WaP!

The Forgotten Activist Prozine: Prologue

“Censorship” cartoon ©1986, 2010 Frank Miller; posted for archival purposes only, all rights reserved to Frank Miller.

I’ve been promising this upcoming serialized essay for a long time, so here goes.

A little setup and prep this morning, with (for those who care enough to pursue it) some homework…

* I’ve made a few rather oblique references over the past few years on various serialized Myrant historical posts about an activist prozine I was part of named WaP! Running a mere eight issues (nine, counting the #0 “preview” edition), WaP! may have only last two years (1988-89), but it was both a culmination and a catalyst in its day.

I want to talk about WaP! for a bit, but that requires some laying of groundwork and historical context.

See, I told you there was homework.

* Two of my past serialized essays lay the foundation for your understanding part of where WaP! came from: the temper (and I do mean temper) of the times, a few of the issues, and such.

Mind you, some of the story I simply can’t provide, as (a) I don’t know it (I was, after all, a long-distance participant, based on Vermont) and (b) some of the key participants are either no longer with us, have moved into other political belief systems, or (c) will (hopefully) weigh in themselves, via either comments or emails to me (msbissette@yahoo.com) I can then weave into the narrative.

So what you’ll be getting are my memories, my perspective—per usual—and, thankfully, scans from my collection of the entire run of WaP!

These scans will be limited. I can’t and won’t post complete issue contents online. I don’t have permission to run complete articles/essays, other than my own; but I’m comfortable running the covers, and select opening paragraphs, along with completed lists of contents. So, it’ll provide some access to this rarity in comics creator collective action—a concept rarer still today, unfortunately.

* For me, WaP! was the culmination of a steep learning curve initiated by John Totleben‘s and my relationship with—specifically, John turning me on to—the Mid-Ohio Con in the 1980s.

Out of that annual November convention emerged my/our friendships with Dave Sim, Frank Miller, Bill Sienkiewicz, and others; out of that also came what eventually coalesced into Taboo.

And Taboo‘s backstory is part and parcel of the path to WaP!, for me.

* I’ve written at length about how and where Taboo came from, but for the purposes of understanding WaP! and my role therein,

• Chapter 8 of “Taboo Origins” will provide as handy a launch platform as any, including links to prior Myrant essays and such of interest. Here ya go; click this link.

I’ve provided links to the fuller Taboo historical posts at the end of this prologue, below.

* Central to that part of the story was Puma Blues, the collaborative fruit of writer Steve Murphy and artist Michael Zulli, initially published by Dave Sim in what proved to be the last of Dave’s many experiments in ethical publishing of creator-owned comics. To cut to the chase (excerpted from the above linked “Taboo Origins” chapter):

“…The fires were stoked with the ongoing friction between Dave and Diamond, which had gained its own peculiar, personalized momentum. In short order, it became personal for all parties involved. Dave was outraged with Diamond’s behavior; Puma Blues cocreators Steve Murphy and Michael Zulli were outraged at the situation they found themselves blameless in, reduced to poker chips in a card game they weren’t even invited to — which only further outraged Dave (though not with Steve or Michael, mind you; not for a nanosecond).

Mind you, too: Steve and Michael weren’t living high on the hog. Aside from any other jobs or freelance they juggled, what they earned from Puma Blues was what Puma Blues earned from its sales; they weren’t paid page rates or advances on issues. This wasn’t a traditional publishing model, and Puma Blues wasn’t a big seller by any stretch of the imagination.

On the Diamond end of this equation — which you’ll recall began with Diamond Distributor National Account Representative Bill Schanes becoming incensed at Dave’s refusing to take Bill’s calls and culminated in Schanes having threatened to refuse listing Puma Blues due to Diamond’s frustration with Dave Sim’s self-distribution of the Cerebus collections High Society, Church & State and Cerebus — it went from Bill Schanes being outraged to Diamond mogul Steve Geppi taking everything personally, too, as the following demonstrates.

And you don’t want to piss off Steve Geppi, ever, do you?

In the spring of 1988 — as Taboo 1 was approaching completion, with Taboo 2 already in the works and coming together — the logjam seemed to break at last.

[High Society, Cerebus and Church & State cover art ©1987, 1988, 2009 Dave Sim and Gerhard, Cerebus TM Dave Sim. Note: The following is ©1988, 2009 Bill Moulage; Bill, if you're out there, drop me a line, please. From Puma Blues #20, “Aardvark-Diamond Chronology,” “The Main Events,” pg. 19-20.]

Alas, this settlement was short-lived — and its eventual outcome impacted us all, as it turned out.

Though those of us in the direct orbit of events were told what happened the day after the phone call between Dave and Steve Geppi, the battle lines had been drawn. It was an uneasy truce, at best…”

Got that?

Good.

Moving on:

* Another prozine collective publication that played a role in all this was Scott McCloud‘s “invention” (his word) of The Frying Pan.

Without opening too many cans of worms, let me further excerpt the above “Taboo Origins” chapter, and lay that groundwork and The Frying Pan‘s chronological relationship with WaP! (which was only chronological; I believe I was the only real point of intersection between The Frying Pan and WaP!, as a contributor to both):

“…Among creator circles, we were all talking among ourselves in a variety of forums. This was long before email, the internet and the like; Scott McCloud launched The Frying Pan, an APA (Amateur Press Association) publication exclusively by and for creators. Frank Miller, Steven Grant and their associates launched WaP! (Words and Pictures), a lively newsletter of radical creator agitprop that I’ll write about in the future — once I find and scan my stash of issues and can offer a cohesive overview of that publication. I was a frequent contributor to both of these.

The Frying Pan set sail in 1986, and ran throughout this entire period; WaP! was launched in April 1988, and became central to the Cerebus/Diamond/Puma Blues affair, as you shall see.

Adding gasoline to the bonfire, it seemed like every distributor and retailer in comics was now pissed — personally ripshit — at Dave, too…”

* To follow through that particular Puma Blues and Taboo-centric orientation to the WaP! years,

• give Chapter 9 of “Taboo Origins” a read, too.

Specifically:

“…by now, everyone was taking all this very personally — even folks who weren’t involved were taking all this very personally. So you can imagine, perhaps, how those directly involved were feeling.

So, now, see, because of the time lag between actual event and press coverage of said event, and dubious reporting of one of those events (particularly the phone call between Steve Geppi and Michael Zulli), we now arrive at critical-mass-clusterfuck in the whole Cerebus/Diamond/Puma Blues debacle.

[Note: The following is ©1988, 2009 Bill Moulage; Bill, if you're out there, drop me a line, please. From Puma Blues #20, “Aardvark-Diamond Chronology,” “The Main Events,” pg. 19-20.]

Which included Taboo. Like I said, I was finding myself increasingly in the crossfire here, with Taboo the next planned Aardvark One International project.

Enter Cheryl Prindle, who along with her husband Jim Prindle were key to operations of the Northampton MA nerve center of Kevin Eastman and Peter Laird‘s Mirage Studios (until Cheryl’s tragic early death in the 1990s). Cheryl was at the Diamond Seminar:

Whew — at last.

But the damage had been done.

These were the events that led to the spring/summer 1988 decision to dissolve Aardark One International.

Within a week of Dave’s phone call alerting my first wife Nancy (now Marlene) O’Connor and I ofhis decision to dismantle his publishing plans, Nancy and I formed SpiderBaby Grafix & Publications as business entity in our home state of Vermont.

With ongoing funding and informational support from Dave and Karen McKiel, we finally completed Taboo 1 and entered the marketplace in the fall of 1988. The book shipped in the fall; the solicitation was sent to distributors in the spring of 1988, as a SpiderBaby publication — my first publishing effort since entering the field in 1976 with the collaboratively-published solo issue of Abyss at Johnson State College, Johnson, VT.

Now, about that Puma Blues benefit issue — Puma Blues #20, the “Eat or Be Eaten” issue, from which [the excerpted text columns above and] account of the Cerebus/Diamond/Puma Blues debacle is excerpted:

Puma Blues #20 stands — along with the relevant issues of WaP! and Dave’s text pages from the relevant issues of Cerebus — as the best documentation of what this whole weird dance meant to many of us….”

And if you really want to make sense of the whole Puma Blues debacle, which is central to part of WaP! #1′s contents (which I’ll share in some detail next post), really, go back and read the entire “Taboo Origins” serialized essay. It’s—complicated, to say the least.

* Toward the end of 2009, I posted a bit more about WaP! on Myrant, but just a teaser, really. That’s because I wanted to gauge whether anyone was really interested, and also because I had yet to find the complete set in the SpiderBaby Archives.

• Here’s the post,

and here’s the meat of it, with the illustration materials I shared at that time:

“…In working my way through the SpiderBaby Archives, I’ve stumbled upon a couple of copies of WAP!, the short-lived 1988 prozine (as in a pro community zine for pros) launched by fellow comics pros Frank Miller, Steve Gerber, Steven Grant and Brad Munson.

It’s been a heady blast-from-the-past to scour these issues two decades later — and also to recall, rekindle and feel anew the irrevocable loss the quiet folding of WAP! meant at the time. For me personally, WAP! and The Frying Pan (it’s companion in time: Scott McCloud‘s APA-zine for pros in which we discussed and dissected one another’s work) embodied the height of feeling, really feeling, part of a comics community and that there was hope for taking on the larger issues that concerned my generation of comics creators — and, with its termination, the first inkling of how badly that community was going to fail itself, and thus fail the next generation of cartoonists, too.

WAP! is a lost chapter in 1980s comics history. As I found earlier this year when I wrote about Rawhead Rex, Michael Zulli, Rick Hautala and my attempts to adapt Rick‘s Little Brothers to comics, and Michael‘s back history with Dave Sim, Puma Blues, Diamond Comics Distribution and that slightly-better-remembered and documented slice of 1980s comics history, there’s absolutely nothing online about WAP!

It’s as if it never existed.

In the coming weeks, I’ll …write a few posts about WAP! – what it was, what it represented, and what I had to do with it. Among my files I’ve also found my rough drafts, revised drafts and letters back-and-forth with Frank (who tended to favor phone calls over writing), Steve and Steven (both of whom favored writing letters over phone calls) about my own contributions to WAP!

Something to look forward to for some of you, I hope…”

Well, it took me over three years, but here we go!

* But wait, there’s more!

Another critical historical series of events that culminated in WaP!—events closer to the urgency that prompted its initiation and publication—were ongoing fraying of relations between certain freelancers and DC Comics.

Again, I’ve written at considerable length about those events. The complete serialized essay ran on Myrant throughout March 2010; I’m currently revising that essay for eventual print and ebook publication later this year or early in 2014.

For the purposes of your grasping the ire and mire WaP! emerged directly from,

• give the initial introductory piece a read—here it is: “Forgotten Comics Wars, Or: How Angry Freelancers Made It Possible for A New Mainstream Comics Era (Including Vertigo) to Exist…,” just for starters.

* The next volley of fire that lent enough urgency to the collective freelancer alarm to conceive, initiate, and actually publish WaP! were the ongoing 1980s community-centric legal attacks on the comics retailer community throughout the US and Canada, and the controversies over how to deal with those arrests, prosecutions, and lawsuits.

• The conclusion of the serialized March 2010 essays with “The DC/Marvel Ratings Debacle 1986-87, Part 12″ provides sufficient information to make sense of that “brick in the wall,” if you will—naturally, reading all 12 installments with provide those of you willing to invest the time with the fullest context possible.

Like I said: homework. But mighty meaty reading, too, to say the least.

Excerpting the WaP!-relevant portion of that concluding chapter:

“…The 1986-87 DC standards and practices and labeling controversy was soon forgotten amid the subsequent busts, the subsequent controversies. Frank, Howard and Marv indeed continued to work with DC (and Marvel), there were more comics shops busted (primarily of labeled comics and comix),

The Comic Book Legal Defense Fund — originally funded, founded and helmed by underground comix publisher Denis Kitchen — became the primary industry advocate and venue for all of us who cared to continue the fight.

Many of us did what we could to get behind the CBLDF — donations, fundraisers, signings, convention appearances (I rolled out my horror comics history slide show, ‘Journeys Into Fear,’ for a full year at cons and gatherings to fundraise for CBLDF, as well as making personal monetary donations when I could afford to) — though it must be said that over the years Dave Sim and Neil Gaiman arguably stood and stand tallest among the many freelancers, creators and self-publishers to made sure the CBLDF coffers didn’t run dry. That is in no way intended to minimize the efforts of all others who pitched and still pitch in, but Dave and Neil [Gaiman] raised and donated mighty, mighty sums to the ongoing legal battles that continue to this day.

The loose coalition of activist freelancers forged by the 1986-87 DC standards and practices and labels controversy went on to publish WaP! the following year [...]

Many in comics ridiculed and reviled WaP!, too, if they noted its existence at all — just as prominent creators then and today ridicule and revile the subsequent Creator Bill of Rights which Scott McCloud proposed and a gathering of like-minded creators ratified in Northampton, MA in November, 1988 (that gathering being Scott McCloud, Ken Mitchroney, Mark Martin, Michael Dooney, Steve Lavigne, Peter Laird, Kevin Eastman, Ryan Brown, Michael Zulli, Richard Pini, Larry Marder, Dave Sim, Rick Veitch, Eric Talbot and Gerhard — oh, and me).

That, in its way, also grew out of the events of 1986-87, and all that followed.

• As Scott McCloud notes on his own website, referring to that fateful November 1988 creator summit, and how his slightly revised draft of the Bill of Rights for Comics Creators reflected the times in which it was forged, “The original Summit version spoke of control of format and distribution rather than approval and included an additional article about labeling which had been a hot topic at the time, but should be adequately covered by format.” This serialized essay finally provides a proper historic context for Scott‘s Bill, and that specific statement on his site.

DC Comics didn’t care about that. Most everyone at DC forgot about it almost immediately, if they’d noticed it at all...”

And that should provide what you need to make sense of what I’ll start sharing on Friday, in some depth and detail.

To be continued!

______________________

For those who want to read and/or know more:

An earlier, in-depth Myrant serialized essay detailing where Taboo came from — which covers in excrutiating detail the events framing and following this 1986-87 DC Comics standards and practices and ratings hubbub — is instantly at your fingertips by clicking the links below. It might answer many questions about what happened next, including the Aardvark/Diamond Comics controversy, WaP!, and what led to the historic Creator’s Summit of November 1988.

• SpiderBaby Archives: Taboo Origins, Part 1 (which covers Dave Sim‘s experimental offering to creators he cherry-picked, and details the events of 1985-1986);
• Taboo Origins Part 2 (horror comics and the birth pangs of Taboo 1, 1985-86);
• Taboo Origins Part 3 (1st draft, the Taboo Manifesto);
• Taboo Origins Part 4 (the Taboo Manifesto);
• Taboo Origins Part 5 — here’s some meat & potatoes concerning the pivotal 1985 Mid Ohio Comics Convention, my meeting Frank Miller, and my departure from Swamp Thing and DC Comics;
• (and this followup post on why I didn’t meet Frank in 1977 — I was to busy heading off to the movies!);

• Taboo Origins Part 6 — “The Learning Curve; Or, How the System Worked, and How It Didn’t” — discussing the events of 1986-87, including Dave Sim‘s battle with Diamond Comics Dist., John and I leaving Swamp Thing, and John and Alan beginning work on their incredible Miracleman arc, which you can now read in the greater context of the DC Ratings Debacle of that same time period (I told you a lot was going on, didn’t I?);
• Taboo Origins Part 7 — detailing Dave Sim‘s publishing experiment of 1987 that spawned a new book format ceiling for all comics publishers, as well as what Aardvark One International was meant to be, and what became of it, and why SpiderBaby Comix & Publications was born;
• Taboo Origins Part 8 — the events of 1987-88, with a focus on Dave Sim vs. Diamond Comics Dist. and the shockwaves in the creative community that spawned;
• SpiderBaby Archives: Taboo Origins, Part 9 (Conclusion) — which covers the events the led from Sim vs. Diamond to the first Creator Summits of 1988, and the first-draft ‘Manifesto for Creators’ — which culminated in the November 1988 Scott McCloud “A Bill of Rights for Comics Creators.”
• Finally, here is Scott McCloud’s page on his own website concerning the November 1988 creator summit and his revised draft of the Bill of Rights for Comics Creators.

_________________

All WaP! images, content ©1988, 1989 the respective creative contributors and proprietors. All other cover art or comics images © respective year of original publication their original creators and/or proprietors. Excerpted essays ©2009, 2010, and this text material ©2013 Stephen R. Bissette, all rights reserved. Permission to link, post pingbacks granted, but please do not quote excessively or post these essays on your own blogs, websites or venues; it’s not yours to play with. NOTE: All images are posted for archival and educational purposes only, under applicable US Fair Use laws.

Ditko Monsters—

—Rule! But, No Rules…

Maternal love, Gorgo style; the heart and soul of the Gorgo mythos.

* I’ve written and sung the praises of the Charlton monster comics at length—and will again in print—but for today, it’s Charlton‘s popular 1960s Gorgo comics series I’m writing about, specifically Craig Yoe‘s most handsome Yoe Books/IDW reprint edition of the complete Joe Gill (script)/Steve Ditko (art) entries in the Charlton Gorgo series.

A little background: first of all, I’ve been in love with Gorgo—the monster, the movie, the comic—for over half a century, so no unbiased impartial reading here. I’ve held on to every single issue of Gorgo and Gorgo’s Revenge/Return of Gorgo (and all the Charlton monster comics) to the present day, and won’t bore you with my own ongoing relationship with ‘em all. To paraphrase what someone once wrote as a comment when I sang the praises of Tim Lucas‘s biography of Mario Bava, Mario Bava: All the Color of the Dark, “you’re gonna get that book pregnant.” Well, same goes for Gorgo—all incarnations of Gorgo.

Now, this new Yoe Books/IDW Gorgo reprint volume—Ditko Monsters Vol. 1: Gorgo, which just arrived via pre-order last week—ignores much of the Charlton Gorgo series to (understandably) favor only those issues drawn by Steve Ditko, who one year after lavishly delineating Charlton‘s initial issue of Gorgo (adapting the MGM/King Brothers movie) would co-create one of the most famous and popular characters in comicbook history, The Amazing Spider-Man, for Marvel Comics. When I was a kid, I loved Spider-Man, too, when it was flowing from Ditko‘s hand—I immediately gave up the title when Ditko left—but not the way I loved Gorgo.

Poster art by the great Reynold Brown: reportedly, MGM went with Brown’s rough version, not giving him time to bring it to planned completion.

Flashback to 1961: though it was a British feature film production, Gorgo opened at the end of March, 1961 (as if it were designed to be my personal birthday gift just two weeks after my sixth birthday!) throughout America (opening in London in October of the same year). Giant monster movies had been raging on the big screen for almost a full decade, spawned by the one-two punch of RKO‘s surprise blockbuster success with a 1952 reissue of King Kong (1933) and Warner Bros. even more surprising boxoffice score with the indy pickup The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms (1953).

This tsunami hadn’t subsided by 1960, it had only picked up steam. By 1961, two competing British studios had produced Konga and Gorgo, while producer Sidney Pink completed the Danish Reptilicus (finally released, after much folderol, by American-International Pictures in 1962)—and all three became Charlton licensed titles, as Monarch movie tie-in paperbacks and as long-lasting Charlton Comics series that long outlived the brief theatrical runs of all three monster movies.

Gorgo was bankrolled by prolific producers Frank and Maurice King—who had scored big with their import of Toho’s first color daikaiju-eiga,空の大怪獣 ラドン / Sora no Daikaijū Radon / Rodan the Flying Monster (1956/57)—and they were, as I was once told by British-born producers Richard Gordon and Alex Gordon (over a marvelous Syracuse, NY CineFest dinner orchestrated by my pal G. Michael Dobbs and Alex), rather fixated on their mother. Eager to both tap the giant monster boom and send a love letter to mothers everywhere, the King Brothers wrangled famed production designer/director Eugène Lourié, who previously directed and co-wrote both The Beast from 20,000 Fathoms and the British Behemoth the Sea Monster/The Giant Behemoth (1959), to direct. Despite his misgivings over being typecast as a monster movie director (his only other directorial effort was The Colossus of New York, 1958, for Paramount), Lourié made the most of the opportunity, working from a solid script credited to “John Loring” and “Daniel Hyatt” (actually blacklisted screenwriters Robert L. Richards and Daniel James). After Gorgo, Lourié resigned himself to returning to production design and art direction, never to direct again, though Gorgo was a hell of a monster movie in its day.

Charlton—already renowned in the industry for paying their writers and artists the lowest rates in the industry and printing their books on the cheapest pulp paper possible—really milked the license, and I loved Gorgo as I loved few other comicbooks. Gorgo ran 23 issues, plus three Gorgo’s Revenge/Return of Gorgo issues—28 issues in all, if one counts the giant-sized Fantastic Giants as #24 (which Charlton did, in its indicia).

Only a handful of that run sported Steve Ditko‘s artwork, but oh, what a handful! They’re all here, in Ditko Monsters Vol. 1, and to put it simply, a more lavish commemorative collection could not be imagined. And, as if perfectly timed to joint release, VCI released a brand-new Gorgo DVD/Blu-Ray restored edition about one week before the Yoe Books/IDW Gorgo reprint volume arrived. What could be better?

• (See Glenn Erickson‘s review of the new VCI edition at DVD Savant.)

So, right from the start: my hearty congratulations to editor Craig Yoe and designer Clizia Gussoni for producing such a lovely book. It’s really quite exquisite, a hefty hardcover offering 224 full-color pages, measuring 8.5 x 1.1 x 11 inches and weighing in just over three pounds. The cover is lovingly textured with a faux-reptile skin scale pattern, the interior archival paper stock is the best possible reprint of a series previously peppered with a scattershot cheapjack reprint history, to say the least.

Now, this material has been available, piecemeal, in other formats, none as comprehensive or sterling as this. Consider what came before, in terms of reprint volumes (and aside from Charlton‘s own reprint, it’s all a progression of pirate editions):
Gorgo #24/Fantastic Giants, Charlton Comics, September 1966; reprints the complete Gorgo #1 and Konga #1 movie adaptations, plus two new Ditko monster stories.
A-Plus Comics, 1991; black-and-white one-shot reprinting Gorgo #1 and #3, with Gorgo‘s name relettered to “Kegor.”

The Ditko Reader, Pure Imagination, 2002; Gorgo #4 cover is the only Gorgo material reprinted herein. Editor/publisher Greg Theakston (“Earl P. Wooton”) got around to reprinting some of Ditko‘s Gorgo and Konga material in 2011 in this black-and-white volume:

So, as a book, a physical entity, and the almost-ideal collected edition imaginable, Yoe’s Ditko Monsters, Vol. 1: Gorgo is the best collected edition to date, and likely to remain so for our lifetimes (who’s going to put out a companion or competing volume?).

As for the contents, written by Joe Gill and drawn by Steve Ditko: well, I warned you from the outset. I love these comics stories, and they’ve aged beautifully for this Monster Kid. As I mentioned, I still have every issue of Gorgo in my collection, and I revisit them every few years. Furthermore, I have extensive emotional, associational, and experiential baggage for the true then-contemporary, now-historical context of these Gorgo issues; having been just the right age to experience almost the whole of Ditko‘s 1960s work as it was published (including Witzend, his reach for true independence and creator-ownership), I cannot impartially revisit these stories, this artwork.

Ditko was omnipresent in the 1960s: Ditko was reveling in a succession of creative peaks, and it’s no exaggeration to say in hindsight that every month seemed to offer a fresh dose of Ditko in the 1960s, via his steady stream of work in Charlton Comics, Marvel Comics, DC Comics, Tower, Warren‘s black-and-white horror comics magazines, and even oddball surprises (like Charlton‘s Mad Monsters #1, or Wally Wood‘s mail-order-only Witzend, which I discovered via a writeup in Castle of Frankenstein).

Long dismissed as inferior to his Marvel and Warren 1960s work, these Charlton monster comics were and remain quite marvelous, in every sense of the word.

There’s absolutely no need to equivocate. Gorgo #1 (sample pages above, below) was and remains in fact one of Ditko‘s finest comics art jobs, ever, brimming with energetic and ever-inventive staging, characterization, action, and imagination. His human characters are as wonderfully realized as his monsters in this movie comic, and the build-up to Gorgo‘s reveal is beautifully executed. It’s also, arguably, along with Konga #1, his first significant lengthy and sustained narrative effort—a full issue single narrative—after well over a decade of drawing short self-contained stories. Pre-dating his key Marvel character work (which began afterwards), Gorgo #1 is a classic stretch for Ditko, and as such one of the most significant works in his Silver Age canon. Why has this never been acknowledged before?

Unfettered from the movie’s man-in-suit effects constraints, while remaining true to the movie’s monster design (based in part on classical Viking dragon iconography), Ditko brought Gorgo and his mother to rich, abundant, eye-popping life. While countless praises have been published about the often-lackluster Dell movie comics adaptations (and yes, I bought, read, collected, and have kept many of those—some were indeed excellent comics), I consider Ditko‘s movie adaptations of both Gorgo and Konga easily as good as, and better than many of, the Dell movie comics.

In fact, I defy anyone to find any panels, pages, or sequences from any Dell sf, horror, fantasy, or monster comic*—other than John Buscema‘s terrific cyclops sequence for Dell‘s The 7th Voyage of Sinbad (1958) comic adaptation—that even comes close to the vivid, literally volcanic power of Ditko‘s work on the Gorgo movie tie-in comic. Hey, I loved and still love Jesse Marsh, but Ditko‘s Gorgo stood in stark contrast to Marsh‘s matter-of-fact Pal-Ul-Don-like resurrected saurians for Dell‘s movie comic of Dinosaurus; I’m an Alex Toth devotee, too, but his lackluster monsters for The Land Unknown comic, or Gil Kane‘s thudding The Lost World dinosaurs for Dell, don’t hold a torch to Ditko‘s Gorgo adaptation:

Gorgo’s mother smashes the phallic lighthouse: patriarchal male power, visibly usurped/destroyed (and at crotch level), with the mother’s entrance in Ditko’s brilliant visualization/adaptation of Gorgo for comics!

______

What was lavished, timewise, on the licensed “special issue” debuts of Gorgo and Konga was undoubtably impossible to emulate on subsequent Gorgo issues.

Were the later issues crude? Rushed? Goofy at times? You bet. But they were and are still great monster comics.

Nevertheless, Ditko‘s energy, invention, and imagination never flagged, even if the deadlines and page rates meant he simply could not devote to later issues what he had to the movie adaptations. But that didn’t and doesn’t inhibit the vision, vigor, or lasting entertainment value of these comics one whit, and some of the uninitiated will find unexpected delights in this collection.

Though Gorgo was one of the few movie monsters without nuclear bomb or radiation-related origins, iconic Cold War fears fueled the Charlton comics series. You’ll find ample evidence of that in this book.

The pages are brimming with communist villains (above), nuclear bombs (below), espionage, xenophobia, and even extraterrestrial invasions plague Gorgo and Gorgo‘s mom, while almost every issue was a parable—most consistent with Gill‘s and Ditko‘s own thematic career threads, from then to today—on the injustice of exploitation and those who believe themselves to be superior intellectually preying upon the perceived “weak” (Gorgo was and is, after all, in infant or adolescent of his species).

My personal favorites of those exploitation parables either find playful self-referential narrative springboards from the comic’s own movie origins—such as the Americans who decide to capture and study Gorgo after seeing Gorgo in the movies (above), essentially restaging Gorgo‘s origin for the Cold War era of US vs. Communism polemics—or those anticipating Godzilla‘s soon-to-manifest role as Earth’s (and, by proxy, mankind’s) saviors, repelling invaders. In terms of the monster genre in all media, it’s important to note that Gill and Ditko pioneered this “monster as savior” conceit in the 1960s—these comics predated the daikaiju-eiga turnabout of Toho‘s fifth Gojira/Godzilla epic 三大怪獣　地球最大の決戦 / San Daikaijū: Chikyū Saidai no Kessen / Ghidrah, the Three-Headed Monster (December 1964; US release September 1965).

[Spoiler Alert: Skip past the comics pages and excerpt panel below if you don't want to read the ending of a key story in this collection; pick up reading at the red line break to skip the spoiler.]

My favorite of all the Ditko “Gorgo as savior” stories remains his last Gorgo opus, The Return of Gorgo Special Edition #2, “The Creature from Corpus III,” in which humanoid/amphibian extraterrestrial invader Koorii was intent on “convincing” Gorgo that they should team up to usurp the reign of mankind meets his match. As a morality tale aimed at young readers that effectively dramatizes and dissects the hubris and fate of an antagonist intent on exploiting perceived “tribal” bonds for malicious goals, this is as good as anything (and better than much) the Stan Lee/Steve Ditko collaborations yielded prior to Amazing Fantasy #15:

For instance, note the subtle foreshadowing of Koorii‘s fate in panel 2 of this page. The positioning of the alien’s fist—as if to hold Gorgo‘s mother (and hence the saurian species) in his grip—is calculated, and sets up the understated finale:



Look at that second panel on the final page, one of my favorite panels in all comics: Gorgo‘s casual release of the alien’s crushed body, simply letting go of what was, to Gorgo, a broken thing of only momentary interest. That’s smart, deft, elegant, simple, direct cartooning, folks, by any standard: the gesture, the composition, the offhand (and seemingly effortless) nature of it, everything. Lovely, lovely stuff.

And reread that last dialogue balloon on the final page (the story’s final line)—Gill‘s scripts were often quite lovely, too. Again, why has Gill been so overlooked and underrated as a writer? For genre scholars: I ask you, was there a more insightful meditation on monster love than Gill‘s Charlton Gorgo (maternal love/devotion) and Reptisaurus (interspecies love/courtship/parenting) comics, prior to 1970 (i.e., Len Wein and Berni Wrightson‘s “Swamp Thing” story, Bruce Jones‘s debut in black-and-white horror comics zines)? I think not.

While there’s clear evidence of Ditko taking shortcuts on this particular issue—note that Gorgo‘s teeth, by this end point in the series, no longer merited even the additional fleeting time/ink/white-out work necessary to breaking those huge triangular dental forms into the more needle-like teeth Ditko earlier drew Gorgo and Gorgo‘s mother sporting—Ditko was still giving his expressive all to every page, panel, and story.

[End of Spoiler Alert]

________________

The monster action was constant, too, which is (let’s face it) all that most kids expected or required of a comic like Gorgo:

I reckon all I can still pine for, as a diehard fan of these comics, are complete reprint volumes, but that’s unlikely to happen. Let’s face it: in 2013, Steve Ditko, not the monsters, is the “marketable star” of these comics, as Yoe‘s title makes clear.

Unlike other Ditko fans who have discussed their attachment to his work, I did not find the non-Ditko issues of Gorgo or Konga instant disappointments; unlike Spider-Man, which I ditched as soon as Ditko was gone, even as a kid, I stuck with Gorgo and Konga through thick and non-Ditko thin (though that, too, was in the eye of the beholder: I liked and still quite enjoy the art by the team of Bill Montes and Ernie Bache, among others). I was equally enjoying Joe Gill‘s scripts and the completely bizarre flavor of the Charlton monster comics as a whole, and I snapped ‘em all up as I lucked into them (and caught up on missing issues early in the 1970s, when Charlton‘s like these were still easily found in cheapie bins and incredibly affordable).

But, back to Ditko‘s work—as this collection demonstrates, he gave his all to every single outing, and even those that (in hindsight) my now-practiced pro cartoonist eye can identify as “rushed” really sing.

Craig Yoe‘s assessment of Ditko‘s work herein doesn’t always jive with my own. Craig tags Gorgo #11 as having arguably been ghosted in part by Ditko’s studio partner, Eric Stanton; I don’t buy that, but who knows (only Ditko, and he isn’t talking about such matters). Yoe‘s introduction is otherwise pretty solid, covering the wellspring movie in some detail and offering a showcase to the gorgo-eous Basil Gogos Famous Monsters of Filmland #11 cover art (April 1961), which is indelibly burned into the memories of all 1960s Monster Kids. We also get plenty of fun promotional art and pressbook materials from Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer‘s US release of the film, and more.

For the most part, Craig and Clizia’s design work is impeccable throughout, including their ingenious play with the UPC code on the back cover (at left). Very sharp and funny!

To my eye, the only real design lapse is in the opening spread of Craig‘s introduction, in which the conceptual conceit—the columns of typeset as “skyscrapers”—just doesn’t read to my eye, and makes for the only design fumble in the entire volume (see below). Nice idea, but unlike their UPC code antics, it doesn’t gel; the black square paragraph breaks are a maladroit touch (thankfully abandoned after these two pages), the lack of any breathing space around the text columns where they cut into the Ditko art lifts cramp the reading and design uncomfortably. Ah, well, too bad. The rest of the intro pages, though, pleasingly balance text and ample illustration eye-candy with aplomb.

In other ways, Yoe‘s text leaves some key history untouched, or simply pictured without further information or context (i.e., the infamous Carson Bingham paperback from Charlton‘s paperback imprint Monarch, which I cover here at Myrant back in 2009: see links, below). Yoe‘s intro research nevertheless holds true, but I have to note one major faux pas in the book—that Return of Gorgo Special Edition #2 cover isn’t a Ditko creation:

That’s most definitely the work of Dick Giordano, who told me so himself back in 1977 (when I asked him after class at the Joe Kubert School of Cartoon and Graphic Art, Inc., where Dick taught us inking). I understand the reason for Craig‘s error—after all, most online sources credit Steve Ditko—but one look at the art itself, particularly its Gorgo (and particularly the head and those teeth), and it’s obvious Ditko had nothing to do with it.

Now, on to the downside of this book:

Damn.

Another pricey, lovely, big ol’ hardcover reprint of a great cartoonists work—and not a fucking penny to the cartoonist.

I hate to harp on this, but, shit. Shit howdy.

Reeeeally, IDW? Really, Craig?

C’mon, you’re multiple volumes into Ditkoland.

Do something to address, preferably redress, this.  

As a consumer, I did what I habitually do these days when I spend anything on any Ditko book or collection: I immediately sent an order off to Robin Snyder to purchase/support one or more of the Steve Ditko projects Robin and Steve have packaged and published most recently. I popped $75 off to Robin and Steve last week; via a separate mailing, I also re-upped my subscription to Robin‘s ongoing newsletter The Comics, which has recently offered reprints of earlier (long out-of-print) Comics essays by Ditko, and the initial installments of a whole new essay series by Ditko:

A lot has been said over the past couple of weeks, much of it to or about me, about what Steve Ditko would or wouldn’t want to have said, or say, or be said on his behalf, or be done, or whatever.

Ditko continues to speak out himself, and he clearly has ongoing concerns and should be heard. Here, how about tuning in to just one of those?

With the express permission of Robin Snyder, here’s the opening paragraphs of one of the recent Ditko essays relevant to the Spider-Man situation(s):

Again, that appears here with permission, folks.

I’ll hold off commenting further, allowing Ditko to speak for himself.

But come on, “comics fans,” discuss that. Discuss what Ditko is writing himself. 

In short, if you’re a Ditko reader, and you’re not subscribing to The Comics, what are you waiting for? A one-year subscription (hell, a two year subscription!) is less than the retail price of any one Yoe Books/IDW Ditko collection.

Going a step further, I also contributed to this Kickstarter campaign, “The Ditko Public Service Package #2,” from Steve and Robin. Robin writes, “A 112 page, black-and-white reprint… This is the 2nd edition of this book and a sequel to an earlier book, Ditko Package. As such, it is nearly ready to go. The story and artwork are finished. Most production work is complete…” I’m a donor,

• and there’s still a little over a week to go, too, so feel free to kick in something, folks!

I’ve also sent in my pre-order check for:

What do I think, Robin? Hell, here’s my hard-earned dough, part of which I know goes to Ditko when I purchase from you.

As Bob Heer notes, the first Four-Page Series was a collection of five Ditko essays published as part of The Comics:

“The Knowers & the Barkers” 
“The Silent Self-Deceivers” 
“A Newspaper Article, A Reporter’s Report”
“A Deadly Fantasy”
“Why Out Of Their Way?”

Bob concluded, “Will The Four-Page Series #2 be more of the same? Something different? With Ditko, you never really know until you have it in your hands.” Indeed.

• Here’s all the ordering information for all the currently available Ditko/Snyder publications, and The Comics newsletter subscription or a sample issue.

Support Ditko directly via your purchases, if that’s vital to you.

And if it isn’t vital to you, then put up or shut up, I say.

Back to Gorgo:

To paraphrase William Shakespeare‘s Julius Ceasar, Act 3, Scene 2, some may argue that “I come to bury Gorgo, not to praise him.” Well, perhaps—but I know I can’t possibly “bury” this flourishing cottage comics reprint industry, nor does the scholar in me aching for greater access to works long entombed in pricey collectibles want to cut off the access such books provide. But—

You know, I was invited to write something for the Gorgo collected edition, and the forthcoming second volume collecting Ditko‘s Konga comics. Something like what you just read, only moreso—something like I just posted on Myrant for you to read, for free.

I declined.

I couldn’t, in good conscience, participate in either venture—much as I love Ditko‘s work, much as I love and adore these two bodies of Ditko work in particular, much as I wish I could have contributed to them.

My decision is my own.

It wasn’t and isn’t a judgment of Craig, or his ongoing reprint volumes—though he is well aware of my own ethical and moral qualms with all this, and respectfully acknowledged that in reaching out to me.

The fact is, much as I enjoy the Gorgo reprint volume, it’s everything I dreamed of—and, sadly, everything I feared it would be:

Ditko‘s name (boxoffice!) writ large, Joe Gill‘s name visible but modest on the front cover, but on the spine and title page, no mention of writer Joe Gill (the spine reads: “Edited by Craig Yoe”).

Oh, well, yes: Joe Gill is given his due. His name is there, small, on the front cover, and inside, in the context of Craig‘s introduction. There’s even a photo of Joe, but damn it, Joe Gill wrote this book. It is comprised almost entirely of Joe Gill‘s scripts, illustrated by toplined-in-the-title Steve Ditko.

Shouldn’t they be listed on the spine as the primary authors, beyond the Ditko Monsters title banner?

Ironic, to say the least, in a collection of stories focusing on the exploitation of monsters unable to speak for themselves, eh? A sequence like this one takes on fresh meaning in the real-world context of how these expensive reprint editions commercially thrive upon exploitation/non-payment of their creators:

Look, I’ve proposed, in earlier Myrant posts and in various Facebook and private conversations, multiple creative solutions to the problems these books present.

I could have argued them all over again, campaigned for them, when I was asked to participate, but frankly, it was easier to just say “no,” with my ethical reasons for declining clearly stated.

But for the record:

* Is there any mention of the ongoing new published work by Steve Ditko, via publisher Robin Snyder? No, not  a whisper—and certainly no full-page complimentary ad for those works.

* Does the copyright indicia reflect, in any way, the copyright status of these works? Well, no. Just the book package in hand, eliminating any messy acknowledgements (that said, Craig does provide a pretty thorough overview of Gorgo and the comics’ history in his illustrated introduction).

* Is there anything in these pages that would steer any Ditko Monsters Vol. 1: Gorgo reader to any means of purchasing anything that would benefit Steve Ditko? No.

So, I declined, and I’m glad, book in hand, I declined. I’ll guiltily buy these books, and balance that karma by sending my money to Robin and Steve every year to support their ongoing and new ventures, and by speaking out publicly about this ongoing injustice, but there it is.

* I’ve also preordered, and am eager to see, Craig‘s second Ditko Monsters volume collecting Konga stories and art.

This should be interesting, as Ditko and Robin Snyder have already collected some of the Konga material in The Lonely One. See, Ditko and Snyder reportedly purchased the copyrights to that material (or some of it) in the wake of Charlton closing up shop.

I bow to Robin‘s and Bob Heer‘s accounts of that transaction, and other Charlton experts, on what was or wasn’t purchased in that transaction, but The Lonely One is still in print and available from Robin

• Here’s the full list of contents of The Lonely One,
• and here’s the ordering info again.

The Lonely One is a black-and-white reprint volume, which means it sports the best-possible incarnation of the material sans color; for some, though, that may not be the attraction it is for me, as a fellow cartoonist.

Others say/write: Why support inexpensive, relatively modest productions like The Lonely One? Surely the Yoe Books/IDW full-color reprint edition will be more lavish, durable, lasting!

Sure. And as I say: you bet your ass the printers are paid for that lavish, full-color, hardcover edition. Not a penny to the creators.

• I wrote at some length about Ditko‘s Konga and The Lonely One for the Center for Cartoon Studies Schulz Library blog back in 2009; here’s the link (which also provides active links to my entire 9-part serialized 2008 Myrant essay on Charlton monster comics and the infamous paperbacks).

Relevant to Gorgo as well, I noted then:

“Steve Ditko gleefully embraced the humor elements [Joe] Gill introduced to the pages of Konga in particular, including a running gag in one issue… involving a photograph of an attractive couple seen reacting to the action of the story. It’s a bit like Gyro Gearloose‘s lightbulb-headed robotic assistant in the Carl Barks Donald Duck /Uncle Scrooge comics (particularly the Gyro Gearloose comics themselves) — you can follow their comedic interaction like a little ‘mini-movie’ hidden inside the panels.

Konga was among Ditko’s most playful comics work ever, a stark contrast to the somber nature of Ditko’s most popular (Spider-Man, Dr. Strange) and most controversial (Mr. A) comics creations…”

Anyhoot, we’ll see what Ditko Monsters Vol. 2: Konga looks like in short order—and what ethical and copyright issues it raises further.

* Are there creative solutions to these ethical dilemmas?

This proliferation of high-ticket collections continues, sans even an attempt to budget for the creators whose names and work sell the books themselves. This is completely out of hand as of 2013.

As we continue to see this cottage industry of reprint volumes proliferate, it’s clear we need a comics industry ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers) or the like.

Something needs to go to the creators and/or their heirs/estates for these packages.

It’s not a matter, either, of whether individual creators (in this case, still-living Steve Ditko) want or will accept income. It’s a matter of a creative community being fleeced regularly, their work filling pages of high-ticket books that pay little or nothing to the creators still alive or the heirs of those passed.

You bet your ass the production and printing is paid for! Look at the list of credits on these books: those folks have been paid, in some form or another.

That said, I have no illusions about ASCAP/BMI or such organizations. I know about the reports of corruption, unfair play, etc. But something, something must be initiated, and hopefully instituted; clearly, the publishers are not going to initiate anything meaningful, and surely will fight any attempt at redress (please, prove me wrong; I would love to be wrong). Cartoonists and comics creators in the comicbook industry (and, now, graphic novel industry) have forever resisted unionizing, as many (like myself) found ill fits and no welcomes from the Graphic Artists Guild back in the day.

Times have changed; time to change the times.

After all, if Gorgo could, we can…

Here, with all due irony fully acknowledged, is my disclaimer for the images and art appearing in all such posts:

All images and artwork ©2013 and/or respective original year of publication/creation their respective individual or corporate proprietors; posted for educational and archival purposes only. Fair Use doctrine and laws apply. The Comics banner ©Robin Snyder, posted with permission; excerpt from Steve Ditko essay ©2012 Steve Ditko, all rights reserved, posted with permission of the publisher. 

_______

* I am referring, of course, to the Dell movie comics only. Dell‘s Tarzan, Turok Son of Stone (and its backup “Young Earth”), Kona Monarch of Monster Isle, etc. boasted amazing monsters and monster action sequences, and I count Jesse Marsh, Russ Manning, Sam Glanzman and Alberto Giolitti among my personal cartooning heroes!

Sorrowful Goodbye to a Beloved Friend

Rick Hautala (February 3, 1949-March 21, 2013)

I received a phone call yesterday afternoon from my great friend Chris Golden: our beloved pal Rick Hautala had been claimed by a heart attack one hour earlier.

Chris wrote shortly afterward on Facebook:

“This is the hardest post I’ve ever written. I can barely type the words.

A little while ago, I lost one of my best friends in the world. The kind of friend who would stand with you through anything, who would have your back no matter what. I talked to him nearly every day and I can’t quite comprehend that he is no longer in this world.

How can it be? How can this man–like a brother to me–with his totally unique voice and his self-deprecating humor…how can he be gone?

I share this not for myself, but because there are many of you out there who will want to know. He was only 64 years old.

The horror community lost a true legend today. My heart is breaking. I just don’t know what to do.

Rick Hautala. 1949-2013″

I retreated for a while, and will for the weekend… but, ah, shit, Rick.

I’ll never see that smile again, hear you laugh again, take or dish a ribbing like the ones you always had in easy reach. Rick was harder on himself than almost anyone I’ve ever known, and quicker with a hand up or caring word than anyone I’ve ever known.

There’s time later to talk about what you wrote, how you wrote, how you pushed yourself, how hard times could be, how you turned up that complete, long-missing ms. for The Stand (published with much fanfare, sans even an acknowledgement or nod to you, damn it), how we never did find a home for a Hautala/Bissette/Michael Zulli comics version of Little Brothers—not now, though; later.

For now, a bear hug for ya, Rick, if only I could get my arms around you for one last goodbye.

Much love; no more anxieties or brass rings to strive for; rest easy at last, my friend.
_________

For more, see:

• the announcement of Rick‘s passing on Rick‘s own website.

For more on Rick‘s, Michael Zulli‘s, and my extensive work on our proposed Little Brothers comics adaptations, see

• “SpiderBaby Sketchbooks: Little Brothers,” Part 1;
• Part 2,
• Part 3,
• Part 4,
• and the concluding Part 5.

Rick sure took it hard that we couldn’t find a home for this project. Damned comics industry—Rick brought it up again the last time we saw each other and dined together. Damn, he took it hard. But that was Rick.

• Also see: Myrant post about Rick‘s novel The Mountain King and my illustrations for the original Cemetery Dance edition, here.

That’s all I’ve got for you today, folks. Signing off and out, for the weekend.
_________

Photo ©2012 Holly Hautala; Little Brothers is © and TM Rick Hautala, Holly Hautala; artwork ©1992, 2013 SR Bissette, all rights reserved.

A Modest Proposal 2: Continued

A Statement from The Wally Wood Estate; Richard Gagnon Statement to Myrant Readers

Time for a followup to Monday’s Myrant post.

My sharing Richard Gagnon‘s letter was picked up as a news story by BleedingCool.com earlier this week,

and the comments thread to that article and Richard‘s letter reveal how willfully complacent and/or ignorant people choose to remain, and how corporate apologists come in all stripes.

A reminder: I said essentially nothing on Monday in the initial post; I simply shared Richard Gagnon‘s letter.

But I’ve something to say today:

* With all due respect to Steve Ditko, his work, his stated philosophies, his privacy, and his desire to be left alone, as an active creator working in the same and similar fields, I believe this goes beyond what Steve Ditko does or doesn’t want (I will discuss that matter in more depth later this and next week here at Myrant), much less what “fans” believe Ditko does or does not want.

Nor do I require anyone’s permission to discuss these matters (though I have reached out, as today’s followup and next week’s posts will reveal). I cannot speak for anyone else—much less Steve Ditko!—but when Richard Gagnon sent me his letter, I chose to share it, and I’m glad I did.

There is a creative community out here suffering, en masse, by corporate—and specifically in the case of Spider-Man et al, Marvel/Disney—policies against credit/payment/royalties/etc. for these megabudget movies.

We do not choose these arguments, per se, nor the names or creators involved, case by case. Those pop up, case by case, by the nature of their having created the characters and properties being exploited: they all emerge as the next mega-budget movie campaign revs up—and this year, it’s Spider-Man and Superman already landing major news articles.

In the case of the Spider-Man movies, Steve Ditko deserves screen credit and payment, period. This is posited by the simple fact he did create and/or co-create Spider-Man.

Whether Ditko wants involvement, credit, reward, attention, income, whatever, the historical fact is he did have a (arguably—and Ditko has and does argue thus—the) major hand in the creation of Spider-Man.

Does Ditko want anything? What does he want? If he refuses money, the Hero Initiative or any charity Ditko determines would no doubt welcome the donation(s). Hero Initiative continues to serve a generation of discarded creators (including, alas, many friends of mine), but that suggestion has already been jeered by “fans.”

* The comics industry abuses of generations have only been amplified into increasingly intolerable magnitudes by the current tsunami of comics-derivative feature films that spend more in legal fees crushing the wellspring creators they are utterly dependent upon for existing than they’d even think to sending to the creators or their heirs.

Like it or not, we are a community, and the actions and inactions of prominent individuals have consequences. Stan Lee and Steve Ditko have long-standing issues to resolve, private (and hence none of our business, really) and public. Ditko has actively addressed some of these in his writings since 1990.

For my own part, I and others have compared Ditko‘s stance with Hollywood with that of Alan Moore; both Ditko and Moore had business and/or creative partners in the work Hollywood has adapted, or is about to adapt.

In my own case, I can speak of consequences. Alan Moore refused credit/payment for films adapted from his work; that did not mean his creative partners were like-minded. In one way, his decision benefitted his respective partners, financially. In other ways, it did not (if only for the benefit of my own now-adult children, I sorely wish the names of the co-creators of John Constantine had enjoyed a screen credit; in any case, and not out of greed, we certainly welcomed our share of the option money DC Comics did cut us all checks for).

As we continue to see this superindustry of multi-million-dollar movies and the cottage industry of reprint volumes proliferate, it’s clear we need a comics industry ASCAP (American Society of Composers, Authors & Publishers) or the like. Something needs to go to the creators and/or their heirs/estates for these packages.

* It’s not a matter, either, of whether individual creators (in this case, still-living Steve Ditko) want or will accept income. It’s a matter of addressing a critical mass of collective wrongs, a codified system of oppression and theft that has reached intolerable proporations. It’s also addressing the ills inflicted upon an entire creative community, and a proliferation of such high-ticket movies and book collections sans even an attempt to budget for the creators whose names and work sell the books themselves. This is completely out of hand as of 2013.

* Cartoonists and comics creators in the comicbook industry (and, now, graphic novel industry) have forever resisted unionizing, as many (like myself) found ill fits and no welcomes from the Graphic Artists Guild back in the day.

Times have changed; time to change the times.

More to follow.
________

Image/text sent by J. David Spurlock, posted with permission.

Further followup to Monday’s post:

* A comment from

The Wally Wood Estate

on the Monday Myrant post’s comments thread prompted me to reach out and contact the author of that comment and establish contact with the Estate. Quickly finding common interests and cause, I invited J. David Spurlock to send a formal statement on behalf of the Estate, and he responded with the following:

“Inherent to the ‘Marvel Method’ of writing, developed in the 1960s, is that the artist is co-author. It is my position that, all ‘Marvel Method’ artists deserve proper credit as co-authors. From a 1968 interview, STAN LEE said about JACK KIRBY: ‘Jack is the greatest artist in the world. He also is a great story man. He does all the breakdowns and basic plots and I dialogue.’ Stan pioneered listing creator credits; it is only proper that Marvel fulfill that tradition by accurately crediting ‘Marvel Method’ artists as co-authors.”

— J. David Spurlock
_________

And now, on to the Guest portion of today’s post, again from Richard Gagnon:
______

I just sent an email to Laura Kusisto at The Wall Street Journal for a similar article on the next Spider-Man movie being made in New York. I made a few corrections based on the comments [on the Myrant Monday comments thread].

I got the idea to try and bring some visibility to Steve Ditko‘s contributions to Spider-Man after seeing Steve Bissette‘s plea for moviegoers to not see the last movie. I wasn’t sure how many comic fans would support boycotting that movie or the upcoming Spider-Man and Doctor Strange movies. Even if there were enough to hurt the profits of the movie, it still wouldn’t help the people who created the characters. About all that would happen, if there was a severe drop in profits, is that fewer superhero movies would be made. That wouldn’t do the comics industry any good.

I didn’t think much more about it till a few weeks later when I decided to try and educate journalists about the people who made these movies possible by creating the characters that were being turned into mega-summer blockbuster movies. I don’t know if any journalist will pick the story up and write an article on Steve Ditko. I hope one does. I figure hitting one up a week won’t take too much of my time. Maybe it will make a difference. I don’t know. It’s my small effort to give a “thank you” to Steve for the joy I had reading Spider-Man and Doctor Strange when I was growing up.

I’m Steve Bissette‘s age, so I grew up when Spider-Man and Marvel comics were new and exciting and something very different from what every other publisher was producing. Even as a kid, I could readily see that Marvel was doing something that was vastly superior to everything else that was out there. Spider-Man was my favorite comic. I could empathize more with Peter Parker‘s troubles than I could with those of the Fantastic Four or other heroes because Peter was closer to my age. His concerns were closer to mine. Steve Ditko was the first artist whose work I was able to recognize. I can’t remember if I were able to readily tell that he was no longer doing Spider-Man. It was almost a half century ago when I was reading those comics. I do recall the day seeing the new Creeper comic and instantly knew that the art was something I’d seen before. That’s when I looked at the credits and compared the name I saw on Creeper and older issues of Spider-Man and saw that they were both done by Steve Ditko. That may not be a revelation today with a thriving comics fandom and the internet, but it was a big deal at the time when the internet wasn’t even dreamed of and comic fandom was in its birthing stage. It was the start of paying attention to the talented individuals who were making the comics that I enjoyed. The Ditko Spider-Man issues had such a unique vision of fight scenes that still blows me away.

This is a small effort on my part to help pay back Steve Ditko for all the fun I had looking at the comics he helped produce. If others can join in, maybe something will happen. Please try to personalize your message so that it’s not a hundred copies that will mean little to the recipient. We all love comics for different reasons. I think I’m going to rewrite the message I’m sending out to better indicate how Steve‘s Spider-Man emotionally struck me. This is the kind of effort that costs nothing. The amount of time invested is minimal once the first letter is written.

I’m seeing posts saying that Steve Ditko is being paid reprint royalties. I wonder if that is all his work or only the later work that was under different contracts that stipulated those royalties. I did a bunch of searches to find out whether Steve or Jack Kirby were paid royalties of any kind on their older work and was unable to find anything. That’s not proof that Marvel didn’t pay Steve for Spider-Man reprints. If Marvel is actually paying Steve for his old Spider-Man work, it would be nice to see a news item that attests to that. It’s an area where I’d like to be wrong. This is the kind of topic where the comics community in general doesn’t seem to have a solid answer–which doesn’t lend confidence that it’s happening.

Here are a few quotes from Sean Howe‘s Marvel: The Untold Story that make me doubt that Steve is getting Spider-Man royalties:

Stan Lee in 1971: “I would say that the comic book market is the worst market that there is on the face of the earth for creative talent and the reasons are numberless and legion,’ says Lee. “I have had many talented people ask me how to get into the comic book business. If they were talented enough the first answer I would give them is, ‘Why would you want to get into the comic book business?’ Because even if you succeed, even if you reach what might be considered the pinnacle of success in comics, you will be less successful, less secure and less effective than if you are just an average practitioner of your art in television, radio, movies or what have you. It is a business in which the creator, as was mentioned before, owns nothing of his creation. The publisher owns it….I would tell any cartoonist who has an idea, think twice before you give it to a publisher.”

[Here's that quote source]

Len Wein in 2009: “I have not seen a dime off of any Marvel stuff, nor do I have a credit on the Wolverine film. Hugh Jackman is a lovely man, and at the premiere he told the audience that he owed his career to
me and had me take a bow. It was very gratifying and very nice. I would have preferred a cheque.”

[quote source]

Avi Arad, then CEO Marvel Studios, in 2012: “When kids were creating comics, they were happy to get their job. A movie is made, it’s successful, and all of a sudden they say, ‘Wait a minute, what’s in it for me?’ It’s human nature. If a creator wants to create a comic book, and self-publish it, and make a big success of it, which is what McFarlane [creator of Spawn and one of the founders of Image comics] did, that’s their prerogative. If they want to work for a company and be guaranteed so many pages a month and so on, that’s a different business. So there are people who feel that they did this, therefore they deserve that, and…I don’t remember any of them on a journey to try and make a movie out of these things. And believe me, it’s far tougher to make a movie than publish a comic book.”

Wally Wood, illustration for TV Guide, March 23-29, 1968; a statement from the Wally Wood Estate concerning this image follows:

About this illustration for TV Guide by long-time Ditko associate and creator rights pioneer, Wallace Wood, the Director of the Wallace Wood Estate, J. David Spurlock, said,

“1965 was a landmark year for Marvel. Stan, with the grand talent pool of Kirby, Ditko and Wood, for the first time in history, topped DC/National in sales. This 1966 painting by Wood, serves as visual commentary on how Superheroes were, not only taking over comicbooks but, taking over the airwaves from the earlier humourous cartoon characters. Wood was the first to leave Marvel, frustrated by the extra work artists did, co-writing without credit and pay—within the ‘Marvel Meathod.’ Ditko soon followed Wood to both Witzend and T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents where they had much greater creative control of their work.”
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All images and artwork ©2013 and/or respective original year of publication/creation their respective individual or corporate proprietors; posted for educational and archival purposes only. Fair Use doctrine and laws apply.

A Modest Proposal 2: LOCampaign 2013

Richard Gagnon Initiates Grass Roots Backlash

Today’s guest blog post is from Richard Gagnon:

I’ve decided to help Steve Ditko by taking the time to once a week write a reporter that puts out a story about the upcoming Spider-Man movie. I don’t know if any of them will break the story in a public enough fashion to get the attention of Marvel/Disney, but at least it’s an effort to try to do something. If others can do the same, maybe Marvel/Disney can be shamed into doing something for him. Here is the message I sent Michelle Breidenbach, who wrote the linked article.

• [SRB: Here's the article: get this—"Next Spider-man movie to be made in New York with state tax breaks"—so, your tax dollars at work, ensuring greater profits for Disney/Marvel, New Yorkers, while not a penny goes to New York's own Steve Ditko! Back to Richard's text:]

I was reading your article, “Next Spider-man movie to be made in New York with state tax breaks” and was wondering if you know much about how Spider-Man‘s creators financially get nothing for the billions of dollars in profits Marvel makes from the character through movies and merchandising.

Spider-Man was created by Stan Lee, who you may be familiar with, and Steve Ditko, who you may not have heard of. Stan wrote Spider-Man while Steve drew the comic. Their creative roles weren’t quite that clear cut because of how Marvel made comics.

At the time Spider-Man was created, Marvel was a second-rate publisher that put out comics that followed trends that were making money for other publishers. Stan Lee was the only salaried editor/writer/art director at Marvel. Instead of full scripts breaking down the comic panel by panel similar to a screenplay, the only way that Stan could keep up with all the comics he was writing was to give the artist a summary of the story. The artist would then break the story down, fill in any gaps, and often create new ideas and characters to fill the pages. Stan would get the art, with stuff he hadn’t even put in the story, and write the script that filled in dialog balloons and captions. That process put the burden on artists to tell much of the story.

As Marvel became more successful, Stan‘s time decreased and his top artists might only get a one-sentence plot idea that they would have to create an entire story from. There were times that Stan had no input to the comic till the artist delivered pages for a story that they created completely on their own. Creative disagreements between Stan and Steve left them not communicating for two years such that Steve Ditko plotted the entire course of that period’s comics, creating villains and supporting characters–all without any input from Stan Lee. Stan was then left with looking at the art and Steve‘s notes and having to create a script on the fly. Steve Ditko quit Marvel when promised royalties were never paid as Spider-Man‘s popularity was starting to show up as merchandised toys in stores and a forthcoming Saturday morning cartoon announced.

The day Steve quit was the last day that he ever earned a penny from his four years of creating and defining the world of Spider-Man. His entire monetary income for all his work on Spider-Man probably earned him less money than the costume designer for the Spider-Man movies made when they slightly tweaked the costume for the character onscreen. Stan Lee‘s long association with Marvel has left him quite well-to-do as the company’s best known spokesman even though he likewise never directly got royalties from his co-creation of Spider-Man.

Steve Ditko, on the other hand, has favored creative freedom over money and consequently has done considerably less well. He is now 85 years old and still works on his own small-press comics. I would imagine that his social security income is unimpressive since he hasn’t worked on any top comics since Spider-Man. When he worked on Spider-Man, Marvel had some of the lowest page rates in the industry, so he didn’t do well there. Meanwhile, Marvel was bought by Disney for $4 billion for its intellectual property and none of the writers and artists that created those properties saw a penny from that massive sale.

I don’t know if this is a story that you would have any interest in following up on, but it does represent a nice human drama of one man being ignored by a giant company that partly owes its fortunes to his creativity. Steve Ditko is a man of very strong morals. He would rather starve than violate the moral code that he lives by. The work-for-hire practice that his art was bought under used the legally shaky practice of granting the publisher all rights to his work on the back of the paycheck that he endorsed. The problem with that business practice is that it represents a secondary contract after the work is completed–meaning that the rights weren’t given away by the original contract, but were to be ceded as an additional concession to be paid even though the original contractual agreement to deliver art was completed. Steve hasn’t pursued legal action against that because he understood that the characters he created and co-created weren’t his. His issue is that he was verbally promised a royalty that he never received. It would be nice if he could see a little of that royalty before he dies. About the only way I can ever imagine that happening is if Marvel/Disney are publicly embarrassed into doing something to help this old man whose ideas profited them so greatly.

As a side note, DC Comics was similarly put in a position to providing a small pension for Superman‘s aging creators before the Christopher Reeve Superman movies were released. I wish companies had the decency to do things like this on their own to reward the people that made them rich. Since they don’t, they have to be shamed into doing the right thing. It’s a pity that they don’t emulate the selfless heroic behavior of the characters they publish.

Wally Wood, illustration for TV Guide, March 23-29, 1968; a statement from the Wally Wood Estate will be posted on Wednesday here at Myrant.
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All images and artwork ©2013 and/or respective original year of publication/creation their respective individual or corporate proprietors; posted for educational and archival purposes only. Fair Use doctrine and laws apply.