Fiffe celebrates Halloween and Ditko

Our buddy Michel Fiffe celebrates Halloween and Steve Ditko's 82nd birthday with a posting of his favorite Ditko horror comics covers, all from his Charlton days. See it Here.

Influencing Comics #1: Dean Haspiel’s Top 5 Non-Comic Book Influences

SERGIO LEONE -- A master of cinema, Sergio Leone's spaghetti westerns understood that drama was more intense when staggered and played out in hyper-realistic time. Matched only by his method to smash extreme close-ups against extreme far shots, Leone blurred the vistas between flesh and landscape, plastering the silver screen with a blue sky backdrop of molten mesas and human pores, baked blood and boiled sweat, squinting eyes and smoking guns, recorded on the bedrock of Italy's scorched earth. The subtle sound of “the man with no name’s” gun click was always more powerful than its bang made sinister by Ennio Morricone's haunting musical score. All home movie libraries should house the works of Sergio Leone, Elia Kazan, Preston Sturges, Bruce Lee, Martin Scorcese, Alex Cox, The Coen Bros., Quentin Tarantino, and Park Chan-Wook, but Leone’s Once Upon a Time in the West may be my favorite movie of all time.

BEA ARTHUR -- Who knew that a controversial, 47-year old, silver-haired, deep voiced, "handsome woman" could capture the heart and mind of a 5-year old boy in 1972? I certainly didn't until Maude came out on DVD recently and opened up a floodgate of treasured memories. Little was I aware of how much Bea Arthur's original yet caustic characterization of a flawed yet righteous, middle-aged Valkyrie emerging as a taboo breaking feminist cum “Golden Girl,” fighting tooth and nail for a better tomorrow, could sustain such a grip on me throughout my decades. Her compassion for truth, justice, and liberty was balanced only by her passionate conflicts with Walter, her alcoholic yet heart-bound husband. To this day, I confuse conflict with love.

AFRIKA BAMBAATAA & THE SOUL SONIC FORCE -- Before I locked my musical play list on regular rotation between the likes of Prince, Joy Division, Max Romeo, The Clash, Throbbing Gristle, Daft Punk, and Blossom Dearie, there was only one essential song that ever mattered to me and that was Afrika Bambaataa & The Soul Sonic Force's "Planet Rock." Hip-hop was on the verge and NYC was looking for the perfect beat and it synthesized in 1982 with "Planet Rock,” the primordial, black and white electric anthem of my high school years that continues to transcend my work and global outlook on life.

HAMMER HORROR -- I was hidden under the covers as a six-fingered claymation hand arose from a bloody swamp accompanied by creepy reverb-heavy music in that terrifying 1970s "Chiller Theater" television opening, paving the way for reruns of 1960s Hammer Horror movies. The vivid, limited comic book colors and chop shop monster masks made for a scarier experience than today's best special effects, and Peter Cushing and Christopher Lee owned the genre. The low-budget creatures and European, mad scientist sets inspired Brawl, my psychotronic, "creature romance double feature," comic book mini-series collaboration with cartoonist, Michel Fiffe, featuring Billy Dogma. The Evil of Frankenstein makes for a great Hammer Horror introduction to a slew of top-notch monster movies before the genre passed the baton to mad men classics like Tobe Hooper's The Texas Chainsaw Massacre, Joe Spinell's Maniac, and John Carpenter's Halloween, and The Thing.

RICHARD S. PRATHER – The hard-boiled, pheromone-rich pulp that made up Richard S. Prather's perverted purple prose in his library of Shell Scott detective novels made a significant impact on my very own Billy Dogma banter. In 1985, my mentor, Howard Chaykin, introduced me to crime noir with Jim Thompson's Pop 1280 and The Killer Inside Me, and, later, Frank Miller's Sin City would inspire me to seek the hyperbole of Mickey Spillane's Mike Hammer novels, but it was Prather's special brand of erotic scandal that wooed me with, "She was a full-lipped and hipped Italian tomato with Rome burning in her eyes,” in his 1969 novel, Kill Me Tomorrow.

c.2009 Dean Haspiel

Dean Haspiel is the creator of the Eisner Award nominated, BILLY DOGMA, and the webcomix collective, ACT-I-VATE, and the creator/editor of Smith Magazine's NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR anthology. He has drawn superheroes for Marvel and DC Comics and Pulitzer Prize winning, Michael Chabon's THE ESCAPIST. Best known for his collaborations with Harvey Pekar on AMERICAN SPLENDOR and THE QUITTER, the Fall of 2008 saw the release of THE ALCOHOLIC [Vertigo], his original graphic novel collaboration with author Jonathan Ames, and MO & JO, a children's comic book collaboration with underground legend, Jay Lynch, for Francoise Mouly's TOON BOOKS series from Raw Jr. In the summer of 2008, Dean launched STREET CODE, a new, semi-autobio webcomic series for Zuda. Dean also wrote/drew SNOW DOPE for The NY Times "Proof" blog and "Bzzt" for SMITH Magazine's NEXT-DOOR NEIGHBOR.

Dean is currently illustrating, CUBA - ONE STORY, his next Vertigo collaboration with painter/writer, Inverna Lockpez, while providing original cartoons and illustrations for Jonathan Ames' upcoming essay collection, THE DOUBLE LIFE IS TWICE AS GOOD, and Ames' upcoming HBO series, BORED TO DEATH.

Dean is also a founding member of DEEP6 Studios in Gowanus, Brooklyn. You can contact Dean: dean.haspiel[at]verizon.net

For the Love of Comics #3: The Great Magazines

Words: Christopher Irving

It was 1989 when I first stumbled across a copy of Comics Buyer’s Guide on the wire rack in a used bookstore in my Virginia hometown. CBG was a literal weekly newspaper for comics then, featuring everything from breaking news, to columns by industry insiders, to previews of upcoming comics. To a 12 year-old boy, it was heaven smudgingly printed on cheap paper.

CBG was a saving grace to me: nowhere else could I connect with anyone in comics (I did, after all, grow up in FARMville, a small town then devoid of comic shops) but, more importantly, it allowed me to be an “insider” to my other middle-school pals. CBG would come in every Thursday and, after dinner, the phone would be dragged into my bedroom, the door shut, and my pal Marshall’s number dialed up to divulge the secrets and predictions of the comics world.

Back then, with dead Robins and impending Batman and Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles live-action movies, it was a helluva time to be a fan. Comics, picked up only at newsstand racks dispersed throughout town (a weekly habit of my father and I was to go “on the hunt” on new comics day) were still a secretive world to my adolescent brain. Marshall and I knew we were going to be comic book artists one day (he, the next Todd McFarlane, while I would happily inherit either George Perez or John Byrne’s mantle), and CBG made it easier to dream about making it a reality.

Comics Scene was the other magazine, which Marshall was often more likely to pick up: a pricier color magazine, it focused on movies as well, with a section in the back detailing the developmental stages and delays of the superhero movies (most of which, like schlockhouse Cannon’s low budget Spider-Man flick, luckily never saw the light of day).

Not long after, two glossy color magazines joined Comics Scene, one of which would topple it from its lofty position: Wizard and Hero Illustrated. Wizard was the hip mag (that, presumably, all the cool kids read), while Hero was a little lower on the production totem pole, yet a bit more grown-up, revealed by the absence of Wizard's dick and fart jokes. We read them, voraciously, marveling at the poly-bagged goodies like trading cards and ashcan mini comics previews (Hero is the reason I picked Madman up: seeing Mike Allred’s snappy art with his wife Laura’s View Master candy coloring made me first up and pursue the smaller press book). While we volunteered the popcorn and soda stand at the local community theater, we stuck our noses in sketchbooks and Wizards and Hero Illustrateds to rip off the latest Spawn or Byrne West Coast Avengers while the show went on in the theater behind us.

November, 1997, and I’m working as Entertainment editor of The Commonwealth Times, the student newspaper of Virginia Commonwealth University, plugging comic book reviews into the paper to the protests of the rest of the staff. The most widespread, mainstream notice comics had gotten at that point was in the release of two comic book based movies: Batman and Robin and Spawn, which also happen to also be two of the worst (if not the worst) adaptations ever. Marvel Comics is about to file Chapter 11 bankruptcy. Comic book shops are closing the nation over, due to the industry-wide crash from the weight of the chrome-covered polybagged speculator’s market.

It is a dark time for comics.

Out of nowhere, after my review of Mark Waid and Alex Ross’s Kingdom Come, I get an email from a VCU staffer who’s been friends with Waid since his days as a student at VCU. Would I like to interview him? She offers.

My interview with the affable Waid made it into the pages of the CT, and also onto the webpage of a local comic shop, Richmond Comix. The Internet was the burgeoning new venue for comics news, with news sites and message boards popping up all over the place.

The magazine format was still going, in spite of the industry’s turmoil: Wizard was still at the head of the pack, with CBG living on in a tabloid-format (eschewing the fold-out newspaper of days gone), Gary Groth’s The Comics Journal still delivered the sophisticated stuff, Comic Book Marketplace appealed (in slick color, nonetheless) to the hardcore Golden and Silver Age fans, and newbie publisher John Morrow came on the scene with fan magazine The Jack Kirby Collector. His TwoMorrows Publishing soon mushroomed into the biggest publisher of fan magazines, adding the classic fan magazine Alter Ego (piloted by legendary comics editor and writer Roy Thomas) and journalism tome Comic Book Artist to its black and white ranks.

Two years later, I stepped from the web to print with pieces in The Jack Kirby Collector, Comic Book Marketplace, Comic Book Artist, and Comics Buyers’ Guide. By the time I met CBA’s Jon B. Cooke at the 2000 San Diego Con, I’d also landed a piece in Alter Ego and one in Comics Scene (who had experienced a very short-lived revival). For a while, I was averaging two cover stories a month for CBG, giving Cooke a plethora of big research essays for CBA, and teaching high school English. My dance card was full, as it were, and there were plenty of other dance partners to go with if I wanted to, but I eventually wrapped up my tenure at CBG to focus primarily on my work for Cooke’s burgeoning mag.

CBG wasn’t what it used to be at that point: how could a newspaper for comics report the news in a timely fashion when there was the Internet to compete with? CBG still featured a handful of columns, like Mark Evanier’s P.O.V. and Peter David’s last page But I Digress…(giving the writer the final word on a regular basis), but the news angle became less and less plausible. Before much longer, CBG went from a tabloid weekly to a full-size monthly. It just wasn’t the same.

Comic Book Artist, on the other hand, was quickly evolving into the most densely packed thematic comics magazine; Cooke is, in this writer’s opinion, one of the savviest comics journalists I’ve ever had the chance to work under. He follows that great editorial tenet, the one the great Archie Goodwin was apparently very guilty of: he’d let you do your thing, and would rein you in only if needed. CBA won several consecutive Eisner Awards for Best Comics Related Periodical, delivering issue after issue of comics history and journalism, shining a light onto the dustier corners of comics history.

Atlas Comics? Charlton Comics? No matter how obscure, we were there at a time that nobody else was, talking to those involved with even the most trivial points of comics history. My work at CBA found me talking to the son of Dell Publishing’s George Delacorte (go to the Alice in Wonderland fountain in Central Park, and George is the basis for the Mad Hatter), becoming friends with Charlton’s head writer (Joe Gill, who is worth a column or book of his own), and attending the “Scottish Wake” of a comics great.

Things are different now. The Internet has taken over as the primary source of news, as well it should for its ability to instantaneous cover breaking items. Several magazines are dropping like flies, hanging onto a ledge by their fingernails, or adapting to fit the current market.
Comics Buyers’ Guide still comes out monthly. Wizard has gone from being a sophomoric magazine with dick and fart jokes to something more akin to Entertainment Weekly for comics. The Comics Journal has changed their frequency of publication, upgrading their format in exchange. The TwoMorrows lineup changes, having recently dropped two magazines shortly after adding a full color non-comics one, mostly catering to an established fanbase of readers, but lesser for the loss of Comic Book Artist some years ago.

Only a few new kids have emerged: Back Issue came in as CBA’s replacement at TwoMorrows, with editor Michael Eury consistently delivering a solid read from issue to issue, while Brit mag Tripwire trips out every year or so. Upstart pub Comics Foundry by Tim Leong came and went before it really had enough of a chance to find its footing as a mag about the "geek" lifestyle.

And what about CBA? After migrating over to indy sweethearts Top Shelf, Cooke’s mag came out inconsistently for a brief time, only to disappear again.

Speaking personally, I yearn for the CBA’s return. One thing I miss is that sense of knowing a secret no one else has had the thoughtfulness to ask, with every piece I worked on, or the insider’s view from reading Cooke’s interviews. I cut my teeth on CBA and learned more about comics journalism under his watch than any other editors (and I’ve had some great editors).
What you read here on Graphic NYC wouldn’t have come about if not for Jon’s constant encouragement, prodding, and direction on CBA those years ago. It all formed my sentiments as a journalist and writer, pushing me from being a reporter to wanting to be something so much more.

And you can bet I’ll be there when and if CBA does come back, full of even more piss and vinegar than I was in 2000.

Graphically Speaking: The Spirit: The New Adventures Archive

Words: Christopher Irving

“I’ve been hesitating until about now,” Will Eisner said about collecting his seminal comic series The Spirit into a collection of reprint archive books. “I finally consented, because I thought it was a kind of mausoleum, and I still thought of the Spirit series as being very much alive, because it has been reprinted in sequence over three times in this country alone. They just completed a complete run of four years in Spain, and just signed a company in Brazil to run a Spirit series. It’s still very much alive, as far as I’m concerned.

“I didn’t want a big mausoleum book to terminate the character. Denis Kitchen’s convinced me that it won’t, so I’ve agreed to do it.”

It was 1998, and Eisner’s seminal creation, the hat-and-mask type The Spirit had just been revived for the anthology series The Spirit: The New Adventures at Kitchen Sink Press, featuring rotating creative teams. I was a 21 year-old college kid who didn’t know damned near enough about the man to be interviewing him, but there I was, with his polite voice coming out of the other end of my phone receiver to be immortalized onto cassette tape.

“For years, Denis Kitchen has been after me, pushing and prodding for me to do another Spirit story,” Will said. “And I was never interested in doing it, because my plate’s too full with the new material that I want to do, and feel necessary to do. Finally, I agreed to allow him to do a Spirit story, provided he would get some top people in the field to do it.

“The only condition that I made was that they would not try to be Will Eisner, because every attempt I have ever seen of continuing a strip, like Terry and The Pirates, were a failure. I said that would be a failure if they were to attempt to be Will Eisner. I said if they were willing to do a series of stories based on their own interpretation and their own take, I would be willing to allow it. It worked out very well.”

Dark Horse Comics has continued the “mausoleum” series of Eisner’s Spirit work, started by DC Comics for 26 volumes, culminating in the DHC-published New Adventures for #27. With an identical dress to the DC progenitors, Spirit Archive #27 fits in nicely with the earlier volumes, a humble approach by Dark Horse in continuing the reprints.

The DC series of The Spirit from the past few years, kicking off with Darwyn Cooke’s initial yearlong run has been entertaining, but modernized with running story arcs and long-term stories.

What The Spirit: The New Adventures managed to do was maintain the titular character in his element through short stories that deliver an emotional and narrative whammy in quick order. While occasional stories, such as Jim Vance and Dan Burr’s “Sunday in the Park with St. George”, were no more than a retread of the character’s conventions, others shone with a power befitting Eisner’s earlier stories.


The highlight of the volume is in the entire first issue: three stories, hardly intertwining with different versions of The Spirit’s tragic origin, by the Watchmen team of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons. Moore understands the balance of humor with action and suspense, while Gibbons taps into the panel structure and other visual devices of Eisner. Moore’s other story, “Last Night I Dreamed of Dr. Cobra”, follows an immortal Spirit revisiting the ancient ruins of Central City and doesn’t just deliver that emotional whammy – but a resonating chill, as well.

Neil Gaiman and Eddie Campbell’s “The Return of Mink Stole” follows the tried and true Spirit device of telling the story through the eyes of an observer, while Campbell, Marcus Moore, and Pete Mullins play with the perspective of an inanimate object for “The Pacifist”.

Paul Chadwick’s “Cursed Beauty” tackles race relations with Ebony White (Spirit’s much maligned and stereotyped black sidekick) against the backdrop of a scandalous murder. A marriage of Will Eisner’s crime fighter with Sam Spade, it surprisingly pulls off being a Spirit despite the somberness of the tale.

John Wagner and Carlos Ezquerra, John Ostrander and Tom Mandrake, Scott Hampton and Mark Kneece, Jay Stephens and a more subdued Paul Pope of a decade ago, Mike Allred and Michael Avon Oeming…it’s a veritable who’s who of comics talents that walk through this volume. They fortunately hit their mark more often than not; when they do, they deliver primal takes on a primal character.


“The only limitation I set is that, first I would not edit the material or be involved in the creative process,” Eisner said. “The second condition that I made was that I would review all material to be sure that they would not warp or defame, or otherwise alter the basic concept of The Spirit character. The rest of it was their take on The Spirit, and that’s what it is really all about…

“I think that what we have here in The Spirit, at least now that I’m able to look at it with a little more perspective now than when I was doing it, is that we have something like the Sherlock Holmes series, where the period is not important, it’s the story that is important. In account for the survival of the character himself, as far as The Spirit is concerned; he’s real; he’s not a superhero. Consequently, his reality is what survives, or his believability, if you will.”

Reading The Spirit: The New Adventures reinforces Will’s assessment of his own creation, and hopefully prophecies Denny Colt’s longevity.

Graphically Speaking: Giraffes in My Hair

Words: Jared Gniewek

Giraffes in My Hair: A Rock ‘N’ Roll Life is a memoir that chronicles Bruce Paley’s life from his teenage wandering hippie days in the late sixties through the end of the seventies, living in a squat on the lower east side. It is a trough of information…of impressions of a world we who grew up in the counterculture of the nineties can barely understand. Every generation must struggle to create that which is taken for granted by the following one. Being a hippie or a punk nowadays, for example, is as easy as a self proclamation and a trip to a shopping mall. Being a hippie or a punk got guys my age beaten up in high school, it got guys Bruce’s age dead.

The book is deeply personal but doesn’t get bogged down with self service or making a Titan out of a man. I love that here we have a view of some of the seedier sides of counterculture that doesn’t have an agenda beyond the act of sharing…of storytelling. It feels like a recounting, almost a journalistic telling of the facts of his personal history. But it also feels like you’re having a great dinner with an old friend.

The moral center isn’t immediately visible, I’m happy to say, although many of the stories do have a moral at the ending. We can learn through Bruce’s triumphs and mistakes, but it doesn’t feel didactic. I don’t think he wants to share life lessons with us as much as share the way the life lessons he puzzled out affected his own growth as a man.

The book begins with a young wandering Bruce on the road and sleeping in cars while avoiding the draft (in a sad and inspirational bit of storytelling where I felt “sold” on this book) and ends with him having clinical depressing sex with a prostitute while living as a recovering heroin addict on the lower east side in Manhattan.

We are seeing a narrative which explores the ways in which we are educated about ourselves. Part of living a rock ‘n’ roll life is the surrendering of yourself to the act of experimentation, be it drugs, music, or sex… I mean isn’t that the phrase? Sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll. The book doesn’t disappoint in any of these regards. To those of us who feel more spiritual about rock music than religion this book is a soul-swelling revival.

This type of book can stray pretty easily into Forrest Gump territory. Where Bruce would be at every event that the Baby Boomer generation would deem important and all would have the gilding of nostalgia to it. I have nothing against nostalgia, it's good to be aware of it as an influencing agent, however, and I felt that attempts were made to keep it to a minimum. It’s certainly there but it doesn’t detract at any point from the stories. I never once noticed rose colored glasses but rather an open honesty about his present day feelings about the events and people involved. The chapter chronicling Bruce in Chicago before the Democratic National Convention and going home after seeing the guns and plans of a local Black Panthers chapter, as well as the chapter regarding Johnny Thunders was as close as it got. And even then it was minimal. I never got the sense reading this that it was a love letter to a generation that has already spent quite a bit of time in the sun dictating public tastes.

I like that Bruce is constantly questioning himself. He wonders when he will give in and get a button-down job. It hovers over him like an inevitable. It’s like a social suicide. When it all gets to be too much you can always run into a cubicle or an office and rot inside your computerized coffin. He refers to this option several times throughout the book and it is a spectre which haunts him. Too often, we see the unrepentant or overly repentant in drama. Bruce strikes a good balance.

In the end, the book chronicles a life. He is born on the roads. Educated by himself through encounters, hobos, Kerouac, mistakes, and successes. Childhood doesn’t matter. His family doesn’t matter. He is given up to a stepmother at nineteen but there is nothing in the book that leads one to believe that his familial relationships were at all important to him before this point. His “rock ‘n’ roll life” begins and ends with this book.

As a graphic novel it is very strong. Carol Swain’s rough-layered pencils are distinct and complex with texture. The pacing sticks mainly to simple grids and has a very smooth rollicking rhythm (like rock ‘n’ roll itself). The sharp angles can get pretty extreme for the subject matter, but having such a transparent narrative voice creates a need for art that matches suit. Less evocative, straight storytelling art simply wouldn’t serve the pieces. It needs to be a little rough around the edges and a little wild in its approach. It works.

Giraffes achieves a fusion of art and story where each serves the other in a mutually empowering way. An ideal comic. It is sharp and witty visual commentary on sharp and witty writing. There is a great eye for details at play with Swain’s artwork. Some of it is downright whimsical, the ending of the story where a hash deal goes bad has a wonderful three panel progression of focusing in on first a facsimile of a drug smuggling stuffed animal and then Bruce himself facing and beneath it in the composition.

It is as though the story and memory of the story are more important than the teller himself. Brilliant.

Jared Gniewek has worked in the music industry as a back line technician, performer, and promoter. He has also been a freelance writer whose work can be seen in the recent re-launch of Tales from the Crypt and heard on The Dark Sense, an audio anthology of the macabre for which he is also the story editor. Jared’s blog, Die By The Pen, outlines his philosophies and personal quest as a writer.

Neal Adams: Evolving Comics from Print to Motion

Words: Christopher Irving . Pictures: Seth Kushner

The funny thing about Neal Adams is that, with his piercing blue eyes, even radio announcer-like voice, and boyish face, you find yourself wondering:
Did he really push comics to evolve in the late ‘60s with his monumental Batman run with writer Denny O’Neil? Is this also the same guy who later brought social relevance to comics in a big way with Green Lantern/Green Arrow, made comics feel like a spiritual acid trip with his Deadman work thereafter, or even told fun superhero tales with The Avengers and X-Men?

The man sitting across, from behind his desk in the offices of his business Continuity Studios, is young, full of life, and still pushing the boundaries of the comics industry. Even subtracting the years since his first big work in the latter Silver Age doesn't add up.

There can only be one solution: Neal Adams has a life-sized portrait of himself hanging in his study, keeping him vibrant, energetic, and aging instead of him.

“People ask ‘What’s going to be the future of comics?’” Neal poses. “They say that in the face of computer games and movies finally having budgets that can afford the special effects to do about anything. We’ve been ahead of the curve for fifty years, until the last couple of decades. Suddenly Star Wars showed up, and I saw it three times in the first week. That’s the only movie I’ve seen three times.

“When Star Wars started, that was the beginning for difficulties for comics. The smell is still in the air, and comic artists weren’t the only people doing revolutionary material. For the past ten years, people have been asking me what’s in the future for comics? You’ve got computers and video games, the Internet…I haven’t had an answer for years, and it’s really embarrassing. In that one little area, I’m dead.

“But suddenly I have an answer, but this is the answer,” Neal points to a stack of John Cassaday artwork from the Astonishing X-Men, “for comics.”

Debuting October 28th in Union Square, projected on the side of a building, is the motion comic adapted from the first issue of writer Joss Whedon and artist John Cassaday’s Astonishing X-Men. Continuity is shepherding the comics pages along, turning them into a cross between comics and animation.

“This is the next step, because this is a new art form,” Neal adds. “It’s never existed before. What you have is comic books and animation. Animation is Bruce Timm interpreting everybody else’s work, and all very nice and semi-complimentary, and not exactly royalty-filled-with. It’s good, but it’s animation: 500 Czech artists tracing animation from some other artist. It’s fine, but it’s not the comic books. This is the comic books. This is taking the work of the artists and words of the writer, verbatim. The thing about Whedon is that [he] is used to doing copy, so he knows how many words need to be dealt with, and he does good personality stuff.

“So, you have vocalizing of the writer’s words, and the artwork being animated by the most modern technology available by computers. The technology, as little as a year ago, is half of what it is today. It’s moving very, very fast.

“I’ve been doing animatics since I was nineteen years old. Animatics are the unknown art form. We’ve been doing it for advertising agencies and making a living, and happy to do it. Now this art form is applied to comic books as a commercial product. So, what do you get? You get the writer’s words and the artist’s artwork. This is what we believe in, and this is what we’re doing: You’re seeing the artist’s line with very little change. We may extend a line or slightly finish an arm, but as often as not we’ll steal another arm and stick it on there, if possible. Like when we do the mouths moving, I’ll draw a moving mouth, but what we’ll do is, in the computer, steal the actual mouth and put it on there to make the mouth fit the actual positions of the mouth I’ve drawn. You get the mouth, line for line, everything that’s there.”

Astonishing is a step up for the ever-evolving motion comic, with the characters moving through their paces with panning camera angles, kinetic bodies, and expressive faces. Chances are, given the rate of the technology’s evolution, that the final issue will be relatively far ahead of the first issue.

“There’s more available every day,” Neal adds. “We just did the first book’s worth, and now the second book’s worth is so much better. That’s how good it is, and it’s joyous for us, because we know we’re going to see it out with the customers. We’ve been doing animatics for years. We do the work. It gets tested, and it’s put/thrown away [after]. And then we look at this. I can see that being the next step in comics.

“You’re going to walk into a comic book store and see DVDs, watch it on your T.V., and on the subway. It’s tech-conscious because it’s not on paper….The thing that’s so wonderful about this is that there’s nothing about it that denies the comic book, but in fact, feeds off the comic books. We do comics, Marvel and DC do comics, so that movies will be made. Everybody recognizes it through the comic book. Everybody gets it, so that it’s still the origin point.”

Neal’s origin point in comics was, unbelievably, that of initial rejection. It’s easy to look at all the achievements he’s accomplished, accomplishments that have redefined both the comics form and industry, that it’s easy to overlook the depressed comics market of the 1950s.

“I don’t know why they called it the Grolier Building because it looked Gold, so I called it the Gold Building,” Neal says of DC Comics’ base of operations in the 1950s when he, a young hopeful, first tried to break in. “They turned me down so coldly that it was a mark of fear in my life. I didn’t even get past the upstairs lobby after I had made an appointment. I was a good boy: I called and made an appointment, and then went up, and this guy, Bill Perry, came out from inside. I was eighteen, and had really good sense – scary good—and I walked in with good samples. He started to look at the work and then put it down. He said ‘Look, kid, I can’t let you in.’…”

Handed the excuse that comics were dying, Neal wasn’t even able to get past the lobby.

“It’s not like I even got to compete in the Shit Olympics. They didn’t even let you into the door. The shit could be solid gold. It didn’t matter. They didn’t even let me through the door.

“As far as I know, at the time, was that the only new person they’d let through there was Mort Drucker. Mort Drucker, I think, worked in the production room. He wasn’t even an artist.

“Mort. Drucker,” Neal pauses. “The best caricaturist in the world was in the production room and he was, as far as I know, the last guy they ever hired. They had a guy named Joe Leteresi, who I guess had been there for a while. He was, guess what? A letterer. I don’t know when he was hired, seems like it was in the Stone Age.

“From about 1953 to the sixties, when Jack Kirby and Stan Lee became a danger to DC Comics, nobody got in. Nobody. We’re talking about not quite ten years. Nobody.

“Mort Drucker did joke pages. Isn’t that hysterical?

“There were other people doing joke pages, but Drucker’s stuff was fantastic. Then he did Bob Hope Comics, which were funny, but they were still Bob Hope Comics. I guess between doing mechanical work and Bob Hope Comics and joke pages was how he made a living.

“Then, one day in 1952, Bill Gaines, the son of William Gaines, decided to start Mad Magazine. Somehow they got a hold of Mort Drucker whose first feature was, I believe, a Bob and Ray illustrated cartoon story [in 1956]. For us fans out here, it was like ‘Wow!’ Before that, Mort Drucker had done the Bob Hope Comics, and Bob Kanigher, the Bob Kanigher," Neal lets out a melodramatic, comical laugh that Snidley Whiplash would be proud of. "Somehow was wise enough to realize that this guy could do war comics. I’m this fan, in high school, and I’d heard about this place called Timely, but they did crap. And ACG did a fat little guy with some super power…weird stuff. There was nothing, and then Julie Schwartz was sort of doing superheroes with Mystery in Space and Space Taxi. They were doing Superman and Batman, and then they tried Flash with the first story by Carmine Infantino and inked by Joe Kubert. Inspiration.

“People talk about the first issue, inked by Joe Kubert. Flash and the Turtle, and that great cover? Not to take anything away from Carmine, but Joe Kubert inking that first issue: kick-ass.

“So, anyway, Mort Drucker, around that time in ’56, started to do war comics. At DC, there were Joe Kubert and Russ Heath, the two best artists at DC. There was Gil Kane, who was becoming one of their best artists but wasn’t quite there yet, doing Green Lantern. There was Ross Andru and Jack Abel and others doing war stories that were so-so.

“You had Kubert and Russ Heath—very good— and then you suddenly had Mort Drucker fall into the war story thing. Now you’ve got Joe Kubert, Russ Heath, and Mort Drucker doing war stories. It was like heaven. Then, for whatever idiotic reason, this character Mademoiselle Marie, a resistance fighter in Paris, caught on with Bob Kanigher. He got Mort Drucker to do those stories, and Mort started to bash those out because he’d found another home over at Mad Magazine, doing satire and being paid four times as much, or something like that. There came a moment where there was war story, war story, Mademoiselle Marie, crap, and then gone! Mort had now found a career becoming the greatest caricaturist in the world, in my opinion.

“That was the end of the new guys at DC Comics!” Neal laughs. “He came in, became fantastic, was kept in the Production room, rose like a rocket, went out, and closed.

“Until I came along.”

Comic books weren’t originally a destination point for cartoonists, but rather a means to the end of a daily comic strip. Neal went a backwords route, first doing some work for Archie Comics in 1960, and then found work at famed ad agency Johnstone and Cushing. By 1962, Neal landed the gig drawing the comic strip of TV doctor Ben Casey, one that ended in 1966.

“Back when I finally went to DC, I had had a commercial art career and had done a syndicated strip for three and a half years. I became a person, and had a career, essentially,” Neal recalls. “It felt like a big career, and I was only twenty-five…When I decided that I didn’t want to do the strip anymore, I did an illustration portfolio that took me six months and took it to an advertising agency, left it, went to pick it up, and it was gone.

“What could I do then?

“Comic books.”

After doing some work for Warren’s black and white comics magazines, under the legendary Archie Goodwin, Neal connected DC artist Joe Kubert with the writer and syndicate behind the Tales of the Green Beret comic strip, based off of the John Wayne film. With Neal’s backing, Kubert gained the strip, and enjoyed a run on it that lasted until 1968.

“It’s later, and I’m thinking while I’m working at Warren [and realize]: ‘Mort Drucker’s now at Mad, Kubert’s doing the Green Beret comic strip, and all they have is Russ Heath who’s drawing war stories by Robert Kanigher.’

“I called ahead, and this time they let me see Bob Kanigher. Why? Because they were finally afraid of Marvel’s comics. So I met Bob Kanigher. What a tough guy, and he knew it. He wasn’t just tough, but he was proud that he was tough.

“He wanted me to be his friend. I know Bob Kanigher was rough, but not to me. He was as nice as could be.

“I even went to Kubert one day and said ‘Joe, how do you get along with Bob?’

“‘Oh, great.’

“‘Are you ever in conflict?‘

“‘Oh, never, never. I love the guy.’

“I’m thinking, ‘Of course this is Joe who could put his fist through the wall. I get it. I understand perfectly.’ Exactly like you said, you’ve got to earn his respect.

“I’m trying to imagine Joe putting up with shit from anybody. Not gonna happen. He’s a tough guy.

“Joe Orlando said one day ‘I was in Carmine’s office. I saw Joe coming down the hall, and I saw you coming down the hall, and you saw each other and then met. I thought for a minute that you guys were going to hit and there would be this big explosion and release of energy,’” Neal laughs.

Sandwiched between Mort Drucker and the generation that produced Denny O’Neil and Roy Thomas, Neil found himself the lone cheerleader and catalyst for change in what was then a static world.

“I have no contemporaries,” Neal admits. “To the older guys, I was the Rah Rah Johnny Freckleface Rah Rah.”

“I’d walk around with a big grin on my face and they would call me Smiley. It was fun. I enjoyed it. Maybe it was a false happiness, but it infected people: ‘There’s some new generation coming? Oh, it’s just Neal.’

“Basically, I sparkplugged all the old guys. They were like ‘What’s he doing? Fancy panels and all that stuff? What’s that?’

“They got a kick out of it, and I met all the old guys, and made friends with all the old generation: Howie Post, who was doing Anthro and was just a sweetheart, Russ Heath, Joe Kubert, and Ross Andru. I loved…and love them all. I was the unexpected thing, sort of like you’re in a family with five kids and then mom gets pregnant again.

‘What’s this? He’s happy to be here? And we’re all miserable? Let’s get happy.’”

As Neal Adams’ style emerged in the ‘60s, it was as a photo realistic cartoonist with modern graphic design leanings: his superheroes looked like real people in costume, while his page layouts consisted of unorthodox panel sizes and arrangements. Fast becoming a star cover artist at DC, Neal made splashes on drawing Batman with writers Bob Haney (in The Brave and the Bold) and Denny O’Neil, as well as the Adams-scripted Deadman series (in the pages of Strange Adventures), which combined superhero action with quasi-Eastern philosophy and trippy layouts that would make Steve Ditko proud.

“People used to ask me about Deadman and other comics that they thought sold well, but according to DC, they didn’t sell that well. How could this be? Of course they sold well, out of the back of the distributor’s warehouse. There was a table in back where you could pull up with a van and buy your Playboy Magazine or comics. The guys who started comic book stores and conventions got their comics that way. From the backs of the distributor’s. Marvel and DC are promoting ‘We’ve got Barry Smith, Neal Adams, and Jim Steranko, and they’re all pulling out this great stuff and sales are just a little bit better than they were? Why is that?’ It’s because you have affidavit returns on your comic books where distributors sign a piece of paper saying they’ve destroyed this many comics, and then they sell them out of the back. That’s why you can get mint conditions of my comic books all the time. ‘Look at that! Looks like it was printed yesterday…thirty-five years ago.’

“The DC says ‘I don’t know why they didn’t sell, Neal. You know, people like Deadman!’”

The cancellation of Deadman led Neal to knock on the door of DC’s competition: Stan Lee’s Marvel Comics.

“I went over to Marvel and I met Stan. I said ‘I’d like to do some work for you, Stan, in the Marvel Style.’ Which was where the artist does the story, Stan dialogues it. Steranko talk me that was how he worked with Stan.

“Stan goes ‘Anything you want!’

“‘What do you mean, anything?’

“‘Spider-Man, Fantastic Four, anything you want.’

“‘Don’t you already have people on them?’

“‘Doesn’t matter, you can have anything you want.’

“I said ‘Why?’

“‘I’ll tell you a secret: the only comic that guys here read, from DC, is Deadman',” Neal laughs.

“I’m not the type of person that sits in the back of the class and doesn’t say anything. If I have anything to say, I’ll go directly to the person and say ‘Listen, guess what could happen if you’re not a little bit nicer?’”

“The worst thing I ran into was when I was working on some covers in the production room at DC Comics, and I looked over to the cutting board,” Neal says. “There was a guy there, and it looked like he was cutting up originals.

“So, I went over there and asked ‘What are you doing?’ like an idiot.

“‘I’m getting rid of these.’ He was cutting them into thirds (that was the way): He’d cut them into two slices and them dunk them into the garbage.”

Neal pauses dramatically: sitting across the desk from him in his office, is akin to witnessing a one-man play. At that time, it was standard practice for both companies to not return artwork; DC, in particular, was infamous for destroying it. The pages were cut into tiers so that they couldn’t be easily pieced back together.

“‘You’re cutting up originals?’

“‘Yeah, yeah, I’m low man on the totem pole here, so I get to do the shitty jobs. So, I cut these up and throw them away.’

“‘Really?’ I said. ‘Stop, just stop.’

“‘Why?’

“‘I just asked you to stop. Stop.

“‘Look. I’m just going to go talk to some people, and would like it if you wouldn’t cut up anymore while I’m gone.’

“‘Oh, yeah?’

“‘Okay. Let me put it this way: I’m gonna go and talk to some people, and if I come back and you’ve cut up some pages, I’m going to be very angry.’..He looked in my eyes, and then I could pretty much guarantee that he wouldn’t cut up any more pages.

“I went to talk to Carmine and said ‘Carmine, they’re cutting up originals in there.’

“He said ‘Yeah?’

“I said ‘Yeah. That’s really not good.’

“‘No? No, of course it’s not!’

“‘Maybe I’m not making myself clear, Carmine: they’re cutting up original art that should go back to the original artists.’

“‘Oh, you think so? Yeah, right. No, it should.’”

Neal pauses again.

“‘Okay, let’s start again—
“‘Carmine that’s a really bad thing going on in there. Artwork shouldn’t be thrown away, it’s not garbage and should be returned to the artist. Don’t you think so?’

“‘Yes, I agree!’

“‘Well: Carmine, if another page of artwork gets cut up here, I don’t think I’ll be working here anymore.’

“‘No, no, wait a second. I’m going to go talk to Irwin about that.’

“So, he went and talked to Irwin Donenfeld. They agreed at that time, not to destroy any artwork. And that’s when it stopped.

“I love Carmine, and he’s talented and I’ve loved his work since I was a teenager. It was wonderful to meet Carmine Infantino. He combines design with art, so his sense of spatial relationships is not very realistic but very wonderful. I’ve always loved his stuff.

“His art direction was a little like this – vertical and then horizontal. But I didn’t mind, and got along fine with him. I think that I got some things accomplished that I might not have gotten accomplished if he didn’t help. He stopped the art from being destroyed. I only stopped it from being destroyed momentarily, but he stopped it by going in and defending my position, without necessarily believing it.”

Carmine used his pull as Editor-in-Chief (and later Publisher) to keep the art from being destroyed but, according to Neal, the fight wasn’t over for seven more years:

“One day, the new Publisher at DC Comics, Jenette Kahn, decided to return all of the original artwork, for the right reasons,” Neal notes, citing the Publisher who succeeded Infantino in the 1970s. “During that same week, Marvel Comics decided to return all their original artwork. Why? Because people were coming to DC because they could get their originals back.

“There were people in the freelance end of things who were terrified that Neal would cause everybody to be fired. We had an Academy of Comic Book Arts. People didn’t want me to bring it up, and argued with me. It was a little rough, so I decided I wouldn’t bring the Academy into the discussion of returning original artwork, because everybody was afraid.

“What’s interesting about it, is that the year after the decision was made to return original artwork, every artist in the business doubled their income that year. Even the worst could sell their stuff.”

One of Adams’ biggest coups was also in his helping Superman creators Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster regain their creators’ credit, as well as a pension from DC Comics/Warner Brothers. When the Superman film was announced in the late '70s, Siegel came out of exile to force Warner into settling with he and his long-suffering creative partner and friend. Through the efforts of the National Cartoonist’s Society and President Jerry Robinson, as well as Adams’ vocal support within the comic book industry, the pair successfully regained their credit, along with an annual pension. For decades, it was common for publishers to make creators sign away their rights when signing their paychecks.

“Since I was eighteen years old, I was used to getting a purchase order, but at DC Comics I’d turn in the pages and they’d give me a check. On the back of the check there’d be this statement that says ‘We own everything, and you forfeit all your rights…’

“‘What’s this?’

“‘That’s your agreement.’

“‘So, you mean that if I sign the check I’ve made a contract with you?’ I wrote a little pamphlet to hand out to everybody that says ‘Look, DC Comics gives you a check with that thing on the back. Cross it out, and write ‘Under protest’ and then sign your check. You know what? Your bank doesn’t want to be a witness to your contract: they just want to cash your lousy check. That’s all they care about. Do that and you’re protected. There’s a danger to signing those things and not making an objection, because you’ve then accepted it.

“That’s a bad thing.”

“The thing about it is that in a way, I was in a better position to do stuff, because I’d had work in advertising,” Adams notes. “Everybody else could’ve found work, but it was easier for me. When that happens, you do have a certain responsibility and can’t say ‘Oh, they’re not going to fight, so I’m not going to fight’, because they’re in less of a position to fight. I’m in a better position to fight, so I came quietly, smiling and suggesting ‘Let’s talk about this and just be friendly.’ I never got into any real arguments.”

It’s a good thing that Neal Adams was turned away from comics in the 1950s; had he not been, he may not have become armed with the knowledge and business acumen gained through advertising, or the craftsmanship honed through drawing daily strips. When he did finally make it, however, he did it in a big way, irrevocably contributing more than his fair share to the standards, practices, and ethics of comics. Because of that (not even counting his revolutionary draftsmanship, panel layout, subject matter in Green Lantern/Green Arrow, and all his other creative contributions), Neal Adams forced the comic book industry to grow up just a bit more.

“This is something I believe in very strongly: I believe that lawyers ought to be out of most things where people are involved,” Neal points out. “People of good will can get together and settle their disputes. There’s no reason to think that they can’t, and they do. I settled more disputes with DC and Marvel by just being friendly. Maybe because I was, perhaps, a little more knowledgeable, but that’s part of the mix. If you know it’s good for both sides to have the same caliber guns, and that way nobody’s taking advantage. That way, I’m in a better position to have those conversations and to make the points that have to be made, and they can make the points they have to make, and we can come to some kind of a conclusion.

“The big argument I had for royalties was ‘There’s a certain amount of copies that you can sell, where you consider it to be your profit. You don’t expect to sell more copies than this, so if you make a contract that says ‘If that number of copies is 80,000 copies, some artist or writer are able to sell more than 80,000 copies, then why not make some small royalty of that?’ Then, the creators will make an effort to do work that will make it sell beyond that, so you, the publisher, will make more money. You’ll get the best out of your creatives than you can possibly get now, because they’ll want to make these royalties. You’ll be selling more copies than you’d expected to sell. That’s a win-win for everybody. You don’t have to start at copy one, but at whatever point you feel is a windfall if you sell more copies.’ So, they did, and surprise, surprise, suddenly some books were selling 150,000 to 300,000 copies. Even now, if you were to ask an artist about certain other artists, they’d say ‘They sell more copies and get better royalties.’ That’s what it’s about.

“If you present an argument like that, where are they going to get angry? There’s no place to get angry because I’ve just made sense.

“‘Are you pissed off at me because I’ve made sense? I’m going to help you sell more copies. That’s a good thing, isn’t it?’” Neal laughs.

“Most of that stuff got settled pretty peacefully. I find, for example, even now common sense and logic…We had some difficulty with Dave Cockrum. He had double pneumonia and was in the VA Hospital, not getting help. We managed to convince Marvel that he ought to get something. One way we convinced them was that I called a reporter in Washington and I had him call Marvel and say ‘is this going to be a big story, with Dave Cockrum in a VA Hospital and not getting any royalties for the characters he’s created? Should I come to New York to cover this story?’

“‘No, no, it’ll be settled and taken care of next week.’”

For the Love of Comics #03: Jeff Newelt ACT-I-VATEs the Hype

Words & Pictures: Seth Kushner

I arranged to talk to Jeff Newelt on the rooftop of the building that houses Deep 6 studios, in Gowanus, Brooklyn. It’s the type of location where one would almost expect to meet a superhero, or a superhero’s publicist, in this case. The phallic Williamsburg Bank Building looms in the distance, it’s clock telling me that Jeff is running late. No signal beam is needed to call upon him, just an iPhone to call to check on his status.

Jeff arrives wearing a Paul Pope designed t-shirt and carrying a bag of comics. He wastes no time hurling info at me at lightning speed. “My role in comics in general, is being the guy who connects all the superheroes,” Jeff tells me matter-of-factly as the F train rattles by. “I get them together and make sure they all know each other so they could all team up to expose everybody to each other's awesome stuff and of course battle some evil cosmic force sure to invade earth in the months to come. I look at ACT-I-VATE as an Avengers, and Paul Pope, who I also work with, as a Batman, and Royal Flush Magazine as a Legion of Substitute Heroes (kidding Josh!!) or SMITH Mag as a Justice League - all compatible and equal entities.”

I don’t know when I first met Jeff. I remember him introducing himself to me at the Consumer Electronics Show in Las Vegas a few years back, when I was covering it and he was doing PR for Samsung at the time. But I already knew him then; we were myspace friends, and he was comics editor for Heeb, a magazine I freelanced for as well. But, thinking back, he worked at The Art Director’s Club back in the 90’s when I frequently attended events. Wait, didn’t he also used to date my friend Emily’s friend? Maybe we went to kindergarten together?

Jeff Newelt, AKA JahFurry, is a self-described social media expert/pioneer. He’s also a reggae performer and promotes jazz & reggae shows. Jeff also is the comics editor of SMITH, HEEB, (where he’s also written many comic creator profiles and reviews) and Royal Flush (announced later in this article) Magazines, as well as editor of The Pekar Project for SMITH Mag. Not enough? Okay, Jeff also is the PR/Social Media consultant for artists such as Paul Pope, Doug Rushkoff, Rick Veitch, Larry Marder, NBM Publishing, Molly Crabapple, David Lloyd, DJ Spooky and others. That must be it, right? Nope. He also is the co-host of ProtocolsNYC an off-the-record salon, and teaches social media to female entrepreneurs.

When does this guy sleep? I think I know since I’ve often received emails from Jeff at three or four AM and never anytime during the day before noon. “JahFurries are nocturnal,” he tells me.

Jeff is feeding me too much information all at once. Time to start the questioning.

Seth Kushner - Tell me about ACT-I-VATE; how did you start with them?

Jeff Newelt – “I first came to ACT-I-VATE because I was comics editor of SMITH magazine and we were publishing online,Shooting War by Anthony Lappe and Dan Goldman, who was also in ACT-I-VATE. So, while promoting and hyping Shooting War, I also promoted ACT-I-VATE, because I was a fan of what they do. I always saw ACT-I-VATE as a sort of sister or brother site to SMITH. Part of my shtick is I uberblab about things I like, so I’d been telling people about AIV, and after seeing what I’d done promoting Shooting War, Dean Haspiel and Dan Goldman asked if I’d officially be one of them as ‘Minister Of Hype.’ I said, ‘Lemme think abou.... I’m in!’ Since then, I’ve been the fifth Beatle, or the twenty-seventh Beatle in this case. I’m the one guy who doesn’t do comics, but I’ll stick my two cents in a lot of different ways.”

SK - What does a “Minister of Hype” do?

JN - “I run in a lot of circles and speak to a lot of media spreading the word that AIV is the ultimate webcomics collective because I believe it. I send people to AIV who may not have ever read a graphic novel as an entry point to not only webcomics, but to the comics medium in general. I also marshal the forces as social media general reminding everybody to link to AIV on their Facebook profile, to Tweet when you put up a new comic, stuff like that.”

“What I consider to be one of my specialties, and has been since I was six years old, is being able to turn people on to comics. When AIV has a big party, I make sure the guest list is 25 to 50% non-comics fans. Most comics related parties are 95% comics fans. I frame AIV, and all the folks I work with, as something someone who is into cool culture would want to be a part of. You don’t have to be a theater buff to see two plays a year, or an independent film freak to see three indie films a year, and you don’t have to be a comics nut to enjoy a few webcomics or buy a graphic novel or three.”

SK – What are webcomics doing for the comics industry?

JN - “Webcomics are not in competition with print comics, but instead they may be the savior of print comics. You can read webcomics while you’re not working at work. You may never pick up and buy a graphic novel, but if I send you a cool image from something that sounds like it might be up your alley, or post one on my Facebook page, you’re just might click, and if you like that, you just may click again onto Amazon. Especially if you're at work, goofing off, and really, when is that not the case? It’s primo procrastination fodder and we’re going to take advantage of that.”

“Without the web, converting someone from maybe buying a graphic novel to actually buying a graphic novel is sometimes almost impossible, but webcomics are the segue in between that, because you can look at a free webcomic for five minutes and be hooked without even knowing you even liked comics in general. I guess that makes my role very similar to being a crack dealer. I give them a taste and they get hooked. AIV is very easy to give a taste of. It tastes like chicken actually. It’s a great gateway for comics in general."

"My main role is gradually and sinisterly getting it into the consciousness of the culturatti that AIV is the badass all-star webcomics collective. "

SK – What about the Pekar project; how did you get involved with Harvey?

JN – “We at SMITH had a code-word for A.D. New Orleans After the Deluge, the serialized nonfiction Katrina graphic novel by Josh Neufeld, before it even started, which was ‘American Splendor 2.0,’ meaning our benchmark for quality of nonfiction comics on SMITH was the work of Harvey Pekar. The 2.0 meant the multimedia and blog extras our format can provide, and Josh happened to be an actual frequent Pekar collaborator. Our next SMITH comics series was Next-Door Neighbor, an anthology of true-life tales edited by AIV's own Dean Haspiel, another frequent Pekar collaborator. Harvey himself contributed a story to NDN, and it was my contribution to pair him with Rick Veitch, and Harvey was real happy with how that story came out and the reception it received. Around that time Harvey was working with a gifted illustrator/designer, Tara Seibel who was starting to do comics with Harvey, and he was energized, knowing the two of them if they kept going would get into some deep avante garde shit. So he called Dean and said, ‘What about that SMITH online thing…think me and Tara could do something?’ I was looking for the next big SMITH project, and Dean knew I was also itching to hone my hands-on editor's chops, so Dean connected us. I immediately had Harvey and Tara do a strip for HEEB's politics issue and the seeds were sown. At the same time Harvey started working with artist Joseph Remnant, whose style was opposite of Tara's, very Crumb-like, but who Harvey was also enjoying working with. Harvey also did a strip illustrated by young Sean Pryor for Royal Flush, which Harvey also dug, and then Rick Parker, the veteran who always wanted to draw for Pekar threw his hat into the ring and a band was formed."

"Working with Harvey is a treat. He is way more sweet, humble and appreciative than he is a ‘curmudgeon.’ We quickly got into a groove and just started to literally jam. Harvey calls me up and reads me stories over the phone and I even would up in one of them, 'Legendary Vienna.' This is also the first time that Harvey isn't working just one-to-one-to-one with all the artists. This is a team. Tara's been instrumental in getting the whole thing rolling, coming up with the badass logo that just sealed the deal, and all four artists are bringing their A-game. We even all went to Cleveland for his 70th birthday to do a Pekar Project gallery show and it felt like a family reunion even though most of us just met for the first time.”

SK – How did the “Harvey Heads” gallery come into being?

JN - "I came up with the Harvey Heads idea on the subway. I didn’t know what was I going to get Harvey for his 70th birthday, and then I thought, how about something that shows this super humble man how much he's loved in the comics community! What if I got 70 artists to draw 70 Harvey heads in tribute? Turns out we got over 100, and more keep coming in. So with a week from conception, to execution, the Harvey Heads gallery came into being, and it wound up being not only a present he loved, but a veritable buzz bomb because its just so fucking cool, and brought a lot of attention to the Pekar Project that we're all working are heinies off on and also very proud of the results. I'm of the school that if you built it awesomely, they will come. If someone asks how can they get folks to write about what they do or their product I say first make sure whatever it is, is awesome. Otherwise don't waste your time; there are plenty of awesome things for media to write about over a not-awesome thing with a spin."

SK – What else do you have going on?

JN – “I'll also take this time in this article to announce that I’ve become comics editor of a third magazine, Royal Flush, the new issue of which is, to quote my own press release, "Part pop culture mag, part rock art carnival, part comic book, and all irreverent fun." I wrote an article about Frank Zappa and Jack Kirby's friendship, and my pal Rick Veitch did a killer illustration of Zappa as a Kirby New God. I also worked with Harvey Pekar on a piece. Flush publisher Josh Bernstein and I brainstormed on how the fuck to get Pekar into the magazine, especially because artist Sean Pryor (now in Pekar Project) was dying to work with him. So we decided to send him some metal and punk CDs to review, knowing that would set him off on an entertaining rant, and it did. And in the spirit of a team-up, this Royal Flush Pekar story will be previewed exclusively on the Pekar Project on SMITH. Sean kicked ass on the art, and was then asked to be part of the Pekar Project and Paul Pope provided a sexy pull-out centerfold.”

SK – I’m exhausted just listening to you. How do you manage to keep track of so many different things?

JN – “Like Wolverine, who’s on the X-Men and the Avengers and who is also hirsute, I'm on multiple teams with equal allegiance to each. It would always frustrate me when the superheroes would fight in the comics. I instinctually see the common points where all the different individual entities can team-up, share audiences... It’s like, if you like the comics on ACT-I-VATE, you’ll probably like the clothes Paul Pope designed for DKNY Jeans, or Rick Veitch's graphic novel, Brat Pack, and so on.... So I coordinate all the superheroes of comics to a greater good of a greater audience for each other and for comics in general.”

With those final words, Jeff takes off, not off the side of the roof, but down the stairs, undoubtedly on his way to make something happen. Or, maybe he’s just going off to read his comics.

Related links-

Pekar Project on Smith Mag

Royal Flush Magazine