, so it was nice to have a guy of his age to ask, “Should I wear this tie?” (Laughter.) He does give me shit about the way I wear my hair. At any rate, we’re doing a number of projects, one of which is called Legend. We are waiting for a contract on this book. On the other hand, both of us have decided that we’d rather do another book first. We’re going to do a His Name Is . . . Savage graphic novel. It was astounding to me that no one had ever suggested it to him. I want to do an extremely cathartic, visceral graphic novel, a serious hard-boiled book, and use that as a segue into the four-part prestige format series called Legend. JEFF: What company are we talking about? HOWARD: DC. JEFF: For both of these things? HOWARD: Yes. I can’t go into Legend at this point because the contract papers aren’t signed, but just know that it’s a four-part series. JEFF: Existing characters in the DC Universe? HOWARD: No, creator owned, outside of the DC Universe, no sequels, no spinoffs, nothing—a single four-part story. One of the things about Gil that I think he’s perfectly willing to say himself is that the irony of his professional life is that he has developed an approach to material that is antithetical to the sort of stories he would intellectually like to tell. This is not to say that we’re talking The Brothers Karamazov here. But Legend is a story that really does have some scale that also makes use of that viscera. JEFF: Well, he’s so wonderful, I can’t wait to see something within that realm. HOWARD: We are going to kick ass for ’90. JEFF: What is Gil doing? HOWARD: Right now he’s working on The Ring. JEFF: What? HOWARD: Wagner! A four-part adaptation for DC. JEFF: That’s interesting. HOWARD: Maybe to you. (Laughter.) HUGH: I always have trouble with Craig Russell’s adaptations of operas. They’re beautiful, and I really like him as an inker, but— JEFF: Me, too.

150â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

HUGH: —but I just have a tough time reading it. HOWARD: I’m real excited about the idea of seeing his characters with my viscera, that kind of language. He was raised at 420 Saratoga Avenue in the ’30s, I was raised at 370 Saratoga Avenue in the ’50s, we went to the same grammar school—the levels of connection are bizarre, tons of shit. I pulled out a Claude Thornhill CD, he was a great bandleader of the ’40s—I mean, I throw things at him that prime memory. Gil’s life is one of extraordinary anecdotes. HUGH: You were talking about using a letter in the advertising. HOWARD: Yeah. HUGH: In your contracts do you specify what the advertising or promotion will be? HOWARD: No, it’s just that I don’t trust any of the companies that I work for to deliver advertising. HUGH: Will they accept this? HOWARD: They want help and I don’t charge them for it. For example, the Shadow promotion, that was my promotion. “God help the guilty!” was my line. When you consider the fact that Obadiah is an advertising man, what promotion that First does is disappointing. As for the Twilight material . . . I’d like, before it comes out, to reprint some of that old material in a couple of issues, with Kevin Nowlan doing the covers, and just lead that in to Twilight. It’s a take on these characters. I’m going to be accused of raping them. But then again, after I did Flagg! I was also told that I should have done comics as good as Sgt. Fury or Kid Colt, Outlaw. People still have too much respect for their tastes when they were twelve—that’s really it. HUGH: You’ve been through this now with both The Shadow and Blackhawk. JEFF: What do you feel about the way that they continued both of those series? HOWARD: I like what Rick Burchett is doing. I didn’t much like what he was doing in Action Weekly. But he and Pasko, I’m really impressed! They’re bouncy, they’re funny. Burchett has always been a good designer, he put a good picture together, but he seemed like he was a little bit unsure on that stuff in Action Weekly. But Blackhawk kicks ass! And Marty seems to be cooking! It’s impressive stuff. I mean that, no bullshit. I like the look and feel of the book, thrills, chills, and laughs. It doesn’t take itself that rigidly seriously, but it’s got some ideas. And they do some research. JEFF: And The Shadow? HOWARD: I absolutely adore Kyle Baker’s stuff, I really do. I was so pissed

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 151

when I found out he’d given away that Blackhawk cover he did for Action Weekly—I was furious, I could have killed that bastard. I think he’s swell. HUGH: He’s got a great sense of design. HOWARD: Have you seen Cowboy Wally? HUGH: You know, I saw it but I didn’t buy it. HOWARD: Aren’t you ashamed? HUGH: Yeah, I am. HOWARD: Cowboy Wally needs your support. I’d like to write the movie. It’s a funny, witty book. Kyle is a terrific writer, it’s just sensational stuff. JEFF: Let’s segue into the film stuff. HOWARD: Sure! JEFF: I’ve heard you were working on Black Kiss as one of your film projects? HOWARD: Yes. JEFF: How far along is that? HOWARD: Well, we’re in the process of cutting a deal. JEFF: So you’ve got someone interested? HOWARD: Yeah, we’re working with an independent producer with whom we’re doing a number of other projects. They’re producing Black Kiss, we’re also involved in a number of other things—a telepathy project and an historical project. JEFF: Did anyone come to you about that project, or did you have to come to them? HOWARD: Well, it organically developed. We’ve been out there hitting the pavement since we had an act written—we were hoping we could get away with an act, and we finally had to do the whole screenplay. JEFF: This is a naive question and I’m sure I know the answer already but isn’t handing them the comic almost like handing them the screenplay anyway? Would it have to be that much different? HOWARD: In the same way that in the paperback business when I wanted to do Westerns I had to do a Western painting, even though I had spacemen with guns, there is no interest on anyone’s part until— JEFF: You have to speak their language. HOWARD: I delivered a screenplay, I got a job. That’s it, you know. Our sample has gotten nice attention. It’s been very frustrating, particularly since the strike. We’ve had lots of meetings but pitches aren’t being bought. We’re working on spec at this point—lots of spec work all of the time. But we do have a couple of deals, we’re working on this film here, and we’re hawking around.

152â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

JEFF: What would you say Black Kiss’s chances are of actually getting to the screen? HOWARD: Not bad, because it’s budgeted very low—I might add also that every schmuck in the comics business who has heard that it’s been licensed has made the immediate presumption that it’s been licensed to someone like Henri Pichard or Chuck Vincent. (Laughter.) And I guess I would expect that from people who think that an adult comic book is about a guy who runs around in his underwear fighting crime. I have no interest in doing hard-core films. The only reason I did a hard-core comic book is because nobody else was. I wanted to piss in the soup. And now that I’ve done it, I don’t want to do it again. I’ve done that already. JEFF: Do you think that was a mistake? HOWARD: Doing Black Kiss? JEFF: Yeah. HOWARD: By no means, it’s a very liberating thing to do. It was cathartic, it was liberating, it was fun! HUGH: Was it lucrative? HOWARD: Oh! (Laughter.) Mother of pearl, you bet. It’s outselling its nearest competitor three to one. JEFF: What is a competitor in that field? I’m not sure I understand when you say that. HOWARD: Independents. Bear in mind that with Black Kiss Vortex has made a major leap forward. But nobody’s buying it because it’s so disgusting! Thank you very much! (Laughter.) I made a remark in Amazing Heroes that Black Kiss is about stuff that no Amazing Heroes reader would be interested in, and I stand by that remark. JEFF: You’re probably right. HOWARD: Because most Amazing Heroes readers read comic books not to be entertained but to be reassured. JEFF: But then that means that there’s another 100,000 people out there that actually do like that stuff. HOWARD: It’s selling fine. It’s made me more money than I expected. It’s going to be in print forever, in various forms. The film will be markedly different for a number of reasons. JEFF: It has to be. The comic is real dense and I don’t think a film can be that dense and— HOWARD: Beyond that! There’s the technical consideration that the only way you could find a man to play the role of a woman convincingly is to make him a fairly unattractive woman. The fact is that a transvestite always looks

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 153

five years older, because men’s faces, the very texture of the skin of a man’s face, is five years older—so a twenty-five-year-old man would look like a thirty-year-old woman at best. So it’s not going to be easy. And you can’t convince me that you can find a transvestite who is going to be that good an actress, you know what I’m saying. So, there’s a lot of shifting and moving. HUGH: Have you envisioned any particular castings? HOWARD: Oh, yeah, very definitely. The guy who I see playing Ricky is . . . the guy who was on My Sister Sam, Joel something. He’s a kind of a big bearish kind of guy who crochets. Ideally I’d like to see Ray Sharkey play Cass, but that might stretch the budget too far. I really like Sharkey. I’ve liked Sharkey since The Idolmaker. I mention that movie to everybody, nobody’s seen it. (Laughter.) You guys, I knew you’d seen it. HUGH: It’s part of the biz. HOWARD: I saw scenes from Class Struggle in Beverly Hills the other day, and he’s the moral focus of the film in a very weird sort of way. He’s wonderful! JEFF: If money were no object, who would the women characters be? HOWARD: Well, Kim Basinger obviously. It makes perfect sense. Basinger is the 1980s/’90s equivalent of a ’50s blonde, and that really is Beverly. HUGH: She’s like almost a nasty Angie Dickinson. HOWARD: I’m one of those guys . . . I mean, I like gentile women a lot, but I really don’t find Angie Dickinson all that appealing, never have. Cybill Shepherd is another one I just can’t work up a jones for, you know. A little too flatfaced. I mean, I spent my youth chasing guilt-ridden Catholic girls who desperately wanted to sleep with black guys, but they were too uptight so they slept with Jews. (Laughter.) JEFF: So, Black Kiss is fairly well along? HOWARD: Yeah. I hope by the time this is in print we’ll be writing the screenplay, if not finished. JEFF: I’m sure everybody, even with your comment about the X-rated directors, is wondering— HOWARD: It’s going to be R-rated. All of the sex is going to be left out, it’s all going to be implied. JEFF: It would have to be. HOWARD: Of course. Come on. I don’t want to spend two hours watching all of those people fuck. It’s going to be a ’90s color film with the sensibilities of RKO and 20th Century-Fox in the late ’40s. JEFF: Works for me. When you wrote Black Kiss the comic, were you thinking graphic novel? HOWARD: No. In this case I thought of it as ten-page chapters.

154â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

JEFF: Really? There was never a chapter head. HOWARD: Because I knew that Lou was going to be writing a synopsis, and it was monthly, and it was ten pages. There was no need to recap. HUGH: The synopsis works when you’re buying it and reading it every month, or however often it comes out—But I just went back and read the first nine issues, and they read great straight through. HOWARD: But talking about the sex, I’m tired of it already because I got tired of drawing fucking. JEFF: There’s not that many ways to do it. HUGH: Although you came up with a few interesting concepts. (Laughter.) When Cass comes back to the house looking for a place to hide out and gets into the three-way, that was great. HOWARD: The way I worked that one out, I said, “Corky, I want you to take every issue of Adult Video Review and clip every three-way you can find.” We put them on the wall, edited it down to fourteen, kept editing, bringing it down, and we finally had it all laid out. HUGH: Well, I guarantee you, there was no reader who expected— HOWARD: I set it up from the first page of the first issue. HUGH: Yeah, when she says something to the effect that there’s just one little thing that’s different. HOWARD: And she says. “I’m a five foot seven inch blonde, and I do mean seven inches.” (Laughter.) HUGH: But, really, you just don’t pick those things up at first. HOWARD: You’re expecting all of these characters to refer to themselves by their first and last names, to tell you what they’re doing. JEFF: Where do you think the audience for that book is coming from? Is it coming from people that want to see you drawing people fuck, or— HOWARD: Some. JEFF: —is it coming from people who actually want to have an adult story told in comic-book form? HOWARD: Some. Simonson seems to like the book—I gave Simonson the cover of #7, he really liked it. Grant calls me up every time an issue comes out to tell me how much he loves it, ’cause he was cracking up. I think that there are elements of enormous comedy in Black Kiss—comedy of recognition, comedy of acknowledgment. But again, comic-book people don’t have much of a life, so they don’t see it. When I was in New York on a signing tour, I was amazed at the people who showed up at St. Mark’s. I was expecting a hard-core, comic-book, new wave crowd, but it was a hard-core yuppie crowd, a lot of suit and tie types.

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 155

From Black Kiss #4 (1988).

HUGH: How do you fit them into that little store? HOWARD: They had a line out into the streets—it was really weird. JEFF: Where did these people find out about it? HOWARD: The book got interesting play. JEFF: Oh, yeah, the Penthouse thing. HOWARD: Penthouse did very nice by us. HUGH: The last time I was in New York I was staying in the Parke-Meridian, which is very chic, and as I was checking in one evening I saw a guy sitting in the bar there—and this was early on in the series—and he had on one of the brand new Black Kiss T-shirts. (Laughter.) HOWARD: No shit! I love it! HUGH: I just went up to him and said, “Right on, man.” (Laughter.) HOWARD: Well, the thing about the Black Kiss T-shirt is it sold like crazy because it didn’t look like a comic-book T-shirt—everybody assumed it was a band. We had it out first. HUGH: This guy was shocked when somebody came up and knew what the hell it was.

156â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

HOWARD: Was he embarrassed? HUGH: No, he was kinda groovin’ to it. HOWARD: Oh, great! HUGH: The other people didn’t know what the fuck we were talking about. HOWARD: I love when that shit happens. JEFF: Now, when you started Black Kiss, I remember you said it was going to be an erotic horror story. HOWARD: Yes. JEFF: I see it less as that as I see more of a film noir kind of story. HOWARD: It becomes a horror story. If I do another erotic book of any kind, it’s going to have to be something screamingly funny, because I’ve done the intense. I had to work up a lot of intensity for this, because there’s very little in me that can do that kind of material without more comedy, and I didn’t want to shoehorn any more laughs into it. And it gets uglier at the end. JEFF: Okay. So, is Black Kiss the easiest film project, or is that hard to translate, something you’ve done in one medium to another medium? HOWARD: I have no idea. I really don’t know. Black Kiss as an outline has given me trouble from word one. For example, I asked John to give me an order to it, in terms of the setup from #1 through #12, because I couldn’t get the breakdown on it, and John is a phenomenal plot mechanic. That was when we realized that we were just being too true to the material, so we threw a lot of it out. The major difference in the film is that Cass is going to be a better guy. The atmosphere and the ambience will be the same. JEFF: Great, film noir for the ’90s. HOWARD: Yeah! If Gary Groth really does believe that the reason the films of the late ’40s were dark was because they were saving money, we’ll do the same thing here. (Laughter.) JEFF: So, this is old news by now, but what did you actually do on Robocop? HOWARD: Nothing. I was asked to design a car. Now, I have no skill in designing automobiles. And bear in mind, at the time I had never driven! (Laughter.) Mostly, I think it was to thank me for all the stuff they were borrowing. (Laughter.) I got friendly with Ed Neumeier very briefly, but we haven’t spoken in years. I’ve known John Davison for about fourteen years, but not well. JEFF: Through comics. HOWARD: No. John was to Roger Corman what Roy Thomas was to Stan Lee, the first guy to run the company after. John’s a real neat guy. He did

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 157

Airplane, has some interesting credentials. And he was pals with a bunch of guys that I knew. I was staying with a guy named Dave Armstrong and it was my last night in town, and he said, “Do you want to see Shane?” These are prevideo days. We go over to John’s, get the keys, and go over to a garage which is stacked with films. It was great. So, I didn’t do anything on Robocop. JEFF: In film, do you feel like you need a partner, or just that it’s worked out well so far? HOWARD: One of the things I learned working in comics is that I need an editor. I like working with an editor. And I’m very disappointed with most of the guys I worked with as editors. One of the rare exceptions to that is Andrew Helfer. Helfer is a fuck up, a monster, and a complete asshole, but I love working with him, I really do. I say this with no contradiction. I respect Andrew, but he’s the absolute worst administrator I’ve ever met in my life—thank God for Kevin Dooley. But Andrew is one of the smartest, sharpest people I’ve met, certainly in this business. I called Andrew once after he hadn’t taken my calls for three weeks and said, “If you don’t call me back tomorrow I’m telling the Germans where your parents are!” (Laughter.) HUGH: He’s somebody who came from outside of comic books, isn’t he? HOWARD: I don’t know. Andrew has been at DC for about eight years. He started as Joe Orlando’s assistant. But back to the point: John and I work together because we’re both very good for each other in terms of editorial. We have very different skills and our skills don’t overlap. I’m strong on dialogue and character, John is strong on structure and plot mechanics. He’s very strong on that. The Grimjack plotting sessions were unbelievable, for that reason. John and I are working on stuff separately as well. He’s doing Dick Tracy on his own. And he’s promoting some other projects. He’s got a dream Western that is just a concept—this could be the thing to bring Westerns back to comics, a brilliant piece of work. JEFF: Why does he want to bother working in comics after seeing how disenchanted you have become? HOWARD: It’s good bread and butter. Film work is a lot of spec so you need a day job, and his day job is writing comics. We constantly argue, we’re at each other’s throats all of the time, but there is an equanimity to the material; it’s an equal partnership. JEFF: What’s the film business like compared to the comics field? HOWARD: Different. My skills are much more valid in films than they are in comics.

158â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

JEFF: In what respect? HOWARD: I’m articulate. I’m reasonably glib, and I think quickly on my feet, and I’m interested in people as characters as opposed to plot devices. The nice thing right now is that an enormous number of people in executive positions around this city are old fans of mine. My attorney is a guy who I did a Batman drawing for when he was seventeen, that kind of stuff. We’re getting old as we speak, and isn’t it wonderful that we all look so boyish! (Laughter.) So, it’s different. It’s more endless in terms of the preparation. Even though comics is a production business, it’s still very hands-on. You can make a comic book. The process is endless in film. For example, we’ve been pitching like crazy at Touchstone for six months to a year. We’re fairly close with a couple of people out there, one guy in particular. We developed a rock ’n’ roll film which we thought was a go, and we were brought in to talk about another film project. They called us, “We want to do a movie about telepathy, what do you think?” They listened to us for awhile and then they said, “Well, we really want to do a teenage comedy, what do you think?” And I said, “I think it’s the first idea you came up with and it’s real kneejerk.” I come up with an idea in the middle of a meeting that nobody seemed to hear. We left and I talked to John, and we called these guys who we’re doing Black Kiss with, and they said, “That’s the movie.” Ultimately, it’s developed into something called Open Book, and we’re pitching it to Tom Lane. HUGH: What about Flagg!? HOWARD: Flagg! is sitting at Larry Gordon’s waiting for Rick Obadiah. JEFF: Why? Does he have to be involved? HOWARD: Yes. I’m a corporation. The reason I’m a corporation is that in this country the law states that you can’t license a character in perpetuity if you are an individual—you have to be a company. That was the only reason. If First goes out of business tomorrow, my characters and my material revert to me immediately without litigation. Other guys will have to go through the legal process. So I paid for the corporation for that purpose—that’s the deal. So, Flagg! is represented by First as an agent. I’m hoping that with the success of Batman there will be some getting on the stick. I’m also involved with the Grimjack project. JEFF: How far along is that? HOWARD: A treatment and four presentation pieces, and we’re pitching. We’re also in the process of developing Time2. JEFF: How about the Nick Fury project? Do you have anything to do with that? HOWARD: I don’t know anything about it. Nobody tells me anything. Iron

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 159

Man is being done at Universal. Iron Man is the only character at Marvel that I would ever want to do as a comic book. JEFF: As a comic book? HOWARD: Yeah. Toss out all of the shit and start from scratch, and do a story about a guy who has to deal with the fact that he is always attached to this box, that he’s living in a machine, and that he’s the engine. I’d like to play with that. But Mark Gruenwald and Tom DeFalco are running Marvel Comics right now. (Laughter.) So you’re going to have comic books that look like cereal premiums. JEFF: Ain’t it the truth. HOWARD: Every time I see those books, I think they’re reprints. What else? We’re pitching Grimjack, we’re developing Time2, and a lot of other stuff in various stages of development, and I can’t talk about it. I can give you a title and a basic run. What we’re doing with Grimjack is a romantic story—the elements of Casablanca and The Maltese Falcon against the background of Cynosure. Time2 we’re trying to develop as a whodunit—what I’d love to see is Jeff Goldblum and Geena Davis star, with Bobby McFerrin and Kim Basinger. JEFF: There’s two things that come through here. We’re not talking to you as an artist anymore—it’s something I still have to get used to. I know Howard Chaykin as the artist who is a writer. I don’t know if I want to get used to you just as a writer, because I’m going to miss that artwork. HOWARD: No, you won’t, somebody will come along to rip it off. (Laughter.) You have to understand, Jeff, that part of my career, particularly in the past five years, has been working in fairly small venues. One of the things I’ve been solicited to do is an article about comics as a secret strip mine motherlode of referential material for the film industry. Recently I realized that I’m a strip mine for the comic book industry, because I can be ripped off and picked over because I reach such a small band. So, I’m not particularly interested. I planned to spend my life in comic books, but I also didn’t plan to get this old. I’m not taken that seriously as a talent, in terms of the comic-book business. JEFF: By whom? HOWARD: By the audience! For the most part they have one idea and either it’s lurid or patronizing or condescending. Very little humor, and absolutely no irony. And I’m not interested in an audience that thinks that stuff is real good. JEFF: If guys like you leave it behind, there’s not much of a reason for guys like us to stick around. HOWARD: I’ve been saying that for years.

160â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

JEFF: Well, I think that’s unfortunate. I still see—and I know you have the same vision—that somewhere there is actually still an adult reader. HOWARD: I think so. Unfortunately, what I think really happened was that Kurtzman produced adult comics, and nobody paid any attention. They were too interested in the horror and the science-fiction stuff. Believe me, as a kid I didn’t see the war stuff’s worth at all. I find it astounding that I have to recommend to guys that have been working in the business for years that they might take a look at Kurtzman’s war books. “I don’t like war comics!” They’re still thinking that the subject matter is important—they don’t know! HUGH: As opposed to telling a story. HOWARD: As I said, I had this page of Arkham Asylum read to me, and this guy in his art directions demonstrates the fact that he’s read Freud, KrafftEbing, Jung, tons of material on early religion, and this is all to service Killer Croc and the Mad Hatter. (Laughter.) Do you see any irony here? JEFF: Yes. Can you do better in films? Do you still have to play down to your audience? HOWARD: I don’t play down to my audience—that’s been my failing in life. (Laughter.) What you’ve got in comic books is those half a million people, and what they’ve got is a very specific, line by line list of what excellent means. The movie industry is mass market, a lowest common denominator having no idea what good is, so you at least have the opportunity to accidentally win. You can’t win with comics unless you share the sensibilities of the audience, and I don’t. The audience in comics, as I’ve said more than once, believes that the world and the universe is an intrinsically just place and that evil is an intrusion, like Jews in Germany. They are constantly astounded and shocked to discover that it’s not like that at all. It’s not that the world is intrinsically evil, but there is no law. All of us at one point or another have realized that we’re adults but we’ve never had the curriculum given to us. What they never tell you when you’re a kid is that you make it up as you go along. Comic books tell the audience very different messages. They tell the audience that being an adult is simply like being a teenager only taller, and that you are entitled to the same range of expectation and acceptance. I cannot tell an audience that it’s okay to whine, publicly misbehave, and just come on as if the world owes you anything. What passes for characterization in comic books today is this whining posture. Adults don’t have the time for that, because they have lives and jobs and other people with whom they really interact. Comic-book people are ready for that sort of thing because they have no lives, their jobs are meaningless, and generally speaking the people with whom they share their lives have the same sensibilities.

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 161

I don’t have a lot of contempt for the comic-book audience, because I come out of it myself. On the other hand, I don’t have a lot of respect for their tastes. Therefore, I can’t take any worship seriously. I’m concerned about guys who clearly have a contempt for that audience, who also thrive on that worship. That lack of irony is very destructive. JEFF: So it leaves you at the point where you have to look elsewhere? HOWARD: Every time I say anything like this, the presumption is that I’m on some high-handed moral horse. I’m not! I simply want to see guys produce material that is unpretentious and fun, that doesn’t have to be apologized for or explained. Chester Brown is doing that. I like comics a lot. I really do. But I don’t keep any in the house. JEFF: That’s right, Howard, you didn’t show us your comic-book collection. HOWARD: Nothing goes by you. (Laughter.) I haven’t had a comic-book collection since I was sixteen years old. I got rid of them the minute I realized it was not the right thing to do. JEFF: The minute you went into the business, really. HOWARD: I feel you have to separate yourself from being a fan and a professional—professionals shouldn’t be fans. When I was starting out in the business none of the guys had any love for the material, and I thought, “Oh, I can’t wait until we run the business, when the fans are in charge!” We really fucked it up, because the fans who ran the business were superhero fans, and they did away with everything else. JEFF: Let’s end this, then, with this question: Why can’t adult comics work? Is it really a marketing problem? Is it the fact that the comic-book people don’t have the right marketing savvy to get beyond the audience they have? HOWARD: There’s a lot of answers. I mean, I think Maus is an adult comic book. It’s filled with flaws, but it’s a good piece of work. I feel the same way about Harvey Pekar’s American Splendor. And I think both of those remarks were very generous, considering what both of those men have said about me. On the other hand, I believe that comics as popular fiction, in terms of reaching a mass audience, is choking on its own bile. You’re going to see material like American Splendor and Maus emerge. But comic-book people still think you can sell guys in underwear fighting crime to a mass audience, and I don’t think you can, except in the summer as a novelty item, and then it goes away. I was trying to explain to people during the whole thing with the Dark Knight stuff, when it was breaking outside of the market—that the real reason it was getting the press was that it was perceived as a sequel to the TV series, the last time anybody in the real world had ever been aware of the ex-

162â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

istence of Batman. The world didn’t know that Batman existed once the series was canceled, because nobody in the United States knows of the existence of comics any more than you know of the existence of coin collecting. So, you’re not going to reach an adult comic-book audience with Batman of the future. The Batman movie is the big summer hit, but once it’s finished it’s not going to affect an adult comics market. If you want to do adult comics, take the sort of novels that adults read and do comics of them. Don’t reduce them, don’t trivialize them, as so many people will in comics. I am being solicited to do a premise that I have been playing with called April in Paris, about a black bandleader trapped in Paris during the occupation, in a deadly and romantic triangle with a half-Jewish cabaret singer and a fanatical SS officer jazz fan. Both of them are sleeping with the girl, and the jazz fan SS officer doesn’t know what to do. I’d like to do it in three hundred pages. HUGH: Sounds like a European album. HOWARD: Not like a European album, like an American paperback, like the size of a trade paperback. JEFF: The size of Maus but less panels to a page? HOWARD: Yes, done decoratively, blue line, romantic. It’s going to cost a fortune. JEFF: And take you forever. HOWARD: Probably. HUGH: Is society geared to pick something up like that? HOWARD: The problem is that it would probably be too damn expensive. HUGH: Where would you sell it, right in the grocery store checkout line? HOWARD: That the problem. I don’t think superhero comics have any place in mainstream adult fiction. I think the tenets and elements of the superhero form, without the costumes, are going to be showing up in film like a motherfucker over the next five to ten years. In the same way that Stan ripped off More Than Human for The X-Men in the first place, you’re going to be seeing people going back to More Than Human through The X-Men on a number of films. Trust me. I do think you’re going to see adult comics, but I think that the comics that are going to reach a mass market audience are maybe the novelty items like Maus, like American Splendor like Dark Knight. JEFF: How do they plan to market Black Kiss when it comes out in a book form? HOWARD: We’re going to start with mail order; we’ve done very well there without the comic-book audience. But again, that was a novelty item unto

hugh surratt

and

j e f f g e l b / 1 9 8 9 â•…â•… 163

itself. “A dirty comic book in a plastic bag, how weird.” I don’t want to do adaptations. JEFF: You don’t want to do adaptations, I don’t blame you. HOWARD: They asked me to do the Dick Tracy adaptation comic book. I don’t see any point. JEFF: Do they have interest at Piranha in doing April in Paris? HOWARD: Mark wants me to do this book. But it’s at least a year down the line, and I’m not sure it’s going to be all that financially rewarding. Am I still talking into this machine?

Real World Bravado K i m H o wa r d Joh n s on / 1 9 9 4 From Comics Scene vol. 3 #41, 1994, pp. 21–25. Reprinted by permission of Kim Howard Johnson.

“Superheroes boil down to three myths—the Superman myth, the Captain America myth, and the Batman myth. Birth, re-creation, or revenge,” says Howard Chaykin. Now, the creator of American Flagg! and Black Kiss is trying to craft his own new superhero myth. Power and Glory, Chaykin’s creation for Malibu’s new Bravura line of creator-owned comics, is his own unique look at the superhero in today’s real world. “Power and Glory is basically what happens when the United States government gets into the business of creating a superhero,” Chaykin explains. “They figure that the 1980s made it possible for an audience to buy into the idea of quick fixes and easy solutions to complex problems. “They find Allan Powell, the most likely guy who can fit their pattern. Powell is A-Pex, which stands for American Powerhouse Experiment. He’s an agent of the Central Intelligence Agency, and he turns out to be absolutely sensational at public relations. The guy who trains him, Michael Gorski, ultimately ends up doing all of the dirty work behind the scenes, while the guy who’s in the costume gets all the credit and attention and licensing and women and money and glory and . . .” Chaykin jokingly describes the relationship between Gorski and Powell as “bad cop/anti-Christ. They absolutely loathe each other,” he says. “They represent two extreme poles of American attitudes.” Power and Glory is also a comment on Chaykin’s view of heroism. “My take on heroism has always been constant,” he says. “The average comic book hero is a hero because the story says he is. He’s totally unmotivated. Comic book heroes are almost always motivated by revenge. If you’re a grown-up living 164

k i m h o w a r d j o h n s o n / 1 9 9 4 â•…â•… 165

American idealism and cynicism collide in Power and Glory #1 (1994).

in the real world, you know that revenge does nothing but get you killed. I tend to do heroes who are motivated by guilt, shame, and moral responsibility, which are emotions and sensibilities more recognizable to me than ‘My parents got shot when I was eleven, so I’ve got to go out, put on my long underwear and beat up petty criminals.’

166â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

“And Power and Glory is about that idea. It’s about two guys, one who looks like a hero and one who really is. The fact is that it’s much easier to digest the one that looks the part, because he’s much more charming than the one who is a hero—frankly, he’s a skeptical son of a bitch.” More than anything else, Chaykin says Power and Glory is about media manipulation. “I have a real aversion to the concept of multi-culturalism,” he observes. “People assume, on the basis of that, that I’m becoming a rightwinger, and nothing could be farther from the truth. I believe in a pluralistic society. I have a real loathing for political correctness. I live in this country, so I don’t have to be politically correct. I don’t have any desire to have the Constitution protect my right to good manners. Bear in mind, this is also a very funny, very violent, very nasty comic book that I’m doing here! This is my take on superhero comics. It’s also about transformation, because every one of the characters in this book goes through a major transformation.” Chaykin’s not sure whether Power and Glory will appeal to the typical superhero fan. “That’s a really tough question. Frankly, if I were aiming this at the typical superhero reader, I would simply draw tons of grimacing heads and big teeth, women with pneumatic boobs and absurdist anatomy and do two panels on a page. The fact is, I have to assume that there’s a certain part of that audience that has finally awakened to the idea that they’re not going to get rich on their millions of Pow-Wow Comics, and that they’re still interested in comics because they’re interested in the read. “I don’t know who the hell’s buying comics out there, I really have no idea. I’m not really doing these comics for myself—I still believe in producing commercial work. If I were doing it for myself, I would be Art Spiegelman or Harvey Pekar. I’ve often described my position in comic books as right of center, because I have no real interest in doing the kind of work that Harvey and Art do, but by the same token, I have no interest in doing the kind of work that Rob Liefeld and Todd McFarlane do—although, they seem to be interested in using a lot of my layouts,” Chaykin notes. “I like doing pulpy adventure stories with an attitude. Attitude has come to mean a little fifteen-year-old punk with a long sweatshirt and a baseball cap turned around and striking a pose of hostile angst. Attitude, for me, is having a point-of-view and being able to express it articulately, and standing by that point-of-view. “What you’ve got in comics are a lot of guys who are social liberals who still like the idea of drawing good guys beating the shit out of evildoers. The problem is that evildoers are not petty thugs, and getting dressed up in leather underwear and going out at night and beating the shit out of criminals is not an effective way to fight crime! But hey, we live in an age of cynical

k i m h o w a r d j o h n s o n / 1 9 9 4 â•…â•… 167

myth where actors like Arnold Schwarzenegger or Bruce Willis, who are enormously mythic, remain cynical figures. The two things almost contradict each other, but they work for the audience.” Power and Glory is not Chaykin’s attempt to deconstruct superheroes, he explains. “The idea of deconstructivism sort of goes with post-modernism,” he remarks. “It’s a phrase created by critics to justify their behavior. I’m simply doing how I feel a super-powered figure might function in the real world. “One of the things I’ve always found amusing about comic book superheroes, and comic books in general in the post–Stan Lee generation, is that for comic book stuff to work, you have to bend, toss out, or completely eliminate anything like a real world existence behind this material. Starting with the basic idea, these guys are running around with their underwear outside of their pants, fighting crime for no real reason that anybody can figure out, other than because that’s what heroes do. There’s no motivation, there’s no morality, there’s no actual sense of why people behave this way. Let’s face it, in the real world, power corrupts, and absolute power corrupts absolutely. With great power comes great responsibility? Horseshit! With great power comes great corruption! That’s the way it really works. Nothing has been demonstrated, certainly in my lifetime, that anybody really behaves in a totally altruistic way, especially when you give them a really big gun.” Chaykin explains that reality has an enormous influence on his comics work. “I’m a great believer in the real world. I live here,” he says. “I’m a politically liberal guy who reads a broad spectrum of political and social thought; the fact that I read sets me apart from a great number of comic book fans and talent. I like to incorporate what I know of real life into the work I do.” Although much of Chaykin’s work reflects the real world, he admits he has to make concessions for it all to mesh with the superhero genre. “If most comic books had real-world rules imposed on them, they wouldn’t work,” he announces. “When you start deconstructing most comics characters and their universes, you stop dead at the very point of reference of motivation. Why do these characters do what they do? A couple of years back, there was a big brouhaha when one of the comics fan magazines referred to most comic books as ‘melodrama.’ But the fact is, by definition, most comic books are melodrama, unmotivated drama. The single most honest superhero comic today is Marshal Law. It gets down to serious brass tacks about what these guys are doing and why.” Chaykin agrees that Power and Glory is his reaction to everything he has seen in superheroes. “I was a Marvel fan—I came to Marvel from DC, and all

168â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

I read as a kid were superhero comics,” he says. “I didn’t discover other kinds of comics until I was into my mid-teens. “When the old guys who ran comic books in my childhood died and were replaced, they were replaced by comic book superhero fanboys who basically eliminated other kinds of comics. It’s a major contributing factor to the continuing popularity of superheroes. “Basically, fandom has come in four phases. The first fandom was E.C. fandom, and when you read the letters in the letter columns in E.C., there’s a youthfulness to the stuff, but you’re also still reading letters written by men and women, boys and girls, who are comfortable and used to communicating and corresponding in words and language and written letters. Second fandom came with guys like Roy Thomas, Biljo White, and Jerry Bails, guys who were big fans of Golden Age comics and who also really applauded what Julie Schwartz was doing at DC in the late ’50s and early ’60s—the Silver Age. Third fandom was the group I came in with, Marvel fandom. What you’ve got now is post-Marvel fandom, which is basically the guys who collect trading cards with staples in them.” Chaykin admits he is concerned about the lack of depth, subtlety, and story in some of the more popular fan-favorite comics that have also attracted speculators. “When I first came out to the West Coast, I made a remark to a [film] studio executive who was rather condescending to comics. I said, ‘My audience reads!’ But, it’s no longer true. The guys who buy Howard Chaykin comic books tend to read them, because my stuff isn’t worth buying from a collector’s point-of-view. I would love it if it were, but I don’t pander to the audience’s tastes. “I don’t tell the audience what it wants to hear, I tell it what I think it needs to hear. I don’t believe in comics as a democratic process. Years ago, I was at a comic con where a fanboy got up and said he didn’t like miniseries, because he couldn’t write in fast enough to affect the story’s outcome. That was an absolute stunner for me. I loved it! I’m not here for milk and cookies,” he says. When Chaykin talks about comics fandom, he is the first to admit that he’s a member of that group. “I’m speaking for myself here, as well,” he points out. “At age seventeen, I weighed 265 pounds—I’m just the archetypal fanboy. The only kind of assault that the contemporary comic book fanboy really can take is from Lobo—as loud and obnoxious as the comic book is, it’s still goodnatured ribbing. I don’t good-naturedly rib! There’s this idea about ‘Hey, kids, let’s put out a comic book!’ It’s a tougher process than that—or it should be.” Chaykin admits that he feels some frustration to see relatively shallow, “trading-card” comics selling more than a million copies, while more thoughtprovoking fare is often overlooked.

k i m h o w a r d j o h n s o n / 1 9 9 4 â•…â•… 169

From Power and Glory #3 (1994).

170â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

“What’s more frustrating for me is that there’s no one doing work out there that pisses me off,” he says. “There are a lot of guys making more money than I am—and that pisses me off—but I wish there was someone out there doing work that I could compete with. I periodically buy these trading card comics, and it seems to me that they’re simply an extension of fanzines in the sense that they do work that is diametrically opposed to what I was taught to do. They’re ‘posing comic books.’ “Dwight Decker did a column a couple of years back in a fanzine saying that comic books and professional wrestling are directly related. And I buy that—I think it’s true. Wrestling is not a sport, it’s a posing game, and comic books have become the same. When I look at the contemporary hot comics, they don’t have to have any continuity, because nobody’s reading them. But hey, let that audience continue to think they’re going to make a killing collecting millions and millions of copies of these books, and let me continue to reach an audience that’s interested in content.” The new Bravura line, which includes Jim Starlin, Dan Jurgens, Dan Brereton, Gil Kane, and Steven Grant, has gotten Chaykin excited about doing comics again. “It’s nice to be working with guys whose work I respect, and not have to apologize for the other guys I’m working with,” he laughs. “I’ve known Starlin since we were boys, and the same with Walt Simonson. I worked for Gil Kane when I was a boy; I was Gil’s assistant when I was nineteen. These are guys who write and draw comics to be read, who recognize the idea that comic book pictures are pictures with literary value. That’s not a judgment of quality of literary value, mind you, but it’s a picture that tells a story. And that’s the major draw.” Although the most recent wave of creator-owned comics—including the Bravura line—seem to stem from the creation of Image, Chaykin points out that he has been doing creator-owned comics since his work for Star*Reach in the ’70s. “The idea of creator-owned comics is nothing new for me,” he says. “The idea of a bunch of guys going out and doing basically imitations of the X-Men, and creating endless numbers of idiotically named superheroes and owning them—big deal!” According to Chaykin, superheroes still work for many of today’s readers, but for the wrong reasons. “They feel completely impotent, they feel completely unable to make any effect on their own world, and it’s easier to turn it over to a superhero. As I’ve said more than once, comic book fans have a great desire to believe in the concept of absolute good and absolute evil. Unfortunately, it isn’t that way, regardless of what Steve Ditko says!

k i m h o w a r d j o h n s o n / 1 9 9 4 â•…â•… 171

“I’m not interested in producing the kind of work that gives a warm feeling in your heart that everything is OK. There are a lot of guys who can do that. Basically, most comic books today are Archie comics with superhero outfits. I’m trying to reach an audience that goes to movies, reads books, and is interested in visual narrative. I simply put the work out there and hope the audience finds it.” Aside from comics, Chaykin keeps busy with television work. He served as a staff writer for the late, great CBS-TV Flash series and continues working in TV today. “I just finished a six-month stint on Viper for Paramount, which began airing in January,” he says. “I was story editor on the show and wrote a bunch of episodes. And, I’m still waiting to hear on a number of film projects. I’m always working!” Howard Chaykin says he’s still having a great time doing comics and still looks forward to doing plenty within the medium. “I was planning on doing a three-hundred-page black-and-white crime novel in comics form, but I decided to simply write it as a novel—Hollywood executives perceive comics as a genre, as opposed to a medium,” he says. “I’ve done lots of different comics. I’ve always wanted to do a romance book, though there’s no market for it. I’m just doing what I want to do. I’m a happy guy!”

An Interview with . . . Howard Chaykin R i c h a r d R e l k in / 1 9 9 4 From Comic Culture #9, August 1994, pp. 10–13. Reprinted by permission of Richard Relkin.

Comic Culture caught Chaykin, awake since dawn, chomping on breakfast, full of nervous tension and angry at the world. He wanted to play two, but we only had enough in the budget for one interview . . .

CC: Keith Giffen paid you the compliment of calling you the most cynical man in comics. Chaykin: If I were as cynical as they say, I would pander to the audience, seek out the audience’s most basic needs and suck that tit until it was bone dry. What I do is try to demonstrate to the audience that their perceptions, the material they read, the world in which they live, and the beliefs they hold dear are arrant horseshit. If that’s being cynical, what is a character like Lobo, the safe-sex version of rebellion, the comic book equivalent of Details magazine? A corporate funded non-conformism. The character of Lobo is a perfect example of what comic books are about today. Lobo is a neutered bull who still thinks he’s hot shit. He’s the perfect character for the comic book reader who wants to feel like he’s safe but cutting edge, but not too cutting edge. Cutting edge as butter knife. I am far from a cynic. I think Jim Lee is a cynic. He is clearly far brighter than his audience. You don’t get out of Princeton without being a little smarter than the average comic book reader. Yet he produces some of the most idiotic work I’ve ever seen. CC: The comic book American Flagg! predicted the politically correct movement by five years or so. Chaykin: I wasn’t so much predicting as seeing what the world was like that day for me. Unlike a lot of my peers in comic books, I pay attention to the world in which I live. I don’t get my information from comic books or mov172

r i c h a r d r e l k i n / 1 9 9 4 â•…â•… 173

ies about comic books. I also don’t mistake information for knowledge. The world that I portrayed in American Flagg! looked to me pretty much like the world I was living in, dressed up and gussied up in science-fiction terms, so it wasn’t so much a prediction as my take on the world. CC: Nevertheless, you had shows like Bob Violence and then along comes COPS. Chaykin: Reality TV. Perhaps what Giffen was reading as cynicism was my own bitterness. I would much rather have the world be like the world comic books thinks it is. I’m a profound romantic; that’s why I’ve been married so often. I take my work pretty seriously, although I don’t take myself as seriously as I should, perhaps. I think American Flagg! was a profoundly influential comic book, but only on the talent pool. It gave an enormous number of second degree talents a lot of material to pick over and use in various contexts. And the fact that magazines now tout Flagg! as an undiscovered find that you can find in quarter bins, I find bitterly amusing. Flagg! is much less accessible on its own terms because it makes more demands of the reader than a book like Lobo or like X-Men or other guys riding around in their underwear. Comic book fans, at heart, like it easy and I speak from personal experience. I am an ex-comic book fan. I have pictures of myself at 265 pounds, looking like every fan boy geek you’ve ever seen. CC: Does that mean you’re not a comic book fan anymore? Chaykin: I like the form of comic books enormously. There’s nothing out there in the mainstream market that I read. The books that I read are by guys that hate my work, because I’m perceived as being hopelessly mainstream by more marginal talents like Peter Bagge, Daniel Clowes, Chester Brown. The guys in the mainstream consider me dangerously weird. So fuck ’em all. CC: You then seem to not be accepted anywhere? Chaykin: Democrats, Republicans, and me. My skills dictate the work that I do. I spent a weekend with Walter Simonson, an old pal. A phrase that kept coming up in the conversation was “failure of nerve.” Which seemed to dictate a lot, and I feel like my own failure of nerve is that I haven’t got the guts to simply throw out the work that I do and start all over with visual imagery that would more directly assess the way I am emotionally and intellectually. Unfortunately, I have a job to do. Unlike a lot of people I don’t have a lifestyle, I have a life. CC: How did something like Bravura get started? Is it the same type of thing as the Legend or Image collectives? Chaykin: Collectives? You make it sound like I should be wearing overalls and holding a pitchfork over my head in salute. Bravura and Legend come

174â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

from the same root. I think Image is going after a very specific audience, whose critical standards boil down to “awesome” and “way cool.” I still reach a core group of guys who read, who like narrative. I like doing action stories. I don’t like doing bodybuilding stories. When the first inklings of doing these creator-owned groups came about, I was not involved in comics. I was doing other things. I was still on The Flash when this stuff was happening (1990). I wrote a couple of films. Things like that. I was kind of busy. Right now I made a decision to do comics this year as opposed to go staff on a TV series. I’m enjoying working at home. CC: Will Bravura help you reach a wider audience, or do you not even want to reach that audience? Chaykin: I go back in comics to that Jurassic period where it wasn’t a seller’s market, when we did it because we wanted to do comic books. We thought it was the coolest thing in the world and there was no money in it. They paid us shit. We got no royalties and they didn’t return our originals. I would love to reach millions and millions of readers. I’m not one of these guys who congratulates himself for reaching an elitist audience. I would like the entire readership of comics to think I was the best thing to happen since sliced bread. The problem is, I don’t share a lot of the sensibilities of the comic book audience. The comic book audience has a series of fairly proscribed beliefs. Their critical standards are different from mine. I try to be a virtuoso and it’s irrelevant. I’m looking at the form, they’re looking at the content. How else to explain a book like Shadowhawk? CC: One of the more banal criticisms of American Flagg! was the use of stockings and garters. Chaykin: It was a way to do sexy without nudity. A lot of the inspiration for it came out of the bondage, fetish costumes that were going on in the Legion of Super-Heroes at that time. Comic books have always been cloaked in emblemology. These guys are running around with underwear on the outside of their pants, with no bulges. Comic books are rife with fetishism. All I did was take the fetishes out of the backyard and bring them to the front porch. CC: How far will you go? I know Black Kiss does show some nudity. Chaykin: Black Kiss is about fandom. Dagmar is clearly an obsessive fan of Beverly. All she wants to do is devour Beverly. In American Flagg! I went as far as the editor would let me. I didn’t sit out there and think, “Wow, this will really shock the mother-fuckers.” I was always amazed at any reaction at all. Quite seriously, until very recently, I have made the not at all that unusual assumption that people of my own background, education, and age would share some of my sensibilities. For example, I’m really bored, to the point of

r i c h a r d r e l k i n / 1 9 9 4 â•…â•… 175

wanting to write a letter to the New York Times, for people attacking me for the language and attitudes of characters in my books, when I’m clearly putting words in characters’ mouths that are clearly reprehensible. I’ve gotten responses that, “That’s a terrible thing!” Of course it is, you schmuck! By that critical term and standard, I’d have to portray Hitler in an evenhanded way. CC: It’s a failure to make the distinction between creator and character. Chaykin: Unlike a lot of comic book guys, I have more than one idea. Which is why, when some jackass on Compuserve describes Power and Glory as Black Kiss with superheroes, I thought it was a little sad. There are lots of common themes that run through my stuff, most of which are frustration and anger at what our rulers tell us, but I try to tell different stories and use different points of view. CC: Power and Glory is a four-issue series, but on American Flagg! you let the story run on after you’d left . . . Chaykin: That was really embarrassing. I’ll do Power and Glory four times a year so I can stay fresh on it. The comic book had become the printed equivalent of soaps. I hate the endlessness, the inertness of the serial form. The fact that Marvel has been able to make such hay out of marrying off two plot devices doesn’t interest me. I like the novel form, I like the film form. Characters arc in a different way and at the end of the story they’re different. How long can these endless comic book series run where characters stay absolutely the same? Then they have Crisis, Zero Hour, Secret Wars so everything can be brought back to where it was in the first place and they can start all over again. What is it? Continuity is the sign of a second-rate mind. CC: It seems in all your books, your protagonists bear a striking resemblance to every other protagonist. Chaykin: Basically my hero is a goyisha version of me. He’s still Jewish inside but he’s managed to accommodate to the gentile world. He’s darkhaired, dark-eyed, left-handed, and Jewish. He’s based on William Holden, Henry Fonda, and James Garner, who are my three favorite film archetypes of my childhood. Henry Fonda for decency, William Holden for skeptical pugnaciousness, and James Garner for sidewinding and running away from fights. CC: So basically, you just plug Reuben Flagg into different situations. Chaykin: It’s easier to do that. A lot of guys spend a lot of time trying to figure out what the hero of the book looks like. It’s not a concern of mine. My other characters all look different, but the heroes tend to be archetypal. CC: Now that you own Flagg!, will we see more? How does it tie in with Power and Glory #4?

176â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Chaykin: Elements of Power and Glory feed into Forever Maelstrom. There’s a throwaway at the end of Power and Glory which sets things up to tie in later when we do American Flagg! CC: So you will be doing American Flagg!? Chaykin: It’s only natural. I’m curious to see what it’ll look like. I’m a lot less self-righteous than I was when I did that. CC: Is Reuben Flagg the only Jewish comic book hero? Chaykin: No, Jules Feiffer always says that the Spirit was Jewish. I think Doc Samson is Jewish, only he’s not like any Jew that I know. I’m a weird Jew. The last time I was in shul was when I was bar mitzvahed. I’m not a follower of the faith, but I feel like I’m stigmatized so I might as well live with it. I’m old enough to remember when it was hip to be Jewish. I’m bizarrely amused by the rise of black anti-Semitism. I think it’s a peculiar phenomenon, and it delights the rulers of our country to no end. I think it’s a source of glee for our secret rulers. CC: Is Somnambutol your version of Prozac? Chaykin: I always wanted to do a drug that would make you sleepwalk, that would leave you ambulatory but you wouldn’t know it. I’m a sixties guy, whatever that means. I loved the drug culture portrayed in American Flagg!, I thought it was really funny. One of the nice things about Flagg! was it was published by an independent, so the mass market readership didn’t read it, but the guys that I couldn’t use as an assistant would use it for their own purposes. It’s nice to know that I’m a cult figure in my own time. CC: What about the use of subliminals? Chaykin: That was Reuben Flagg’s superpower, other than being able to make ice-cream. I am a paranoid and I don’t say that in that discredited way. All the guys I knew running underground newspapers and being radicals in the ’60s ultimately ended up winning Clio awards in the ’70s. They were all ready to be co-opted by the power structure they were attacking. The concept of paranoia has been utterly discredited by the society in which we live. Advertising depends on you believing that advertising doesn’t work to be successful, and television congratulates you for being too hip for television. I read a wide range of paranoia-inducing material on the extreme left, the extreme right, and everything in the middle, just to keep a simmering level of terror in my life. We live in a world that has been so completely filtered through filters of unreality because the real world is so much more difficult to deal with than a fantasy version of it. Americans still really believe we’re still number one, with those obnoxious, giant plastic number one fingers, and that we are the best in the world, whatever that means. We’re certainly the favorite but we may

r i c h a r d r e l k i n / 1 9 9 4 â•…â•… 177

From Power and Glory #2 (1994).

178â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

not be the best. As a society in general and comic fans in particular we don’t know the difference between a favorite and being the best. We presume that our affection for something gives that something an imprimatur of quality, but actually all it does is say that we like it. We’re entitled to like shit. CC: Can you be as effective in getting across your meanings in TV or movies? Chaykin: No. CC: What are the objectives in writing for other media? Chaykin: Mass audience, fun, attention, money. It is the medium of my youth. My girlfriend has this fantasy of me growing up with my face sucked into a television tube. I think she assumes that I’m Martin Tupper. CC: Are you? Chaykin: No, although I could be [laughs] by circumstance. For a guy who mocks popular culture as much as I do, I am soaking in it. CC: So you like Beavis and Butthead? Chaykin: I loathe Beavis and Butthead, but I was never a Three Stooges fan either. What most amuses me is that Beavis and Butthead is an insulting parody of lower middle-class white suburban males, who of course make up the enormous audience. Identification with the aggressor. I’m not out to say, “Don’t watch this because it’s really bad for you!” I don’t really give a rat’s ass what people watch. It’s not even part of my experience. I’m not a suburban kid. I’m very urban and I would never wear shorts in my life. I hate my legs. There isn’t much on television that I regularly watch. I watch NYPD Blue, even though it’s being attacked for neoconservative sensibilities. I like Law and Order. I’m a big fan of Jerry Orbach. Every time I see Jerry Orbach I remember this is a guy who was a great dancer in his time. Jerry Orbach created the role of the guy with the whip in The Fantasticks and don’t you forget it! And I watch The Larry Sanders Show. CC: It’s just the idea of having 800 channels on that appeals to you? Chaykin: I channel surf constantly. I like Politically Incorrect, Talk Soup. I find Greg Kinnear’s smirk really appealing. He’s the only smirker on TV that I really like. CC: That was one thing that seemed contradictory in American Flagg!, there was really only one station. Chaykin: Well, no. There were 120 stations in American Flagg!, they just all showed the same thing. I now have access to some 35 or 40 stations and there’s never anything on. I got really excited when they announced Turner classic films. I was like, “Whoa, another channel I can miss!” For me modern television came into being when WPIX-NY started showing the Yule Log. [A

r i c h a r d r e l k i n / 1 9 9 4 â•…â•… 179

Plex programming vies with black market television in the future Chicago of American Flagg! From American Flagg! #3 (1983).

180â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

looped videotape of a burning log in a fireplace played during Christmas for those without a hearth or just too lazy to build a fire.—CC] The Yule Log acknowledged the fact that television had completely replaced the hearth. I have a hearth. I have two fireplaces. It’s been a late winter into spring, and we had fires laid on. It’s really nice, you know, for the city-bred Jew Boy. CC: Are you still an urban boy? Chaykin: Well, I live in Los Angeles, Staten Island in the year 2001. I like living here. It’s much easier than living in New York. A friend of mine just got back from New York and hadn’t been back in eight years and was talking about how you can’t miss the energy. The problem is the energy is like a fifteen-year-old who just discovered sex. “Ahuuuhuhu!” all over the place. I’ve never mellowed out for those of you who are curious. The fantasy of going to Los Angeles, moving to the beach, and saying “dude” has never been part of my life. CC: Are you proud of the fact that Malibu tells everyone you write for Viper? Chaykin: Sure. Fact is, I work on Viper. Furthermore, if I’m willing to take all the praise that comes my way, I have to take the blame as well. Viper could have been a great show. I wrote three and a half episodes of Viper and I’m real happy with the work I did on that show. CC: Does it bother you that no one in the real world knows who Howard Chaykin is? Chaykin: That’s one of the great things about comic book fame. It’s like being the world’s tallest midget. It’s a secret fame. You have to understand I love doing what I do, but the idea of developing a big ego over being a comic book artist is really silly. CC: What about people who try to elevate the art form? Chaykin: I think Art [Spiegelman] is exactly where he belongs, at the New Yorker. Art has never taken it upon himself to say anything nice about me in print so he can do what he wants. Art once said that he felt American Flagg! should represent the level of mediocrity in comics. Implicitly, that it should be the bottom as opposed to the top. Fine, as I say, my work is dictated by the skills I have. I like genre fiction.

Sting of the Scorpion J o n B. C o o k e / 2 0 0 1 From Comic Book Artist vol. 1 #16, December 2001, pp. 74–77. Reprinted by permission of Jon B. Cooke.

One of the foremost designers in the history of comics, Howard Chaykin is also a helluva storyteller, having received numerous accolades for his fondly recalled American Flagg! series of the 1980s. CBA extensively interviewed the artist/writer in our eighth issue, so we just jump right into 1974, the year of his big break with The Scorpion. Howard is now producer of the TV show Mutant X, and he still dabbles in comics, most recently as creator/writer of American Century. Interviewed in September 2001, he copyedited the transcript.

CBA: Do you recall when you first heard about Atlas/Seaboard? Howard: Honestly, I don’t. Their office was diagonally across from Marvel, which used to be on 575 Madison Avenue, and I don’t remember what first brought me there. It’s been a long time. CBA: Do you remember whether promises were made about some creator ownership of properties and the possibility of royalties? Howard: No. I don’t recall any of that. What they were doing was paying more money. There was no talk of royalties or creative ownership in my memory. CBA: Do you recall if it was a significant amount? Howard: In retrospect, the primary impact that Atlas had on the comic book business was to raise rates considerably. CBA: Was there any thought about Martin Goodman, who created Marvel Comics, was going in direct competition . . . Howard: Martin Goodman “created” comics the way Victor Fox “created” his line. They were businessmen, they created by fiat. The word “created” is used very loosely in the comic book business, and I’m loath to support the ideas that the money guys created anything other than opportunity. 181

182â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CBA: Was there any thought on why Goodman was doing that? Howard: We also basically assumed Martin was doing it to piss in the soup, because he felt left out of the loop and didn’t get the attention he felt he probably deserved at Marvel, and he wanted to show he could do it again. CBA: Did you hear anything about the rumor he started Atlas as an act of revenge against Marvel? Howard: Absolutely. I seem to recall he was pissed off at Stan for getting all the attention. CBA: Did you ever meet Chip Goodman? What was he like? Howard: He was kind of invisible, and he didn’t have much of a personality. Chip just struck me as a void, there wasn’t much going on there. What little dealings I had with him—he was mostly there to edit Swank, and I think he was there to meet chicks. [laughter] I dealt more with his art director, whose name I don’t recall. The office was rife with story, they had good people who worked there, we had a good time being there, but it was a burp in my career. CBA: Except for perhaps “Ironwolf,” The Scorpion seemed to be one of the first real “Chaykin projects.” Howard: I was called in to write by Jeff Rovin, the editor in chief of Atlas. They wanted to do a book called The Scorpion. I think what they wanted was The Shadow, and what I came back with was sort of more a combination of The Shadow, Justice, Inc., and Doc Savage. A lot of the signature stuff that ultimately evolved into what I did for a living for the next twenty years or so did show up in that book. CBA: So The Scorpion was the first initiation of this archetypical character that’s had various incarnations, as Dominic Fortune, Cody Starbuck, Monark Starstalker, etc.? Howard: I’d say that’s true. CBA: What happened with the book? Howard: The company was built on rage and hostility, and they lied like a rug. Halfway through the second issue I found out that Rovin had told Alex Toth I was off the book, and Alex had carte blanche to come in and completely re-create and redo the book. The job that Alex did was ultimately published years later as “The Vanguard.” I was fired from the book, or I quit—I don’t remember which. Ultimately, Larry Lieber took over the book and turned it into an imitation of Spider-Man, which is what Larry does for a living. CBA: Immediately after you left, the book was contemporized. Howard: And let’s face it, we’re talking about not much of an idea. CBA: I’ve talked to some people who worked in the office who say that perhaps Jeff Rovin was getting a bad rap, because he was taking the heat for the

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 1 â•…â•… 183

arbitrary decisions Chip and Martin were making. It’s a fact that Jeff quit, resigned, was fired, whatever, because of his problems with the company, being squeezed in the middle. Howard: I don’t know anything about that, but I do know some years after the fact, I happened to see a number of paperback originals he’d written using character names and springboards I’d submitted for The Scorpion back in the earlier days. So, I tend to have my doubts about his ethical standards. CBA: Did you submit a lot of conceptual material for The Scorpion? Howard: I continue to have a career both in television and comic books because I’m a good mechanic in terms of story. I can throw you concepts bam! bam! bam! And that’s what I did. I submitted a year’s worth of material on The Scorpion. CBA: What happened with the second issue? You had thanks to about eight or nine people. Howard: On the second issue—I’m hoping I don’t leave anybody out here— Simonson, Kaluta, Wrightson, Ed Davis . . . I think that’s it. CBA: Who’s Ed Davis? Howard: Ed Davis could’ve been the greatest. Ed walked into Continuity in the early 1970s with a huge portfolio filled with sketchbooks. He was a Vietnam vet, he’d just gotten out of the service, and every sketchbook was a different theme. Science fiction, Westerns, war sketches, porn. The guy was the single greatest natural draftsman I’d ever seen in my life—an amazingly talented guy. CBA: He was like a blip on the comics radar, so to speak. He did really nice work that I recall, but boom! he was gone. Howard: He had personal problems. He did a couple of jobs for Heavy Metal in its earliest inception, and worked on The Six Million Dollar Man and Space: 1999 when Continuity was packaging that stuff, he did a job or two for Warren, but then he disappeared. I have not seen Ed in well over twenty years. I have no idea whether he’s alive or dead. CBA: You also thanked Annette Kawecki in the second issue. She was primarily a letterer? Howard: Yes. Annette was an absolutely fantastic letterer. I think she became a doctor. CBA: What was she like? Howard: Awfully cute, and very smart. Sharp, very snide, and incredibly sexy, but someone I could never connect with. CBA: Do you recall a second cover you did, a cover that wasn’t accepted for Scorpion #2?

184â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Dominic Fortune in “Moo over Manhattan,” co-written with Dennis O’Neil. From The Hulk! #23 (1980) © 2010 Marvel Entertainment, LLC and its subsidiaries. Used with permission.

Howard: I don’t remember. I have no idea why they got Ernie Colon to do the second cover. CBA: In Inside Comics, the magazine, you went public with your situation at Seaboard. Howard: When was this? CBA: It was around the same time. Howard: You’re talking twenty-six years ago. CBA: 1975. I was thinking what the hell’s going on? How come Howard’s gone? The Scorpion is the best book Atlas/Seaboard came out with, and all of a sudden, it’s just gone! Howard: I walked across the street to Marvel, I said, “Hey, would you guys like to do a version of this?” So I did Dominic Fortune for them, got a major bump in my rates at both DC and Marvel, and everything was fine.

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 1 â•…â•… 185

CBA: Was The Scorpion your first real writing assignment? Howard: I think so. CBA: It really launched your career into another level? Howard: Yeah. CBA: Can you think of the other characters that evolved from The Scorpion? Reuben Flagg, for instance? Howard: Well, you go from The Scorpion to Dominic Fortune, a little bit to Cody Starbuck, but I always thought that Reuben Flagg came out of a way to conflate James Garner and Henry Fonda. CBA: There was Monark Starstalker? Howard: Monark Starstalker, the blind bounty hunter. I had a good time in the ’70s! Who knew? It was still a blur! CBA: What did Simonson, Wrightson, and Kaluta do on The Scorpion #2? Howard: Penciling and inking, working over layouts. CBA: Do you recall the event, was it a crazy weekend? Howard: Right, we had a great time. CBA: Any way to paraphrase? Howard: Okay, we were all working in my apartment in Queens, Wrightson was living downstairs, Simonson was living across the hall. Kaluta was out. We were doing a marathon. I think Simonson at that time was coming back in town a couple of days. It was Halloween, and I was invited to a party. Wrightson and I decided to take a break, because we’d started a day before Michael. Again, this is all memory of many years ago, so bear with me on this. We had a half bottle of one of those gallon jugs of vodka, which were very popular in those days. It was about a third full. We tried an experiment: We added water and brought it up to two-thirds full, and it still got everybody who went to this party drunk off their ass. (There’s nothing nicer than the power of suggestion.) We left the party in about an hour, and we were in Queens, in Kew Gardens Hills, Union Turnpike, and I stuck out my thumb to hitchhike back to my place. And this white, late-model Cadillac pulls up, and there are two women in the car—not much younger than we were—a little blonde behind the wheel, and a brunette in the passenger seat. The brunette scrambled into the back seat. [laughter] Wrightson gets into the back seat, I get into the front seat, and we proceed to go on a joy ride into Manhattan, having a great time. We get back, we bring them back to my place, Wrightson goes off to his apartment with the brunette, I stay with the blonde. I ended up dating the blonde for about a month-and-a-half. CBA: And this is in between inking and working on the story? Howard: It was her dad’s car, she sold misses’ and petites, she was a salesgirl.

186â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Cute little blonde! I’m not sure if Wrightson got anywhere, but I certainly did! CBA: [laughs] Was it typical of the ’70s in a sense? Was it a good time? You guys were all pretty close. Simonson lived across the hallway, it was just very close-knit. I used to go to the Seuling cons and saw you guys interact very closely. Howard: I’m still close with Walter, we talk pretty regularly. I don’t see Wrightson anymore, I run into him now and then. He lives out on the West Coast now. It was me, Walter, Milgrom, Starlin, Wrightson, Kaluta, just a whole pack, and we ended up going to conventions together; when we were at cons we tended to eat together, we tended to hang out together. When I left my first wife, she started dating Bernie, they broke up, then she ended up marrying Starlin! It gets all around! CBA: Close-knit group! Howard: We were buds! The fact is, the only guys in the pack who came from New York City were me, Ralph Reese, Larry Hama, and Frank Brunner. And these other guys were from East Bumfuck, Iowa, and some shit. They had no idea what they were doing, they moved to New York City, they all lived in town, it was the first big city they lived in. Walter was a bit more cosmopolitan, he’d been around. He was also a little bit older than the rest of us. We all hung out! CBA: Were you friends with Larry Hama? Howard: Hama? We knew each other. I wouldn’t call him a friend, per se— but there was a period where we both had really long hair and in bad photographs were frequently mistaken for each other. CBA: Did you get together with any other compatriots, throwing out ideas for books for Atlas? Howard: No, in those days, you did jam sessions to carry your ass, but a lot of us just worked alone. One of the reasons we had get-togethers, called “First Fridays” in those days, was we tended to work alone, and it was an opportunity to get out of the house for a bit of a social gathering, and also a bit of a salon to share your work, show what you were doing, and talk about what you were planning. CBA: It’s interesting in that, except for the studio system in the ’40s, generally speaking, the ’70s—with First Fridays and the antics that you guys had— there really has not been much to talk about the social history of comic book artists, outside of conventions. Generally, making comics is a solitary thing. Joe Schmo sat in his garage for forty years doing this stuff, he doesn’t have any tales to tell.

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 1 â•…â•… 187

Howard: Let’s face it, comic book guys are either asocial creeps who have no idea how to get along with other people, or they’re assholes whose idea of sociability is getting loaded and having a big party! That’s just the flip side. Comics guys aren’t really social animals. CBA: There’s something that Ernie Colon said that’s interesting, in that comic book artists are a type of people who want to do what they do, and generally speaking, most people don’t want to work! You go out there in the world and most people just want to be in front of the TV. Comic book artists are naturally exploited. Howard: Most of us. This is an amazing vocation or avocation. CBA: There seemed to be great promise with Atlas/Seaboard, at least initially, for the first couple of months, and then boom! it just turned into total shit. What was your point of view on that; did you just turn your back on it? Howard: Yeah, I just walked away. I thought the people involved were shitheels, and I’d rather deal with the shitheels that I knew. CBA: How did you find out that Toth was working on the book? Howard: I came into the office and saw the pages. These were not good guys, let’s face it! [laughs] Comic books have a long-standing history of creeps, assholes, and shitheels. The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay gets it right for the most part. These days, now you have artists who’ve become exploitative. If I’m bitter, it’s only about the money, because it’s not about anybody’s abilities. CBA: You still work in the field. Howard: I still maintain my relationship with comic books because who knows what’s coming up? I did my first piece of artwork this year since American Century—a cover for Radioactive Man. It’s in Craftint, a Howard Chaykin take on Matt Groening’s Radioactive Man. I make my living as a television producer, but I’ve often described my job as being an itinerant who drives a BMW. I’m a migrant worker, every job I’ve had could be my last job. Right now, I’m running Mutant X. We’re shooting episode 11 as we speak. I’m working on episode 22 on my desk in front of me. Who knows where I’ll be working next year? CBA: It’s related to the Marvel universe? Howard: It’s outside their universe, but it’s a Marvel show. It’s an actionadventure show—The A-Team meets Mission: Impossible with super-powers.

Still Chaykin After All These Years: A Life in American Comics J o n B. C o o k e / 2 0 0 4 From Comic Book Artist vol. 2 #5, December 2004, pp. 34–37, 72–102. Reprinted by permission of Jon B. Cooke.

“A man in the middle.” That’s one way to look at veteran comic-book writer/ artist Howard V. Chaykin’s position in the field. On the one hand, he’s an accomplished mainstream chronicler of boffo superhero yarns and, on the other, the man is also a cutting-edge, smart storyteller, able to weave sophisticated tales that can appeal to the most adult and urbane tastes. Science fiction, crime, Western, romance, war, mystery, and—yes—costumed heroes are genres the Brooklyn-raised raconteur has mastered over his three and a half decades in the business, but often a Chaykin story blurs categorical labels. (You try shoe-horning his American Flagg! exploits, for instance!) Though his dialogue and characters are witty and intelligent, Howard’s work is rarely pretentious and always entertaining, revealing perhaps that at the heart of it all, HVC is a showman. Plus, like the best double-threats in American comic books, Howard (at one’s dire peril, unless he is Neal Adams or Walter Simonson, does anyone call Mr. Chaykin “Howie”) has a completely individualistic style, both as writer and artist, difficult to imitate with an approach so uniquely his own it would be folly to even attempt. Another laudable and obvious talent in HVC’s arsenal is the creator’s masterful design sense, undoubtedly honed from a lifelong appreciation—and now full-blown obsession, judging from his extraordinary collection of vintage original art—for the supreme artists who reigned during the Golden Age of American magazine illustration, as well as a deep appreciation for the art of typography, another “real world” influence clearly evident in Howard’s work (especially his innumerable collaborations with one of comics’ greatest letterers, Ken Bruzenak). Come to think of it, perhaps Howard’s greatest achievement in 188

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 189

funny-books (besides paving the way for creator-owned, independent comics with his breakaway 1980s hit, American Flagg!) has been to help usher in a profound and professional appreciation for the greater world of illustration and graphic design. Still, I’m betting, in the end, it will be HVC’s outrageous excess of personality that just might be remembered best. Loud, scatological, abrasive, biting, acidic, sarcastic, droll, opinionated, and—above all—hilariously truthful, HVC is simply fearless in telling it like he sees it. And, again in this humble editor’s mind, the comics world is exceptionally lucky to have had the likes of this feisty, short, angry, smart New York Jewish kid bless its ranks with his oh-so-necessary and vital presence. Now, on with our chat! — Y.E. The following interview took place at Mr. Chaykin’s Los Angeles home on January 21, 2004, and was transcribed by Steven Tice. HVC copyedited the final transcript.

Comic Book Artist: How old are you, Howard? Howard Chaykin: I’m fifty-three years old, and that means I lie about my age in show business, but not in comic books, because it’s easy to track it down in this field. I can be Googled up the ass. CBA: “Chaykin,” what does the name mean? Howard: It means “seagull” in Russian. I found out about six years ago that my name isn’t really Chaykin, because I learned the man I thought was my father was actually my adoptive father. My real father’s name was Norman Drucker, no relation to Mort Drucker. I found this out due to a series of weird events that took place. I was raised in Brooklyn, and my mother and adoptive father split up when I was a kid, so I hadn’t seen him since I was a little boy. I sought him out, expecting to find his grave. Instead I found this seventy-eight-year-old guy, alive and well, living in Phoenix. My mother never knew I had found my father, and my brothers never knew either. But a couple of months after my mother died, and as I started to make peace with this situation, I get a phone call from a woman, a cousin of mine on my father’s side. When my mother split with my dad, she divorced herself entirely from his side of the family. This woman, in the course of the conversation, remarks about my adoption, and tells me something she assumed I knew, that this guy wasn’t my father. It turns out I was born out of wedlock and adopted by him when I was two. All the women in my mother’s family knew about this, and all of them had assumed I had known.

190â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

I had a lot of resentment about not having been told. Now I only have half of my own health history. My mother died of malignant lymphoma, so there you go. I called my brother—now my half-brother—and his reaction was, “Holy fuck! It’s just like Bonanza!” [laughter] See, ask a simple question . . . but I’ll be Chaykin for the rest of my life. CBA: What’s your mother’s maiden name? Howard: My mother’s name is Russian, Pavonovich or something. The name came through Ellis Island as Pave. Her mother was Austrian and her father Polish. So I’m a classic Eastern European Jew. I have direct antecedents with all the great men of the comic book business, guys like Jack Kirby and Gil Kane. Comics, in those days, were the domain of the Jews and Italians, because they were the only kids who would work for the kind of money they were being paid. CBA: Have you examined your Drucker lineage? Howard: No. Chaykin is an unusual enough name that you can actually find the few people who have it, whereas there are a lot of Druckers. I ultimately had to accept the fact that my father’s identity was my mother’s trump card from beyond the grave. On the other hand, it inspired me to find my own daughter, in Nashville, Tennessee. I’ve not met her, but we’ve talked on the phone and corresponded through e-mail. CBA: Did she express any resentment about being put up for adoption? Howard: No. She’s perfectly happy being the child of her adoptive parents. CBA: Had she known she was adopted? Howard: Yes. I don’t necessarily want an on-going relationship with her, but found her just to be sure that she’s alive and to let her know if she needs to call me she can. I gave her all the information about me that I can’t get from my real father. CBA: So this Drucker was a Jew? Howard: Oh yes—I’m a Jew-boy from way back. There’s no escaping that reality. [laughter] CBA: When did your mother’s family come over? Howard: In 1909. My mother was raised in Staten Island, the one borough of New York not inculcated with Judaism. I spent my earliest childhood there, weekends, because my parents were constantly fighting—so I was always being shipped out to Staten Island. It’s impossible these days to imagine this, but at the age of seven, I was spending an hour and a half on public transportation, all alone, going from Brooklyn to Manhattan to Staten Island. I took a bus, a subway, a ferry, and rode another bus to get out to what was then actually the countryside. CBA: Was she retired when you were visiting?

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 191

Howard: My grandmother was working as a peddler until the day she died. There were no retail stores on Staten Island. The malls didn’t come in until the very late ’50s. She would go to wholesale outlets in lower Manhattan, buy clothing for her customers, make her rounds, and finally deliver the clothing to the black, Italian, and Polish community on Staten Island. All of my grandmother’s friends were these batty old ladies. I hung out at their houses because my grandmother was my surrogate mother in a lot of ways. So I grew up in the slums of Brooklyn and spent weekends in the rural countryside of Staten Island, getting this weird overlap. CBA: They put you on the bus and you took the whole trip alone? Howard: Uh-huh. I took my clothes and some comics. My grandmother was always willing to pay for comics and I just took my stuff. CBA: So you obviously never had a chance to talk to your mother about your father? Howard: No. CBA: Was there creativity on your mother’s side? Howard: No. My family was archetypally liberal Democrat—Roosevelt Democrats—a typical Jewish family with secrets. CBA: Did you observe Jewish holidays? Howard: Yes—but we weren’t deeply religious. There was a great secularity in our family. We were political Jews as much as anything else. I’ve always insisted I was bar mitzvahed because my grandmother was still alive, and if I hadn’t been, it would have killed her. I went through that, but it was the last time I was in a synagogue for any real reason. I’m not an observant Jew at all, but I’m deeply imbued in the faith and the culture that pertains to the faith. I remain a secular humanist, but a spiritual one. So it’s not a religious kind of spirituality. CBA: Did you interact with your cousins a lot? Howard: Yeah! I got my first comics from my cousin Alan, who is seven years older than I. His mom was my mother’s sister—his father was an Italian guy who worked at the Staten Island ferry. He gave me a refrigerator box filled with comics. CBA: [Amazed] A refrigerator box full of comics? Howard: It was fantastic! It was my first experience with that great smell. Comics have a smell, a mustiness of paper that just gutted me like a fish. There were Lash LaRue comics, and a bunch of Batmans and a bunch of Supermans. There was tons of this shit. I grew up in an apartment; I didn’t grow up in a house, so I don’t have the typical story of a mother throwing away my comics. I never saved anything. CBA: So that’s what started you in comics?

192â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Howard: I was four years old—and it was like, “My God! These are the greatest things!” I’d never seen comics before. I remember very specifically, a year later at school they asked us, “Draw what you want to be when you grow up.” So while other kids were drawing a lot of fire trucks and police cars, I’m drawing ink bottles and brushes, because I knew what I wanted to do. My older cousin Bob was an artist—a sign painter and failed cartoonist— so I guess there was a bit of creativity there. Comics were all I ever wanted to do. I was completely obsessed. They taught me to read. By the time I entered first grade, I was reading at a fourth-grade level thanks to comics. I couldn’t pronounce the words, but I could read by myself. I learned the phraseology of the comics language. So my reading level was three years ahead of the rest of the kids, due to [Superman editor] Mort Weisinger. CBA: Now, did you have any allowance to buy them off the stands? Howard: No, I stole them. I grew up on welfare and in poverty. CBA: You were really dirt poor? Howard: Yeah. It was the equivalent of being on the food stamp program. CBA: Were you hungry? Howard: No. In the United States, poor people are fat because they eat fat foods, they eat starch. I was a fat kid. I lived at 370 Saratoga Avenue in Brooklyn. Gil Kane had grown up at 420 Saratoga twenty years earlier. What money I did have, I got from my godmother, my aunt, and my grandmother. That’s how I bought comics, but I’d steal them, too. They were an addiction. My first passion was Blackhawk. I loved Chuck Cuidera’s art on the early DC stuff. I’ve always been drawn to the iconography of fascism. My motives in comics are liberal aims achieved by fascist means. [laughter] CBA: Were you too young for the EC comics? Howard: I discovered them in my teens through the Ballantine paperbacks, and later the bound collections. CBA: Did you have any comic strips coming to the house? Howard: Yeah. We saw all the strips. CBA: Did you follow them? Howard: Not really. I was never a strip fan. It was just a different world. CBS: Did you go to the library? Howard: Yes. I was a complete geek—a huge science fiction reader. I read Andre Norton, Isaac Asimov, Ray Bradbury. How average can you get? When I was a kid Channel 13, now the PBS station, was in Hackensack, New Jersey— a bargain basement syndicated outlet that ran cartoons and grade-Z cowboy pictures. So when I grew up, the triumvirate was comics, science fiction, and Westerns. Red Barry, Johnny Mack Brown, the Maynard Brothers—all that

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 193

From “Horrors!” an autobiographical story in DC Comics’ creator spotlight series Solo. From Solo #4 © 2005 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

stuff. There was also a kiddie show on that station called The Magic Clown, which scared the living shit out of me, and it’s kept me afraid to this day. CBA: [Laughs] Did you read a lot of Westerns, as well? Howard: I’ve never read Western fiction until very recently—I’ve just finished Elmore Leonard’s Westerns. CBA: Have you always read books? Howard: Yes. CBA: How many books do you read in, say, a week? Howard: It depends what I’m working on. CBA: Is it all fiction? Howard: Mostly, although I also read criticism, biographies, and some history. Mostly I read thrillers for entertainment. There are authors who I read all the time, like Stephen Hunter, Thomas Perry, and George Pelecanos. Most of the major bestsellers these days are written for people who might read two books a year. CBA: Did you also go to the movies? Howard: There was a third-run theater in my neighborhood. A typical playbill had three movies, five cartoons, and a movie serial for a quarter. That was a day-trip on Saturday for my kid brother and me, and we’d spend the

194â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

entire day at the movies. There was always a Western, a horror picture, and a science-fiction movie. Complete and utter crap. My mother also let me off the leash, because she was always working, and I was up all hours. I’d watch The Late Show on Channel 2, to see all the MGM and RKO pictures. Movies were a big part of my upbringing. I started to want to see movies that hadn’t been commercially available. CBA: Did you like the horror stuff, particularly? Howard: I hated it. I never got into that stuff. CBA: Not even the Universal monsters? Howard: None at all, but the Hammer stuff was always sexy. The Universal pictures, I didn’t get and I never understood the appeal. To this day, I’m not a fan of any of that stuff. I liked war movies, Westerns, cops-&-robbers, musicals, and comedies. The horror just didn’t grab me. CBA: Did you have a television in the house? Howard: We got one in 1955 or ’56. CBA: Did you have any other favorite comics besides Blackhawk? Howard: I became totally obsessed with Superman. Mostly it was just the DC books—Superman, Action Comics, Superboy—and I came to Marvel about five months late. I went to summer camp, and somebody had a copy of Amazing Fantasy #15. CBA: What did you think of DC, in retrospect? Howard: I loved the books. They were a huge part of creating my worldview and setting a moral outlook. I was captivated by [editor] Julie Schwartz’s titles. Kubert’s first The Brave and the Bold Hawkman was really extraordinary. I was a huge fan of Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino. That was amazing stuff, clearly a cut above from Curt Swan on Superman. On the other hand, I can still get into Dick Sprang Batman stuff, because it was so grotesque that I really dug it. CBA: So it was pretty much exclusively the DC comics? Howard: They were available. I lived in Brooklyn, so we just didn’t get a lot of other stuff. I saw occasional interesting things in that period—particularly the DC war titles. I’m a real Mort Drucker fan. There was this great Kubert stuff, and Ross Andru—a guy I never appreciated when I was a kid, but ultimately I look at Ross Andru’s stuff and just think, “Holy fuck!” A real unsung giant. CBA: Gil would tell me that Andru’s work was so underrated. Howard: Gil turned me on to Andru, as well. CBA: What was it about Andru? Howard: He was simply one of the greatest picture-makers in comics. An

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 195

astonishing talent. His pencils are unbelievable. Andru’s deep space, his sense of picture elements and storytelling is amazing. When you look at Ross’s pencils for the Superman/Spider-Man crossover, you realize this is great stuff! No offense, but Esposito never really did the guy justice. CBA: What was your reaction to Kirby, besides being grotesque? Howard: I liked the Fantastic Four. I only saw the Fin Fang Foom stuff years later, but I was never interested in horror or monsters. Kirby’s stuff was just odd to me. At the time, I didn’t connect it, I wasn’t smart enough, wasn’t hip enough. I loved The Double Life of Private Strong, and I loved The Adventures of the Fly—it was so fucking weird. I loved Fighting American. I loved the first fifty issues of Fantastic Four. In those pre-comic book store days, you haunted newsstands every day, always afraid of losing your source. There were a bunch of guys who were all on the prowl together. We’d meet every few days. I remember walking forty blocks to buy Bill Everett’s first issue of Daredevil a day or two early. I was disappointed, because I wasn’t sophisticated enough to appreciate its value. CBA: What about Steve Ditko? Howard: Marvel was my first experience with writer-driven material. It was Stan’s involvement that was most important to me at the time. I learned to accept stuff by Ditko and Kirby that looked so weird and outré, because of the material they were illustrating. I loved the stories. I’d never read anything like it. So the great irony is that two of the most revered artists of the generation, for me at least, were sold to me by the material they were drawing. Again, I respond to what’s pretty, and, obviously, my definition of “pretty” has a wide range. I consider Alex Toth to be the most elegant and beautiful comic book artist in the world. His work is just astonishing. Ditko’s work was always weird and grotesque, beyond his curious politics, but I had a great affection for it, and I never responded to Spider-Man after he left. He was the book for me. CBA: Even though John Romita was obviously a “prettier” artist? Howard: Romita’s work was never as interesting to me. I thought he was a good girl artist and an okay romance artist, but I never, ever responded to his Spider-Man. Amazing Spider-Man was Ditko in the way that Roy Crane was Buzz Sawyer. It’s what Spider-Man looks like. The great revelation was, years later, seeing Kubert’s early work, from the ’40s and ’50s, and seeing how much of what Ditko did was based on Kubert, whether Steve was conscious of it or not. CBA: Was that the aspect you enjoyed in the Julie Schwartz books, because they were pretty?

196â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Howard: Absolutely! I loved Carmine’s Flash, with the skinny, flat figures. I loved the Space Museum stuff, Atomic Knights, all that shit. It was all very pretty, the [writers] Gardner Fox/John Broome period. Yeah, to a great extent it was all about its cuteness. CBA: Did you aspire to a certain kind of middle class existence or normalcy? Howard: I had no knowledge of the middle class’s existence. CBA: Well, it was on TV. Howard: But that’s TV, and I recognized it as bullshit. We moved from Brooklyn to Queens when I was fourteen years old. I had no expectations of what life could offer me when I was a kid, no fantasies about the future. I just kept growing and things changed around me. When I graduated from high school at sixteen, I was asked to leave my house because I was clearly a drag on my family. I was not a great kid. I got in trouble a couple of times, drank, and did a lot of drugs. Ultimately I ended up as a cartoonist’s assistant, which was the perfect way to go. CBA: Now, how’d you do in grade school? Howard: My career in school started at the top and took a nosedive. I graduated from high school with what today would be considered glowing marks, but in those days were considered a huge disappointment. I was a disinterested, distracted student. I cared about what I cared about, and about very little else. My SAT scores were dismal, so that gives you some idea where I’m at. I’ve never had a facility for numbers—whereas I’m good with language. What’s odd about that is that my work is deeply geometric—and I’m very influenced by mechanical and industrial design. Furthermore, the music that I like—everything from Bach to Charlie Parker—is, again, very mathematical. I respond to the very structured in everything. CBA: Were you sociable in school? Howard: I was fat, I was shy, I was closed. It wasn’t until I was encouraged by a number of teachers between eleven and thirteen, that I opened up and discovered I had a smarty-pants reputation and was not deeply liked. My high school graduation photo has nothing underneath it, and the picture looks like I’m the president of Future Optometrists of America. I was not a personality kid. That was reflected in my tenth high school reunion, when I went back and fell into the same role that I’d been in when I was in high school. There was a guy, a huge comic book fan, who insisted his wife take him to the reunion so he could meet me and get some books signed. That was depressing. CBA: When did you start drawing? Howard: When I was five—Superman comics on lined paper. CBA: Did you do actual stories?

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 197

Howard: Oh, yeah. I had no idea what I was doing, but I was doing them. CBA: Were they just crude? Howard: Absolutely. CBA: Did you create any of your own characters? Howard: No. Later, but in the earliest days, never. By the time I was twelve or thirteen, I did my own versions of Superman and Batman, the archetypes. I did endless stuff like that. When I look at the work that Wallace Wood was doing when he was a little kid, it’s astonishing. He called himself the kid artist, but all those guys—Toth, Kubert, Kane, Infantino—started as boys. CBA: Were you known in school as an artist? Howard: No. I took too much shit from those who found out, so I kept it to myself. CBA: So you didn’t share your abilities at school at all? Howard: No. I can’t convey to you how shy I was. I was a total goof. I was not a happy kid, I was not a social kid, I did not have social skills. I was invited to one party and that killed my social life for years. CBA: Why? Howard: Because I was not a good guest. I was ugly and geeky and I was never civil. So I’m surprised that I turned out as gregarious as I did. CBA: Now, when you call yourself fat, were you obese or were you chunky? Howard: I weighed 265 pounds when I was seventeen years old. CBA: You were fat! Howard: I lost the weight that summer. CBA: Without gastric surgery? Howard: Speed. In those days, doctors prescribed amphetamines. Three hits of clinical methedrine a day. CBA: Holy shit! [laughs] Howard: The fact that I was able to wean myself off speed is a miracle. Between Memorial Day of that year and Labor Day, I went from 265 to 180 pounds. I was a great party guest that summer. But I lost the weight. When I was a kid, I was just pudgy, but I ate myself fat as a teen. CBA: How was it possible you had a girlfriend? Howard: It remains astonishing to me. I developed verbal skills, a sense of aggression, and a take-no-prisoners attitude in my early teens. I might take no for an answer, but I’ll keep coming back with another question. And it worked. I was like a woodpecker at a tree, pounding away at girls, yet I was this hugely fat guy. It was amazing. Once I got past that shyness that was endemic in my early teens, I blossomed—particularly with the introduction of drugs and alcohol—which gave me Dutch courage. It gave me a sense of self

198â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

that enabled me to take that newly evolved assertiveness and aggressiveness and kick it up a notch. CBA: Was that also because you were the oldest? Howard: My brothers were both jocks. I’ve never been a jock. I’ve always said, “You’re out chasing balls, I’m gonna try to ball your girlfriend.” I never got along with my brothers, but I have a great relationship with my little brother right now. We became friends over the past couple of years. CBA: What’s the difference of age? Howard: I’m four years older than him, I’m seven years older than the other. CBA: So you got your girlfriend pregnant at eighteen? What were your options? Howard: Abortion was illegal, and she wasn’t going to get one anyway, it was too scary. So she had the baby. Within a month or two of that, she dumped me. CBA: Did you guys get married? Howard: No. The child was put up for adoption. And my adventures began anew. I married early and often. I was brokenhearted for a little bit, then I realized that I had learned valuable life lessons, and just had to apply them. CBA: What were your options with high school? You took the SATs . . . were you prepared to move on? Howard: I went to college in Chicago very briefly. I dropped out pretty early and ended up hitchhiking across the country a couple of times. I worked in a diner as a short-order cook for a while, accumulating life experience. CBA: Did you graduate high school in 1967? Howard: Yes. CBA: Did you go out West then? Howard: I went West in 1968 and was in Chicago for about a year. CBA: What were you studying? Howard: Who the fuck knows. CBA: Liberal arts? Howard: Yeah. CBA: But it wasn’t art? Howard: No. I had allowed my family to talk me out of art as a career. Then I came back to New York in 1969 and went to work for Gil Kane for a while, and hitchhiked back and forth across the country a couple of times. Most of my life was hanging out. Chasing skirts, smoking an awful lot of dope, drinking cheap wine, and finding a place to live, because I was always on the move. That was a pretty common experience for guys my age.

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 199

CBA: Did you continue to read comics? Howard: Absolutely! I was completely and totally addicted to comics. The guys I was hanging out with were all comics fans, None of them became professional, but we drew comix in bars. We did jam comix all the time. CBA: Were they dirty? Howard: Filthy. Once I became a professional in comic books, I lost touch with most of these guys. Comics, particularly in those days, was social. You hung around until you got work. So you’re there on a Friday, somebody needs a page, you’ve got a job. That’s how I got my first gig. I was hanging out with Alan Weiss and Bernie Wrightson and Mike Kaluta and Walter Simonson and Neal Adams. CBA: Did you go to the ’68 SCARP convention? Howard: I think so. CBA: This was where you met the guys? Howard: No, I met them a couple of years later, at a DC coffee room we hung around. You got work if you hung around the DC coffee room. CBA: Had you gone to DC at all? Howard: I had been getting thrown out of the office for years. CBA: Did you go on the tour? Howard: Just once. Back in the early ’70s, you’d get there in the morning, go to the coffee room, and just hang around and shoot the shit. I started by working for [editor] Dorothy Woolfolk on the romance stuff, I did a couple of romance stories for her. Then I did some stuff with [editor] Murray Boltinoff. You just get work, and you get the necessary experience to a great extent. Joe Orlando was my main editor, and he was just a wonderful guy. Joe was just a hero, a great guy. One of my fondest memories is playing translator between Joe and Fernando Fernandez, a Spanish artist. Joe spoke no Spanish, Fernando had no English or Italian, and I can bullshit my way through both. CBA: You worked with Gil first? How did that happen? Howard: I was housesitting for this hat designer. Nobody wears hats anymore, and even at that point, hats were already passé. This was on Second Avenue and 60th Street in the most amazing apartment. Gil lived at 63rd Street and Second Avenue. He had an assistant working with him named Tim Battersby who died at age twenty-one. CBA: Did Tim also work for Woody? Howard: Yes. I forget who told me about his death. I called Gil up and said, “Hey, I hear your assistant’s dead. You need somebody?” CBA: Who did you know to get into the network of comic book artists?

200â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Howard: I have no idea how I found out that Tim had died, but I got Gil’s phone number and called him. CBA: You’d already gone up to DC a couple of times? Howard: Yes, but I’d been thrown out. CBA: Did you come up with sample pages? Howard: Yes. CBA: What was it? Howard: I don’t recall. I showed Gil the same pages—and he justifiably tore them apart. I was the least skilled and least talented and least gifted of my generation, beyond any reasonable doubt. I’m very comfortable with my own sense of my work, and this is not self-abasement. I sucked. I didn’t get good until years later. I went to work for Gil, filling in blacks and doing paste-ups and Zip-A-Tone and clipping art for his swipe files. He had tons of paperbacks and issues of Pilote. So I got to see Lucky Luke, Bob Moon—great strips—and I learned a great deal from Gil. He was my real father figure. CBA: As you recall, was Blackmark a comic book, or was it a paperback? Howard: A paperback. CBA: What is your assessment of Gil? Howard: He was a giant. He’s my hero—everything I wanted to be. I met Gil for the first time when I was thirteen years old at a bookstore, a comic book store called My Friends Bookstore, a.k.a. Dave’s, in Brooklyn. I was selling a pile of comics and Gil was hunting for Will James books. Will James was a cowboy who ultimately became an artist and writer in the 1920s. He wrote children’s books of which the best known is called Smoky. Gil always regarded Will James as the greatest horse artist ever. Gil looked the same as he did ’til the end: that shock of white hair, black eyebrows, tall and lean. CBA: What did you think of his pontificating manner? Howard: I loved it. Working for Gil was the single most important educational experience in my professional life. I got more from him than I ever did from Neal or Gray Morrow or Woody. No offense to any of those guys—I got a great deal from them—but Gil was the first and most significant. Gil once asked me, “What do you like?” It was an excuse to diminish my tastes and cut me down. But his criticisms were brilliantly incisive and I came to agree with his opinions. They were the building blocks for my own sense of critical thought. He opened my eyes to some of the most important artists I had ever seen. One day, in those pre-videotape days, we stopped work to watch Cover Girl on a little Panasonic black-and-white television. Gil kept up a running mono-

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 201

logue throughout the picture. Gene Kelly was Gil’s archetypical hero. He was athletic, a cross between Douglas Fairbanks, Errol Flynn, and Tyrone Power. Gil was deeply interested in dance. Years later, I saw Bob Fosse’s anthology, Dancing, where the great choreographer re-created a lot of dance numbers from earlier musicals—and every one of the dancers was a Gil Kane superhero come to life. Baryshnikov looks like a Gil Kane hero. Gil’s figures were dancers as opposed to wrestlers. I gained an enormous amount of my own professional sensibilities by watching Gil work. Still, I had and always will have issues with his ethical quandaries. CBA: When Gil embraced his inner Kirby, so to speak, on the “Hulk” stuff in Tales to Astonish . . . When Gil started inking his own stuff, did you appreciate the leaps he was making? Howard: The first time Gil inked his own stuff was on Green Lantern. You have to remember, Gil was Kirby’s assistant back in the ’40s. Gil always said he was predominantly influenced by Jack Kirby and Burne Hogarth. For me, I never understood his obsession with Hogarth. I never understood his appeal. It still escapes me. The work is pretentious bullshit. Gil was so much better an artist than Hogarth ever was. One of the few things Neal and I agree on is that Gil transcended anything Hogarth could have done. CBA: Obviously, Kirby changed as he went through his career, he went through a metamorphosis. I think that when Gil embraced Kirby in the ’60s, when all of a sudden, his work just exploded. Howard: Yes. Significantly for me, the Kirby he was embracing was the Kirby of The Fly and The Double Life of Private Strong and Captain America. By that time, Jack’s work had developed weight and heft, but for me at least, had lost much of its sense of mobility. Gil’s stuff was always about movement. I understand that Stan always thought Gil’s work was faggy, and I think that just missed the point. But it’s a typical reaction to Gil’s elegance. For me, Gil’s stuff was just the greatest. I love his Superman stuff from the mid-’80s. CBA: Gil had a strange assessment of his own work, which echoes you, sometimes, when you’re discussing your work. He had very mixed feelings about his abilities. He did not have much respect for quite a bit of it. It was always curious to talk to him—and I loved talking to him—but I always ended up arguing with him about his own work. Yet we agreed on almost all major issues. Like, I always thought he was the best inker of his own work, and he agreed. Howard: Absolutely. CBA: Though there were wonderful inkers who did work for him. But his assessment of his own stuff was that the content was vapid. I could see what he

202â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

was talking about, and I read what you say, I can see what you’re talking about, in a way, but there is enormous heart in it, which is important, I think. Howard: The problem with Gil’s stuff is he never got past the idea of producing work on a mechanical, machine-like basis. He never bothered to seek out reference, never worked from photographs. I’m not talking about for characters, I’m talking about the worldview. There were always generic airplanes, generic automobiles, generic suits. It became a glib cliché. When he tried to work with reference, he couldn’t work at his usual speed. He just never learned how to incorporate photography and reality into his work. That’s something I learned how to do by looking at guys like Roy Crane and the guys who created their own authentic cartoon worlds. Wash Tubbs is a very cartoony strip, but it takes place in a completely convincing universe. Gil also developed a dislike for pulp and for mass-market entertainment material, to the point where he stopped reading fiction years before he died. He and I would argue about popular culture. Gil was of the mindset that everything was better in the late ’40s and early ’50s. That’s absurd. There’s a lot of stuff that was better in the late ’40s, early ’50s, and there’s a lot of stuff that’s better now. Gary Groth once described Gil’s work as hyperbolic—but I think that’s what sold it—and what Gary sees as hyperbole, I see as an operatic sensibility, and there’s room for opera in comics. Jack Kirby’s stuff has an enormous operatic sensibility, too. My stuff is less operatic than chatty and loud. There’s a lot of extraneous stuff going on in my work. I tend to give the audience more credit than it might deserve for paying attention. I wish I could figure out a way to be more explicit with what I’m trying to tell the audience, but I find that implication is better than explication. CBA: Did you think that Gil was beating himself up by being too self-critical? Howard: Yes, I do. CBA: How does he embrace pulp and yet reject pulp? Howard: Well, he produced pulp for a living. He thought he was trapped by the pulp sensibility, and always wanted to do something else. CBA: Gary would always say to him, “Can you do something that’s more personal? Can you do something that’s autobiographical?” And Gil said, “I just can’t.” (This was Gil’s own description.) Howard: Gil drew himself into the hole his work had dug. I don’t really give a shit about his take on The Ring of the Nibelung, about King Arthur and His Knights. It would be difficult for me to visualize what would be appropriate for him to do with his approach. He became very generic and glib, so that that

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 203

was what he did. But, you’re right, it was out of a tradition that dates back to when he was fourteen years old. To give credit where credit is due, if you look at those three guys—Toth, Kubert, and Infantino—Toth is the only one who continued to evolve and develop in different directions—at least in visual terms. Infantino owes a great deal of his development to elements of Bernie Krigstein’s stuff from the early ’50s. They all three went through their Mel Graf/Frank Robbins/Milton Caniff/Alfred Andriola phase in the ’40s, and they all looked alike. Kubert sort of codified what he was doing in the mid-’70s. He’s brilliant, but there wasn’t any variation to the page. It is what it is. Toth has tried different techniques. CBA: Do you think Toth suffered paralysis because he’s trying to refine even further something already refined to brilliance? I mean, he just seems paralyzed. Howard: Toth is just pissed off. I don’t think it’s any secret that Gil and Alex were never particularly fond of each other on a personal basis. Yet Gil was able to put aside any personal animus for Alex and write an extraordinary epistolary introduction to a chapbook of Alex’s stuff some years back, that I think was very astute and right-on in its observation. Gil always talked about the two artists that came out of the ’40s and early ’50s who defined the two directions of comics for his generation—Alex Toth and Wallace Wood. What I’ve tried to do in my life, particularly over the past twenty years, is incorporate elements of both of those two men, because I believe Gil was right. There was graphics and there was bravura drawing, two totally different approaches to the same material. Take the EC stuff. You look at what Alex did with the few jobs that he did for EC. I wish he’d done more for them, but Toth drew three great jobs for Harvey Kurtzman, which Harvey typically shits all over in the slipcase editions. Wood was ubiquitous there, because he did everything. He worked on all of it, and it’s great to watch his stuff evolve. It’s easy to dismiss Woody because in his last years he was a difficult man, but his work was astonishing. There’s technique flying out in every direction, and if you know anything about the period, you can see he must have seen a Fritz Lang movie that week, or an Anthony Mann picture the next. His stuff is just so overheated and passionate. You talk about the hyperbole of Gil’s and Jack’s stuff, Woody had that same essence of hyperbole, but put to an entirely different use. There was a sense of outrage to Wallace Wood’s stuff. Woody was the archetypal liberal mugged by reality. His politics start out popular front populist liberal—then, by the late ’60s, he codifies into this

204â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

unpleasant race-baiting man. His self-loathing was intense. But the work from the early ’50s, the Shock SuspenStories in particular, is gut-wrenching. In its own way, it’s as important as what Kurtzman was doing. It was just completely over-the-top and huge. CBA: We are talking about Wally Wood . . . Howard: Wallace Wood. He never called himself Wally. Like “Howie” Chaykin. I’ve never been “Howie.” “Howard” is tough enough to bear; “Howie” is something I will not accommodate. His name was “Woody” or “Wallace.” Let him rest in peace. CBA: Was the transition straight from Gil to Woody for you working as an assistant? Howard: There was about a year in between. I went to work for Woody when he was living in Long Island and I was living in Manhattan, so I was reverse commuting. I penciled a Western strip that he inked for about eight weeks, then I dropped it, and Dave Cockrum picked it up. It was called Shattuck. He was doing these vaguely smutty comic strips for Overseas Weekly, a newspaper for the military service: Sally Forth, Cannon, and Shattuck. He’d rented a big old studio space over an Italian deli. Great scene. Syd Shores rented space, and Jack Abel, too. That was when I met Jack. Jack was just a total pisser. He and I developed an affinity for each other, because Syd was totally oblivious, while Woody would come in and sit down on the floor in a lotus position, vodka in one hand and black tea in the other, and pontificate on everything he hated at endless length. Talk about curmudgeons! So it was an education. CBA: What was Jack Abel like? Howard: Jack was sly, funny, and easy to underestimate. He never became one of the great talents in the comic book business, but who gives a shit? He was a great guy—a real hero of mine. He was one of the best people I ever met. CBA: What made him so? Howard: He was smart, he was funny, and you could have a real conversation with Jack about just about anything. Jack was a great man. CBA: Did you get to know Syd Shores at all? Howard: No, he was just kind of goofy. CBA: Getting back to Gil for a second, did your pen touch any of his work? Howard: I was simply a gofer. I did paste-up, Zip-A-Tone, filled in blacks. He didn’t even let me deliver his stuff to DC because he felt I misrepresented him, because my hair was too long. CBA: Did you avoid the draft?

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 205

Howard: I was in the first lottery—and I didn’t want to go. I was involved in the anti-war movement, but the first time I saw somebody burn a flag, I knew it was time for me to blow that scene. It was the complete and total abdication of patriotism—allowing it to be hijacked by the right, and it’s been that way ever since, to this day. So I hung out with hippies for a while, because that’s where the chicks were. I went to Woodstock with two pals of mine in a ’63 Bonneville convertible and had a great time, and I learned a valuable lesson— I don’t do dirty and smelly well. I’m not a camper. CBA: Did you develop an affinity for jazz years earlier? Howard: I got turned on to jazz by my mom, who was a third-rate band singer. The jazz I first heard was vocalese. The first rock ’n’ roll I heard was a cappella and doo-wop. The first cowboy and Western music I heard was Hank Williams. The first jazz singing I heard was King Pleasure, Eddie Jefferson, and Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross. For me, it all comes from the vocals. To this day, I still listen to a lot of girl singers from the ’30s and ’40s. It’s one of the things I have in common with Gary Groth. We’re both huge fans of Anita O’Day and Lee Wiley, two great singers. Back then, I was into rock ’n’ roll. I was a huge fan of The Band, Van Morrison, Jefferson Airplane, and Joe Cocker. I was in the culture but not of the culture, because basically that’s where the women were. CBA: Did you read underground comix? Howard: Some. It’s the oddest thing: they weren’t as generally available in New York. I saw more of them in Chicago. I certainly got the East Village Other in New York and Windy City Comics and stuff like that. I got some comix, but I didn’t love them. I liked Crumb’s stuff, I liked Art Spiegelman’s stuff, back in those days. Justin Green. Some of Spain’s stuff. But again, I was a real middleof-the-road kind of guy when it came to comics. CBA: So you didn’t see it as a revolution that was coming from within the form? Howard: No. It wasn’t something I felt I could do. CBA: How do you look upon it now? Howard: It seems sort of oddly innocent in its expectations. The work of that period that best holds up for me is Arcade: The Comics Revue. Crumb’s two pieces for Arcade remain gigantic. The piece about modern America is an amazing piece of work, as is his piece about blues musicians. Astonishing stuff. CBA: So you bought Arcade when it was coming out? Howard: Yes. CBA: Did you see the East Village Other as a possible place you could work?

206â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Howard: No, I didn’t have anything that would have interested them at all. I have a longstanding tradition of responding positively to pieces that are not for me. I like a lot of work by guys who hate my work. I got a nice squib in GQ an issue or two back—and my reaction to my wife’s delight was, “No big deal—just a nice pat on the head from another magazine that won’t give me work.” CBA: It’s genre that interests you? Howard: Pretty much. I’m a genre/pulp guy. My Solo book is all genre material. I had a great time working on the Michael Chabon–edited issue of McSweeney’s, illustrating a series of genre fiction pieces both by genre writers and by guys who were not regularly associated with genre fiction. CBA: Why did you leave Wallace Wood? Howard: He fired me. CBA: Why did he fire you? Howard: I wasn’t very good, I was sloppy. He needed someone neat. I got a lot neater, but in those days, I was all thumbs. I was just really clumsy. I’m pretty sure he died owing me fifty bucks. CBA: Was Gil a man-about-town? Howard: He was a character. He was the first real flesh and blood human being I ever knew who owned a dressing gown. I had never seen a guy who owned one, except in the movies. He was a class act. CBA: Did Gil regale you with stories? Howard: Always. CBA: So did you gain insight into people like Jim Warren and Carmine Infantino? Howard: Yes. I’m sure you’ve heard all the stories. Bear in mind, Gil’s was a very jaundiced worldview. A couple of years back, Jim Steranko asked me what was the most interesting thing in comics the past year in or so. I nominated the interview Gil did with Gary for The Comics Journal. CBA: I thought that was great. Howard: Gil’s a controversial figure. He’s easy to misunderstand, misconstrue, and misjudge. He was ethically challenged and a bit of a scoundrel. But he was still intriguing and brilliant in his own fashion. CBA: So what did you do after you left Gil? Howard: I don’t remember. I did a lot of drugs, and ended up working for Woody—how and why I don’t recall. CBA: But there were always new assistants in his studio, right? Howard: Woody went through assistants like other people go through tissue. The great Woody quote—and I’m paraphrasing here, is—“Don’t draw

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 207

what you can trace, don’t trace what you can paste up, and don’t paste up what you can swipe.” Nick Cuti basically assembled pencils from swipe files. A little bit of Alex Raymond, a little bit of Reuben Moreira, all this stuff. He would trace all these pieces off, hand them to Woody, who would then ink them in the Wood style, so that everything came together. It was a fascinating thing to observe. I’ve never learned to ink. I draw with a pen. I go back to the EC stuff once in a while, to remind me what the best stuff used to look like—the technique, the tweaking of brushwork—and it helps me remember. I went from Woody and met Gray Morrow. Gray was living in Brooklyn— two apartments, one on top of the other, one he lived in and one he used as a studio. Gray was a real funny guy who came to New York just in time for EC to go belly up and the comics business to have its first implosion. He did a couple of jobs for Stan at Atlas—Westerns and s-f—then disappeared from comic books until he came back in the late 1960s. I ghosted for him, did a couple El Diablo stories, and I penciled a Man-Thing job. CBA: This was for Fear? Howard: Yes. I penciled it. Twelve-panel pages with a tapestry in each panel. Half the job was in editing the script. From there I went to work for Neal. Neal had this paternalistic thing going. You lived at his house, hung out with his kids, and had Thanksgiving dinner at his place. There was a real sense of the Last Supper. “Let’s all pretend Neal is Jesus!” He generated a lot of chaos. He prodded a lot, stuck his finger into sucking chest wounds to make trouble. CBA: You worked for Gil, who was always trying new things: with the Bantam paperbacks—Blackmark—and His Name Is . . . Savage. Wally obviously was doing a great deal outside of comic books. Did you see a message there, that comics were not the only place to be? Howard: What I learned from Neal Adams, more than anything, when he was working in advertising, drawing storyboards and comps, was to develop as commercial a drawing style as possible to get through lean comics times. CBA: When Continuity was a fully blown art agency? Howard: This was long before Continuity. I’d hang around the coffee room at DC, like I said, and go out to dinner with the guys. Then I’d go with Neal to the Bronx and work in his office in his house all night. His kids were very young at the time. I was penciling animatics and storyboards for him. I learned comics didn’t pay very well. There were no royalties, they didn’t return artwork; it was just a flat fee. The goal for me was to develop my skills to the point where I could do sto-

208â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

ryboards, where the money really was. For the amount of effort you expended on a page of comics, you could make three to five times as much doing boards and animatics. So ultimately, that’s what I did. I penciled for him. I was briefly in business with an incredibly talented artist at the time, who seems to have disappeared, doing animatics and boards and comps on our own. We had a lot of work for Old Gold cigarettes developing their campaign, a slew of comps, Council, and a bunch of other things. CBA: For what agency? Howard: Mostly Benton and Bowles. CBA: Were you on staff there? Howard: All freelance, all the time. CBA: What did your portfolio look like? Howard: I did sample animatics, storyboards, and comps. The biggest job I ever had was a transitional campaign for G.I. Joe for the Australian market. This was before G.I. Joe became small action figures; it was still a superhero doll. I did those on my own. I had no assistants, didn’t use a colorist, just did everything myself. I didn’t quite figure out how to do it, how to farm the work out. I did very shortly afterward. I had a group of assistants doing the coloring and stuff. It was just an amazing job, and it paid very quickly. I pissed that money away. CBA: It was good money? Howard: Oh, it was great money. CBA: Did you continue to have a passion for comics? Howard: Without question. The thing is, once I got the work, it was an enormous letdown, because the work I got wasn’t very interesting, and I wasn’t very good and didn’t know what to do with the work. So I humped along doing different stuff. It wasn’t really until I had the opportunity in the mid to late ’70s to work with Byron Preiss that everything came together. I loved doing that. CBA: At Continuity, what were you doing? Howard: I never worked at Continuity. I just hung around a couple of times a week. CBA: Were you a Crusty Bunker? Howard: No. I lived in Queens. I’d go to Continuity, hang around until rush hour was over. You had fried chicken wings and just shot the shit. By that time, Neal was just getting into the animatics. Marshall Rogers and Pat Broderick were there, and Lynn Varley was working as Neal’s colorist and assistant. CBA: Were you close with Wrightson and The Studio guys?

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 209

Howard: Intermittently. I was closest to Walter Simonson. He came in around ’74. I’d been around for about a year, but he was older than the rest of us. I was the youngest of the bunch. Then there’s Weiss, Kaluta, and Wrightson. But after a while we sort of drifted out of each other’s lives. CBA: What are your feelings about Kaluta? Howard: Kaluta and I come from the same root, but blossomed in different ways. I have a great deal of respect for Michael’s work. Michael is still living in the same apartment building he was living in back then. It’s just amazing. In the time I’ve known Michael, I’ve lived in I can’t remember how many different houses and apartments! And I’ve been married four times. CBA: There was a lot of nostalgia . . . Howard: I was interested in the ’30s stuff back then, and Michael was into the ’20s. I liked the sleeker, slicker stuff. I was talking about Robert Fawcett, and Michael sort of pooh-poohed the illustrator, and I was like, “What are you talking about?” To this day I consider Fawcett to be one of the greatest illustrators who ever lived. A lot of guys who influenced Michael were a little too much on the fantasy side for me. I’m not a fantasy guy, though I used to be. It doesn’t interest me at all. CBA: Had you had any knowledge of the great illustrators? Howard: In a very rudimentary way. CBA: Did you ever look at the pulp reprints that were coming out as paperbacks? Howard: Not really. I never read those Doc Savage paperbacks, for example. For all my pulp sensibility, I’m not particularly steeped in the original pulp material. CBA: But you did read Tarzan? Howard: Oh, yeah. I was a fanatical Edgar Rice Burroughs fan. I bought my first Burroughs novel the day before my bar mitzvah in 1963. I had five bucks in my pocket—so I picked up a copy of A Fighting Man of Mars with a Bob Abbett cover painting. I went home, sat on my stoop, and read the first seventyfive pages of this book. My reaction was: “How long has this been going on?” From that point on, I was an absolute Burroughs fanatic. I read all the Martian books at least three times over. CBA: What was it about it that you liked? Howard: It was comics in text form. Super-science as well as sword fighting. A couple of years later, I got turned on to the Robert E. Howard stuff with the Lancer editions that came out. I just loved that stuff, too. I was just a huge fan of that material—and now, I find it amazingly unreadable. CBA: Did you like Frazetta?

210â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Howard: Sure. I hadn’t seen the Ace editions; I saw the Ballantines first. CBA: Was it the Hollywood movies that got you into this stuff? Howard: No. I saw all the Tarzan pictures, but the Tarzan novels were my least favorite of all the Burroughs books—but we’re talking degrees here— and I still loved them dearly. CBA: Well, I was talking about your affinity for the ’30s. Did you get that from Hollywood? Howard: I guess. CBA: Obviously, you have a ’30s sensibility. Howard: Again, it’s more movies than comics. CBA: Did you read the pulp magazines, The Spider or The Shadow? Howard: I read The Shadow. The golden age of comics and pulp is the age of twelve, and, if there’s anything about me I have any deep respect for, it’s that I’ve learned not to have that much respect for my tastes when I was growing up. CBA: [Looking over Sword of Sorcery #1–4, Mar.–Oct. ’73] Did you have a hard time with deadlines? Inks are by the Crusty Bunkers in the first one, and “Chaykin, Inc.” is listed in #4. Howard: No. I was never supposed to ink the book. CBA: Why didn’t you write your own stuff in the beginning? Howard: Because my writing sucked. CBA: I was talking to Walter, and he said you two did a jam session. Howard: On Scorpion [#2, May ’75], Walter and I would jam. Again, it was not so much a problem with deadlines, because deadlines were flexible and shifted. But no, my writing was really awful. CBA: Were you happy with the results of the jam? Howard: I don’t remember. We’re talking thirty years ago now. CBA: But you’ve remembered everything else so far. Howard: Yeah, but this stuff doesn’t interest me, it wasn’t important. CBA: Was there an embarrassment from it or something? Howard: No, not at all. CBA: I mean, you made it to the Big Time, right? You were working in comics. You finally had made it right? Howard: Yeah, but my attitude was, “What’s next?” CBA: What was your living situation? Were you married at the time? Howard: Yes. I was living in Brooklyn, across the street from Walter, on Argyle Road in the bad section of East Flatbush which, oddly enough, was the new location of My Friends Bookstore, the store where I’d met Gil ten years earlier. I was happy with the work. Years ago, I said at a convention that the

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 211

difference between me and comic book fandom is for them, every month on the stand, for me, every morning on my desk. CBA: Did you really make a transition from being a fan to a professional? Howard: I was never part of fandom. I didn’t go to conventions until I was already a professional. CBA: You had no interest? Howard: I was intimidated. I thought I’d look like a fool. They’d always make fun of the cons on the local news, and it just looked too geeky and weird to me. CBA: So you didn’t have a need to get back issues? Howard: I didn’t think I’d be welcome. I couldn’t tell how I, who I was, would fit into that world. I go to conventions now and frequently feel the same way, because I don’t unqualifiably love the stuff. I find when I go to conventions today, I generally seem to find myself sitting in the same place and not moving. I plant myself. CBA: Did you have any desire to do super-hero stuff? Howard: No, because in those days super-heroes were defined by the Marvel Bullpen—and my stuff was certainly too different for that. The only artist of my generation who seemed appropriate for super-hero comics was Rich Buckler. You couldn’t see Wrightson doing it, though you could maybe see him doing Batman, but even that was too weird. So it was great to see all the sword-and-sorcery and Robert E. Howard stuff start surfacing in the quasimystery/horror vein. CBA: Was Dennis O’Neil okay to work with? Howard: Dennis was terrific. The great irony is that his son Larry ended up working for me as my assistant on American Flagg! CBA: What did he do? Howard: Backgrounds. Larry and Dean Haspiel came in and worked for me and Simonson. They were seventeen or eighteen years old at the time. I’ve known Larry since he was three or four. CBA: Has he done work that I should know? Howard: Larry? Larry is a successful screenwriter and feature director. CBA: Walter certainly is one of the finest people in the comics biz. . . . Howard: Walter and I hit it off immediately. He’s still The Viking Prince and I’m The Jew From the Future and we’re still friends. CBA: You guys had a studio together? Howard: Upstart Associates. CBA: Was Frank Miller a part of that? Howard: Frank replaced Starlin. It was originally Walter, Starlin, Val May-

212â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

erik, and me. Mayerik left and Jim Sherman moved in. Then Starlin left, and Frank took his spot. CBA: Do you have any idea what the story behind War of the Worlds [Amazing Adventures #18, May ’73] was? Was it a rush job? Howard: Oh that . . . oh, sure! Neal had spent eight months doing twelve pages, or twelve months doing eight pages—I forget exactly what—and they got tired of waiting. I got a call from Marvel asking if I would finish the book, and like a schmuck, I said yes. It was a valuable lesson learned, because if Neal had taken eight months to do twelve pages (or twelve months to do eight pages), I had to finish the rest of the book in a weekend . . . and it looked it. CBA: What did you learn? Howard: If you have a deadline of Friday, tell him you can get it to him by Monday, because if you give it to him on Friday, you’re a hero. CBA: So you learned that pretty early on, then. Howard: It was a very educational experience. CBA: And yet you still did the next issue [AA #19, July ’73]? Howard: I think I did one more, and then it was done for me. CBA: You didn’t do that much work for Marvel. Or did you? Howard: I didn’t have the desire to work for them back then. Marvel was a very parochial company in those days. They had a specific idea of what the stuff looked like. They’d have John Romita redraw heads. I never really had anything that Marvel wanted. CBA: Were you disappointed when Sword of Sorcery was cancelled? Howard: I don’t remember feeling one way or the other. CBA: [Picks up Weird Worlds #9, Feb. ’74, featuring Ironwolf] You enjoyed doing stories like this? Howard: That was the same deal. I was doing the plotting and penciling, and Dennis was doing the dialogue and collecting a fat paycheck. CBA: Did you feel like you were developing your chops? Howard: I was a kid. As I said, this stuff was a lot of work. I loved doing it. CBA: Where did the character of Ironwolf come from? Howard: I loved Scotland, loved Germany, loved all that stuff. It was this weird melange of bullshit: E.E. “Doc” Smith, Cordwainer Smith, all that s-f stuff, Captain Future. CBA: Is there an archetype being developed here? Is there this direct lineage, let’s say, from Ironwolf to Flagg? Howard: Okay, I don’t draw an iconic hero. For me, Flagg was always a combination of James Garner and Henry Fonda. Garner is my archetype, a wise guy who’d do the least amount of work to get the job done.

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 213

A panel from a Killraven story written by Gerry Conway, with pencils by Chaykin and inks by Frank McLaughlin. From Amazing Adventures #19 (1973) © 2010 Marvel Entertainment, LLC and its subsidiaries. Used with permission.

CBA: Was there you in that archetype, as well? Howard: I’m a short, fat Jewish guy. An idealized version of me is Robert Downey, Jr. [Jon laughs.] I’m serious! He’s going to play me in a TV movie. CBA: I seem to recall you having an “interesting” fashion sense back in the ’70s. Howard: I was in my late twenties when I realized that everybody who used to call me a faggot for having long hair now all had long hair. I started buying clothes. Armani sweaters, just gorgeous, sort of cotton thread and gold, and a couple of dress shirts in flannel. Suits, shoes, neckties, pocket watch. I went and got a haircut, and started looking like an Italian pimp. I’d always liked clothes, but I never felt worthy of them, because I was always this fat guy, but by then I wasn’t fat anymore, so I figured I might as well try a makeover, and I looked okay. To this day, when I dress up, I’m frequently the best-dressed man at any wedding. CBA: Would you say that you were a hippy? Howard: We never used that word. We called ourselves freaks. CBA: And did you dress the part? Howard: I wore blue jeans, work-shirts, boots. There you go. Look what I’m wearing today: A pair of blue jeans, a ripped T-shirt, a denim work-shirt, and white socks.

214â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CBA: You used to have mutton chops, right? Howard: Oy. CBA: Is that from Joe Cocker or—? Howard: No, it preceded that. It was actually more [lead singer of the Lovin’ Spoonful] John Sebastian. Look, I was as much a victim of fashion as the next guy. CBA: And the fashion sense of your characters was very much of the day. Howard: I never developed a sense of the figure as effectively as Gil did. I liked clothes. I could do a silhouette, but muscle-bound figures? To this day, I’m not that interested, but I really liked to draw clothing. I had a pretty good swipe file on costumes, fashion, and everything else. CBA: [Pulling out Detective Comics #441, July ’74] I guess this is one of your few superhero jobs. Howard: The very few. CBA: Did Archie Goodwin approach you to draw Batman? Howard: Yes, and I never apologized enough to the guy. CBA: Why? Howard: Because it’s just . . . I just wasn’t very good at superhero stuff, that’s all. You’re really pulling out the shit, aren’t you? This is unbelievable. CBA: Sorry, Howard. [Picking up Scorpion #1] Were you most happy with it? It seemed to be the most “Chaykin” comic book yet. Howard: It was fun at the time, yeah. We had a good time. CBA: This book was a real change for you, I thought. The work was much more assured, the layouts stronger. We had discussed this before [CBA V.1 #16], but in shorthand, what was your experience with Atlas/Seaboard? Howard: It wasn’t pleasant. Atlas/Seaboard raised everybody’s rates. It was a company that existed to show Stan Lee that somebody else could do it, too. On the other hand, I got to do two issues of a book I really liked, and had a good time with it. I had a lot of personality issues and problems with the people involved. CBA: Were they well received, those two issues? Howard: I think so. I think there were some good spots in each. I walked across the street and did another version of it at Marvel. I ended up doing Dominic Fortune [Marvel Preview #2 (’75), Marvel Super Action #1 (Jan. ’76), Marvel Premiere #56 (Oct ’80)] which was a similar milieu, but a very different hero and heroine. Cody Starbuck [Star*Reach #1 (’74), #4 (Mar. ’76), Cody Starbuck (July ’78)] is, to a certain extent, an evolved version of Ironwolf. It takes a similar world. If you accept Ironwolf as the nobleman of that universe, Cody Starbuck is a

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 215

bastard king. He comes in as more of a blue-collar guy in that position. Again, I was influenced by all that pulp stuff: Edmond Hamilton, Andre Norton, Poul Anderson, as well as Robert E. Howard. Christ, he’s Conan! To a great extent, Starbuck is the Amra the Lion stories transplanted to a science-fiction series. CBA: Did you have intentions with Cody Starbuck, from the start, to do an epic? Howard: No. It basically started out as a one-shot space opera. I was crazy about that sort of stuff. There’s a novel by Samuel R. Delany called Nova that’s one of my favorite novels of the late ’60s. It was just one of the really great, seminal wacky science-fiction novels, and a huge influence on me. CBA: There’s a real growth in the layouts over a short period of time. Did anyone help you with that? Howard: No. CBA: Was it self-confidence? Howard: To a certain extent. I was also realizing there were other ways to do things. Just trying different shit. I’ve always been influenced by stuff outside of the world in which I work—applying what I was learning from looking at guys like Bob Peak, Barron Storey, and Bernie Fuchs and magazine illustration to comics. I’ve always felt that comics are illustrations with the application of time. CBA: How did you really get into illustrators? Howard: During the Bicentennial celebration in New York City, there was an exhibition called Two Hundred Years of American Illustration, at the New York Historical Society. It was just an amazing show. It turned us on to a lot of people we didn’t know. It’s exponential. Larry Hama walks into Continuity one day carrying a copy of a Japanese book called Akira he picked up in a Japanese bookstore. Al Milgrom says, “Take a look at this guy, Michael Golden!” Who is, for my money, the most influential comic book artist in the past thirty-five years. Guys hang around talking about comics and talking about pictures, and everybody starts seeing what everybody else is seeing, and you begin to make choices. CBA: You and Walter, did you bounce off each other? Howard: Walter was a very adventurous designer. I got a lot of what you would consider confidence by looking at his stuff. CBA: His incorporating typography within the work? Howard: No question about it. Walter is the first guy I ever saw who acknowledged lettering as drawing. He still does his own sound effects, because he

216â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

wants to control that effect. It’s an enviable skill. The last job I did with traditional lettering on the page was Mighty Love, and it was a lesson learned, because the system has changed so dramatically. They can’t do it that way anymore. I’m now doing what all the rest are doing, which is computer lettering. CBA: This is just a transitional period? Howard: I’m a virgin when it comes to Photoshop, but I’m using it on every job. I scan the pages, my assistant uses Photoshop to do clean-up, paste-ups, and Zip-A-Tone that I’ve indicated on a hard-copy printout markup. Then I take it and do a final tweak myself. CBA: How long have you been using Photoshop? Howard: About a year, so I’m just a neophyte. CBA: Are you excited about the program? Howard: I’m intimidated, but I also acknowledge its value. CBA: Were you reluctant to give up the tactile? Howard: I don’t give up! I’ll show you what the page looks like before scanning, and I’ll show you what it looks like scanned. CBA: So the computer is an embellisher? Howard: Yes. CBA: Did you reach a point early on in the ’70s when you didn’t want other people to ink your work? Howard: Absolutely. CBA: I’ve got these issues of Conan the Barbarian [#79–83, Sept. ’77–Feb. ’78]. Howard: With the Ernie Chan finishes? I just did layouts. As I’ve said before, I never learned to ink, and ultimately I had to figure out a way to finish my stuff in ink so it could be reproduced. That took a lot of trial and error and I experimented a lot, trying all sorts of different approaches. After I did the work for Byron Preiss, I finally figured out a way to render my own stuff, but every couple of years I take a new look and reinvent the way I approach the reproduction line. Right now, I’m working with marker again. It’s mixed media, working with marker and pencil, colored pencil, and brush. I have to re-groove every couple of years. CBA: With the animatics, did you work with color much at all? Howard: Well, I’m color-blind, so I avoided learning color, learning the basics of color theory, for the longest time. I finally taught myself to paint in black and white. I learned values that way. My color stuff is very simple. I approach things very basically. I’m influenced by illustrators—Bob Peak, David Grove, Robert Fawcett, and many others—and a lot of it is seat-of-the-pants stuff, one of the few places where I allow myself spontaneity in my work. CBA: Do you now have to have a good grasp of color?

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 217

Howard: I think my color stuff works. I don’t do much of it anymore. I’ve never been happy with computer coloring in comics until recently, until I discovered Dave Stewart, Michelle Madsen, and Brian Haberlin. They’re all extraordinary artists. CBA: When you went to the Bicentennial illustrators exhibit, did you have an epiphany by getting up close to the work? By actually looking at their technique? Howard: I became a painter of paperback book covers because of a problem at Marvel. Ultimately it was a good thing. I went off and did paperback covers for three years. Then I came back and did American Flagg! I had a great time in paperbacks. I did science fiction, Westerns, romance, all sorts of shit, and had a really good time. But I never developed a traditional approach. It was always a weird style. I was using colored pencil, marker, watercolor, and acrylic. Again, very seat-of-the-pants stuff. CBA: Was it a helpful experience? Howard: It made me realize that I had a bigger worldview than I thought. Bear in mind, I’ve made my living as a cartoonist, a comic book artist, a comic book writer, a paperback illustrator, a TV writer, and a TV producer. Now I’m back to writing and drawing my own comics again, and I’m really happy. I’ve had a really interesting series of overlapping careers. CBA: So I guess the transition must have been through the animatics, right, of you moving into the Heavy Metal stuff? Howard: The Heavy Metal work came because I had a good relationship with [HM editor] Julie Simmons. CBA: Did you meet Michael Gross? Howard: Yes. I did stuff for The Big Book of Comical Funnies and The Encyclopedia of Humor. Michael is an amazing talent. I haven’t seen Michael in years. We traded e-mails a couple of years back, after the interview you did with him. I used to run into him at the Universal lot. I became friendly with Julie Simmons, who was editing at Heavy Metal at the time, and music critic and legendary comics editor Lou Stathis (who died tragically young). You were talking earlier about socializing in the business. My wife and I socialized with Julie. We were part of her wedding party. The Heavy Metal work overlapped with the stuff I did for Byron Preiss, Empire and The Stars My Destination. CBA: This is vicious stuff, right? We’re looking at The Stars My Destination. Howard: It was a hugely difficult job. CBA: Was this the first of the illustrated novels? What is the chronology here? Where does Empire fit in?

218â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Howard: Empire precedes this. Empire was a book for Berkley Books, written by Chip Delany. CBA: Did you know Chip? Howard: Yes. He was a comics fan. I haven’t seen him for years. It was a great project, a lot of fun, and kind of wacky. I was a huge fan of his, as I said earlier, and it was an opportunity to work with someone whom I deeply respected. So I had a great time with the book. I have no memory whatsoever of what the book was about. Joe Jusko was my assistant on that book. CBA: What did Joe do? Howard: Laid in flat colors. It was all marker and watercolor, so he would lay in flat color. I would render on top of his flats. Then came The Stars My Destination, my all-time favorite science-fiction novel. Alfred Bester was a real hero of mine. CBA: Did you know Byron Preiss prior to that? Howard: Empire was Byron’s project. CBA: Did you admire what he was doing in publishing? Howard: I saw it as an opportunity to do something outside of mainstream comics. Again, it was like doing animatics. The difference was there was no money in it. I got myself into a credit hole I didn’t get out of until I did American Flagg!, because I was getting paid far less to do this than anything I was doing at the time, but it was satisfying work. CBA: It was a gas to see it published. Howard: It took forever to get that second volume out. Marvel published it years later. CBA: Were you friends with Archie Goodwin? Howard: I knew him. I drank with him. I wouldn’t call him a close friend. Walter was close friends with Archie. CBA: Did you see him as an editor who had an artistic sensibility and sensitivity? Howard: Absolutely. CBA: What was your general assessment of comic book editors, anyway? Howard: Archie was the best editor around at the time. CBA: Why? Howard: He was well read and was an artist in his own right. He had a real understanding of both sides of the fence. And also, he came out of the EC tradition. CBA: Do you have any particular editors that you enjoy working with today? Howard: I’m working with Scott Dunbier pretty regularly right now. Scott’s terrific. I also love working with Joey Cavalieri.

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 219

CBA: Do you see Mark Chiarello as an editor? Howard: Mark is an art director who seems to have become a terrific editor by default. I make no secret of the enormous respect I have for Mark. Mark is also as an illustration geek. I’ve turned him onto some guys, and he’s turned me onto some guys. We share similar sensibilities. CBA: How did Star Wars [#1–9, July ’77–Mar. ’78] come about? Howard: Because of Cody Starbuck. George Lucas asked for me on the job. I did it, with no idea that the film would become the phenomenon it was. CBA: What’d you think of the script of the project? Howard: The film was incredibly kinetic—but my question, while I was watching the film in a screening the day before it opened, was “Where the fuck was this when I was twelve?” I just didn’t care about the stuff on an adult level. For example, I saw the first film in a theater, saw the second in a theater. The third film I rented on video. The phone rang about forty-five minutes before it ended, and I answered the phone and forgot it was on, and never went back and saw the movie. I’m just not that interested. Had I known, perhaps, that the film was going to be the phenomenon that it was, I might have applied myself more to the adaptation. Be that as it may, without sounding like too much of a whore, what angers me the most is that they sold a million and a half books, but in those days, all I was getting was fifteen dollars a page in royalties. Had I been paid the royalties that were being paid out in a year or so, I would have made a serious fortune off the book. CBA: It was reprinted in all sorts of different editions in a very short span of time, right? Howard: I’ve actually earned more in residuals from the Dark Horse reprints of the Marvel books than from the Marvel reprints. And that’s just the way it is. CBA: Is that contractual at Dark Horse? Howard: Yes. CBA: Did you get to meet George Lucas? Howard: Yes. CBA: Any insights? Howard: Not really. CBA: Did you meet Steven Spielberg? Howard: No. CBA: You drew [The Further Adventures of] Indiana Jones, did you? Howard: Just one issue of the book [#16, Jan. ’83]. Actually, for me, what’s interesting about Spielberg is the art that he had in the Amblin offices on

220â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

the Universal lot. His collection of Rockwells is there, and it’s great to see all those superb paintings close up. It’s remarkable stuff, including Norman Rockwell’s Visit to a Country Doctor. CBA: Did you have the original art for your Star Wars stuff? Were you able to sell it at a good price? Howard: Oh yes, I did well. But again, we’re talking about twenty or thirty years ago, Jon. CBA: But you said that you really did like space opera, correct? Howard: But by that time, I’d lost my taste for it. To a certain extent, what ruined me for that was being turned onto Raymond Chandler; to a lesser extent Rex Stout, all the mystery stuff. CBA: When did that come about? Howard: The mid-’70s. It came from Archie Goodwin to Walter Simonson to me. Toward the end of Archie’s life, I turned him onto a guy I thought he’d like, and I was gratified that his response was as positive as it was, because he turned us on to a lot of great guys. CBA: So your interest in science fiction just slipped away? Howard: Right. CBA: Did you read Jim Thompson? Howard: Oh, yeah. Not then, later on. Speaking of Thompson, as a sidebar: I think it was Geoffrey O’Brien, talking about science-fiction and crime paperbacks—and I’m paraphrasing here—whereas crime paperbacks were as fantastical in their own way as science- fiction, they were based on observed reality. To a profound extent, the world I grew up in during the ’50s and early ’60s, very much resembled the covers of those paperbacks. CBA: The Signet covers? Howard: Exactly. Later on, I got into the Black Lizard stuff, the Jim Thompson stuff. Around the same time as the Black Lizard reprints, there was a British company called Zomba Books, publishing much more upscale versions of all sorts or noir writers. The Black Lizard books had these dreadful covers. Zomba had a series called Black Box Thrillers, publishing David Goodis, Jim Thompson, Cornell Woolrich, Horace McCoy, and two other writers, who are among the living—as opposed to those dead men—Marc Behm and Jerome Charyn, both of whom I became very, very enamored of. Charyn’s work on The Isaac Quartet is astonishing; a great take on crime fiction, very different from conventional stuff. And then Marc Behm, the three novels that Zomba published were incredible. There’s a terrible movie based on his first novel, The Eye of the Beholder, but the novel is just great. CBA: Were you attracted to the cynicism of crime fiction?

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 221

Howard: I didn’t regard it as particularly cynical. CBA: How about James Cain? Howard: I like Cain. I think Cain creates a very positive, very moralistic world. I think he’s not on the side of his characters, I think he stands aside, apart . . . CBA: Well, I get that, but obviously he’s focusing on these brutal characters ... Howard: Cain’s are dark novels, but they’re human frailty novels. My favorite Hammett novel is a toss-up between The Glass Key and Red Harvest. And as for the Chandler stuff, I still love The Long Goodbye. But I don’t read much private detective stuff these days. I think to a great extent Cain is just writing about unpleasant things happening to people, and I like that. But significantly, when EC got into the crime comic business, they didn’t really do crime comics, all these Charlie Biro/Lev Gleason–type stories. The EC crime books were basically pastiches of Cain with a whiff of Woolrich, about two married people who couldn’t stand each other. I found that kind of fascinating. CBA: Did you want to do crime comics? Howard: No. At that point in my life—and this has changed—I was stymied and hampered by limitations of my own worldview. For example, when I first came to Southern California, it never occurred to me that I could stay here and get work in the television industry, because what I’d been writing seemed inapplicable to what they wanted. I couldn’t visualize it. So I started in television very late. I’m back doing comics now because I like to work. I don’t think I’m ever going to do a comic that’s going to transcend the form, but . . . maybe someday I will write a novel. I have no idea. One of the great things about being who I am at my age is that I’m younger than I think. CBA: When did writing begin for you? Howard: It might have been Dominic Fortune for Marvel, I think. CBA: Were you comfortable with it? Howard: Yes, very much. CBA: Immediately? Howard: Absolutely. CBA: Did you work with other writers? Were you becoming an auteur, so to speak? Howard: I’d rather write my own stuff, because I feel that the artwork that exists within the text, the pictures I choose to draw, are the characters acting in the way the text specifies. I’m happiest doing it all. I turned down a number

222â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

of assignments to draw from other people’s scripts, not because I’m afraid of that or anything, it’s just the way I want to do things. CBA: You did some work illustrating Alan Moore, didn’t you? Howard: It was fun, but I didn’t love the experience. CBA: Do you hold Alan in high esteem? Howard: Yes. CBA: You’ve had some success getting things your way. Howard: I don’t feel I’m the best writer around, but my work is best when I draw it myself. CBA: With Scorpion, did you say, “Yeah, that’s it. This is what I want to do”? You had obviously done some plotting with Ironwolf. Howard: I’ve always been a story guy—a major league bullshit artist. I was a bar drinker—and much of the experience of drinking in bars is keeping up with the bullshit. CBA: Did you make money with Mike Friedrich’s Star*Reach? Howard: It didn’t pay much. Also, in those days, I couldn’t see myself committing to doing a monthly book. Now, of course, doing a monthly book is practically unavoidable. I’m a disciplined guy. I didn’t have this discipline then. CBA: Did you want to see more sexuality in the books? Howard: I just dig sexy stuff. It wasn’t until I did Flagg! when I really saw an opportunity to indulge in something a little different, a little odder. CBA: Did you see portfolios as a possibility? Howard: No, it was just another way to use the skills. I never understood why anybody would want them. “Why not do cocktail napkins or coasters— something that’s useful?” My generation believed it was the last paper-based generation, because paper was going to go away, computers were going to eliminate hard-copy, and we all would fly with jetpacks. [laughs] So I always thought portfolios were a silly way to use paper. But also, to a great extent, they led to the guys who were very popular in comics doing trading card comics. CBA: Did you want to get into the magazine illustration field? Howard: Yes, but I wasn’t good enough. CBA: I guess that brings us to the Preiss work. Howard: I went off and did paperbacks. That was good; I had a great time. I did a painting or two a week. I was making pretty good dough, working in everything from Magic Marker to acrylics to color pencils, doing all sorts of different stuff, and having a good time. I did a lot of that, and then I was seduced back into American Flagg! That was when I came back to comics.

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 223

CBA: You did a Cody Starbuck one-shot with Mike Friedrich, and then a serial in Heavy Metal. Did you do any other serials with other mags? Howard: No, I don’t believe so. I illustrated Michael Moorcock, which was a graphic novel. CBA: Was it episodic? Howard: No, it was a single volume. CBA: Did you get to meet Michael? Howard: Years ago at a science-fiction convention in the mid-’70s, and we talked about proposing an Elric movie. I haven’t talked to Michael in a long time. We traded e-mails. CBA: Did you read his material? Did you read Dancers at the End of Time? Howard: I was a huge fan of his work. CBA: Did you enjoy the adult approach that he had? Howard: Oh, yeah. I have a couple things on the shelf that I’ve yet to read. I was a huge fan of the stuff, I loved Elric, loved Jerry Cornelius, loved The Eternal Champion. To a great extent, he seemed to combine what I liked best about Fritz Leiber, Alfred Bester, and J. G. Ballard. It was some weird shit. CBA: What did you like about J. G. Ballard? Howard: Just his strange, esoteric approach to life. CBA: Did you read Crash? Howard: Yes. I hated the movie, but I loved the novel. CBA: Did you ever get a chance to meet Ballard? Howard: No. You? CBA: No. I’ve always wanted to. Was it collaborative with Michael or did you work off a script? Howard: You know, I don’t remember, to tell you the truth, I think it was an outline that I dialogued. I’m pretty sure I worked from his outline. It’s an Eternal Champion story done in color, done in a more trademark and conventionally recognizable as my layout approach than I did for Byron. CBA: How did you get seduced to come back to comics? You had that burden of debt? Howard: Yes. I’d paid off a lot of it from the paperback work I was doing, because I was doing pretty well in that field. I was approached by Mike Gold and Rick Obadiah [First Comics editor and publisher, respectively], who told me they had created a new company out of Chicago—and were interested in any ideas I’d like to pitch. I sent them a ten-page proposal. They bought it, negotiated the deal, and that was that. The schedule was brutal, it ate my brain, because it was extremely labor-intensive. CBA: And it was extremely monthly.

224â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Howard: Right. I believe in schedules. CBA: Was this the beginning of your discipline? Howard: The Byron Preiss stuff is the beginning of that discipline. I was able to really churn that stuff out. But the Flagg! stuff was a more commercial reflection of that. I was thirty-two years old then, and I had the energy. CBA: Were you acquainted with Jim Steranko? Howard: Oh, sure. CBA: Were you friendly with him? Howard: Yes. CBA: How did you first encounter Ken Bruzenak? Howard: I was to Neal Adams as Ken was to Steranko. Ken and I just like each other. I was looking around for a letterer, and for some reason, the two of us started talking. He was in town looking for work. We hadn’t seen each other in a long time. He was still living in rural Pennsylvania. I don’t know what it was that convinced me, but it was a perfect match. Everything worked. He did everything but the logo. CBA: Did Alex Jay do the logo? Howard: Yes. Ken was just phenomenal. He influenced everybody by reinventing idiomatic approaches to onomatopoeia. His sound effects are incredibly influential, as were his reinvention of the balloon shapes. CBA: Did you become friends with him through that conversation, or had you admired his skills already? Howard: I honestly don’t remember what it was that convinced me to go with him, but it worked out well. CBA: Did you like Chandler: Red Tide? Howard: Yes, I did. I like Steranko’s stuff. I was a huge fan of the S.H.I.E.L.D. stuff. I’ve always felt that Jim’s great gift was graphics, because his narrative has always been so strange. He just leaves stuff out. But his work is very clean and polished, and I really respect that, and the Chandler book was interesting. CBA: What was the pitch for American Flagg!? Howard: Gunsmoke with motorcycles for four or six issues. Of course, it turned out to be fifty. CBA: What were the limitations on you? Howard: I was told I could do anything that obeyed FCC rules, so no nudity or foul language. Other than that, it was all okay. CBA: Where did you want to go with it? Did you have a plan? Howard: My plan was to get out twelve issues. The first twelve were to set up the world, get Flagg established a bit, and then take a road-trip. That’s what

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 225

I did. My inspiration was Caniff’s Terry and the Pirates. He created this huge supporting cast and played off all these characters. CBA: What was the agreement? Was it very good for you? Was it better than anything you’d got from mainstream comics? Howard: Absolutely, mostly because the company had no baggage or history. First made the deal because this was all new ground we were treading. I legally incorporated back then so that I could grant the company the rights to the material with a reversion clause, so I wouldn’t have any major problems. CBA: Did you enjoy the critical success? Howard: It was great. But again, it was a brutally difficult book to do. I did the first twelve issues without an assistant, though I don’t know how! The two issues that I wrote that two other guys drew, #13 and #14—I used that time to figure out how to use an assistant. CBA: Who was your first assistant on this? Howard: Dean Haspiel and Larry O’Neil. CBA: Have these been collected in recent years? Howard: No. CBA: [Looking through American Flagg! #1] Did you start at page one? Howard: Yes. I outline on index cards, with each index card representing a page. So I paginate using index cards. I take the index cards and do thumbnails. Basically I get how many panels and the approximate size relationship of the panels. From that, I do a full-size layout. In those days, I did a full-size layout on layout bond and then penciled there, and that’s where it stopped. These days, I do a full-size layout, all my finishing stuff, do panel borders, and then I draw it, after the panel borders are already done. CBA: Obviously, you’re the one who inked this work. How much penciling do you do? Howard: I penciled very tight. I’ll show you what my pencils look like now, but in those days it was just scrubbing. CBA: Were you very particular? Did you reject pages? Howard: I couldn’t afford to, due to time constraints. I’d just keep working on them. CBA: And did you maintain your schedule for those twenty-four issues? Were they all on time? Howard: Close. I was late here and there, but we never missed shipping, as I recall. I could be wrong. CBA: What about critical response? Howard: Very positive. Kim Thompson at Amazing Heroes ran into me at a

226â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

From American Flagg! #4 (1984).

little mini-con. I gave him Xeroxes of the first two issues, and he gave us a nice write-up about it. It was a very gratifying experience. CBA: Did you feel like your work really progressed quickly in storytelling? Howard: I was proud of this work. I’m looking over your shoulder right now, and there’s stuff I’ve forgotten, some pretty busy work. CBA: It took a while to ink these, didn’t it? Howard: Oh yeah. CBA: I recall seeing it for the first time and it was exciting, something new, and fulfilled the promise of what independent mainstream comics could do. It was the first real comic that convinced me, “Wow, it doesn’t have to be Marvel or DC. It’s coming out regularly, it’s always going to be there.” It was fun. Not a lot was going on with Marvel except for Simonson and Miller. So did you set yourself up for twenty-six issues, “This is what I’m gonna do”? Howard: No. I committed to twelve, then took two issues off (which I wrote), and then another twelve. I just stayed with it. I finally burned out, exhausted. It was a difficult book to do. Take my word for it. CBA: And did you continue to write it? Howard: I wrote it for a couple of issues with Joe Staton, then I left and did Time2 for them. I liked working for the company, I really did. I had a great time working for First.

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 227

CBA: You were in California at the time? Howard: No, I was still in New York City. The first comic book work I did when I moved West was The Shadow. CBA: Time2, what was that? Howard: Time2 was an opportunity for me to do a magic realist-fantasy fiction version of my life. The three guys—Max, Azriel, and Dani—are idealized versions of me and my brothers, and Rose is my mother. It was an absolute hoot. I loved doing Time2. It’s my most personal work, my favorite work, and of course, nobody really responded to it. CBA: Weren’t there two Time2 graphic novels? Howard: Yes—The Epiphany and The Satisfaction of Black Mariah. It was everything I cared about at the time. A lot of Jewish stuff, a lot of New York stuff, a lot of ’50s stuff. It was a strange book, I know, and it was difficult to read, but . . . CBA: Did you have a lot of plans for it? Howard: Yes, I really did. CBA: Would you ever go back to it? Howard: I’m a different person, and that was the way I felt at that time. I’ve thought about going back to it from a rock ’n’ roll direction. At its core, what Time2 is, is the underworld of the city of tomorrow as visualized in the 1939–40 New York World’s Fair. CBA: How good was the money from American Flagg!? Howard: At that time, it was fabulous. It got me out of debt and enabled me to buy an apartment in New York City. It was a good life. We ate out all the time, drank in hotel bars, and we just lived well. CBA: Politically, you had said you were brought up— Howard: I’m a pretty left/liberal, but not a bleeding heart. I part company with a lot of stuff. I’m not a multi-culturalist by any means. I have strange beliefs for people who consider themselves political liberals. For example, I do believe that English should be the official language of the United States. But I cleave pretty closely to my basic Democratic roots. CBA: And that pertains to growing up in poverty? Howard: My wife’s a Republican, but more compassionate than I am. CBA: There is such a thing as a compassionate conservative? Howard: Absolutely. CBA: Did American Flagg! last for more than fifty issues? Howard: Yes. CBA: So what was Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!? Howard: That was an attempt on First Comics’ part to revitalize the same

228â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

material, and they had me put together a crack team of people to work with. I co-wrote the book with John Moore, a very good writer. Mike Vosburg did the artwork, along with Richard Ory and Tony Van de Walle. I hope I’m not forgetting anybody. We finished the book, and it just didn’t really catch on. It just kind of stopped. The adventures took place in the Soviet Union, which had begun to unravel in the real world. It was a challenge to read. But if I’m going to spend this much time on a monthly basis turning this stuff out, I want more than six minutes of your time on the crapper. [Jon laughs.] That was about my reading time for a comic, six minutes in the john. BAM! CBA: When readers, like Evan Dorkin, say they read CBA on the toilet, I take that as high compliment. It means they’re giving it full attention. (Or maybe they’re using it to wipe their ass?) So while you were doing Flagg!, did The Shadow miniseries proposal come in? Howard: No. I had finished Flagg!, I had finished the first volume of Time2, and I ran into [DC Executive Editor] Dick Giordano at the convention in San Diego that summer. Dick asked if I’d be interested in doing The Shadow, and I said, sure, but with this one condition: that it wouldn’t be a period piece, because I thought that would be a commercial disaster. So I did it, and pissed off Harlan Ellison enormously. Harlan hates that series with such a passion. CBA: You were determined that it was not going to be in the ’30s period? Howard: I wanted to do something that was accessible to a larger audience that didn’t give a shit about the past. CBA: Were you surprised at your success with Flagg! and then The Shadow? Howard: No! I felt that I was doing work that I liked, and at least for a period of time there, people out there liked what I liked. CBA: So you had come of age? It was your time? Howard: I guess. CBA: You’d put in your time and . . . Howard: You’re putting words in my mouth and thoughts in my head, Jon. I never really thought of it in those terms. I just continued to work. I was always thinking about the next job. CBA: Well, pragmatically, you could get more money, the practical rewards of success. Howard: I’ve always had good relationships with my clients. The only bad relationship I ever had with a client was at Atlas/Seaboard, and that was just more personal than anything else. I came to Southern California with the intention of trying to get into the movie business. And until then, I was going to continue to do comics. By the time I got here, in October of ’85, I did The

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 229

Shadow, Time2, Blackhawk, all between ’85 and ’90. That’s an interesting period of time. At the same time, I was pitching movies. I sold a feature. And then in ’90 I got hired on the TV series The Flash, so I moved over a bit. CBA: What made you think of California, to come out here? Howard: I wasn’t getting any younger and wanted to see if I could make a lot of money—looking at the future. I wanted to start living a more comfortable life, and I didn’t have the interest in doing the kind of fanboy stuff that seemed to generate big bucks. I couldn’t visualize myself doing The X-Men. I had a great deal of respect for those who could, but it just wasn’t my world. And I figured that if I flew out to Southern California, there was a possibility that I could use some of the cache from Flagg! to generate some movie business. CBA: Did you pitch Flagg! as a movie? Howard: I got my first agent because she was representing First Comics properties. She was representing Flagg! as a property to sell, and she took me on as a client, but didn’t do jack shit for me. I ultimately got a job on the basis of Flagg!, on The Flash, which in turn generated another agent coming and taking a look at me and bringing me on. CBA: Did it take long to get your first job in Hollywood? Is The Flash your first regular gig? Howard: I sold a movie which has never been shot. CBA: Was it all for the money, or did you really want to have a wider audience? Howard: I wanted to do something else. CBA: Who is John Moore? Howard: John Francis Moore works in comics. CBA: How did you meet him? Howard: He was an art student at Cal State Fullerton. I met him at a convention and hired him as my art assistant and we started talking stories, and we said, “Let’s try something new,” so we did. CBA: You were with him for how long? Howard: We remained working partners until we split up in ’92. CBA: Was it just that the work had dried up? Howard: No, he just decided he wanted to do something else, so he did. CBA: So how was your experience in television? Howard: I loved it. I loved the hours, loved working on the lot. The people on the show were great. CBA: Was The Flash pretty much identical to the comic book? I never saw the show.

230â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Howard: It was like a comic, but it was the comic book as seen through a heightened reality. There was good stuff there. CBA: Was he Barry Allen? Howard: Yes. John Wesley Shipp, who has since played one of the dads on Dawson’s Creek. Mark Hamill played The Trickster. It was hysterical, just really crazy. It was fun, it really was. We had a ball. CBA: How many episodes? Howard: Twenty-two. It was one full season. If the series had been on Fox, it might still be on the air, but CBS was skewing so much older then they couldn’t save the show. They tried everything. CBA: Did that show come back as a special? Howard: No. We got our back-nine order at Thanksgiving, but it was pretty obvious the show wouldn’t be picked up. CBA: What does “back-nine” mean? Howard: Shows are bought as thirteen-episode commitments at the start of the season, and then in the autumn, if you’re going to get a full season, they buy what’s called the back-nine. And we got our back-nine, but, by spring, we knew we were gone. CBA: Did you have ideas for another season? Howard: We had plenty more material, although we’d already done our evil twin and blind hero story—two of the great clichés of TV action shows—in the first season. CBA: Was the money good? Howard: Yes. CBA: Where did you go from The Flash? Howard: I went from The Flash to freelance, I came back to work with those guys. I freelanced a bit. I worked on Viper for three and a half years. CBA: Viper was . . . ? Howard: Viper was a car. Knight Rider with guns. CBA: Were you on the set? Howard: Frequently. My last month with Viper overlapped with my first month on Earth: Final Conflict, arguably one of the worst projects I’ve ever been a part of. CBA: What was that? Howard: It was based on an idea of Gene Roddenberry. I don’t know what the hell it was. It was a toxic and awful place to work. Then I went to work on Mutant X. CBA: What was Mutant X? Howard: Mutant X was a bunch of mutants.

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 231

CBA: This was based on Marvel Comics? Howard: It was a Marvel Comics co-production. It was Marvel/Fireworks/ Tribune. I ran that show. CBA: What was a typical show? Howard: The bad guys try to capture an innocent mutant who doesn’t know that she’s a mutant and our heroes come in and rescue her from the bad guys. CBA: Was this after the first X-Men movie? Howard: It had nothing to do with The X-Men. It was a different universe. CBA: How was the audience introduced to the idea of oppressed mutants? Howard: That aspect was just a part of it. CBA: How did it do? Howard: It just got picked up for a third season. CBA: How long were you there? Howard: I did a full year and I started to do a second season, and I left after episode 23. CBA: Did you immediately look for other work? Howard: I couldn’t. This happened at the end of staffing season, so there were no jobs. So instead I pitched a book to DC on a Friday and got an approval on Tuesday. That was Mighty Love. CBA: Because there is security in comics? Howard: Not a lot of security, because I hadn’t drawn anything in years. CBA: Still, you had a good reputation . . . Howard: Still, I could have humiliated myself, Jon. CBA: Was Mutant X material you were proud of? Howard: Yes. CBA: Was Mutant X one of the best things you’ve done in TV? Howard: No. CBA: What was? Howard: I think the best thing I’ve done in television is an episode for a series called Profit, which was never shot. I wrote episode nine of the series. Profit was a wonderful series, co-written and co-created by John MacNamara and David Greenwalt. CBA: Do you still seek work in the field? Howard: I’d like to freelance, but I’m not particularly interested in going back on staff. CBA: Did you like Blackhawk as a kid? Howard: I loved Blackhawk! As I said earlier, it was about achieving liberal ends by fascist means. It was the first comic book I ever stole. Later, when I

232â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

discovered the ’40s Blackhawk, those Military Comics covers by Reed Crandall . . . unbelievable! So when I got the opportunity to do it, it was just a big thrill. CBA: Did they ask you or did you ask to do Blackhawk? Howard: I don’t remember. CBA: Is there a Shadow collection? Howard: DC’s rights to The Shadow have lapsed, so they can’t do it again. CBA: What was Black Kiss? Howard: I had known [Vortex publisher] Bill Marks for years. This was at the time when they were discussing creating a rating system for comics, which I thought was ridiculous. I decided to do a book that would piss off everybody. And that’s what I did. CBA: Was the plan for how many issues? Howard: Twelve. CBA: Was it monthly? Howard: Yes. Fantagraphics has a collection in print now. As I look back at it now, it’s like a different person drew it, because I was in a trance. CBA: Then after the success of Image, did you look at those guys with any sense of envy? Howard: Only because of the money they were making. The work I wasn’t interested in. That stuff never interested me. CBA: What, the success there— Howard: Absolutely. CBA: —or the work itself? Howard: Well, both. I found most of the work appalling. CBA: You’re one of the stars of ’80s comics. Did the Image guys approach you? Howard: I represent something totally anathema to what they were doing. CBA: What about Legend? Howard: Somebody talked to me about getting together a bunch of guys, and that’s how Bravura happened. Me, Walter, Starlin, Dan Jurgens, Steve Grant, Gil, and a couple of other guys. CBA: What was the premise of Power and Glory? Howard: Power and Glory is about the government creating a superhero who sucks at everything but public relations—so the guy who trains him does all the dirty work and hides in the background. I’m a huge puppetry fan. I saw a thing about puppetry around the world, featuring Japanese shadow puppets, huge creatures made of feathers, manipulated with poles attached to

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 233

the knees, of men in black, against a black background. I thought, “What if the guy in the back was a ninja and the guy in the front was a superhero who was a puppet?” CBA: Was it a four-issue thing? Howard: Yes. CBA: Did you come up with the name? Howard: Bravura? I think so. CBA: You use that word a lot, I’ve noticed. Howard: It’s one of those Gil Kane words. CBA: Was Twilight your first writing-only, not also-drawing assignment? Howard: It might have been. I loved that book. I’m a huge fan of José Luis Garcia-Lopez. CBA: Now, how did this start? You were aware of the Alan Moore treatment called Twilight that eventually morphed into Kingdom Come? Howard: Alan had a treatment called Twilight? No . . . I’m not, no. CBA: It’s about the last days of the Justice League and eventually became Kingdom Come. Howard: I had no idea. CBA: Did you come up with the name? Howard: Yes. This is new information. I don’t speak to Alan a lot, but he’s never mentioned it. Was he annoyed about this? CBA: I don’t know about annoyed, but he made mention of it. Howard: Never had any idea. CBA: What was the premise of Twilight? Howard: This was all of DC’s science-fiction heroes—the Space Museum, Star Hunters, all that stuff—and tying it all together as if those stories published by DC in the ’50s and ’60s were the equivalent of Ned Buntline’s dime novels. This is the truth, this is what “really” happened. CBA: [Picking up Batman: Legends of the Dark Knight #24–26, Nov. ’91–Jan. ’92] Was this a full-circle moment working with Gil Kane? Howard: Absolutely. CBA: You’d always stayed in touch with Gil? Howard: Gil and I lost touch with one another for quite some time. We started talking again in the early 1980s when he called to ask if I’d fill in for Harvey Kurtzman on one of the Master’s Class lectures, a discussion of doing comics in full-color. Harvey had some personal issues that he had to deal with. I ended up saying no, but that started us talking again. We began eating together and inflicting marathon talk sessions on our wives.

234â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

For all of Gil’s sophistication, he never developed a palate. He ate like a boy, with no taste in food whatsoever. He’s the only guy I know who’d spend two weeks in Paris and live on omelettes. We found a restaurant in Germantown in New York, and I called Gil and said, “You’ll love it, they planned the Holocaust there.” So we get there for dinner at 7:30 and end up closing the joint, after four hours of nonstop talking. And our wives would occasionally chime in. We worked together on a couple of things. We did Flyer, and we did that Superman thing [Distant Fires] . . . Steve Grant did the sequel. Working with Gil was a treat, because I never knew what I was going to get back. [laughs] He would just leave shit out: “I didn’t want to draw that.” Yeah, coming back and going full circle with Gil was great. We hung out quite a bit. We had some problems toward the end of his life, which we made peace over, and I got laughs at his memorial. CBA: Do you miss him? Howard: Very much. He was an important character in my life. I’m not a family guy, as you might have gathered. I’m comfortable with being a loner. But every so often I’ll see something in a movie and say, “I wonder what Gil thinks of that?” CBA: Was it a brother dynamic? Howard: No. It was more complicated than that, than father/son, brother/ brother. We came out of very similar roots and ended up with very different sensibilities. CBA: And yet, you’re not dissimilar. Howard: He became much more forgiving in his later years, and I can see myself heading in that direction. And he was also a profound sentimentalist. I’ve always been that way, I’m a big weeper. I’m much more sentimental than my wife. I cry at the movies a shitload. He was the closest to an actual father figure that I ever had in my life, but the relationship evolved in different directions. CBA: So the “death” of Superman and the collapse of comics in the early ’90s: Did that concern you much? Howard: I really didn’t notice it, because I was working primarily in Hollywood. I was keeping my hand in comics, but my bread and butter was never that mainstream kind of comic book. CBA: Since the early ’90s, have you done stuff pretty much every year for DC? Howard: I guess. I’ve written and co-written some stuff. I’m in the process right now of rewriting a series that will be out this summer.

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 235

CBA: Rewriting a series? Howard: Just taking another whack at the script. We did twenty-seven issues of American Century, we did Pulp Fantastic, and we did Barnum. David Tischman and I had a good partnership for a while, but we’re not working together anymore. CBA: What was Barnum? Howard: Barnum was something I’ve always wanted to do—a superhero book using circus anomalies as superheroes. CBA: That was a one-shot graphic novel? Howard: It was originally conceived as a TV series. Then [the motion picture] Wild, Wild West came out and completely killed that genre. CBA: American Century, what was that? Howard: American Century was an attempt to do a left-wing version of Steve Canyon. When you read Steve Canyon, fifty years after the fact, you realize Canyon was about the Central Intelligence Agency, and Horizons Unlimited was really Air America. Canyon was an unacknowledged agent of the CIA, serving American interests on foreign soil. Caniff has always been a fascinating figure to me—a guy who represented the archetypal Roosevelt Democrat liberal through the 1930s and through the first couple of years of the Second World War—who, by the end of the war, had been so completely co-opted by the military that he moved from lefty Democrat to a staunch Republican. Steve Canyon reflects a lot of that rightward swing. Maybe Caniff was just getting older. But I wanted to do a left-wing version of Steve Canyon, a guy adventuring around in the early 1950s, catting around. CBA: How did you fit writing comics into your schedule? Howard: Well, when I’m writing a TV series, time is pretty flexible. CBA: So the comic stuff you did while working at the Bungalow, did you just do it at home? Howard: No, I’d do comics whenever I could fit it in. I write in a script program called Scriptware, a very good screenwriting program. It’s perfect for comics. I’ve been using it for ten years. CBA: So the scripts you write for comics are straight text? Do you thumbnail at all? Howard: I thumbnailed American Century, the first ten or twelve issues, then I turned it over to my former assistant, Don Cameron, who did a great job thumbnailing as well. CBA: You use stick-figure thumbnails? Howard: A little more involved than that, but not much more. I’m a great

236â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

believer in visual storytelling, and find that it’s a skill I take for granted which a lot of people don’t have. So I’m perfectly willing to thumbnail, if someone asks me to. CBA: And you worked on Batman a number of times for Elseworlds series? Howard: Yes, I’ve done a couple of those things. The Batman seems to be the most applicable to Elseworlds, for me. CBA: Mark Chiarello’s first pro job was on a Batman/Houdini one-shot you wrote. Howard: Right. CBA: Do you like Chiarello’s artwork? Howard: I love Mark’s stuff. I’m a huge fan of Mark on a personal basis, but yeah, I love his stuff. He’s just great. I really love his work. CBA: What was Batman: Dark Allegiances? Howard: My left-wing version of Batman. Instead of getting shot by a hoodlum, Batman’s parents are killed by cops trying to arrest Sacco and Vanzetti. CBA: How did you find time to do this, did you just fit it in? Howard: I was in-between staff gigs. CBA: You didn’t draw much at all when you were in television? Howard: No. I drew Power and Glory while I was working on Viper, and it killed me. I promised myself I’d never do that again. CBA: Was this the only job that you did? Howard: I didn’t staff for six months, so I did that during that time period. CBA: Did you miss drawing? Howard: Not especially. CBA: Do you love comics or is it a job? Howard: Both. CBA: It’s a job you love? Howard: Yes. But the truth is, I’d just as soon sit on my ass and relax for the rest of my life. As I’ve often said, I’m not interested in power or prestige; I crave comfort and privacy. CBA: Is your only weakness for illustration? Howard: Pretty much. CBA: Is that an expensive hobby to have? Howard: Yeah. CBA: Do you spend a lot of money? Howard: More than I should. CBA: Is that going anywhere after you go? To a museum or . . . ? Howard: No. It’s in my trust. But I’m assuming there will come a point where I’ll just say [indicating his framed illustration collection], “Get out of here.”

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 237

Portion of a two-page spread from City of Tomorrow #3 (2005).

CBA: How many pieces have you accumulated? Howard: About a hundred. I’ve got stuff up at the beach house. I’ve also got stuff in storage. CBA: So you said you called up Friday, got a job on Tuesday for DC. This was Mighty Love. How did that idea generate? Howard: It came out of a conversation I had with my wife about romance comics. I said all comic books are romance comics, they’re all about love. But I was intrigued. You’ve Got Mail is based on a Hungarian play called The Shop Around the Corner, which became a play and a movie here. It was also a musical in the early ’60s, entitled She Loves Me. I decided to use the broad strokes for a superhero comic book. Two people know each other in their personal lives, hate each other’s guts, who meet behind masks and develop a relationship. CBA: Does this take place in the DC Universe? Howard: No. CBA: Did you also say, “Hey, I’ve got this other idea, too,” after pitching Mighty Love? Howard: I did Mighty Love and said, “There are some other things I’d like to do.” And ultimately the other books are out of WildStorm. I sent Jim Lee a

238â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

couple of proposals, and Jim opted for two, with a desire to do the third as well. CBA: What are the projects? Howard: One is City of Tomorrow, a science-fiction/adventure book—The Untouchables meets Westworld at EPCOT—the other is Marked Man, a hardboiled crime book. But first, the new Challengers of the Unknown. New characters. A number of people impossibly survive a devastating attack, and discover that the reality they know is a lie. CBA: And this is a six-issue monthly? Howard: It’ll be a six-issue miniseries. CBA: So the only relationship with the Kirby stuff is the chance survival aspect? Howard: And living on borrowed time. It’s not related, although I do refer to those original guys in the context of the book. CBA: This might be the biggest volume of work you’ve had in a very long time, if ever. Howard: Unlike a lot of my peers, I actually deliver. I know how wild that sounds. I also always leave myself wiggle room for other projects. I’ve got two other projects that I really desperately want to do. Let’s call it “actively” want to do. CBA: Is there anything you’d like to hint on that? Howard: There’s a Western I’d love to do, and a historical crime piece, too— that’s really dark. CBA: So you did do a lot of reading on the OSS and the CIA, for instance, for American Century? Howard: Oh, yeah! CBA: So you know a lot about a lot. Howard: I do a lot of research. CBA: But it’s captivating for you? Howard: I love research. CBA: Equally engaging sometimes? Howard: Oh, absolutely. CBA: It’s not just work . . . Howard: I earmark one day a week for keeping everything in order. I spend Monday going over paperwork and checking out what I write for the rest of the week. And that’s really my structural organization. CBA: Is keeping your work in print something that you’d like to do financially? Howard: What do you mean? CBA: To have an income coming in from past work.

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 239

Howard: I have very little of my stuff in print. CBA: I’m surprised to hear that Blackhawk, for instance, was not reprinted. Why was that? Howard: I have no idea. American Century is in trade paperback and has done well, and I always get a nice little chunk of change out of it. But there’s a lot of stuff of mine I’d like to see in print. There’s some I don’t ever want to see again, but, y’know . . . [laughs] CBA: It seems to me American Flagg! begs for reprinting. Is it a question of finding a publisher? Howard: American Flagg! will be republished by Dynamic Forces in November of 2004. CBA: Well, there you go. Is there anything else you’d like to see in print? Howard: Blackhawk. I’d like to see Twilight back in print. I’d like to see Swords of Heaven, Fires of Hell back in print. CBA: When did you quit smoking and drinking? Howard: Well, I stopped drinking about twelve years ago and I stopped smoking about ten years ago. I stopped caffeine about two years ago. [laughs] So now I’m just really quiet, very mellow. CBA: Would you say that drinking was becoming a problem? Howard: Let’s just say it wasn’t a solution. It was not a healthy part of my life, and I’m much happier. I’m much happier. CBA: You don’t party much at all? Howard: I don’t party at all. I’m not that interested. I’m not the lunatic I was when I was younger. I’m not the risk-taking nutcase I was. I’m not smug about it. I had my time, did my crazy shit, and right now I don’t. And I’m comfortable with that. CBA: Do you like attention on your work but not necessarily on you? Howard: Well, like I said, I want my life covered in privacy. CBA: But you like adulation of your work? Howard: I like it to be well respected. “Adulation” is a little highhanded. I like the work to be accepted and liked. I don’t need worship. CBA: So you don’t necessarily want a big hit? Howard: It’d be fabulous, I’d love it. It would be affirmation, it would confirm that I was right all along. But I don’t do the kind of work that tends to create big hits in the context of comic books. And when I try to compete under those terms and circumstances, it rings very false to me. CBA: Are you now at the most content, most relaxed stage of your life? Howard: Without any qualifications. You bet. CBA: Are there things you want to do that perhaps you haven’t done? Howard: Professionally? Personally?

240â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

CBA: Both, I guess. Howard: There are a couple of projects I’d like to do. But overall, by my own terms and standards, I’ve had a terrific run. CBA: How do you want to be recalled, remembered? Howard: God, is this the end of my career? I have no idea. That’s beyond my ken. [weepy] “He was a good guy. He was younger and taller than anybody ever knew.” [laughter] CBA: Is there one particular work that stands foremost for you? Is it Time2? Howard: Well, the audience obviously loves American Flagg! That’s their favorite. I’m fonder of Time2, but also of the Flagg! stuff. But to me it’s all tied together. There’s stuff I’ve done that I’m proud of, and there’s stuff I’ve done that’s “what was I thinking?” But I go on. And I’m glad I still have the chops to do it. CBA: Would you like to return to American Flagg!? Howard: No, I don’t think so. CBA: Why? Howard: Well, it’s very much of its time. There’s other stuff I want to do. CBA: Just to back up a bit, what was Midnight Men? Howard: Midnight Men started out as a Batman pitch. A guy who’s the best thief in the world, accidentally responsible for the death of a masked avenger, ultimately ends up taking the job. CBA: How was the execution? Howard: I was half-assed satisfied with it. There are parts of it I really like and parts of it I really hate. But it’s a good story. I’m pretty happy with it. CBA: How do you look at comics today, as a field? In a cruising position? Howard: I don’t think of it as a whole, anyway. There’s stuff I like and there’s stuff that doesn’t interest me. CBA: As an industry, as a business? Howard: It’s a lot like television. CBA: Do you think it’s here to stay? Howard: I don’t know how long it’s going to be around. I’m hoping it outlives me. CBA: Have you always felt that way? Howard: Yes. CBA: Are you surprised it’s lasted as long as it has? Howard: Yes. CBA: Have you always felt like it was a couple of years away? Howard: Yeah! I still do. And I guess that’s healthy. It keeps me young. CBA: Are you happy to be doing comics right now?

j o n b . c o o k e / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 241

Howard: I’m grateful to have the skills to do it, because life is a lot more satisfying when you can do what you want. It’s 3:30 in the afternoon on a beautiful day in Southern California. As soon as you hit the road, I’m going downstairs and get back to my drawing table. It’s still work, but it’s very satisfying work. And it remains craft, the physical and the mental, a nice compendium of skills. And when they come together and they work, it’s just swell. And when they don’t, it’s unbelievably frustrating. CBA: Technologically, are you going to get more into the computer? Howard: Yes, but I still don’t want to do all that much digitally. I like hands on artwork. On the other hand, there are some interesting special effects you can achieve with Photoshop that are really cool. CBA: Is typography going to be as important as it has been for you? Howard: Well, until I learn how to do it in Photoshop, I doubt it. But I’m doing comps and sketches for how I want to approach the onomatopoeia stuff in City of Tomorrow, because I want to come up with another way of doing sound effects. I’m not particularly crazy about the conventional approach. I want to try some different stuff. And a lot of that will involve collaboration with a letterer. There are some ideas I’ve had about sound effects that hearken back to some experiments we were all talking about in the early eighties that I think might be applicable now. Just different stuff that particularly applies to the computer application of lettering. Modular stuff. CBA: Anything that you wanted to specifically address in this interview? Howard: No. Again, it gets back to never mistaking attention for affection. CBA: Are you in California for the long haul? Howard: Yes. I moved out here on October 5, 1985, and I’ve settled in. The dirty secret about Southern California is that once you get past all the bullshit, it’s much easier to live here than a lot of other places. It’s very undemanding. Living in New York is a second career. I live six doors down from the water. What could be better? CBA: Do you have kids? Howard: A daughter. CBA: But you’re a step-grandfather now? Howard: Yes. CBA: Your grandchildren have a special name for you? Howard: I’m Baba, and my wife is Nana. Baba and Nana. Take that.

My Lunch with Howard Chaykin P h i l i p S c h we ie r / 2 0 0 4 From Back Issue #10, June 2005, pp. 9–15. Reprinted by permission of Philip Schweier.

At the 2004 Comic Arts Forum at the Savannah College of Art and Design in November, legendary comics artist and writer Howard Chaykin was a featured guest, participating in workshops and conducting portfolio reviews. Philip Schweier, a freelance writer and Chaykin enthusiast, interviewed him about everything from his early work in comics to his time in Hollywood to his ambitious plans for future projects.

PHILIP SCHWEIER: I just want to do a quick overview of your career. HOWARD CHAYKIN: Sure, okay. SCHWEIER: In the ’70s, in the early ’70s, you were doing comics . . . CHAYKIN: When I was eleven. Let’s accept that right here and now. SCHWEIER: (laugh) Okay. CHAYKIN: I was a tad, I was a child, I was the Mozart of comics. SCHWEIER: I always thought so. CHAYKIN: Well, there you go. What a guy. SCHWEIER: At a time when superheroes dominated the landscape, you were kind of all over the place, what with Ironwolf at DC, The Scorpion at Atlas— Dominic Fortune at Marvel came later, I think— CHAYKIN: Hm-mm. SCHWEIER: —at a time when superheroes were so prevalent, you took the road less traveled. Why is that? CHAYKIN: Well, I think I take issue with the superheroness of it all. One of the things that—and again, you ask me a question, a short one, you get three hours of answer—the reality is I’ve always said that as my generation came in, superhero comics were being done by men our fathers’ age. The Marvel Bullpen in those days was old guys, and most of us were E.C. fans, or pretentious illustration fans, and came out of an entirely different world view. Very 242

p h i l i p s c h w e i e r / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 243

few of us were superhero-based types. Rich Buckler was the most superheroappropriate character in the bunch. [Bernie] Wrightson was doing the horror and mystery stuff, [Michael] Kaluta was doing the same. [Walter] Simonson came in shortly after I did, with a science-fiction portfolio. So none of us were really prepped to do superheroes. All of us had grown up on that material, but by the time we’d become professionals—and I’m speaking for myself, and fairly certain I speak for most of those guys—were interested in a wider range of material. Since we all assumed—and this is not a joke—that we were the last generation of comics talent. You’re probably too young to remember the idea of the paper shortage of the early ’80s. The perception was that paper would disappear, with the advent of the personal computer, hardcopy was going to go away. So we didn’t realize we were actually playing the role of the three hundred Spartans at Thermopylae. We were holding down the fort until the generation after ours, like Frank Miller and Bill Sienkiewicz, could come in and then do superhero comics. So all of us came as Johnny-come-latelys to the superhero world, and I was a superhero fan as a boy, but as I became a professional, the skills that I had weren’t really applicable to what was expected of a superhero artist. So, I did everything else I could. I did pulp fiction, and I liked dirty stuff later on, and science fiction, sword and sorcery. I was just testing the waters on everything I could get. Told ya, ask a question, get an endless answer. SCHWEIER: I don’t mind that at all. Now, when you did (Marvel Comics’) Star Wars, the movie hadn’t broken yet. When you were working on it, did you have any idea where it was going to go, how big it was going to be, or was it just another job? CHAYKIN: Not the faintest. I was talking to Phil Noto about this, because he was six years old when the movie came out, for which I’m going to kill him. And I said flat out that I wish I’d been fifteen when the movie came out because A) I would have been an obsessive fan, and B) my life would have been very different. I would probably still be a nose-picking geek—no offense . . . SCHWEIER: None taken. CHAYKIN: At any rate, I was in Burbank in ’75, before the picture came out, when they were doing the post work, and I went to the post studio, and met with George (Lucas) and Marsha (Lucas) and I guess it was with Gary and the whole bunch, and I walked away from that with a box of four thousand stills. They were great on-set stills, and the McQuarrie portfolio, the Ralph McQuarrie material. The stills were incredibly dead and inert; they looked like a high-school science project. They really did look shitty. What freaked me out when I saw the film—because I saw it a week before it opened at a

244â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

special screening in New York City—was the film ended up looking like the McQuarrie paintings, and that was the most profound effect, that they managed to do all the work in post. It’s a tribute to what was done to that film after it was shot. And I’m not talking about the added scenes and digitizing, I’m talking about what was done in the ’70s. So I had no idea. Had I known, I probably would’ve worked harder on it. I still haven’t gotten over the resentment of the fact that it existed in the preroyalty times so I got chump change for those books and I sold millions. The book sold millions, I didn’t sell them. C’mon, I have no illusions about that, but I’m perfectly willing to attach my own ass to someone else’s coattails. SCHWEIER: (laughs) CHAYKIN: Why lie? SCHWEIER: Now it was shortly after that that you started getting into more book publishing, like with Byron Preiss stuff, Empire, Stars My Destination, also paperback covers. When you came back to comics with American Flagg!, what new sensibilities and interests did you bring with you? CHAYKIN: You’re good. You ask good questions. You ask questions I feel like answering. My eyes aren’t rolling into the back of my head. SCHWEIER: The last thing I want to come across as is a fanboy, even though I am one. CHAYKIN: At any rate, there was a period between that stuff, and when I went to do paperbacks, when I was back into regular mainstream comics again. I had a big screaming match with one of the mainstays with one of the major companies, and I was sort of driven out of the business for two years, and it was great. I went and made my living as a paperback guy doing Westerns and romance . . . SCHWEIER: I have some of them. CHAYKIN: I’d love to see some, I can’t find mine. Around the time that the Reagan revolution sort of, ah, whipped the ass of the American economy, the bottom fell out of the money in the paperback business. There was no money anymore, and also that coincided with a developing conservatism in paperbacks. It was the rise of Pino and Elaine Dewillow. Very, very slick, very unpainterly, almost photographic stuff. It was the year of the bodice ripper. I was doing fairly graphic stuff, and more influenced by Bob Peak and David Grove, and those guys, and that disappeared. That coincided with a call from First about doing a new book for them. My then-wife and I had long talk. We decided that it would be an interesting process to work with a company with no baggage, where there was no history, and I would say I would take everything I’d been working on, all my notes—

p h i l i p s c h w e i e r / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 245

I’m an enormous note-taker, I’m a list-maker and I compile endless ideas— and it all coalesced, or some might say congealed, into American Flagg! Flagg! was really the apotheosis of all the things I’d been reading, studying, learning since I’d been a teenager. I make no secret of the fact that I’m a left-leaning kind of guy and unfortunately, unlike a lot of my fellow leftleaning friends, I also have really complex ideas about multiculturalism, and I’m profoundly patriotic, because I don’t feel the right has any right to hijack patriotism, although they’ve done a fabulous job of doing it. So it was just an opportunity to vent all of my spleen and get paid for it. What a concept. SCHWEIER: We should all be so lucky. CHAYKIN: Hey, one of the things about my life and my career I’ve always said is I am absolutely blessed. I am one lucky bastard. And I look good, too. SCHWEIER: And a snazzy dresser. CHAYKIN: Actually, I used to be. I’m not anymore. I used to be a real clothes horse, and I stopped doing that because I realized that when I put on a suit I looked like an agent or an attorney. Nobody should look like an agent or an attorney without wanting to be one. SCHWEIER: So following American Flagg! you still eschewed a lot of the superheroes— CHAYKIN: You used the word “eschewed” in a sentence. That’s fabulous. SCHWEIER: I try. CHAYKIN: Do you use “ennui” or “jejune”? SCHWEIER: Not today. CHAYKIN: But you will. SCHWEIER: Getting into the late ’80s, you were doing Blackhawk, The Shadow, as I said, eschewing the superhero genre, except for Batman. With Batman you did Dark Allegiances, “Flyer” with Gil Kane, your mentor, and, um, there was a third one, Thrillkiller. Batman seemed to be rather prevalent in your superhero work. What is it about him? CHAYKIN: Well, yeah, I’m fascinated by Batman, I really am. I don’t care about Superman particularly. I take that back, it’s not that I don’t care. One of my favorite comic books is that last Superman story that Alan Moore wrote. But I have no idea, I wouldn’t know where to begin writing Superman because there’s something, for me, so innately goofy about this guy. He’s huge, he’s powerful, he’s all-powerful. Y’know, what if God and Superman had a fight? Superman would probably trip him, so I can’t imagine writing Superman. I’ve always been much more interested in Bruce Wayne than Batman. Bruce Wayne’s a really interesting guy. I want to do a story about Bruce Wayne involved in an Enron-type scandal, and Bruce Wayne at Bohemian Grove.

246â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Bruce Wayne and Alfred debate the ethics of being Batman. From Batman: Dark Allegiances © 1996 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

SCHWEIER: I’m sorry? CHAYKIN: At Bohemian Grove. It’s where all the rich Republicans and celebrities go up in Northern California and run around naked. You know, “Eliminate rage,” and they dance naked around a bonfire. I want to see Bruce Wayne doing that. SCHWEIER: Without the cape. CHAYKIN: Well, maybe. Or maybe naked with the cape. But Batman is a physical specimen, a guy who is completely and totally his own self-product,

p h i l i p s c h w e i e r / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 247

and that’s as close as I can get. You know, when you start giving a guy superpowers, my own innate goofiness comes in. I always felt the stuff that [MAD artist Harvey] Kurtzman did, the Super-Duperman, the Plastic Sam, was closer to the way real people would behave. And I’ve always said that superhero comics are based on a kind of absent altruism. The average comic book fan doesn’t have to behave in a moral way as long as he reads Superman comics because Superman picks up the moral slack. Since I believe that superheroes should have feet of clay to bring them down to size and to make them more fun to be surprised by. SCHWEIER: As you did with The Shadow and Blackhawk. CHAYKIN: I’m going through a period where I’m reading a lot of World War II fiction right now, both fiction written during the war and about the war. And I’m fascinated by what really is the absurdity of war. Not the absurdity of war as sold in movies, but the utter non-ironic nature of war. War is not ironic, it just is. I was a fan of Schindler’s List and of Saving Private Ryan. My favorite World War II movie is The Americanization of Emily, and that was my source material. And the Shadow is a man of the ’30s, and in my version he’s a man of the ’30s running around in the ’80s. Men of the ’30s had certain attitudes. SCHWEIER: The chauvinism. CHAYKIN: Well, it’s the nature of the beast. We are a society that is constantly victimized by presentism. You know, you’ve got a contemporary culture doing period material that imposes contemporary ideas on period ideas. I can read Dorothy Sayers—I haven’t in years, but I could read Dorothy Sayers when I did—and Dorothy Sayers is a rampant racist and bigot. She was a flaming anti-Semite, but she was a perfect example of an overeducated Catholic woman of her time in society. I can read P. G. Wodehouse, and Wodehouse is excoriated for collaborating—I don’t believe he really collaborated, I think he was just around. My favorite conductor of Bach and Beethoven is probably Herbert von Karajan, who was Hitler’s favorite conductor. So I can separate myself from the politics to appreciate the art. I like Lenny Regenstadt’s work. Well, I don’t like it, but I can look at it and be awed. It’s like different. So when I do period work, I try to convey period sensibility, and buyer be damned. And I’m frequently damned by the buyer because they want presentism, and they can find it elsewhere. SCHWEIER: Speaking as a Shadow fan, when I read yours, I thought, “Well, of course, [the violence is] because he’s coming from the 1930s.” CHAYKIN: Well, right. I find it’s a really funny book. I had a great time. I was only annoyed at how much they had to censor the second issue. The second issue was incredibly censored; character names, attitudes, just stuff. Oooh! It

248â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

was so much uglier before Andy [Helfer, editor] imposed a lot of censorship on that second issue. I was appalled. But I was in California so I couldn’t go to the office and scream. SCHWEIER: Getting into the ’90s, you were also working in TV: Flash, Viper, Earth: Final Conflict; so for lack of better term, a “debtor’s prison,” was it? CHAYKIN: Hardly. No, it was whore money. No, I moved to Southern California in 1985—[noise in the hallway] shut up, I’m working here—with the specific intention of getting into show business. I was working in movies, but I stumbled into TV. I started out a rung above the bottom and finished a rung below the top, and I had a great time. I guess in thirteen years I had eleven jobs, you know eleven years of staffing work, because you can’t make a living freelancing in television. It’s a staff world. I learned a great deal, I had a great time, and I finally started working myself into an early grave, and I came to a parting of the ways with the last show I was running— SCHWEIER: Mutant X. CHAYKIN: —yep, but it was a great job, a good ride. I realized after I left the show I dropped thirty-five pounds, I started sleeping, and my life just got easier. And I was really lucky, really blessed. I’d not drawn in close to ten years. I’d done some individual pieces here and there, but I hadn’t really done any work of volume, and I discovered to my surprise and delight that my chops were still in pretty good shape, and further that I had developed a jazz musician’s improvisation that I didn’t have before. I’d always been an anal structurist in every sense of the word. I’m a great believer in order and geometry, and for some ungodly reason, and I have no idea where it came from, I developed a jazz musician’s improvisation, a lack of fear about not knowing exactly where I was going with an idea, which is a very new idea for me. It’s brand new. I’m having a great time, because a lot of guys my age are sort of stultified and atrophied in their abilities and in their attitudes toward the material. I’m really lucky in the sense that I’ve always reinvented myself every couple of years anyway. I’m really lucky to have the work that I’ve got to do. I’m really having a great time. SCHWEIER: One last question because I know you have other things you need to do. CHAYKIN: Fuck ’em. Just kidding. I didn’t mean that, that was a joke. That was just a throw-away, devil-may-care kind of thing to say. SCHWEIER: What can you tell me about Midnight of the Soul? CHAYKIN: Where’d you get that from? SCHWEIER: I have my sources. CHAYKIN: Okay. Midnight of the Soul is I believe a very commercial product,

p h i l i p s c h w e i e r / 2 0 0 4 â•…â•… 249

and I’ve yet to find anybody willing to publish it. It’s a transliteration of the Greek myth of The Journey through a single twelve-hour experience in a guy’s life. It’s about a guy who is mortally wounded during the liberation of the death camps who’s carried around a belief system that he’s supported for five years through addiction to morphine and cheap wine. In this twelve-hour period, where for the first time in five years he hasn’t had a drink or a drug, he begins to learn that his memory is a screened memory, and it’s all a lie, and things begin to evolve and change. By the end of the twelve hours his life is changed dramatically. It’s violent, it’s funny, and it’s very, very dark. SCHWEIER: And you’re writing and drawing as well. CHAYKIN: Yeah. Sooner or later. It’s also something that I may very well self-publish. I’ve danced around the idea of self- publishing it. It’s come close to being published by various companies but it’s something I really want to control, and structurally it’s about the concept. It’s—here I’m digressing—the only kind of science fiction that I continue to read with any consequences is alternate world stuff. I’ve always been a fan of the alternate world, and I’ve just read Philip Roth’s Plot Against America, and this is a book about—one of the things he does is he writes failed stories about alternate universes not realizing he’s living in one. He is obsessed with the fact of ignoring his own reality. It’s personally derived, there are metaphors from my own life in this job, but in a world where superhero comics are held in the regard they are, this is not an easy sell. I like crime fiction, but I’m not a huge fan of retro crime fiction. I’m not a Mickey Spillane fan. I like Mickey personally, I’ve met him a few times, he seemed like a really nice guy, but I don’t really care about his work. I don’t like Race Williams and all that pulpy guns, gats, and gangs. SCHWEIER: Dames and washed-up gunsels. CHAYKIN: Yeah, I’m not interested—but that’s not what gunsels means. Great thing about Hammett of course is actually that gunsel means a catamite. It does not mean a gunman, it means a butt-boy—and I’m more interested in contemporary stuff. Even in doing period stuff, I’m more interested in [James] Ellroy. The new Jeffrey Deever novel is an incredible opportunity that I believe he squandered enormously. It’s about an American hitman in Germany during the Olympics. I’m sure he’s a lovely man. SCHWEIER: Okay, I guess that’s it. I won’t take up any more of your time. CHAYKIN: Good questions, good questions. SCHWEIER: I try. CHAYKIN: I’m serious, you took me by surprise a couple of times. SCHWEIER: Thank you for your time.

An Afternoon with Howard Chaykin Br a n n o n C o s t e l lo / 2 0 1 0 Previously unpublished. Printed by permission of Brannon Costello.

This interview was conducted at Chaykin’s home in California in March 2010, with follow-up questions by telephone in April. Howard Chaykin and Brannon Costello copyedited the typescript.

Costello: I want to start by asking about class. In a lot of genre entertainment there’s often a kind of cheap populism, but not very much specific attention to the realities of social class. Your work is among the few instances of comics in mainstream genres that takes class seriously—beyond the romanticization of the common people. Even if class isn’t central it’s never invisible. Is that a deliberate choice? Chaykin: My mentor was Gil Kane, who was an autodidact and brilliant in his own way, but hampered by his own needs and wants and financial state, and also by what Gary Groth has called the hyperbolic style that he ultimately developed as his most successful calling card. Gil always insisted that quality work had a point of view, and the idea of applying a personal point of view to the work I do really evolved out of American Flagg! Before that I kept it fairly generic. Flagg! was an expression of some outrage in a commercial venue. I’ve never understood why my work didn’t have a huge commercial following— I’m a cult figure and I’ve come to accept that with a little bit of bitterness and a certain serenity. But since Flagg! I’ve always felt it’s important to let my feelings underpin the material. For the most part I’m a left-liberal guy. I’m a product of a welfare childhood and popular front parents. I grew up in poverty, but I no longer live in poverty. I’m a very lucky man in that I’ve managed to put that aspect of my life behind me, but it’s still there and it resonates in my work all the time. And I think it’s an imperative in the work that I do that I don’t ever lose touch with that—with the poor Jewish background, the ghetto background, with growing up with want. 250

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 251

Costello: In terms of your seeing yourself as a cult figure, do you think the emphasis on class in your work is something that prevents identification with the mainstream audience? That it’s not selling the same fantasy that a lot of genre entertainment sells? Chaykin: I don’t think that has anything particularly to do with it. I get really weary of being called a “cynic” by the marketplace and by critics. I’m a skeptic, I’m a romantic realist. If I were a cynic, I would not be doing work with a point of view; rather, I’d be doing work that pandered to the very beliefs that I have contempt for. I’m not saying that the people who are doing the kind of work that achieves huge popular acclaim are necessarily cynical, but rather that that’s the perfect venue for cynicism. If I were to actively take and put my own personal feelings aside and do work that I had no respect for with an eye on solely satisfying the audience, that would be cynicism. On the other hand, I think that the work I do lacks the kind of crowd-pleasing self-satisfaction and self-congratulation and audience-congratulation that’s a guarantor for success. Costello: In addition to themes that show up in the work, did your own class background shape your conception of what you wanted to do as an artist? Not necessarily what stories you wanted to tell, but how you conceived of success as an artist? Chaykin: I don’t think so. I wanted to be the next generation of Gil Kane and Carmine Infantino and Alex Toth and Jack Kirby and Joe Kubert because that was what I knew. All sensibilities are formed and shaped by what previously exists. The audience, for example, can only ask for what it’s already seen but better or different—without really being able to clarify what better or different is. And I was that guy. It never occurred to me that there would be other paths to travel. When I came into the comic book business in 1971, the assumption was that comics would be gone by 1980 because the combination of the paper shortage and the advent of the personal computer would eliminate paper. I had no idea that the kind of work I’m doing now is the kind of work I’d be doing. I was going to do guys in capes flying around beating the crap out of each other. That was my goal. Costello: There’s a tension that I see in a lot of some of the interviews from the 1980s, around the time that Flagg! is breaking big, where you often insist that you’re doing commercial art, but your interviewers seem to want you to have loftier aspirations, and I’m wondering if your emphasis on the commercial aspect of your art is in some ways motivated by class. Chaykin: Yeah, I pissed a lot of people off, but I’m an entertainer! I got trapped on a panel many, many years ago with Jack Jackson, Gary Groth, whom I

252â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

consider a friend, and some other people, and I felt I got ambushed by some people from the Comics Buyer’s Guide. I was being charged with not loving the material as much as I should. I came up with a phrase which I’ve used a lot, which is that for you, it’s every Wednesday at the comic book store, and for me it’s every morning at my desk. The relationship I have with comic books is vastly different than it was when I was a reader. As a producer, as a guy who creates this stuff for a living, I have a very different relationship with both the form and the content and with the product itself. This is my job. I’m very lucky to have a career. I take very seriously the fact that I’m a blessed guy, that I’ve managed to build a very successful career out of very little in the way of goods because I’m not naturally gifted by any means—I’m simply a product of a workhorse sensibility, and that came late in life because I was a very lazy shit when I was very young. I think that to a profound degree the desire to impose a loftier goal and a loftier value to material is similar to how, when you go to the theater now, everything gets a standing ovation. It diminishes excellence; what the audience is really doing is applauding its own good taste for being there, and I unfortunately don’t satisfy those needs. I recognize that I’m confounding and exasperating in a lot of ways. I’m fairly well read, I’m a reasonably bright guy, I’m fairly articulate, but I lack the pretension to see a higher value to the material than I do. I’m more Irving Berlin than George and Ira Gershwin. I couldn’t compose for Carnegie Hall. I’m a music hall guy. Costello: In some of the very earliest interviews— Chaykin: And I will not be held accountable for that—we’re talking a long time ago! Costello: Sure, but I want to talk about this transition from the early interviews when you’re very insistent that you’re an entertainer, that the work doesn’t need to aspire to a higher value, to about the time you start doing Flagg! when, for example, you say in an interview with Mile High Futures that comics had been “a phenomenally complex means to express phenomenally simple ideas,” and that you wanted to “start expressing some complex ideas.” Chaykin: But it doesn’t obviate the entertainment value. Costello: No, but I’m wondering at what point you began to feel like you wanted to do something more complicated with comics than simply entertain ... Chaykin: But— Costello: Well, maybe not simply— Chaykin: You’re fucked now, young man! Costello: I fell right into that. I can’t believe it happened so quickly. Chaykin: The reality is that I don’t feel like doing more complex material is

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 253

stepping away from my original goals of being an entertainer. I felt, and I still feel, that comics is more about mosaic patterns applied to really simplistic stories. Right now we’re going through a period in comics where it’s a writerdriven medium, which I find very odd and curious. But in those days it was an artist-driven medium and the stories themselves were basically not much more than templates or armatures on which to hang very complicated mosaicstyle drawings—like the work of George Perez to a profound extent and the guys who followed him—these incredibly complex tapestries of images that really weren’t in service of anything in terms of narrative. I simply wanted to figure out a way to do more complex stories because I felt that the medium allowed it. There was room for it. Funnier dialogue, less expository dialogue. I read paper books at home, I read the Kindle on the road, and I listen to books in the car, usually popular fiction. I gave three hours of my life to [the audio book of] The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo and I just said I’m obviously missing something here. In three hours of disc there’s still two characters telling the story—we’re not seeing the story, we’re hearing about things that happened off-page, and it’s just mind-numbing. What is it that people see in that book that I don’t? And to a certain extent comics were that medium. Everything was exclamation points, everything was characters calling each other by their first and second names. You started from square one each time. And I believe that at that point in the early ’80s when I did Flagg!, we had an audience that was so deeply steeped in tropes that, if you took those tropes and bent them slightly and extended them a little bit and had fun with them, you could do more. And that’s all I did. And I succeeded in some cases; I failed in a lot of others. But my natural nervousness makes it necessary for me to constantly try to find ways to do different stuff—because if I don’t I feel like I’m going to be left behind and be regarded as an old fuck. Costello: What’s a way you’re pushing yourself into something different now? Chaykin: I’m putting myself in the position of drawing things in public that I don’t feel I do well. Animals, things like that. I drew a Western so I can do horses. They’re very difficult to do and I feel like if I don’t do them well I’ll be humiliated. I’ve gone from being the youngest guy in the group to being old enough that I’m older than most of the parents of my editors. And I’m holding onto my career—not with claw marks, but I’m doing okay. But I also feel that I’m competing with guys half my age, and what I bring to the table is a different and studied sensibility that is based on a bridge connecting the previous generation and mine in terms of craft and trying to demonstrate that craft has value to the next generation.

254â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Costello: To step away from the entertainment versus complexity dichotomy that I foolishly wandered into there, to put it in the terms that you used to begin with when you talked about Kane and point of view, if as you said to start with, Flagg! was one of the first times that you felt like you got your own perspective into the material in a fully realized way— Chaykin: I’d say unquestionably and indubitably the first time. Costello: So what was it that made you want to do that for Flagg!? Did you feel that you couldn’t before, that you didn’t have the skills? Chaykin: Well, sure. I hadn’t done comics for a while. I’d been doing paperback covers and some illustration. I’d left comics under bad circumstances— I’d had a big screaming match with one of the editors-in-chief at Marvel and I went away and did other things for a little bit. At that point the radioactivity of the Reagan administration ultimately filtered down to publishing and rates started getting cut left and right as books disappeared. And I’d also spent a good part of my career growing up in public and doing really shitty work, so a lot of it’s on my permanent record and it’s inescapable. There are two writers I really admire, Don Winslow and Alan Furst, and neither of them acknowledge their early books—I’ve read ’em! I know they’re there! Unfortunately I went to school in public. I did a couple of things with Byron Preiss and Heavy Metal and learned other techniques and craft and then the opportunity to do Flagg! came along. I was made an offer by First Comics, where there was no baggage. They were a brand new company, so there was no history, nothing I had to write or draw against. I gave myself a sort of kitchen-sink mission that I was going to see what I could do with all four burners on fire. That I would hold nothing back. Wreck my health, fuck up my relationship, just go to hell with myself—and I did. I set a standard for myself that I’ve unfortunately had to maintain ever since—and I’m tired. I’d much rather sit on my fat ass. So that was really the motivation—to see what I could do if I applied myself. Costello: One of the major themes that runs through Flagg! and your other work is an ambivalent relationship to mass culture. On the one hand, a lot of your work, or at least characters in a lot of your work, condemn mass culture as propaganda selling fantasies to the masses to keep them happy, and on the other hand you seem to find something meaningful in it generally. Could you talk me through that tension? Do you even experience it as a tension? Chaykin: I love television so much it makes my brain hurt. I love popular music, by which I mean the American popular song. I do not mean contemporary popular music. I love the American Hollywood movie. I also recognize just how pernicious an influence all those things have had. I use the word pernicious very specifically because it is an insidious relationship. I realize

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 255

that half of my expectations of romantic love are based on the lies that were told to me by George Gershwin and Rodgers and Hart. And yet I still love that music and I listen to it every day. When you walked in, I was listening to the Complete Billie Holiday on Verve, 1945–1959, which is all that popular song—I mean, she sings “My Yiddishe Mama.” I watch television constantly, and yet at the same time I recognize just how dangerous an influence it is. There was a television series a number of years back called Profit which was way ahead of its time and on the wrong network. It was about a kid who was raised in a box with a hole cut in it so he could watch television. I wrote an episode for this series, and the theme was that television is a medium that congratulates you for being too hip for television. I really believe that’s the case. That said, I’ll be watching TV tonight. Not as if I’m sitting around a campfire hearing the stories being told—in some cases it’s wallpaper, in some cases I actually pay attention. I’ll go to the movies this weekend, I’ll go to the theater on Saturday. I both make popular culture and I participate in it as an audience—but it is a love/hate relationship. Maybe not so much love/hate as mutual distrust. Costello: A lot of your work seems to be about finding a way to relate to mass culture without being seduced by its narratives. Chaykin: Is that true? Costello: Well, let me give you some examples and you tell me. One I have in mind is Blackhawk. Both Blackhawk and Death Mayhew are to some extent victims of a mass media machine that wants to create very simplified versions of each of them; Death eventually buys into his knight-errant image and Blackhawk doesn’t, at least not to the same extent. Chaykin: That’s because Blackhawk is Polish! He’s eastern European; he has a relationship with the world that’s based on recognizing that his country is one of those places that’s going to be a battlefield for other people. But also, Blackhawk is obsessed with television from a technical perspective, comparable to HAM radio operators in the 1950s and CB in the 1960s and 1970s—a hobbyist. When I was a kid, Adventure Comics and Superboy would have filler pages of Superboy’s workshop: “Hey fellas, here’s something you can make!” And it was Superboy with a screwdriver, like he was going to hold up a liquor store or kill Bernie Goetz. Make a crystal set radio or a skee-ball game and shit like this. And I wanted to play with that, and obviously it plays into the end with the use of the television signal in the Empire State Building. [Blackhawk] was just an interesting interpretation of the use of the medium. I love just everything about TV. I’m fascinated with pre-war television. There’s a great documentary on YouTube, a British documentary about television during the Third Reich, that I wish I’d seen before I did the Dominic Fortune miniseries

256â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Portion of a dream sequence from Blackhawk #1 © 1988 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 257

last year because I’d love to do something with television in Germany—and boy, it’s really bad TV. Had I known about it at the time I probably would have done more with Death and TV and that would have made a more perfect bookend in terms of the two characters’ relationship to television. Beyond television, Midnight Men is also about the relationship between reality and popular culture. The idea of life imitating art is a big part of my work. One of my favorite things about Watchmen, for example, is what Alan [Moore] does in the second issue in the backup feature, the excerpt from Hollis Mason’s autobiography: He comes up with a much more valid and viable justification for people to dress up in bondage outfits and go out and fight crime. And he does it in a really effective and charming way. That’s an achievement. Costello: So Blackhawk, as you mentioned, is interested in the technical aspect and interested in the medium—as opposed to Death, who is seduced by the content. Chaykin: Exactly! I wish I’d said that. Costello: Well, I can always attribute it to you. Chaykin: You can imply that’s what I meant. And I’m willing to have this be part of our conversation and have people know that I’m willing to take credit for something you said. And make it clear. I’m that big a whore. But irony is a problem with these people so you’ve got to be very careful. You need emoticons. Costello: The whole structure of that book is relevant here too: You have the Byzantine plotting, the layers of betrayals and cross-betrayals, but then that’s contrasted with the excerpts you have from, for example, Signal magazine or some of the other mass periodicals, all of which offer a very simple good guy/ bad guy version of reality. Chaykin: I love Signal magazine! Great German design. I keep thinking. “What did the Italian version of Signal look like?” Streamlined! The opening sequence [of Blackhawk] with the golden lion and the black bird was inspired by a wonderful Fred Cooper poster for British Lend-Lease. I said, make the eagle a black hawk and that would be an interesting animated sequence. I love Fred Cooper’s stuff. He’s the guy who created the big head cartooning style. He was a letterer, wonderfully talented. He did Con-Edison’s emblem in New York that until the 1950s was a colonial figure, a guy who looked like George Washington with a powdered wig—I guess it was Charlie Knickerbocker of New York. He also did all this great poster work for the World’s Fair along with William Welsh, a phenomenal illustrator from that period. These are guys who are pretty much forgotten. Costello: One of the other examples I was going to give in terms of thinking

258â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

about mass culture in your work was from Batman: Dark Allegiances, where part of the fascist plot is to turn Batman into Batman, to turn him into a mass-merchandised character. Chaykin: I said why not make Batman the product of Sacco and Vanzetti and see how that works out? A guy who raised himself up by the bootstraps, became really rich, and had the archetypal job of the 1930s, industrial design— why not? Raymond Loewy is one of my heroes. Loewy was an officer in the French army who came to the United States in 1919, 1920, a veteran of a war that demonstrated the mechanization of murder. And he sought to turn the mechanization toward peace and toward home objects. He designed the first streamlined train, the first streamlined car, the Studebaker Avanti, the interior of the modern jetliner, Apollo 7, Apollo 11, the Lucky Strike pack, the Greyhound bus logo, everything. He designed the twentieth century. He’s a god. I’m sure that his politics were to the right of Torquemada, but I have nothing to base that on. I’m just assuming that was the case. I wanted Bruce Wayne to have that job because I thought it would be a really cool job for a ’30s guy to have. And of course Penguin is Walt Disney. But Walt Disney was also a great futurist in his own way. I like the idea that the ’30s was all about looking into the future, overlooking the Second World War. If it weren’t for the Second World War, television would have been a going concern by 1941 or 1942. There was television at the World’s Fair; the BBC was already broadcasting TV. Costello: I’m interested in the sense in that book that there might be something subversive or resistant in the notion of a left-leaning vigilante, but that as soon as he becomes popular, what power there might be gets co-opted— people can just buy him. Chaykin: But for me the book was also about giant typewriters, because I love those giant typewriters. And also Hitler in a Hawaiian shirt. That was my Halloween costume that year as a matter of fact. It was called Hitler goes Hawaiian. Pissed a lot of people off. Costello: One other example I had in mind was one of the color Dominic Fortune stories from The Hulk! magazine, “All in Color for a Crime.” Chaykin: With Jack Kirby! Costello: Right! Well, what was interesting is that the options for comics in that story are that they can be either Nazi propaganda or funny animals. Chaykin: I think I was just making a cheap joke on comics. Mostly it was an opportunity to draw two guys fighting with T-squares. I did it again in a Batman story I wrote and drew a couple years back that has not seen print that took place in an architect’s office, where Batman and the Cavalier are dueling with T-squares. You have a T-square, you duel with it. Not the metal ones, though.

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 259

Detail of a page from issue #5 of the Garth Ennis–written World War I aviation tale War is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle (2008) © 2010 Marvel Entertainment, LLC and its subsidiaries. Used with permission.

Costello: In terms of your work’s critique of the pernicious influence of mass culture, I was struck by what seemed to be to be a distinction between the conclusion of the first American Flagg! series and the more recent Challengers of the Unknown. At the end of the first volume of Flagg! we discover that the Plex is headless, there’s no one running the show; but it doesn’t really matter when Flagg takes over because the populace has so internalized these values that it’s irrelevant that no one is pulling the strings. Chaykin: Discipline is self-fulfilling and self-perpetuating. Costello: Right—and then in Challengers you have a group of people who are actually called Hegemony who are the puppeteers, and I’m wondering if there is a distinction in philosophy between those two works? Chaykin: No, Challengers was just another way of doing it. I was playing with the concept of eugenics and entitlement. We live in a culture in which a huge part of the population has been sold a bill of goods about who they have what in common with. This goes back to our first question about class. I recognize that despite what I may earn, own, or have, I have more in common with someone who is totally helpless and hapless than I do with the ruling

260â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Chaykin’s Challengers of the Unknown featured a vicious satire of the jingoism and hysteria of the modern news media. From Challengers of the Unknown #4 © 2006 DC Comics. All Rights Reserved.

class. And I believe there is a ruling class. I don’t believe there’s Hegemony out there, but I do believe that those people are Republicans and they eat different meat than I do and they drink different water than I do and they have a lifestyle that is dissociated from mine, and that their values are colored by a belief system and a set of rules that don’t apply to them. I can obviously fabulize it and fantasize it into entertainment because the reality of course is much duller. But the truth is, people like the people who support the National Review, the people in the Tea Party—I think the Tea Party is the perfect example of the rabble being manipulated by the ruling class, and they embrace

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 261

their rabbleness as a sense of identity—“Yeah we’re an uncontrolled mob!” They’re being manipulated by people who have no interest in their interests and who are simply using them in the same way that Johnny was used to kill other Johnnys in every war that this country has fought. I’m a great believer in just wars, and I think, yes, the Second World War was a just war, and I kind of regret that Patton didn’t get a chance to organize the wehrmacht and move east. I think we should have taken some chances when we had the chance and imposed our will. But that doesn’t sound like a liberal speaking, does it? That’s kind of complex. I’m as confused as the next guy. But I do believe that we live in a society that’s actively seeking to be sold a bill of goods. Costello: Often in your work there are characters who begin to perceive these forces that are arrayed against them or perceive that they are caught in this self-policing society that’s enforcing a status quo that isn’t beneficial to them, but there’s also often the sense that on an individual level there’s not much they can do about it. There’s a moment in Cyberella #6 where she’s about to plunge into a battle and a character is explaining how it’s not going to do any good in the long term, and she says, “What else is a superhero supposed to do?” So, how much of that inability of the characters to effect meaningful change comes from the constraints of the genres you work in, and how much of it is personal philosophy? Chaykin: I think it has more to do with a personal philosophy that everything is basically sisyphean and that you get along and do the best you can with what you’ve got, but in the long run it doesn’t really matter. Someone I don’t like very much once defined humility as being comfortable with one’s own insignificance. As much as I don’t like him, I still accept it as a good observation. It applies to the work as well: You do the best you can and generally speaking it isn’t enough. Costello: Is there any sense in your work or philosophy that there is any possibility to effect change on a large scale? Chaykin: Look, my wife always considers me a pessimist, and she’s an optimist. The truth is that I’m a realist. I hope for the best but I always expect the worst. I believe that the situation is hopeless but not particularly serious. Costello: Why isn’t it serious? Chaykin: Because it is what it is. I recognize that society is going to hell, and I worry about my grandchildren, but I realize for them that it’s normal, they won’t notice. All generations think everything is going to hell, just like all popular music is specifically designed to piss off one’s parents. Costello: You’ve said before you enjoy Captain America as a character—what is it about that character that appeals to you?

262â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Chaykin: He’s been turned by the readership into this ultra-patriot, but I always felt that in his most original and perfect conception he was a reflection of the popular front sensibility of the 1930s and 1940s, a world before patriotism got hijacked by the right. Captain America really was a reflection of World War II’s popular front idealism, a left-liberal flag-waving guy. Basically comics in the ’40s were all done by Jews or Italians with a couple of Polish guys thrown in there, and they were mostly political liberals who started voting Republican as soon as the war ended. They all shifted to the right as they got older, but most of the guys back in the ’40s were Roosevelt Democrats— the ones who could vote. Most of them were children, let’s not forget—the talent pool who was drawing comics in the mid-1940s was born between ’25 and ’28, but their parents were Roosevelt Democrats who became Eisenhower Republicans in the early 1950s. Captain America reflected that. Costello: What motivated you to want to do a 1950s Cap story? He was written in the 1970s as a kind of ’50s bigot, but your one-shot seems like a more complex take on the politics of that era. Chaykin: I wasn’t motivated at all, I was asked! I like drawing ’50s stuff. My wife is convinced I’m obsessed with the ’50s and she’s probably right. It was just an opportunity to do Captain America in a venue with cool costumes and cool visuals and great vehicles and all the paraphernalia that goes along with it. Doing the Challengers of the Unknown, I wanted to do a moonbase as though it had been established in 1946: what it would look like, how these people would choose to dress. Enjoying myself. Costello: Keeping on this topic about politics in your work, when Blackhawk came out there were readers who objected that it wasn’t a “pure” version of the characters. But beyond that, I’m wondering if in the mid-to-late 1980s— the Reagan era, the era of Red Dawn—the idea of a heroic communist figure from the ’30s might have been hard for some readers to take. Of course, America has a history of heroic communists and socialists but we didn’t much talk about it in the 1980s. Chaykin: You don’t hear about Big Bill Heywood! And Joe Hill just doesn’t show up. Well, I don’t think that was an issue particularly. It was probably a mistake in judgment to do the oral sex bit, but whatever. But I got a lot of heat from the B’nai B’rith for doing the two racist mobsters killing the black soldiers and killing the girl. I thought it was pretty funny actually, because I knew those guys when I was a kid and they were just disgusting people. Just because they were Jewish didn’t mean they were good people. I had such a good time doing Blackhawk and doing the character of the girl—was it obvious that it was Ruth Wonderly? Bridgid O’Shaugnessy? I just wanted to do a character who reflected the Dashiell Hammettness of it all, an adventuress.

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 263

When I was a kid, I would sneak through my parents’ underwear drawer just to see what they had in terms of literature. And there was some porn, some erotica, just dirty decks and things like that. I formed a worldview, and it was time-specific. It’s like Richard Merkin, the painting teacher at the Rhode Island School of Design who collected erotica over the years. He published his collection of French postcards and pointed out that none of this was going to be erotic to an audience that found Hustler sexy, and that Hustler would cease to be valid sexually in ten or fifteen years anyway—and he’s got a point. You look at Penthouse layouts from ten years ago and you wonder what’s going on. With Blackhawk, I tried to ground it in a real socio-political world where there was money involved. Where do these guys get their bucks? What happens to the political universe? I like playing with the world in which I really live. Costello: Speaking of the 1930s milieu then, you recently brought Dominic Fortune back for the first time since the early 1980s. Can you talk about what you find interesting about the character now and how that’s changed from when you were working on him in the 1970s and 1980s? Chaykin: I got a call from Axel Alonso, and he said, “You know what I’d really like to see? I’d like to see a Dominic Fortune MAX series,” and I said oh man, yeah! It was a great opportunity for which I’m forever grateful. I had a sensational time doing it and I think it shows—and of course nobody bought it. Again, another kitchen-sink idea. There were a number of attempts to overthrow the United States government in the 1930s and 1940s, real attempts, and I conflated a number of them; I took rumors about Victor McLaughlin’s private army training in Valencia; the idea of the children and grandchildren of confederates who fled to Brazil; General Smedley Butler, who was offered the fascist dictatorship of the United States to front for a bunch of industrialists who wanted to overthrow the government; the Christian Front, who were actually arrested in 1940 for an attempt to overthrow the government, kidnap the first lady, murder the president, blow up some bridges. When the Second World War starts they threw all the defendants into the army to be chewed up. There’s all this great stuff—and I wish I’d known about TV in the Third Reich! Costello: Something for a sequel? Chaykin: I told Axel a couple months back that I’d kill to do a sequel. I’d like to do a sequel that takes place during the Spanish Civil War. Costello: In terms of the character himself, he’s one of the first characters you created, so when you came back to him so much later, had the way you approach him changed at all? Chaykin: I know I should say yes, but not really. The language was a bit rougher and raunchier, but it was the same sort of breezy facetiousness that

264â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

I did in the first place, and I’m really happy with that. It was very much like picking up a ball I’d left behind yesterday and running with it. The same snippiness, the same snarkiness—it’s a fun voice to write in. Costello: There’s a passage in the third issue where he’s made contact with the Jews from the underground, and one of them says, in reference to Fortune, “America makes strange Jews.” There’s been so much written in recent years, especially after The Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, about American comic books and superheroes in particular as a particularly Jewish form of expression— Chaykin: Absolutely! Costello: —and Fortune is one of the few Jewish characters you have where you foreground the idea of a Gentile hero/Jewish secret identity split: he’s changed his name from Fortunov; in those Hulk! magazine stories he looks for any chance to get out of his regular clothes and into his Dominic Fortune costume. Can you talk a bit about that? Chaykin: That’s interesting. One of the things about this book is that in so much of it he’s in his normal clothes, not his combat outfit. I was a little scared about that—how would my editor react to him not walking around dressed in this flamboyant cavalier outfit but only slipping into it when called for? But there was not even an eyebrow raised. I like drawing guys in suits; he was dressed like a gentleman of that period would have been dressed, wearing a suit and a hat, and it was perfectly cool. My one conceit was that in the last issue when he flies from New York City to Washington, he gets on the plane dressed in a suit and gets off dressed in his combat outfit. You assume he’s changing with the stick between his legs, so to speak. I made him a babysitter to these characters, pastiches of John Barrymore, John Carradine, and W. C. Fields, to have him be forced by circumstance to be a higher moral authority, which is a bit of an ironic place for this character to be. A lot of my characters are based on my own absolute love of the kind of characters that William Powell and James Garner played. Garner, Henry Fonda, William Holden, and Powell are the four archetypes for me. Not necessarily visually, though Garner looks like I drew him. But in the sense that, like Neil Simon wrote: “think Yiddish, go British.” A lot of the guys who were putting words in these guys’ mouths were Jewish writers who found wit and charm. Jeanine Basinger in her book The Star Machine talks about meeting William Powell and being disappointed to discover that he’s not as witty as he seems, just facetious—which I thought was just fabulous. But that kind of MGM wit really carries a great deal. William Holden in Stalag 17 and Sunset Boulevard; the Thin Man movies and Nick Charles and his relationship with women; Henry Fonda

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 265

in The Lady Eve, that amazing expression of American decency—particularly when you find out what kind of a shitbag he was in real life. And Garner who in Maverick, Nichols, and the astonishingly brilliant movie The Americanization of Emily, personified the kind of heroism that I take to heart: A guy who does the least amount of work and effort to achieve the maximum goals and is easily underestimated. I’ve spent the past couple of days in pitch meetings talking about American Flagg! as a possible film, and I describe Flagg as a guy who is an innocent but not a fool, a guy who is thrust into a situation that he thinks he understands from the outside and discovers that it’s nothing like he expected once he’s inside, and so he is constantly brought up short until he figures out a way to game the system and get the upper hand. And that is the archetypal character I do. Costello: In terms of Fortune as that sort of hero, is there any sense that you handle him any differently because of his ethnicity? Chaykin: No, not really, because it goes back to “think Yiddish, go British.” The original pilot for the Dick Van Dyke Show is with Carl Reiner. Reiner plays the lead, but it’s the same show. It was a failed pilot—it was greenlit to go to film and it had been shot, and then he goes back a year or two later and reinvents it with a gentile to play the lead. But he’s still playing exactly the same character. And that is so archetypically the Neil Simon, Larry Gelbart idea. Simon writes Barefoot in the Park and he casts Robert Redford and Jane Fonda—as British as you can get—delivering yiddishe comedy. Woody Allen does it with Kenneth Branagh in Celebrity and with Will Ferrell in Melinda and Melinda. That’s what I’m doing. It’s a form of minstrelsy. And I might add also to that, in an entirely other digression, I’m fascinated by minstrelsy. Costello: Why? Chaykin: I feel that there’s a great movie, there’s a great musical comedy or musical or a great novel in minstrelsy, in just the idea of white men in blackface and black men in blackface playing white men in blackface. I love identity, and playing with the layers of identity appeals to me enormously. Costello: On that topic, when Fortune goes to a comedy club, there’s a woman ventriloquist in swastika pasties, and he runs into a character dressed as a stereotypical Jewish rabbi. Can you talk about that scene a bit? Is this comic a Jew pretending to be a stereotype of a Jew, or what? He’s somehow connected to the Jewish underground but he’s also exploiting this stereotype. Chaykin: I’m familiar with the musical comedy Cabaret, I’ve read I Am a Camera; I don’t recall whether I actually read about comics doing cartoon Jews or whether I made that up, but if I made it up it’s perfectly logical. Obviously the

266â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

girl with the tits doing the ventriloquist act with the Hitler dummy was an invention, but within the context of what I know about the period perfectly reasonable, and I have no doubt that there was a comedian somewhere in Berlin in the 1930s doing offensive comedy dressed as a rabbi with a big red rubber nose. I read not too long ago that one of Hitler’s plans in accumulating all of the dead Jews’ iconography was to create—and I use the word here in a contemporary sense so this will sound facetious—a theme park to re-create the lost world of the Jews. It would be filled with Aryan actors playing the part of Jews in a shtetl to demonstrate to the Aryan world the degeneracy and decadence of these exterminated subhumans. Costello: That question of identity is interesting because although you have other Jewish protagonists, Fortune is the only one who seems to be at all ambivalent about it. Do you even see him as ambivalent? Chaykin: No, I think his relationship to being Jewish is similar to mine. My wife converted to Judaism many, many years ago. For the first couple of years of our relationship she tried to get me to follow her along in religious observance. I’m an atheist, but I consider myself a Jew and an atheist because I believe it’s a cultural affinity, and I believe that’s sort of how Fortune behaves with it. I said to her finally, I’m so good at being Jewish that I don’t have to practice, and I stand by that. Fortune’s relationship to being Jewish is similar to my relationship to being Jewish. It’s an inescapable reality but I don’t really feel the need to fit the battle of Jericho. Costello: Another tension running through Flagg! and a lot of your other work is between real experience and mediated or simulated experience. Chaykin: Is that true? Costello: Yes! Chaykin: Please, tell me how! Costello: In Flagg! for instance, on the “real” side there’s sex, violence, and basketball, and on the other there’s whatever entertainments the Plex offers; at the conclusion of Time2, this is the dichotomy that Maxim Glory sets up: he says of where he’s been, “it wasn’t much of a hell either—just an incredible simulation—but this—this is the real thing.” Chaykin: Wow—I’d forgotten that. Please, go on! Costello: This is consistent even through Cyberella, which explicitly opposes the “visceral” to the “virtual.” Chaykin: True. Costello: So, a lot of the work up through then is fairly insistent on real experience being something that is separate from virtual or simulated or mediated experience, and something that you prefer; but I wonder if that’s becoming

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 267

Dominic Fortune uses Franklin Roosevelt as an offensive weapon. From Dominic Fortune #4 (2009) © 2010 Marvel Entertainment, LLC and its subsidiaries. Used with permission.

blurrier in City of Tomorrow, because there the protagonist gets the girl, but the girl he gets is a sophisticated sexbot— Chaykin: But a nice girl nonetheless! Costello: —and then we find out that he is part robot as well. So I’m wondering if this is an evolution in the way you think about these issues? You seem surprised that I brought that up. Chaykin: I hadn’t even thought about it, honest to god. I don’t know, I really don’t. Costello: Well, there’s even in Flagg! a distinction between real porn and the kind of “fake” porn that the Plex supplies—it seems like there’s a sense that your characters often start off living in a sort of bubble when they never experience anything. This is literally true in Cyberella, where they’re plugged into a virtual world where they only have virtual relationships. Chaykin: Maybe, but Cyberella was very much a co-creation with Don Cameron, and Don came to me with that pretty much developed whole cloth. I polished up some of the rough edges, but that’s Don’s world. But I don’t know, maybe you’re right. Could be! I’m not saying no. Costello: It’s interesting that Flagg! comes out right before Neuromancer and the same year as White Noise, works that are also dealing with this idea in different ways. Chaykin: I have a copy of White Noise on the shelf but I haven’t read it, and I’ve never read Neuromancer.

268â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

From City of Tomorrow #3 (2005).

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 269

Costello: Oh, I’m not suggesting these were influences. Chaykin: I’m not saying you are. I just don’t really think about that aspect of the work that much, but if you say it’s a theme then I’ll take a look at it. Costello: Well, let me pose that question one more time a different way. Chaykin: You’re still hammering me with this stuff! Costello: Is authenticity a concept you believe in? Chaykin: Yes, absolutely. It’s like honesty in acting—once you can fake it you can do anything. I think it’s true. It’s why I don’t like much popular music of late. Most of the people I listen to have been dead for years, people who recorded when the musical experience was more interesting. Costello: Let’s shift gears just a little bit and talk about some craft and industry issues. You’ve done a fair amount of adaptation over the course of your career, starting with the very early collaborations adapting Fritz Leiber’s work, an Edgar Rice Burroughs story early on, and then The Stars My Destination and, more recently, Gladiator. Do you approach the work of adaptation differently than when you’re working on your own original material? Chaykin: Only in the sense of respecting the original source material. I did the Leiber stuff twice, first as an artist in the early 1970s, and then I adapted it in the mid-1980s for Mike Mignola to draw. I thought I did a really loathsome job as an artist on the early stuff because I just wasn’t very good. But in adapting them for Mignola, I took them much more seriously because I was more skilled at that point, and I learned a valuable lesson, which is how much of an influence Leiber had been on me as a writer and a thinker. To a profound extent I’m deeply informed by the influence of Fritz Leiber’s work. He was a very smart writer. The Fafhrd and Gray Mouser material was a series of sword and sorcery short stories and novellas that took place in a fantastical version of New York City, particularly the Lower East Side. It really was New York in the late 1930s, only translated into a phantasmagorical sword and sorcery universe, and to a profound extent Time2 is the reverse—it’s a phantasmagorical universe translated into New York. And I didn’t even know it when I did Time2. Costello: Are there other aspects of his work that influenced you? Chaykin: Not really; I love sword and sorcery. I was fifteen years old when I discovered Conan. I was a huge Edgar Rice Burroughs fan when I was a kid. It was that whole spate of sword-and-sorcery material coming out of the 1960s and early 1970s which we were all crazy about. Most of my generation that came in in the early 1970s were ready to do comics based on that material, as oddly enough the generation before us had been as well—they were all fans

270â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

of that stuff. By the time I became a professional, though, I was less and less interested in it. My career has always been defined by mistiming. Costello: How so? Chaykin: Well, I think to a certain extent I was always ahead of the curve or behind the curve and not able to profit and to exploit a moment. Flagg! to a great extent and Time2 to a lesser extent are both profoundly influential visually and graphically and are not noticed as such by the mass market readers who are only aware of the material that it influenced. I can occasionally lapse into bitterness but I choose not to today. Costello: Are you willing to say some of the works you think your work influenced? Chaykin: No, I’m not going to do that. That would be just shitty. Costello: I’m not suggesting they have to be derivative works, just works inspired by yours. Chaykin: No—that would be wrong. Costello: Going back to the issue of adaptation, then, when you’re thinking about what to adapt, is narrative what you’re most interested in, or is there ever a quality or an effect of the prose that you’re interested in translating to visual terms? Chaykin: Narrative is more important. For example, in that regard I felt that in the case of the Leiber adaptation, the one thing that was missing from the visuals was the humor. There was nothing in the material that conveyed the whimsical nature of the Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser stories. I didn’t do the textual adaptation of The Stars My Destination. That was done by Byron Preiss. I felt that was a slavish adaptation to no good effect. Costello: The overall package or your drawings? Chaykin: I look at it now and it feels crude, and I felt that the adaptation was more of a transliteration than an adaptation. I had a great time doing Gladiator [adapted as Legend]. Legend was originally written for Gil Kane, who coerced me into doing it and then when he read the first issue decided he couldn’t do it because it was too complicated. So it sat undrawn for years. It was going to be drawn my Michael Nasser, by Ashley Wood, a number of guys. And Russ Heath came along—one of my favorite artists—and he did an extraordinary job. Really journalistic, really smart. Taking it and moving it fifty years up made it much more accessible—making World War I into Vietnam, things like that. I had a great time doing that. It’s a seminal pulp novel. Costello: Was there anything you changed in the text of your adaptation to account for difference in Kane’s and Heath’s styles? Chaykin: No. It is what it is, and Russ just took it and ran with it. At the time

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 271

Russ and I were neighbors. I was still living in the San Fernando Valley. He would come over to the house and show me pages. I was delighted, particularly because I’d assumed for a number of years that Russ had lost it because the work he’d been doing for most of that era was shit, and it turns out he’d been phoning it in because he was lazy. He was capable of doing great stuff and just wasn’t bothering. Russ is really old. He dated Fred Flintstone’s sister. He’s still a very vital and incredibly talented guy, one of my heroes. And he’s got carrot-colored hair. He looks like he was molested by a carrot. Costello: Speaking about collaboration, then, I wanted to talk about some of the writers you worked with early on in the 1970s and 1980s before you came into your own as a writer: You worked with Len Wein and Dennis O’Neil quite a bit in the ’70s. Could you talk a little bit about your working relationship with them? Chaykin: Not much. Denny was my editor, Len was just a guy. Costello: Did you learn anything about writing from either of them? Chaykin: Not really. I learned that I was making less money I should have been, considering how much plotting I was doing. They were both willing to take advantage of that, and I would have done the same thing. Denny less so, but Len was like a lot of guys who came along and were writing comics back then. They were basically guys who’d failed as artists and became writers, and I thought the default position wasn’t enough for me to have that much respect for them. Denny had been a newspaperman and he was a good guy. These weren’t bad men; I just think I’m a more interesting writer. Costello: Someone else you worked with early on was Roy Thomas. Chaykin: Roy thinks he’s responsible for my career. Roy was a more interesting writer than most of those guys. To tell you the truth I learned to write comics from Harvey Kurtzman, because Kurtzman was, until Alan Moore came along, simply the best writer in comics ever. And from Archie Goodwin—and also from looking at stuff, you know? Recognizing that not everything had to be done this way; it could be funnier. I’m a reasonably glib and witty guy, and finding a way to translate that glibness and that witty sensibility onto the page was what I was working on. I’m a good extemporaneous speaker with a sense of narrative. I owe my career to reading Edgar Rice Burroughs, drawing Nazi planes bombing my Hebrew school homework, playing with toy soldiers, and spending a lot of time draped over a bar bullshitting. Those four things really combined and coalesced to create a narrative sensibility. I mean, a good writer generally speaking is a good bullshit artist or a raconteur, and when I was a drinking man, I liked bar drinking in New York because it was an opportunity to shovel the shit. And then you just type it.

272â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Costello: Could you say a bit more about why you admire Kurtzman’s work? Chaykin: I think he had a really great human scale. His war books are among my favorite comics. I don’t want to mistake favorite and best, but I think Harvey was really extraordinary. An indication of that is how many people imitated him. He set so many trends in the early 1950s. Before Julie Schwartz convinced the powers that be at DC Comics to start the superhero revival in 1956, comics in the early 1950s were so heavily influenced by Harvey that it can’t be overstated. The word on the street has always been that back in the early 1950s, Stan Lee did the best imitation of Harvey Kurtzman of anyone. Stan’s war books were pretty damn good—he used a lot of the same talent as well. Harvey and I never got along personally but I still just worship the work. Costello: When you’re writing for other artists, do you take into account who you’re working with? Chaykin: Not really. I do full scripts for all my writing. It’s something I do for myself because I don’t deliver pencils. I’m enough of a brand that if someone hires me to do a job they get it finished—they don’t need to see it in pencil, because they know what they’re getting. And in that regard when I’m writing and drawing something, I always write full script so they at least get a sense of what the pictures will look like. When I write scripts for other people, I write pretty much the same way I write for myself. I’m frequently surprised and occasionally disappointed but that’s the chance you take. Costello: At the end of American Century, Harry Kraft ends up working at Starburst Comics. Was that the ending you had planned for that series? Chaykin: Fuck, no. My intentions were to do Harry well into the early 1960s. Every year David Brooks, the neo-con columnist, does the “Brooksies,” the essays of the year, and a couple years back he promoted a great essay called “The Other ’60s.” I’m fascinated with that Mad Men period, the early 1960s, because I believe the ’60s really didn’t start until the mourning period after JFK, until April of ’64 when the Beatles came over. And that ’60–’64 era was a really interesting period. Mad Men is really milking that era beautifully, and I wanted to do Harry in that time. Because I was conscious then—I remember where I was the day Kennedy was shot because Amazing Spider-Man #9 came out. A month earlier I’d been bar mitzvahed and I had German measles and I discovered Edgar Rice Burroughs, my family life was in enormous upheaval and I was going to Hebrew school and there was all this stuff—just an active time in my life and I remember it very strongly. Costello: In terms of where you did end up having to leave Harry, Starburst Comics features pastiches of the various creators who were active in comics in the 1950s. Obviously there’s a danger—I don’t think American Century does

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 273

this—but there’s a danger in romanticizing earlier eras of comic book production. But I’m wondering if, compared to the very corporate and “synergized” models of how mainstream comics get produced now, is there anything from that earlier period of how comics were written and produced that’s valuable, that you think has been lost in the transition? Chaykin: No, I think what it comes down to is that the guys who were producing comics back then were still readers—reading was still a primary source of entertainment, along with radio. These people were children of radio and pulp fiction and popular short fiction. In those days popular magazines all featured fiction, and so there was a respect for narrative. Today most people don’t read for entertainment, and the irony is that you have non-readers producing comic books. In terms of the early ’50s, I used to listen to Alex Toth tell anecdotes about his relationship with his editors and the way they were treated, and he told them in this whimsically nostalgic, almost melancholy way—they sound horrible. Absolutely hellacious. They sound like they treated the talent like utter shit. There seemed to be a sado-masochism attached to it that was just really awful. I think Gil’s view of it was a bit more sanguine. I was born in 1950 which means I came of age in the ’60s, and, like all my generation, I had utter contempt for my forebears. In retrospect I realize that the guys who were basically Eisenhower Republicans of 1950s, the silent generation of the 1950s, were the guys who’d grown up through the Depression, and just when things started getting cleaned up they get the shit kicked out of them in the Second World War. They had every right to be utterly and completely shellshocked and to want to slip into the cocoon of the suburban lifestyle. And to a great extent that’s who these guys were. Gil Kane was an only child of immigrant parents who never learned to speak English, who had a nose like a toucan and looked like a shtetl dwelling boy. And at the end of the ’40s he gets a nose job and transforms himself into a New Yorker cartoon, a Charles Saxon cartoon—Ascot, Oxford-cloth button-down, blue blazer, gray slacks, loafers. And as soon as that transformation was completed he begins to see anti-Semites under every rock. He moves into a neighborhood in Connecticut surrounded by these cocktail party anti-Semites who became his friends and yet he remains completely apart from them. That kind of dichotomous thinking—how nutty must that have been? When I came into the business, we were all stoners. The contemporary generation is much more frat boys. It’s real laddie culture—they have less in common less with Details and more with FHM and Stuff and Maxim; there really is that playing poker, smoking cigars, hey-let’s-fuck-around kind of sensibility. They’re softball players. My generation mostly hung around in bars

274â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

and got high a lot. That’s what I did, and a great many of my colleagues as well. Not all of them. Costello: You mentioned Byron Preiss earlier; I was recently reading a review of Empire on Joe McCulloch’s blog, and he noted that nowhere on the jacket copy does the word “comics” appear. Chaykin: Byron had contempt for the material. At heart he felt that his job was to improve it and to put lipstick on a pig. And I felt that was true of Empire and Stars My Destination and almost everything that he did. I think it was a mistake. I think this whole graphic novel thing is nonsense. Costello: Why so? Chaykin: Because it’s coming up with a pretentious name for what is essentially comic books. Let it be comic books. Why make a whole big deal about it? It’s this English art-fag sensibility. The need to give it a high-toned sounding name feels sort of along the lines of giving something an elitist name to make it more palatable to an audience that sniffs at its original source material. Costello: Do you have any sympathy for it even purely on mercenary grounds? That more people are likely to read or buy comic books if they’re called something else? Chaykin: Are they? Costello: Well, there are reviews of comics in places you would never have seen them before. Chaykin: I think the idea of the New York Times reviewing comics is amazing. When I was a kid, I said, “Why doesn’t this paper have any comics?” Max Allan Collins reviewed Batman: Year One a couple of years back in the Los Angeles Times, and he makes a couple of references that are so opaque and so obscure that only a comic book fan can have any idea what he’s talking about. What is that Valley housewife who’s reading the LA Times Book Review going to make of this? James Wolcott in Vanity Fair years ago, in a review of Internal Affairs, refers to Richard Gere as looking like he was drawn by Gil Kane. Again, what does that bohemian in lower Manhattan think—“Who is this Gil Kane? Is he one of the Industrialists?” Costello: The work you did for Heavy Metal in the early 1980s had a style that was similar to but also distinct from the work you’d done for Byron Preiss. Could you talk about the different technical skills you were honing for that work and how your approach to form or visual style evolved from the earlier work? Chaykin: I was making it up as I went along—very seriously. I was trying to find a technique that would be accessible and repeatable over a longer period. It all gets back to what Caniff said years ago about Terry and the Pirates, which

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 275

is—I’m paraphrasing here—to try to find an illustration-quality technical finish that one can produce on a daily basis. And that is what I was looking for in the color material, trying to find a technique that wasn’t so totally, mindnumbingly time-consuming that I’d spend the rest of my life illuminating a single picture. I was looking for the shorthand, the short cuts that make it possible to do a twenty-five- or fifty-page comic book in full color. That meant looking for mixed media—everything from magic marker to colored inks to acrylic paint, animator’s paint. Costello: Your presentation of information on the page, the arrangement of visual information, seems different than what you’d been doing for Preiss. Chaykin: Byron Preiss had very dogmatic ideas about how to lay out a story—no particular gift or ability, but because he basically owned the tools, these were the rules. After I stopped working for Byron and came to my senses, I realized that doing tiny pictures was counterintuitive. We all go through a period where we break everything down panel by panel—Simonson went through it, I went through it. In retrospect, I realize that’s because there’s cowardice and fear involved in designing full-page images. Doing those twelve-, fifteen-, twenty-panel pages, you end up doing postage stamps as opposed to design, and I just think it’s a jerk-off. Costello: Some of the single-page images or two-page spreads in the Heavy Metal Cody Starbuck stories work as an illustration, but they’re also narrative. Chaykin: That’s always been my goal. Simonson once described comics as illustration with the addition of time. That’s a much more complex remark than it appears. That has been my goal all along, to make a standalone image that also serves the narrative. Costello: Is it fair to say that the Heavy Metal work, American Flagg! and Time2 are more design-oriented, and your recent work has become more narrativeoriented? Or is that a valid distinction? Chaykin: I think basically I was learning to do what I’m doing now back then. There were some things I did in Flagg! and Time2 that I wouldn’t do again, and there were things that I did that I should do more often. Costello: What would you not do again? Chaykin: I can’t say specifically. To a certain extent there were some places in Time2 where I slipped into incoherence, where the story I was telling wasn’t very interesting, but it was more about the technique involved in organizing pictures. There’s a lot of obscurantism in Time2 that I regret, but that was ultimately endemic to the material. It’s the artist’s fallacy to blame the audience for not getting what you’re talking about.

276â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Costello: On a practical level of putting lines on page or the screen, has technology altered your relationship to the artifact of the page? You’ve talked about how you were, at least early on, someone who didn’t draw tight pencils, who did a lot of the drawing in ink. Do you find you’re doing more of the work at an even later stage now? Chaykin: I never learned how to ink, and I don’t know how to pencil tight. So when I pencil I do a preliminary inking job, then erase it and then re-ink it. I keep inking it and keep refining it, which is pretty much how I write. Then I scan it for Photoshop, and frequently the finished pages are an assemblage of various pieces, and it helps production dramatically. It means I can turn out more pages in less time and achieve greater verisimilitude. I came back to comics in 2002, and I was working with Don Cameron, a very talented guy, very deeply technologically skilled. We had six months working on a book and we argued constantly, and ultimately my experiences proved him right. It all came together in an issue of Blade where we did a sequence that took place almost entirely inside a department store at Christmas. We did three master shots of the department store, three different views. We dressed them in Christmas decorations and unified them with certain patterns that were the same, and we used those as the backgrounds for the entire book. What starting out as a labor-saving choice also, oddly enough, deeply enhanced the verisimilitude, because there was consistency to the background. It confirmed how right Don was about the application of Photoshop technology to comics, and it’s been the way we approach the material ever since. Costello: How about your Western comic Century West—that was first published by Disney Italia. How did that come about? Chaykin: The editors at Disney Italia approached me to do the second of what was supposed to be a series of graphic novels, and they got cold feet after I delivered mine and stopped the project. As it stands right now it’s in Italian and Spanish. It was just a big fat comic book based on a pilot that I’d written some years earlier about the relationship between the American West and show business. I’ve always believed the American West was tamed so that it could be filmed. I think the American film is the last great product of the American West, along with the railroad and the telegraph and the gold rush. Costello: So your interest in the West is tied into your interest in mass media and culture, then? Chaykin: My interest in the West is that I grew up with Gene Autry, Hopalong Cassidy, Roy Rogers, Johnny Mack Brown, Wild Bill Elliot, Red Barry. I was an obsessive cowboy fan—in the pictures of me as a child I’m wearing

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 277

cowboy boots and a cowboy hat, sitting on a rocking horse. That’s very much part of my generation’s childhood. The first television show I ever watched on a TV set my family owned was The Cisco Kid. I love the Western—almost everything I do is in some way a version of the Western. Flagg! is a Western in its own way, heavily influenced by Gunsmoke. City of Tomorrow is a Western— it’s a town-tamer story. That’s the thematic adventure that I was raised with. Costello: As your career has developed, are there artists you’ve come to a new or different understanding of, people whom you dismissed or didn’t like earlier on that you appreciate now? Chaykin: Absolutely—Jesse Marsh is a classic example. He did Tarzan in the 1950s, and I thought it was really ugly and awful and stupid—and I look at it now and it’s like Diego Rivera. Jesse Marsh is a guy that I remember actively hating as a kid and coming to absolutely worship as an adult. Costello: What specifically do you see in his work now that you didn’t before? Chaykin: He’s an amazing picture-maker. The work is no prettier than it was then. But the prettiness is not an issue anymore—it’s his sense of space, his sense of order and organization. The picture-making on the Tarzan stuff just knocks the shit out of me. His John Carter of Mars from 1954 is great—these Graustarkian outfits and gloves and suits. Don Heck is a perfect example of a guy who I never had respect for as an artist, and I look at him now and think his stuff is fantastic. His early Iron Man work is amazing. Costello: What about Heck do you appreciate now? Chaykin: A really solid graphic sensibility, great sense of space. He’s nowhere near the artist that Jesse Marsh was, but the same qualities are there, the sense of space and sense of organization and power. Costello: It seems like we’re entering an interesting period now—and maybe this ties back into the question about the implications of the term “graphic novel”—where we’re rereading some of the writers and artists who were so associated with superhero and other genre comics of previous generations through the kind of lens that we more typically read underground and alternative comics artists through. I’m thinking of the way that Kirby’s Fourth World material is read now, in terms of Kirby’s personal vision, neuroses, quirks. Chaykin: Are we talking about the Fourth World stuff or about taking material from the ’60s and ’70s and giving it an imprimatur of quality that it didn’t deserve at the time or doesn’t deserve at all? Costello: Maybe that’s the question—is that what’s happening, or is it just a different way of thinking about what quality is? Chaykin: I remember when the Fourth World stuff came out I was smoking

278â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

so much dope that I couldn’t have cared less. I was never a huge fan of Kirby’s work in that period anyway—for me the first issues of Fantastic Four, that’s the shit. The Fourth World stuff was just too fucking weird for me. Looking back as a fan—not a professional, as a fan—I always felt that the great irony of his career is that he spent almost his entire life being associated with tall, better-looking Jewish guys. Joe Simon was a tall, good-looking Jewish guy, and Stan was a tall, good-looking Jewish guy in his time. And Jack was this fireplug, a raging machine—one pissed-off little Jew. When he went off on his own, the work just wasn’t very interesting to me. There was a lot to be said for the collaboration. I certainly think Jack was the more creative member of the partnership, but together the two of them [Lee and Kirby] created a synergy that was unstoppable. Those first fifty issues of Fantastic Four and Sgt. Fury and His Howling Commandos—there’s some crazy-ass shit, and they’re really funny. In retrospect I recognize just how relevant a part of the equation the humor that Stan and Jack did in the material was. In that regard, the Marvel Fanfare story that Barry Smith did with the Thing and the Human Torch—that was hysterically funny, using all the tropes of that material and those characters. And of all people Barry, who has never showed the slightest sense of humor in his work! That job was just dynamite—it was hysterically funny, beautifully drawn, and wonderfully executed, and it reflected an understanding of the innate comedy of the material, and that’s to a great extent what separated Stan and Jack’s work from the work Jack did alone. A real sense of humor. Costello: Along these lines, we started out by talking about Gil Kane as someone who felt like work had to have a point of view and a perspective— Chaykin: But I don’t think he ever followed his own direction. He tried with Blackmark and His Name Is . . . Savage but he got shot down each time. Is that what you’re asking? Costello: Sort of. I’m wondering about what you think of the validity of looking at work produced in popular genres through a more literary lens. Chaykin: Nah, I think his stuff was monthly junk. In a good way. Years ago, well before he died, Gil and I got into a long discussion of the use of reference. Gil never used reference because he was chasing a check all the time, so that a Gil Kane city was a generic city, generic gun, generic car, generic suit—everything was generic. I convinced him to try working with reference, and I put him together with a friend of mine to work with him and see how he could do it. He spent two weeks in frustration and went back to what he always did. I think that it was to his great detriment that he never learned how to apply

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 279

realism to the work in the way that Hergé did with Tintin—very cartooned, created figure work against photographically realistic backgrounds done in a perfect line. I thought Gil could have evolved in that direction had he chosen to step back from chasing the check for a moment and done something more interesting. He wanted more than he was willing to work for. Costello: In what sense? Chaykin: He wanted more attention. He never really understood—and I’m speaking for myself as well—how best to sell and promote what he did well. I think he would have been delighted and pissed off at the ink he got after he died. He made Newsweek and Time and I think if he’d known going in he would have died happier. Costello: Putting this in the context of the conversation we were having about comics and graphic novels and the graphic novel as a publishing phenomenon or marketing term, we’re at a point where comics are having a bigger readership or broader readership— Chaykin: I don’t think bigger, just more broad. Nobody’s buying anything. Comics exist primarily as a source of ancillary product for video games. Costello: But there’s the broader picture, the comics and graphic novels that aren’t being done in mainstream genres or published by Marvel and DC and other publishers who do business mainly in the direct market. They’re reaching a readership now so that, for instance, I can teach a class on contemporary American comics and graphic novels and it seems at least borderline legitimate to my colleagues. Chaykin: Only because they’ve read about them in the New York Times and the New Yorker, and that gives comics an imprimatur it doesn’t deserve. Costello: It doesn’t? Chaykin: No, I don’t think so. If you take the praise seriously you also have to take the blame. In a world in which Persepolis exists, so does Youngblood by Rob Liefeld. There are people who work in the comic book business who diminish its value simply by their presence. So you can’t take seriously the aggrandizement of it while at the same time dismissing the loathsomeness of what diminishes it. Costello: But by saying the medium or even the business is more worthy of paying attention to, that’s not the same as saying that every work is equal. You can say you need to pay attention to this and ignore that, right? Chaykin: But you’re dealing with an audience that frequently doesn’t know the difference between favorite and best. Costello: Which audience are we talking about now?

280â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Chaykin: The comic book audience. The mainstream, non-comics reading audience is just a bunch of art-fags. They don’t know what the fuck they’re talking about. Costello: But people can be educated to know what they’re talking about, right? Chaykin: I really don’t think so. Years ago in Film Comment, the actor James Woods wrote the first of the “Guilty Pleasures” columns about movies that he knew were shit but that he loved anyway. I took that to heart enormously. I’m a great believer in the idea that I’m entitled to like crap as long as I don’t fool myself into believing that just because I like it it’s any good. By the same token, dressing up comic books as graphic novels to make them more palatable to an audience that sniffs at a comic book doesn’t really serve the form of comic books except by finding the comic book equivalent of “films” versus “movies.” I like movies. Films are what people call movies when they want to justify their love of them. Costello: But a film and a movie more or less look the same; a comic book comes out every month in a certain page count, but comics in general can be all kinds of different things. Chaykin: Look, I’ll tell you a story. I got a call a couple of days ago from a colleague, a newspaper cartoonist who I’ve known for years. He asked me if I would be interested in drawing a graphic novel based on a novel he wrote some years ago about experiences in the comic book business in the 1940s. I said no, but that I had other people I’d put him in touch with. I gave him a couple of names, and I got home last night to find a message for me on the phone saying that they were just not right, that they were “too modern and too graphic novely.” Now, if I cared, I’d follow this up only because it annoyed me so much—what did that fucking mean? It’s just a matter of perception. When Chronicle published Tom De Haven’s book It’s Superman, the hardcover has a Chris Ware cover, you know what I’m saying? It’s a demonstration of an utter lack of understanding of the material. Whereas the cover for the paperback pulls a cel from the Fleischer Superman cartoons—perfect. The audience for this sort of material—is a person who reads Joe Sacco, who reads Persepolis, is that the same person who’s going to read my stuff? I don’t think so. Costello: Why not? Chaykin: Because I don’t have that high-minded a sensibility, I’m not that self-involved. There really is a narcissism attached to that material. I was talking a couple of days ago about Chester Brown, who seems to have disappeared. I love his stuff. But his flagellant narcissism was so impressive that his capacity for self-revelation of the ugliest side of his own personality was

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 281

so beyond my capacity to imagine. By nature I have a private life. Don’t follow me with that camera to the bathroom! With most of these guys, everything about the world reminds them of themselves. Harvey Pekar is a perfect example of what we’re talking about, Art Spiegelman is a perfect example. I love Harvey’s work, Art’s not so much. But I love Harvey’s work because it’s just so utterly narcissistic—it’s mind-boggling. He writes like a fifteen-year-old only child. I haven’t got that self-obsession. I’m just not that interesting. I never felt that special, that worthy of autobiography. Costello: But not all the comics that are embraced by the broader audience are the same. What about something like the Hernandez brothers are doing? It’s not self-involved autobiography. Chaykin: The Hernandez brothers are special. They’re both just graphically extraordinary. Jaime is an amazing graphic designer. His influences are so disparate and fun: the Archie-ness, the Hank Ketcham–ness of it. Gilbert is a phenomenal writer and a great cartoonist. There’s an understanding of black and white there that boggles the mind. Thematically speaking, they’re writing about things that don’t interest me at all. It’s more a matter of looking at the pictures. I feel about their work the same way I feel about Jordi Bernet’s work on Torpedo—I don’t much give a shit about the stories that are being told, I just love the way he tells the stories he’s telling. Costello: But are they the only outliers here? It’s all either genre material, self-indulgent autobiographical stuff, or the Hernandez brothers? Chaykin: Yes. Costello: Well . . . Chaykin: You’ve got to accept the answers to the questions you ask! To a certain extent I think it’s true. Everything else is a bunch of wanky jerking off. Or superheroes with angst. Costello: In talking about how comics as a medium have gotten more accepted in the academic world specifically, by and large the book that everyone who doesn’t read comics but wants to talk about graphic novels talks about is Maus—it’s a gateway book. And it seems to have shaped what people think a graphic novel is. Chaykin: Call Ted Rall about that, see what he was to say . . . Costello: I think he has an essay on that . . . Chaykin: Yeah, most guys who do the sort of work I do may not even be aware of Ted Rall, let alone the essay. But I thought it was a great piece. Also, his parody of Chris Ware is pretty good. I don’t know Ted Rall. I’m sure he hates my stuff. Costello: He hates a lot of things.

282â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Chaykin: He’s a big hater, but so am I. But I love his stuff. He’s a clumsy, ineptly ugly cartoonist who does great truthful work and I love it, I really do. Costello: The interview he did in the most recent Comics Journal [#300] was amazing. Chaykin: Great piece. He clearly just doesn’t give a shit, which I really respect deeply. I’m not that guy, but Ted’s take on that stuff is just fantastic. I don’t entirely agree with it but I agree with a lot of it. He’s venal and petty and small-minded and truthful and I respect him enormously. But I knew Art years ago back in the 1970s. We were dating friends. Costello: Did you double-date with Art Spiegelman? Chaykin: No. We dated two women who were astrologists. And I was dating her and could put up with that nonsense because there was fucking involved. She was kind of a lean, slim, very neurotic woman, and we ended up at a party or two where we ran into Art. And for some reason she could never remember Art’s name. She would call him Archie Spiegelberg—she had a block about his name. And I took that to heart. I dated her for like six months, and her feelings for Spiegelman so colored my relationship with him that I couldn’t get past it. There was a disdain for him bordering on a distaste. Costello: But does Maus fall into that category of self-indulgent autobiography for you? Chaykin: Probably. Harvey Pekar did a review of Maus that really pissed Art off—accuses him of self-indulgent bullshit. Costello: It’s interesting the way that book has shaped the way the general readership thinks of what a literary comic is: It’s an autobiographical story about a traumatic event— Chaykin: And how it affected me! Six million Jews are killed but what about me! Costello: Is that an accurate read of the book, you think? Chaykin: Yeah! Costello: But there are interesting things going on with form, there are interesting things going on with the page— Chaykin: Look, my resentment for Maus began in Italy in the early 1980s. They had an American year at Lucca [Center for Contemporary Art], and Joe Orlando, Russ Heath, Art Spiegelman, and I were all invited, and we did fifteen-minute slide-shows. But Art did a forty-five-minute to an hour slide show where he read Maus to date verbatim—this was before it was published. I was married at the time to an extremely edgy woman named Leslie Zahler. And Leslie was really smart, really sharp, no-nonsense, great sense of humor—and knew bullshit when she saw it. I was sitting there just apoplec-

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 283

tic, because we were basically held hostage—it was like being with Vaughn Bode. And she was just sitting there shitting blood—she was ready to gut the motherfucker. That night we ended up going to a restaurant outside of town with Rick Obadiah at this farm house which nobody was supposed to know about—tiny little black babushka Italian ladies, they served T-bone steaks, polenta, and grappa. I was still a drinking man at the time. We’re having a great time, letting it all hang out. And then Art comes in with these Frenchmen who are just sucking his cock. My wife Leslie, she wasn’t drunk, but she was willing to talk at full volume to let her opinions be known, and Obadiah and I were just having the best time because Leslie was being our surrogate. So, complex guy. I can’t speak for him—I’ve not spoken to Art in going on thirty years—but when I’m in the same room with him I pretend he’s dead and I assume he does the same for me. We’ve been in the same room frequently. I spent most of the ’90s flying to New York at least twice a year for auctions—I collect American illustration—and he was always there. There would be this invisible shield that existed between us. We both pretended we were dead. It was a fun thing. And I’m sitting there with my fellow collectors and they’re all encouraging me to do something obnoxious and stupid, but no. He’s got his own life, I’ve got mine. And we’re both old Jews. We have that in common. But I quit smoking. Costello: Is there a sense then that having canonized or enshrined Maus as the ideal of what a serious comic is has been detrimental to people who want to do other types of serious comics? Chaykin: Not at all. The audience gets what it wants, what it deserves. And you don’t do wrong by doing the Holocaust! You can’t go wrong there. Mel Brooks, it’s there. I’ve got a Holocaust book. Costello: Is this Midnight of the Soul? Chaykin: Yeah. It’s couched in a pulp sensibility, but I haven’t done it yet. I haven’t put it on paper, but I will ultimately. Costello: There’s a way in which, regardless of what sort of work is being done, critics tend to read it through a Maus lens. Chaykin: Still, you think? Costello: Not as much as it used to be, but for a long time the way to praise a book was to say it deserves a spot on the shelf next to Maus. Chaykin: I pay so little attention to that world. You have to remember that there are guys in that world whose work I really like who hate me and everything I stand for. Costello: What do they think you stand for that they hate? Chaykin: It’s Democrats, Republicans, and me. I’m too weird for the main-

284â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

stream, and I’m too mainstream for the weird. So I’m stuck doing this weird shit in the middle. I like Daniel Clowes’s work; he has utter contempt for everything I do. I know this. I’m sure the same thing is true for Peter Bagge, Adrian Tomine, Seth, all those guys. Costello: You think they have contempt for your work or you know they do? Chaykin: In Daniel’s case I know for sure. I’ve become comfortable with this fact and I don’t really care. I’ve got a comfortable ego, but I’m also comfortable with my own insignificance. But there’s that whole squadron, that cadre of talent that has utter, sniffy contempt for the world in which I live. By the same token, I’m regarded as kind of nutty and weird by so many of the mainstream cats. I take it back: I’m well regarded by most of the companies, by most of the clients, but a lot of people think I’m still lost in the ’70s. You look at a guy like Bill Griffith who hates me and hates mainstream comics—it’s either Zippy or diatribes on Richard Corben. Costello: Are there people in that “cadre” that you mentioned or other contemporary artists besides the Hernandez brothers whose work you admire? Chaykin: Well, I like Clowes a lot. I think it’s really fun graphically and it’s got this cheap retro sensibility that acts like it’s more important than it is. Costello: Do you think it knows it’s acting that way? Chaykin: No, I think he’s got an enormous ego about the quality of his work. His work is brilliant and clever but it really is so dependent on pastiche that he should step back a little bit. But it’s terrific—I like Dan Pussey. I also like Mitch O’Connell who did Ginger Fox, influenced by the same root as Clowes. I spend more time looking at period illustration—I look at John Held, Earl Oliver Hurst, Harry Beckhoff, Al Parker, Jon Whitcomb, the astonishing Herbert Paus. Mostly it’s guys who have been dead for many, many years. Costello: You’ve said that you couldn’t go back to Time2 because you aren’t the person you were when you created that, because your interests have changed. What would a Time2 book look like now for you, something that was similarly a kind of catalog of all of your aesthetic and cultural influences and fascinations? Chaykin: It would probably be a ’60s rock ’n’ roll book, be more psychedelic. It would be called Slidestreet. It would deal with rock ’n’ roll and ’60s culture and sensibilities. Costello: What is it about that era that interests you now more than it did in the 1980s? Chaykin: A greater distance, and a recognition that it’s as alien a landscape as the ’50s were in the ’80s. Costello: Are there psychedelic designers or illustrators that you admire?

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 285

Chaykin: Not really. Costello: So the music, then? Chaykin: Not even the music—it’s more the lifestyle, the implications of violence and fucking in an atmosphere of real paranoia. I discovered drugs in 1967, and I smoked pot all the time and I drank a great deal and I was pretty high most of the time. And for the most part I wasn’t paranoid until I moved to California. California made me paranoid because it’s scary. There’s a sinister underpinning, particularly if you’re fucked up, to Los Angeles that was totally absent from my life in New York. I go to New York a couple times a year. I’m familiar with it—it’s not my hometown anymore, but I don’t feel the slightest whiff of paranoia. In California, if I’m outside of the car in the dark—get me the fuck out of here! I’m going to Los Angeles tomorrow and I won’t be leaving the city until 8:30 or 9:00, and it’ll be creepy. Costello: Can you put your finger on what’s creepy about it? Chaykin: There’s an element of moral rot in California, in Los Angeles particularly, that’s really Satanic. It’s the capital of I-don’t-give-a-fuck. It’s the First Church of the Second Chance. Costello: So it makes sense, then, that in Black Kiss, the characters aren’t actually Satanists, but Satanism is the idiom through which they choose to express themselves. Chaykin: Yeah! Word to your mother, as Vanilla Ice would have it. Costello: I’m glad I got the interview where Howard Chaykin quotes Vanilla Ice. Chaykin: I will paraphrase and quote him as long as I possibly can to keep him alive in the cultural mind. Costello: Speaking of the character of cities, when they announced you were doing the Die Hard: Year One book I was surprised, but it seems like it’s given you a chance to play with the idea of New York in the 1970s. Can you talk about that? Chaykin: I’ve had such a good time with that. The one thing I didn’t get to do was the giant iguana on the roof of the Lone Star Cafe. The first arc was the Bicentennial and the second is the blackout, both of which I had deep experiences of. I hung out with Alan Weiss and got ptomaine poisoning during the Bicentennial, and I was hanging out with him during the blackout—he was at my place when the city went black. I experienced the blackout in 1965 as well. The one in ’77 had a very different sensibility—there was looting and violence, which I wasn’t aware of. I was downtown in Greenwich Village, and it was just awash in ass and alcohol. The bars were emptying out and they were giving away drinks, people were drunk in the street. I think I got laid, I

286â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

don’t remember. I thought I was really fat and unattractive and I look back, and I was really a cute guy. No wonder women kept marrying me. I just had a great time. [For Die Hard,] I came up with a criminal underpinning for both events and had a great time doing it. The narrative is all about my feeling about being in New York in the ’70s. The great thing about New York in the ’70s is that it was like a lot of people think the ’60s were—you could fuck anything with hair that wasn’t dead. It was just dynamite. It really was a scary amusement park. It was just vile. “Drop dead,” says Gerald Ford—it was just perfect. New York in the winter, the subways melted all the snow and turned everything into this great pile of slush, it was awful—the clothes were terrible. Disco was really rampant—I was not interested in disco but the women who were interested in disco were great. What the ’70s really did for the ’60s was return good grooming. I liked girls who shave their armpits and their legs and wore makeup, I liked the whole look. And I liked the decadence and degeneracy that was brought to the city by disco that I thought was just fabulous. I didn’t like punk rock, I didn’t like disco—at the time I was listening to a lot of jazz. But I hung around at discos just because gothic chicks and punk rock chicks weren’t going to sleep with me but disco chicks would, and at least they were well groomed. Costello: You recently went to Savannah to do a workshop with Klaus Janson. Is this the same as the workshop you run for Marvel? Chaykin: A modified version; we’re not dealing with working professionals, but rather with students. A big part of the Marvel seminar is a discussion of maintaining professional career and client-talent relationships, of taking the step from hobby-ism to professionalism. Too many people in the comic book business forget they have a responsibility to the client. They have a career, and a career doesn’t simply happen—it’s managed, it’s organized, and it’s structured. On the creative side, my contribution to the seminar is about the application of graphic design to narrative, understanding that there really is a language of comics, that there’s a reason why you use one particular picture before another, what the pattern of organization picture-to-picture is, how to use a page as a unit. Costello: Is this a class you created on your own? Chaykin: Klaus teaches at the School of Visual Arts. He’s a very impressive guy who started out as an inker and became a penciller. Recently he showed me a job he’s doing with Brian Bendis that absolutely kicked my ass. Brilliant drawing on a par with the best of the newspaper strips of the ’50s like Leon-

b r a n n o n c o s t e l l o / 2 0 1 0 â•…â•… 287

ard Starr and Alex Kotzky. Amazing stuff. Made me angry and jealous, it was that good. Klaus first approached me on this some years ago. We did the first one and we’ve only slightly modified it since. In New York we do three days with five guys, all of whom are under contract, all of whom Marvel feels could profit from a more structured environment. We do three days of demonstration of principles, then we give them a segment of a script and we have them do three pages of layouts to demonstrate their grasp of those principles. And then we tear the living shit out of them. Sometimes they’re good, sometimes they’re not. The group we had at Marvel this past January was older than a lot of the guys—all five were married, four had kids—so they were a bit farther along in the process of settling into life, and that made them more available to the client-talent relationship aspect of the workshop, the career-management aspect. Frankly, these guys are stuck. My feeling is that this is the best it’s going to get. Even if the economy improves, it’s not going to improve retroactively—it’s going to get better but not as good as it was. There’s a responsibility they’ve got to their family, their careers, and their lives to find a collegial working relationship with the client. We modified our presentation for the Savannah College of Art and Design. I was there five or six years ago and it was appalling—the quality of work was a joke, there was nothing going on. I assumed it would be just the same here. We went there and we did a two-day version of it: We had eight students who were, I think, chosen by lottery, with an audience of fifty others in a lecture hall. We talked career management in passing, but we did pretty much the same pattern. We showed them the same demonstration, we talked about the paradigm, the five-panel breakdown, and Klaus uses another artist’s work as a demonstration of how shitty an artist can be and still have a career. Then they did the three pages as a homework assignment. I was sure the work would be awful. And we were amazed. Of the eight people, two were a waste of time. One was a guy who Klaus, to his credit, dismissed as complete bullshit, who was a better draftsman than I am but didn’t know how to put it together. Five of them were dynamite. One was a bigfoot artist, who would be an absolute asset on a show like Superhero Squad, almost Smurfy stuff. One guy looked like a cross between Dean Haspiel and Tom Fowler—eccentric but fun, and with conviction, with a point of view that had consistency and merit. It was really gratifying, and a tribute to the work done by the faculty at the school.

288â•…â•… h o w a r d c h a y k i n : c o n v e r s a t i o n s

Costello: Do you find this teacher or mentor role satisfying? Chaykin: I guess; I don’t really think about it. If there were a similar situation to SCAD out here I’d consider becoming a faculty member. I like the process. Costello: You’ve worked with assistants for some time. Chaykin: For thirty years. It keeps me honest. It means I’m less distracted, I don’t woolgather. My charge to assistants is always the same: It’s that I’ll get you to do better work for me than you would do for yourself. I’m fairly disciplined and I can transmit that discipline. I did hands-on work for Woody and for Neal and for Gray Morrow, and I didn’t for Gil—but I learned more from Gil than from any of those other guys, because what I learned from Gil was the process, how to get up in the morning and sit down and do it, despite the presence or lack of muse. Some people feel that diminishes the process, but I don’t see that at all. Costello: That’s a very romantic conception of art—wait until inspiration strikes, scrawl in blood on a page. Chaykin: I was having some issues with my career a couple of weeks back. This schmuck who’s an artist gave me shit, and I said fuck your muse—I have a career. Felt good. Costello: Well, we’re about at the end. Do you have something inspirational to send us out on? Chaykin: Who the fuck do you think you’re talking to? No, in real terms, I consider myself unbelievably lucky in that I’ve never had to do anything for a living I didn’t want to do, that I’ve made my living out of my hobby, and that based on my incredibly limited gifts I’ve done very well for myself. For all the bitterness that occasionally inveighs, I’m generally speaking a happy guy. I live a very charmed life. I’m in love, I have a great family, I have a body of work of which I’m fairly proud, I expect to make Newsweek and Time with my obit, too—I’m good.

Inde x Page numbers in bold refer to illustrations. Abbett, Bob, 209 Abbey, John, 117 Abel, Jack, 24, 25, 204 Academy of Comic Book Artists, 4–5 Action Comics (Action Comics Weekly), 113, 150, 194 Adam Strange, 9, 105, 142 Adams, Art, 140 Adams, Neal, xi, xv, 4, 9, 13, 23, 25, 26, 82, 115, 188, 199–200, 224 adaptation, 23–24, 34, 35, 40–41, 269–71 Adult Video Review, 154 Adventures of the Fly, 195, 201 advertising, 45, 176, 208 Alonso, Axel, 263 Alter Ego, 85 Amanda by Night, 125 Amazing Adventures of Kavalier and Clay, 187, 264 Amazing Heroes, 85–86, 138, 145, 152, 225 American Century, xix, 181, 187, 235, 238, 239, 272–73 American Flagg!, viii, ix, xvii, xviii, 39, 40, 41–43, 43, 44, 46, 47, 48, 49–51, 54, 55, 56, 57–59, 59, 60, 60–65, 66–71, 73, 74, 76, 79, 80, 82–84, 85–86, 92, 93, 94, 101, 102, 103–4, 106, 107, 109, 111, 114, 118, 122, 127, 130, 131, 132, 138, 139, 145, 146, 150, 164, 172–73, 174, 175–76, 178, 180, 181, 188, 189,

211, 217, 218, 222, 224–26, 226, 227, 228, 229, 239, 240, 244, 245, 249, 251, 252, 253, 254, 259; proposed film adaptation of, 105–6, 111–12, 114, 140, 158, 229, 265, 266, 267, 270, 275, 277. See also Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg! American Splendor, 161, 162 Americanization of Emily, 247, 265 Anderson, Julia, 41 Anderson, Poul, 215 Anderson, Roy, 29 Andriola, Alfred, 203 Andru, Ross, 194–95 Angel Love, 100 animatics, 207, 208, 216 Arcade: The Comics Revue, 205 Archie Comics, 15, 103, 171, 281 Arkham Asylum, 137, 160 art school, 23, 27 artists, in Chaykin’s peer group, 53, 185–86, 199, 209 Asimov, Isaac, 192 assistants, xi, 29–30, 80–82, 131, 145–47, 211, 218, 225, 229, 288 assistantships (Chaykin’s), xi, 23, 26, 39– 40, 81–82, 115, 148–49, 199–200, 204, 206–8, 288 Atlas/Seabord, xvi, 4, 18–19, 181–83, 184, 186, 187, 214, 228, 242 audience, x, xi , 12, 15–16, 17, 19, 30, 47, 49, 56, 61–62, 67–68, 72, 76, 88, 89, 92, 98, 101–4, 105, 108, 109, 110, 111,

289

290â•…â•… i n d e x 112, 113–14, 125–26, 131, 134–35, 139, 140, 152, 154, 159–62, 166, 168, 170–71, 172, 173, 174, 210–11, 240, 247, 251, 253, 273, 274, 279–80, 282, 283 Austin, Terry, 24, 25, 47 authenticity, 269 Autry, Gene, 276 Bach, J. S., 196, 247 Bagge, Peter, 173, 284 Bails, Jerry, 168 Baker, Kyle, 141, 150–51 Ballard, J. G., 223 Band, The, 71, 205 Barnum!, xix, 235 Barry, Red, 192, 276 Barrymore, John, 264 Basinger, Jeanine, 264–65 Basinger, Kim, 153, 159 Batman, 73, 74, 79, 96, 98, 128, 141, 158, 162, 164, 197, 211, 235, 245, 246, 246–47, 258 Batman (comic book), 15, 53, 92, 93, 95, 127, 128, 138, 141, 191, 194, 236, 240 Batman (film), 139 Batman (television series), 11, 161–62 Batman: Dark Allegiances, x, xviii, xix, 236, 245, 246, 258 Batman: Year One, 274 Batman/Houdini: The Devil’s Workshop, xviii, 236 Beauty and the Beast, 92–93 Beauvoir, Simone de, 63 Beavis and Butthead, 178 Beckhoff, Harry, 284 Behm, Marc, 220 Bendis, Brian, 286 Benton and Bowles, xvi, 208 Berkley Books, 20, 25, 218 Berlin, Irving, 252 Bernet, Jordi, 281 Bester, Alfred, xvii, 9, 57, 66, 218, 223

Between the Wars, 97 Big Chill, 126 Big Nowhere, 124, 141 Black Dahlia, 141 Black Kiss, xviii, 104–5, 113–14, 114, 123, 124–25, 125, 126, 127, 128, 130, 133, 134, 135, 136–38, 141, 144, 151–55, 155, 156, 158, 162, 164, 174, 175, 232, 285 Blackhawk, 57, 96–98, 99, 113, 121–22, 255, 257 Blackhawk: comic book, ix, x, xvii, xviii, 57, 80, 86–87, 87, 88–91, 93, 96–97, 97, 98, 99, 101, 102, 103, 112–13, 115, 121–22, 127, 128, 130, 133, 150, 192, 194, 231–32, 239, 245, 247, 255, 256, 257, 262–63; proposed film adaptation, 114–15 Blackmark, 200, 207, 278 Blade, x, xix, xx, 276 Blind Man with a Pistol, 91 B’nai B’rith, 91, 262 Bob Moon, 200 Bob Violence, 44, 173 Boltinoff, Murray, xv, 27, 199 Bon Jovi, 104 Bon Ton MacHoot, 108 Bonanza, 90, 190 Bonus Army, 97 Boxell, Tim, 106 Bradbury, Ray, 192 Branagh, Kenneth, 265 Bravura (publishing imprint), xviii, 164, 170, 173–74, 232, 233 Brereton, Dan, xviii, 170 Broderick, Pat, 208 Brooks, David, 272 Broome, John, 196 Brown, Chester, 135, 161, 173, 280–81 Brown, Johnny Mack, 3, 192, 276 Bruce, Lenny, 36 Brunner, Frank, 186 Bruzenak, Ken, 80, 111, 188, 224

i n d e x â•…â•… 291 Bulandi, Danny, 41 Buntline, Ned, 143, 233 Burchett, Rick, 150 Burden, Bob, 82 Burroughs, Edgar Rice, xvi, 142, 209, 210, 269, 271, 272 Buscema, John, 12 Buscema, Sal, 28 Bush, George H. W., 120 Butler, Smedley , 263 Buzz Sawyer, 195 Byrne, John, 53, 104 Cabaret, 265 Café Flesh, 125 Cain, James, 221 California: as residence, 241; as setting, 7 Camelot 3000, 53 Cameron, Don, xviii, 235, 267, 276 Candide, 112, 119 Caniff, Milton, 203, 225, 235, 274–75 Captain America, 164, 261–62 Captain America: Theater of War: America First!, xx, 262 Cardy, Nick, 124 Carradine, John, 264 Cass Pollack, 124, 153, 154, 156 cats, 70, 80, 84–85, 107, 108 Cavalieri, Joey, 218 censorship, 7–8, 42, 247–48 Century West, xix, 276 Chabon, Michael, vii, xix, 206 Challengers of the Unknown, x, xix, 238, 259–60, 260, 262 Chan, Ernie, 216 Chandler, Raymond, 7, 220, 221 Chandler: Red Tide, 224 Chapman, Mark David, 72 characterization, 20–21, 23, 50, 51, 84, 85– 86, 92, 93, 94–98, 109–10, 121–22, 127, 132, 167, 174–75, 182, 212–13, 264–65 Charles Keenan Blitz, 42

Charyn, Jerome, 124, 220 Chiarello, Mark, 219, 236 childhood and adolescence, 3, 117, 122, 150, 168, 173, 189–94, 196–98 Chop-Chop, 90 Cisco Kid, 277 City of Tomorrow, x, xix, 237, 238, 241, 267, 268, 277 class, 250–51, 259–61 Class Struggle in Beverly Hills, 153 Cloak and Dagger, 103 Clowes, Daniel, xii, 173, 284 Cocker, Joe, 205, 214 Cockrum, Dave, 204 Cody Starbuck, viii, xvi, xvii, 9, 10, 21, 24, 31, 32, 33, 35, 37, 39, 182, 185, 214–15, 219, 223, 275 collaboration, 19–20, 35, 41, 51, 81–83, 85, 105, 110–11, 141, 143–44, 157, 210, 223, 229, 233, 234, 235, 267, 271, 272; in construction of an issue, 30–32, 33, 36, 38, 40, 51, 74, 82–83, 144, 225, 235. See also assistants collecting, 161, 170 college, 23, 198 Colletta, Vincent, 41 Collins, Max Allan, 274 Colon, Ernie, 184, 187 color, viii, 8, 9, 20, 31, 38, 40, 51, 53, 104, 147, 216–17 Columbia College, xv, 23, 57 Come Back, Charleston Blue, 91 comic books, mainstream: business of, 18, 32–33, 99–101, 103–4, 139, 161, 187, 273–74; Chaykin’s early career in, vii, 3, 26–28, 39, 104, 208, 210, 212, 242, 254, 273–74; Chaykin’s early exposure to, 3, 15, 26, 168, 191–92, 194–96; Chaykin’s position in, xii, 110, 132–33, 138–39, 144, 159, 170, 173, 180, 240–41, 250, 283–84; division of labor in, x, xii, 4, 5, 8, 23–24, 25, 40; evolution of industry,

292â•…â•… i n d e x 24, 52, 161, 168, 186–87, 234, 240, 253, 262; genres in, 11, 12, 35; limitations of, 17, 36, 39, 59–60, 64, 65–66, 67–68, 89–91, 103, 127, 131–32, 133–35, 139, 162, 168, 170, 173; literary significance of, 277–79; narrative conventions of, 54, 61, 64, 67–68, 88, 102, 111, 128, 166, 253, 261 Comic Buyer’s Guide, 137, 252 comic strips, 192 comics (medium), vii, xii, 6, 11, 28, 64–65, 66, 170, 171, 173, 215, 253, 274, 275, 279, 280, 281, 286 Comics Journal, 206, 282 Communist Party, 91, 97 Compuserve, 175 Conan, 9, 12, 215, 269 Conan the Barbarian, 216 Conrad, Tim, 13 consumerism, 119 continuity: among images, 28, 43, 45–46; in shared universe narratives, 47, 57–58, 175 Continuity Studios, 208 conventions, 16, 30, 34, 62, 72, 131, 134– 35, 168, 186, 199, 210–11 Conway, Gerry, 213 Cooder, Ry, 71, 104 Cooley, Spade, 71 Cooper, Fred, 257 Corben, Richard, 284 Corman, Roger, 156 Costner, Kevin, 112 Cotton Comes to Harlem, 91 Covarrubias, Miguel, 88 Cover Up, 69 Cowboy and the Cossack, 117 Cowboy Wally Show, 151 Craftint, 84, 187 Crane, Roy, 195, 202 crime fiction, 89, 91, 124, 141, 171, 220–21, 238, 249

Crime Story, 86 Criss Cross, 124 Crossfire, 124 Crow, Lenny, 25 Crumb, Robert, 8, 124, 205 Crusty Bunkers, 23, 208, 210 Crystal Gayle Marakova, 41 Cuidera, Chuck, 192 Cuti, Nick, 207 Cyberella, xviii, 261, 266, 267 cynicism, 58, 92, 165, 166–67, 172, 173, 220–21, 251 Dark Horse Comics, 219 Dark Knight Returns, viii, 94, 96, 100, 137, 161, 162 Davis, Ed, 183 Davis, Geena, 159 Davison, John, 156 DC Comics (National), viii, xii, 5, 11, 15, 26–27, 32, 39, 79, 87, 89–90, 94, 95, 99–100, 103, 105, 128, 133–34, 137, 138, 140, 149, 168, 194, 199, 200, 232, 233, 234, 272, 279 De Haven, Tom, 280 deadlines, 18, 53, 56, 76, 210, 212 Decker, Dwight, 170 Deever, Jeffrey, 249 DeFalco, Tom, 159 Delany, Samuel R. (“Chip”), xvi, xvii, 9, 25, 34, 57, 215, 218 DeMatteis, J. M., 79 DeMott, Benjamin, 58 Dennis, Patrick, 107 Depardieu, Gerard, 90 design, applied to narrative, viii, ix, 6, 20, 29, 37, 48, 74, 124, 143, 150, 151, 188, 189, 196, 215, 274–75, 281, 286 Dewillow, Elaine, 244 Dick, Philip K., 72, 73, 123 Dick Tracy, 140–41, 157, 163 Dick Van Dyke Show, 265

i n d e x â•…â•… 293 Dickinson, Angie, 153 Die Hard: Year One, xx, 285–86 discipline, 222, 224 Disney, Walt, 258 Disney Italia, xix, 276 Ditko, Steve, 170, 195 Dixie Ray: Hollywood Star, 125 Doc Samson, 176 Doc Savage, 12, 18, 109, 182 Doc Savage, 100 Doctor Fate, 146, 147 Dominic Fortune, viii, xvi, xvii, 18, 19, 29, 32, 33, 36, 39, 47, 54, 182, 184, 185, 214, 221, 242, 258, 263–66, 267 Dominic Fortune, x, xx, 255, 257, 263–66, 267 Dooley, Kevin, 157 Dorkin, Evan, 228 Double Life of Private Strong, 195, 201 Downey, Robert, Jr., 213 drawing, 8, 23, 31, 36, 38, 40, 110, 132, 148, 196–97, 207, 216, 217, 222, 225, 276, 286–87; possession or lack of skill at, 104, 132, 148, 200, 243, 254, 269; tools used for, viii, 31, 36, 38, 40, 216, 217, 222, 275 Drucker, Mort, 189, 194 Drucker, Norman, xv, 189 drugs, 17, 176, 196, 285 Dubois, Nick, 145 Dunbier, Scott, 218 Duncan, Susan, 30 Duotone, 40, 51 Durango Kid, 15, 26 Dynamic Forces, 239 Earth: Final Conflict, xix, 230, 248 East Village Other, 205–6 Eastwood, Clint, 96 EC Comics, 9, 15, 94, 192, 203, 207, 218, 221 Eclipse Comics, 52

editors, x, 18, 52, 100, 101, 107, 157, 174, 182–83, 199, 218–19, 247–48, 253, 254, 264, 273 Ellington, Duke, 71 Elliot, Wild Bill, 276 Ellis, Bret Easton, 95 Ellison, Harlan, xviii, 79, 228 Ellroy, James, 124, 142, 249 Elric, 17, 223 Empire, viii, 25, 30, 57, 80, 217–18, 244, 274 Ennis, Garth, xx, 259 Enos, Randy, 15 erotica, 263 Esposito, Mike, 195 Eternal Champion. See Swords of Heaven, the Flowers of Hell Eternity Comics, 81 eugenics, 259 Evanier, Mark, xvii, 57 Everett, Bill, 195 Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, 27, 28, 269, 270 Fafhrd and the Gray Mouser, xviii, 144, 269, 270 family background, 116, 122, 189–91, 198 Fantastic Four, 30, 195, 278 Farmer, Philip Jose, xvii fascism, ix, x, 66, 79, 86, 92, 113, 120, 128, 142, 192, 231, 258, 263 fashion, 21, 45, 213–14, 245, 264 Fawcett, Robert, 209, 216 Fear, xv, 207 Feiffer, Jules, 176 female characters, 21, 42, 90, 102 Fernandez, Fernando, 11–12, 129 Ferrell, Will, 265 Fields, W. C., 264 Fighting American, 195 film (medium), 28–29, 46, 64–65, 71, 88, 126, 152, 193–94, 276, 280 Fin Fang Foom, 195

294â•…â•… i n d e x Finger, Bill, 98 First Comics, 47, 52, 54, 57, 69, 74, 77, 79, 100, 101, 108, 111, 130, 133, 138, 150, 158, 223, 225, 226, 227–28, 229, 244, 254 First Fridays, 186 Flash (comic book), 196 Flash (television series), xviii, 171, 174, 229–30, 248 Fleisher, Michael, 47, 96 Flyer, xviii, 234, 245 Fonda, Henry, 175, 185, 212, 264 Fonda, Jane, 265 For Your Eyes Only, xvii, 40, 41 Forever Maelstrom, xix, 176 Foss, Ron, 85 Fowler, Tom, 287 Fox, Gardner, 196 Fox, Victor, 181 Frazetta, Frank, 12, 20, 209–10 Friday Foster, xvi Friedrich, Mike, xvi, 8, 18, 222, 223 Fuchs, Bernie, 215 Furst, Alan, 254 Further Adventures of Indiana Jones, xvii, 46–47, 219 Garcia-Lopez, Jose, xviii, 105, 143, 233 Garfield, 70 Garner, James, 175, 185, 212, 264–65 Gere, Richard, 274 Gershwin, George, 252, 255 Gershwin, Ira, 252 Ghost Writer, 91 G.I. Joe, 208 Gibbons, Dave, xviii Gibson, Hoot, 3 Gideon Faust, xvi Giffen, Keith, 172, 173 Gil, Armando, 41 Giordano, Dick, 3, 25, 228 Girl with the Dragon Tattoo, 253 Gladiator, xix, 269, 270

Goetz, Bernie, 96, 255 Gold, Mike, 70, 87, 149, 223 Goldblum, Jeff, 159 Golden, Michael, 140, 141, 143, 215 Goldfine, Norman, 34 Goldwater, Richard, 64 Gonzales, Babs, 71 Goodis, David, 220 Goodman, Chip, 182 Goodman, Martin, 18, 181–82 Goodwin, Archie, 6, 214, 218, 220, 271 Gordon, Larry, 130, 158 Goulart, Ron, xvii Gould, Bob, 13 GQ, 206 Graeme, Lynne, 36 Graf, Mel, 203 Grant, Steven, 137, 154, 170, 232, 234 Grapes of Wrath, 47 graphic novel, 60, 274, 277, 280, 281–82 Graziunas, Daina, xv, xvi Green, “Grass,” 86 Greene, Sid, 142 Grell, Mike, 13 Gretchen Holstrum, 41 Griffith, Bill, 284 Grimjack, 77, 140, 147, 157, 158, 159 Gross, Michael, 217 Groth, Gary, 135, 156, 202, 205, 206, 250, 251–52 Grove, David, 29, 216, 244 Gruenwald, Mark, 159 Gulacy, Paul, 13 Gun Crazy, 124 Gunsmoke, 63, 224, 277 Hama, Larry, 186, 215 Hamill, Mark, 230 Hamilton, Anthony, 69 Hamilton, Edmond, 215 Hammett, Dashiell, 221, 249, 262 Happy Days, 95 Harry Kraft, 272

i n d e x â•…â•… 295 Haspiel, Dean, 81, 145, 211, 225, 287 Hawkgirl, xx Heath, Russ, xix, 270–71, 282 Heavy Metal, viii, xvi, xvii, 18, 20, 24, 35, 126, 138, 183, 217, 223, 254, 274–75 Heck, Don, 277 Heinlein, Robert, 66 Held, John, 284 Helfer, Andrew, 141, 157, 248 Hernandez, Gilbert, 135, 281, 284 Hernandez, Jaime, 135, 281, 284 heroes, x, 20–21, 50, 79, 93, 96–97, 122, 128, 164–67, 168, 175, 212–13, 264–65 Hill, Walter, 71 Himes, Chester, 91, 124 His Name Is . . . Savage, 149, 207, 278 Hitler, Adolf, 92, 128, 175, 247, 258, 266 Hogarth, Burne, 148, 201 Holden, William, 175, 264 Holiday, Billie, 255 Holocaust, 123, 234, 283 horror, 11, 16, 113, 156, 160, 194, 195 horses, 3, 253 Hot Stuf’, 18, 19 Howard Chaykin’s American Flagg!, 80, 84, 109–11, 119, 227–28 Hughes, John, 107 humility, 261 humor, vii, viii, 36, 45, 50, 64, 77, 83, 84, 95, 107, 124, 135, 159, 270, 278 Hunter, Stephen, 193 Hurst, Earl Oliver, 284 I Am a Camera, 265 I Photographed Russia, 117 Idolmaker, 153 If He Hollers, Let Him Go, 91 illustration, as approach to comics, 28, 65, 189, 215, 275 illustration, commercial and editorial: Chaykin’s interest in tradition of, viii, 13, 15–16, 29, 31, 53, 66, 188, 209, 215, 216, 219, 222, 236–37, 242, 244, 254,

283, 284; as source of employment, viii, xvii, xix, 7, 16–17, 20, 45, 59, 217, 222 Image Comics, 170, 173–74, 232 imperialism, 117–18 improvisation, 248 independent publishers, xii, 52, 53, 70, 138, 152 industrial design, 123, 258 Infantino, Carmine, vii, 14, 29, 194, 197, 203, 206, 251 influence on others, 34, 106, 166, 270 influences, viii, x, 19, 20, 29, 31, 39–40, 46, 47, 71, 74, 121, 123–25, 127–28, 148, 167, 188, 194, 196, 200–201, 203, 209– 10, 215, 244, 269–70, 271–72, 277, 284 inking, 7, 8, 23, 25, 36, 38, 40, 41, 47, 185, 201, 276. See also drawing intellectual property (creator’s rights), 18–19, 170, 181, 225 Ironwolf, viii, xvi, 12, 39, 182, 212, 214, 222, 242 Ironwolf: Fires of the Revolution, xviii, 144 Jackass, 11, 12 James, Will, 200 James Bond, xvii, 114, 147 Janson, Klaus, 286–87 Jackson, Jack, 251 Jay, Alex, 224 Jefferson, Eddie, 71, 205 Jefferson Airplane, 205 Jewish identity, 21, 68, 90–91, 116, 175, 176, 190–91, 250, 262, 264–66, 283 Jones, Jeff, 27 Jordan, Bobby, 107 Judge Dredd, 106 Jurgens, Dan, 170, 232 Jusko, Joe, 30, 218 Kahn, Jenette, 99 Kaluta, Michael, 11, 14, 183, 185, 186, 199, 209, 243 Kane, Bob, 98

296â•…â•… i n d e x Kane, Gil, vii, x, xi, xv, xvii, xviii, 5–6, 13, 23, 26, 39–40, 41, 45, 82, 115, 132, 143, 148–50, 170, 190, 192, 194, 198, 199–203, 204, 206, 207, 210, 214, 232, 233–34, 245, 250, 251, 254, 270, 273, 274, 278–79, 288 Karajan, Herbert von, 247 Kawecki, Annette, 183 Kennedy, John F., 88, 117, 272 Ketcham, Hank, 281 Key Exchange, 126 King Pleasure, 71, 205 Killraven, 13, 213 Kingdom Come, 233 Kinnear, Greg, 178 Kirby, Jack, 8, 13, 24, 190, 195, 201, 202, 238, 251, 258, 277–78 Kosinksi, Jerzy, 123–24 Krenkel, Roy G., 13 Krigstein, Bernie, 203 Kryptonite Kid, 141 Kubert, Joe, 7, 29, 100, 194, 195, 197, 203, 251 Kuper, Peter, 29–30, 81 Kurtzman, Harvey, 123, 148, 160, 203, 204, 233, 247, 271, 272 Lambert, Hendricks, and Ross, 71, 205 Lang, Fritz, 203 Larry Sanders Show, 178 Last of the Just, 123 Laverne and Shirley, 95 Law and Order, 178 Lee, Jim, 172, 237–38 Lee, Stan, 67, 156, 162, 167, 182, 195, 201, 207, 214, 272, 278 Legend, xix, 149, 270 Legend (publishing imprint), 173–74, 232 Legion of Super-Heroes, 110, 174 Lehmkuhl, Corky, 145, 147, 154 Leiber, Fritz, xviii, 223, 269–70 Leno, Jay, 112

Leonard, Elmore, 193 Less Than Zero, 92, 107 lettering, 20, 61, 144, 183, 188, 215–16, 224, 241, 257 Leyendecker, J.C., 13, 15 licensing, 158, 225 Lieber, Larry, 182 Liefeld, Rob, 166, 279 Li’l Abner, 63 limited edition press, 16–18 Lobo, 68, 172, 173 Loewy, Raymond, 258 Lomax, Don, 83 Lombard, Carole, 41 Lonely Crusade, 91 Los Angeles: as residence, 144–45, 285; as setting, 144, 285 Love and Rockets, 45, 62 Lucas, George, 219, 243 Lucca Center for Contemporary Art, 282–83 Lucky Luke, 200, 258 Luther, 44, 50, 56, 70 Lynch, Jay, 124 MacArthur, Douglas, 97 Magic Clown, 193 Mann, Anthony, 203 Man-Thing, xv, 207 Marked Man, 238 Marks, Bill, 105, 136, 232 Mars, 107 Marsh, Jesse, 277 Marshal Law, 167 Marvel Comics, xii, xvii, 5, 6, 12, 15, 17, 18, 19, 32, 44, 52, 76, 91, 100, 103, 134, 138, 147, 159, 167, 168, 175, 181, 182, 184, 187, 194, 195, 211, 212, 214, 217, 226, 231, 242, 254, 279, 286–87 mass culture, 166, 178, 254–59 materialism, 129 Maus, 161, 162, 281, 282, 283 Mayerik, Val, xvi, 52, 212

i n d e x â•…â•… 297 Maynard Brothers, 192 ’Mazing Man, 87, 100 McCoy, Horace, 220 McCulloch, Joe, 274 McFarlane, Todd, 140, 166 McFerrin, Bobby, 159 McLaughlin, Frank, 213 McLaughlin, Victor, 263 McManus, Shawn, 145, 146–47 McQuarrie, Ralph, 24, 41, 243–44 McSweeney’s Mammoth Treasure of Thrilling Tales, xix, 206 merchandising, 70 Merkin, Richard, 263 Meyer, Russ, 124–25 Middle Earth, 16–17 Midnight Men, xviii, 240, 257 Midnight of the Soul, 248–49, 283 Mighty Love, xix, 216, 231, 237 Mignola, Mike, xviii, 144, 269 Milgrom, Allen, 13, 25, 27, 44, 52, 53, 186, 215 Miller, Frank, viii, 41, 52, 53, 79, 98, 135, 211–12, 226, 243 minstrelsy, 265–66 Mitchell, Lewis, 30 Moebius, 29 Monark Starstalker, xvi, 39, 182, 185 Moorcock, Michael, xvii, 24, 25, 57, 66, 117, 223 Moore, Alan, viii, xix, 83, 95, 135–36, 222, 233, 245, 257, 271 Moore, John Francis, xviii, 80, 82, 111, 130–31, 228–29 More Than Human, 162 Moreira, Reuben, 207 Morrison, Van, 71, 205 Morrow, Gray, xi, xv, xvi, 82, 115, 200, 207, 288 multiculturalism, 166, 227, 245 Munn, Jeni, xviii, 140 music, 71, 121, 123, 162, 205 Mutant X, xix, 181, 187, 230–31, 248

’Nam, 141 naming, 107–8 Nasser, Michael, 270 National Review, 260 Nazis, 61 Network, 95 Neumeier, Edward, 106, 156 Neuromancer, 267 New York City: as residence, 23, 122, 180, 241, 285–86; as setting, 6–7, 74, 92–93, 112, 227, 269, 285–86 Newell, Mindy, 80, 82, 111 Nick Fury, 19–20, 147, 158 nicknames, 14, 188, 204 Night Dreams, 125 Niven, David, 90 noir, 137, 140, 156, 220 North, Oliver, 120 Norton, Andre, 192, 215 Noto, Phil, 243 Nova, 34, 215 novelizations, 69–70 Nowlan, Kevin, 150 NYPD Blue, 178 Obadiah, Rick, 83, 150, 158, 223, 283 O’Brien, Geoffrey, 220 O’Connell, Mitch, 284 O’Day, Anita, 205 Oliff, Steve, 30 On the Beach, 63 Once and Future King, 36 O’Neil, Dennis, xvii, 12, 33, 81, 184, 211, 271 O’Neil, Larry, 81, 145 Orbach, Jerry, 178 original art, 52–53, 174, 207, 220 Ortiz, Jose, 12 Ory, Richard, 80, 82, 111, 145, 228 O’Shaughnessy, Brigid, 263 Ostrander, John, 77 Outer Limits, 136 Overseas Weekly, xv, 204

298â•…â•… i n d e x Pacific Comics, 52 page rates, 181, 184, 214 Painted Bird, 123 paper shortage, 222, 243, 251 paranoia, 144, 176, 285 Parker, Al, 284 Parker, Charlie, 71, 133, 196 Parrish, Maxfield, 17 Pasko, Martin, 150 Patinkin, Mandy, 112 patriotism, 59, 122, 205, 245, 262 Patton, George, 261 Paus, Herbert, 284 Pay, Bill, 30 Peak, Bob, 15, 29, 215, 216, 244 Pekar, Harvey, xii, 101, 133, 161, 166, 281, 282 Pelc, Gene, 64 Pelecanos, George, 193 penciling. See drawing Perelman, S. J., 107 Perez, George, 253 period settings, 6–7, 35–36, 45, 86, 96, 100, 127–28, 228, 247, 249, 262–63, 266, 272, 284–85, 286 Perry, Thomas, 193 Persepolis, 279, 280 Photoshop, 216, 241, 276 Pilote, 123, 200 Pino, 244 Ploog, Mike, 14 Plot Against America, 249 Politically Incorrect, 178 politics, ix, x, xix, 51, 84, 96–97, 116, 120, 122, 167, 172, 203–4, 227, 235, 259–62, 263 pornography, x, 17, 41–42, 124–25, 126, 152, 222 portfolios, 16–18, 222 postmodernism, 127–28, 167 Powell, William, 264–65 Power and Glory, x, xviii, 164, 165, 165–67, 169, 175–76, 177, 232–33, 236

Preiss, Byron, xvi, 34, 80, 208, 216, 217, 218, 222, 224, 244, 254, 270, 274, 275 professionalism, 56, 76, 100, 252, 286–87, 288 promotion, 150 Psychology Today, xvii, 58 pulp, 45, 54, 89, 100, 124, 202, 206, 209, 210, 215, 243, 270, 273, 283 Pulp Fantastic, xix, 235 race and ethnicity, 89–91. See also Jewish identity Radioactive Man, 187 Rall, Ted, 281–82 Ranxerox, 127 rating system, xii, 99, 100, 137, 232 Raul, 44, 50, 70–71 Rausch, Barb, 145 Raymond, Alex, 207 reading habits, 63, 65, 193, 247, 253 Reagan, Ronald, 120 Real Cool Killers, 91 Redford, Robert, 265 Reese, Ralph, 186 reference, 38, 41, 147, 202, 278–79 Reiner, Carol, 265 rejection, 3–4 relevance, 8 reprints, 32, 103–4, 238–39 Republican Party, 116, 227, 235, 246, 260, 262, 273 research, 43–44, 73, 74, 97, 100, 117, 123, 150, 238 Reuben Flagg, 39, 43, 47, 48, 50, 51, 54, 55, 56, 58, 59, 60, 69, 71, 109–10, 112, 119, 130, 175, 176, 185, 212, 224, 259, 265 Rice, Laurel Beth, xix, 227 Ring of the Nibelung, 149, 202 Ritter, Tex, 3 Rivera, Diego, 277 Robbins, Frank, 203

i n d e x â•…â•… 299 Robinson, Edward G., 107 Robocop, 106, 156–57 Rockwell, Norman, 15, 220 Roddenberry, Gene, 230 Rodgers and Hart, 255 Rogers, Marshall, 208 Rogers, Roy, 276 romance (genre), 126, 127, 237 romance comics, 26, 39, 124, 126, 171, 195, 199, 237 Romita, John, 195, 212 Ronin, 53 Roth, Philip, 91, 249 Rovin, Jeff, 19, 182–83 royalties, 174, 181, 207, 219, 244 Ruling Class, 143 Runyon, Damon, 72, 73, 123 Russell, P. Craig, 13, 14, 149 Russia, 84, 109, 116–18, 118, 119–20, 228 Sable, 106, 114 Sacco, Joe, 280 Sacco and Vanzetti, 236, 258 Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD), 242, 286, 287 Saving Private Ryan, 247 Saxon, Charles, 273 Sayers, Dorothy, 247 Schindler’s List, 247 Schwartz, Julie, 168, 194, 195–96, 272 Schwarz-Bart, Andre, 123 Schwarzenegger, Arnold, 128, 167 science fiction, 9, 35, 63, 66–67, 192–93, 215, 220, 243 Scorpion, viii, xvi, 18, 19, 39, 182, 185 Scorpion, xvi, 6, 7, 18, 19, 181, 182, 183–85, 210, 214, 222, 242 screenwriting, x, 76, 88, 105–6, 107, 112, 114, 126, 130–31, 139–40, 151–52, 153, 156, 157–58, 159, 171, 174, 178, 187, 221, 228, 230–31, 235, 236, 248 Scriptware, 235 Sebastian, John, 214

Seth, 284 sex, 50, 60, 61, 62–63, 73, 84, 99, 110, 114, 121–22, 124, 126, 135, 154, 174, 222, 263 Sgt. Rock, 128 Shadow, xvii, 18, 79, 98, 127, 247 Shadow (comic book), ix–x, xvii–xviii, 79, 80, 82, 89, 98–99, 100, 101, 102, 113, 127, 130, 136, 137, 150, 227, 228–29, 232, 245, 247 Shadow (pulp serial), 98, 182, 210 Shakespeare, William, 3 Sharkey, Ray, 153 Shattuck, xv, 204 She Loves Me, 237 Shepherd, Cybil, 153 Sherlock Holmes, 17 Sherman, Jim, 52, 212 Shining Knight, 20 Shipp, John Wesley, 230 Shock SuspenStories, 204 Shonehair, John, 24 Shooter, Jim, xvii, 254 Shop Around the Corner, 237 Sienkiewicz, Bill, 53, 243 Signal, 257 Silent Terror, 124 Silverado, 112 Simmons, Julie, 217 Simonson, Louise, 53 Simonson, Walter, xvii, xx, 8, 12, 14, 18, 21, 25, 27, 41, 44, 52, 53, 64, 154, 170, 173, 183, 185, 186, 188, 199, 209, 211, 220, 226, 243, 275 simulation, 266–69 Skrenes, Mary, 133–34 Slidestreet, 284 Slight Case of Murder, 107 Smith, Cordwainer, 212 Smith, Paul, 83 Smoky, 200 Soldier of Orange, 106 Solo, xix, 193, 206

300â•…â•… i n d e x Solomon Kane, 22 Soviet Union. See Russia Spider, 18, 210 Spider-Man, 24, 182, 195, 272 Spiegelman, Art, xii, 101, 166, 180, 281, 282–83 Spielberg, Steven, 219–20 Spillane, Mickey, 249 Spirit, 176 Sprang, Dick, 194 Star Trek, 136 Star Wars, viii, xvi, 23–24, 40–41, 126, 220, 243 Starlin, Jim, xvi, 14, 19–20, 52, 170, 186, 211–12, 232 Star*Reach, xvi, 7–8, 9, 11, 18, 170, 214, 222 Stars My Destination, viii, xvii, 9, 30, 34, 57, 217, 218, 244, 269, 270, 274 Starship Troopers, 66 Stathis, Lou, 138, 217 Staton, Joe, 83, 111, 226 Steranko, Jim, 13, 206, 224 Steve Canyon, 103, 235 Storey, Barron, 16, 29, 215 Stout, Rex, 220 Stroman, Larry, 80, 81 Study in Scarlet, 16–17 style, evolution of, 28, 31–32, 36, 46, 65, 101, 110, 123, 173, 215, 216, 217, 226, 253, 254, 274–76 Summer, Ed, 24 Superboy, 16, 154, 295 Superhero Squad, 287 superheroes, 25, 30, 35, 93–96, 102, 103, 124, 128, 148, 164–68, 170–71, 211, 232–33, 235, 242–43, 245–47, 261 Superman, 25, 50, 94–96, 98, 121, 141, 145, 164, 194, 195, 196, 197, 201, 234, 245, 247, 280 Superman (comic book), 15, 25, 26, 95, 96, 127, 191, 192, 194 Superman (film), 125

Superman: Distant Fires, xviii, 234 Swan, Curt, 194 sword and sorcery, 11, 12, 35, 211, 243, 269–70 Sword of Sorcery, xvi, 23, 210, 212 Swords of Heaven, the Flowers of Hell, viii, xvii, 24, 25, 31, 35, 57, 223, 239 Tales from the Crypt, 145–46 Talk Soup, 178 Tarzan, 209, 210, 277 Tea Party, 260–61 television: Chaykin’s work in (see screenwriting); as entertainment medium, 11, 119, 133, 176, 178–79, 179, 180, 200– 201, 254–57, 258, 277 Terry and the Pirates, 225, 274–75 Thomas, Norman, 122 Thomas, Roy, 6, 12, 22, 85, 156, 168, 271 Thompson, Jim, 65, 220 Thompson, Kim, 225–26 Thornhill, Claude, 150 Thriller, 49 Thrillkiller, xviii, 245 thumbnails, 83, 111, 144, 225, 235–36 Time2, ix, xviii, 72–74, 75, 76–77, 79, 80, 101–2, 102, 103, 108, 112, 113, 123, 130, 133, 138, 158, 159, 226, 227, 228, 229, 240, 266, 269, 270, 275–76, 284 Tischman, David, xix, 235 Tomine, Adrian, 284 Tommy Tomorrow, 142–43 Toth, Alex, x, 19, 29, 36, 124, 182, 187, 195, 197, 203, 251, 273 transvestites, 152–53 Truman, Tim, 77 Trump, Donald, 128, 141 Twilight, xviii, 105, 142–43, 147, 150, 233, 239 Twilight Zone, 136 underground comics, 8, 24, 124, 205–6, 277 United Fruit Company, 93, 110 Upstart Associates, xvi, 34–35, 52, 211–12

i n d e x â•…â•… 301 V for Vendetta, 136 Van de Walle, Tony, 82, 111, 228 Vanilla Ice, 285 Varley, Lynn, 208 Verdict, 81 Verhoeven, Paul, 106 Viper, xviii, 171, 180, 230, 236, 248 Vortex Comics, 113, 137, 138 Vosburg, Mike, 3, 80, 83, 84, 85, 105, 111, 145–46, 228 war comics, 160, 272 War is Hell: The First Flight of the Phantom Eagle, xx, 259 Ware, Chris, 280, 281 Warren, Jim, 14, 183, 206 Wash Tubbs, 202 Watchmen, viii, 95, 103, 135–36, 257 Weegee (Arthur Fellig), 73, 77 Wein, Len, xvi, 19, 47, 271 Weisinger, Mort, 192 Weiss, Alan, 133–34, 199, 209, 285 Welles, Orson, 7 Welsh, William, 257 Westerns, 3, 6, 11, 26, 86, 89, 117, 143, 151, 157, 192–93, 238, 253, 276–77 Whigham, Rod, 82 Whitcomb, Jon, 284 White, Biljo, 85, 168 White Noise, 267 Wild, Wild West, 235 WildStorm, 237 Wiley, Lee, 205 Williams, Race, 249 Williamson, Al, 94 Willingham, Bill, 69, 70 Willis, Bruce, 112, 167 Wills, Bob, 71 Wilson, S. Clay, 124 Windsor-Smith, Barry (Barry Smith), 13, 16, 28, 278 Winslow, Don, 254 Wodehouse, P. G., 247

Wolcott, James, 274 Wolverine, x, xx Wolverine/Nick Fury: The Scorpio Connection, xviii, 145, 147–48 Wood, Ashley, 270 Wood, Wallace, xi, xv, 26, 82, 115, 197, 199, 200, 203–4, 206–7, 288 Woods, James, 280 Woolfolk, Dorothy, xv, 26, 199 Woolrich, Cornell, 220, 221 World of Krypton, xvii, 25 World War II, 86, 88, 91, 96, 119, 122, 123, 128, 129, 235, 247, 258, 261, 262, 263, 273 Worlds of the Imperium, xvii, 63 Wrightson, Bernie, 8, 53, 183, 185–86, 199, 208–9, 211, 243 writing: Chaykin’s approach to, 7, 16, 20–22, 33, 42–44, 47, 49–51, 54, 56, 58–61, 63, 66–67, 68–69, 71, 86, 88, 89–94, 109, 121–22, 127, 128, 129, 171, 173, 183, 202, 210, 221–22, 250–53, 254; compared to drawing, 5–6, 7, 111, 143, 159 Wyeth, N. C., 13 Wylie, Philip, xix X-Men, 64, 86, 103, 105, 162, 170, 229, 231 Young, Lester, 71, 123 Youngblood, 279 You’ve Got Mail, 237 Yummy Fur, 135, 136 Zahler, Leslie, xvi, xviii, 51, 59, 282–83 Zenith Press, 136 Zorro, 36, 96