Pádraig Ó Méalóid

What's the News on Marvelman? Marvel Replies...

2012-01-18T13:20:00.012Z

On Friday the 24th of July, 2009, Joe Quesada, then Editor-in-Chief of Marvel Comics, accompanied by Dan Buckley, Marvel’s publisher, made an announcement at San Diego’s Comic-Con International, saying that Marvel Comics had bought the rights to Marvelman.

That’s now two and a half years ago (or a bit over 900 days, if you like), and we’re all more or less still waiting for them to announce what their actual plans are. Without attempting to draw any conclusions of my own here (because I’ll be doing that somewhere else, before the year is out), I thought I’d try to find out what they have said in those two and a half years.

It seems that various different people from Marvel Comics regularly take part in Q&A sessions on Comic Book Resources, and these sessions are the primary source for very nearly all the information that follows.

So, here’s what I’ve found:

The first report on CBR was on Friday, July 24th, 2009, where a somewhat triumphalist Joe Quesada made the first announcement:

"Marvelman belongs to Marvel," said Quesada, saying that the company purchased the character from creator Mick Anglo – a process that started in 2007 thanks to word from Neil Gaiman. "Mick is 94 years old, and I talked to him on Wednesday for an hour and a half," said Buckley noting that Marvel had discusses plans for the character and its stories with Alan Moore, Neil Gaiman, Alan Davis and Mark Buckingham, who was in the audience.

"I'm excited to see this character not just at Marvel, but the continued adventures of Marvelman," said Quesada.

The next day, Saturday, July 25th, 2009, there was more:

The Marvel panellists had much to say on the subject, starting with Quesada saying, "Marvelman belongs to Marvel. Marvel has purchased the rights to Marvelman from Mick Anglo, who is the creator of Marvelman. He is arguably the JD Salinger of comic book characters. It is arguably one of the most important comic book characters in decades."

Publisher Dan Buckley went on to describe the process behind the purchase, saying, "I'm pretty sure if you go on the internet right now, within the next five minutes you'll hear every rumour associated with this character from the 1950s through the '80s to the '90s. We started talking to Mick Anglo's people in 2007 about this, and it was a very exciting prospect. I first became aware of it through our relationship with Neil Gaiman. I really didn't know much about Marvelman at that time, but the conversation started about how we could get involved with the character and bring him back. Mick Anglo and his folks are great to work with. John Campbell who represents Mick Anglo – I want to mention him because he's done a great deal to bring him back here. He's not going to get all the kudos because he's got to do all the negotiations with me.

"But it's very exciting for us to get this character that has so many great stories attached to it. We're working. We don't have a lot to say on the publishing right now. We will be publishing some Marvelman material next year. We are talking to all, besides having Mick on board – who by the way is 94 years old, and I spoke to him Wednesday for an hour and a half. It was a pleasure. We're talking to all the people who were involved in the '80s and '90s material – Alan [Moore], Neil [Gaiman], Garry Leach, Alan Davis – we've reached out to all these folks. Mark Buckingham, who is also in the house..."

"The impact of this story that the character had on the industry is akin to what happened with 'Watchmen,' and we're very excited about it. We'll have a lot more details in the near future."

Just over a week later, on Monday, August 3rd, 2009, CBR editor Kiel Phegley hosted CUP O’ JOE, a regular Q&A feature with himself and Joe Quesada, which included this:

This is our first edition of CUP O’ JOE after the madness that was Comic-Con International in San Diego, which we are still filing reports from even today. As you can see from our complete Comic-Con news index, there were a ton of announcements, but the biggest comic book news concerned Miracleman -- known originally as Marvelman when his adventures were serialized in Britain’s Warrior Magazine. Miracleman will be back under his proper Marvelman name and under the Marvel Comics banner, ending years of legal issues surrounding the character.

Kiel Phegley: In terms of news, we already spoke a little bit on CBR TV about the Marvelman announcement; that Marvel has obtained the rights to the character. How did you think the announcement went over with comics fans?

Joe Quesada: I think it went amazingly well. For most people it was a jaw dropping announcement. For other, younger fans, it was a bit lost on them until they went back and looked up exactly what the character means to the history of modern comics. All in all, the response was pretty amazing, even more than I anticipated and I was anticipating a lot.

[And later in the interview...]

Kiel Phegley: The one thing that was repeated over and over by Marvel staff about this deal was the fact that Mick Anglo, Marvelman’s creator, was getting his due. I know that Marvel Publisher Dan Buckley has been playing point man in talking to Anglo and settling the specifics of the deal, but what's been your take of the man and his art?

Joe Quesada: While most people in the States aren’t familiar with Mick’s work, over in the UK he is incredibly well respected. I actually spoke with David Hine about this a bit at one of the con parties. It was loud and crowded, but I could tell that David just had tremendous respect for the guy. I do believe that if Mick had been working here in the States, he would have been known within the American comics community as one of the classic masters. So, our hope is to expose Mick and his early work to a wider audience as well as introduce Marvelman to a whole new generation of readers who aren’t aware of how the character revolutionized how we write and draw characters today. But that’s the interesting thing about Marvelman, there has always been something magical about the character, something prophetic about it that even though he’s not a household name, he’s caused seismic creative changes within our industry on every shore.

A few days after that, on Thursday, August 6th, 2009, CBR spoke to Todd McFarlane, to see if he had any opinion on the announcement. He did:

CBR Executive Producer Jonah Weiland spoke with McFarlane during Comic-Con. When asked to comment on Marvel's announcement, McFarlane responded, ‘Here’s what I know as a guy who’s been living a complicated life: I will be having meaningful conversations with my lawyer when I get home.’

A few weeks later, on Friday, August 21st, 2009, Joe Quesada was answering more questions with Kiel Phegley, the last time they spoke about Marvelman in 2009:

Kiel Phegley: We've got an awful lot of questions about the status of Marvelman since Marvel's acquisition of the character. We know that for now there's nothing to report with respect to reprinting material that's already been seen in the US, but in terms of the classic character and his place at Marvel, Byzantine echoed a few readers when he asked, "Will we see the character brought into the Earth-616 continuity? Or will he be given his own universe to exist in?"

Joe Quesada: The simple answer to this is that we’ll be making announcements about this in due time. With the acquisition of Marvelman, we inherited a character with not only a long publishing history, but a character that over the years, due to its interesting history, has become a legend in our industry. It’s because of that that we want to take great care and really think through what we’re doing with the character and how we will present him. I know fans are dying to know all the whats and hows as soon as possible, but rushing into those decisions, at the end of the day, won’t serve the character. What I can say is that when we do start to announce our publishing plans, I think longstanding fans of the character will be pleased and fans unfamiliar with the character will be intrigued.

Kiel Phegley: hondobrode followed that up, wondering, "How would Marvelman be different than, say, the Sentry? I would think he would most appropriately fit under the MAX imprint, but I imagine that would also limit sales and exposure. Are you going to change his back-story? Can we expect Marvel to purchase any other properties?"

Joe Quesada: All of this will be revealed in good time, hondobrode. We’ve already had some pretty fantastic idea sessions internally here at Marvel about how to go about it all, but there are other cool ideas still on the way that we’re going to be throwing into the mix. Once we’ve gathered all of this, then we’ll start laying a groundwork and foundation for the character and that’s when fandom will get all of the info it’s starving for. I wish I could be more specific, but I think this is better than rushing into things and then hearing that we should have taken our time and thought it through.

Look, folks have waited for decades to see the character return. Heck, most thought he never would. So what’s a bit more time? Especially knowing that it’s finally going to happen!

Kiel Phegley: Finally, with all the praise sent towards Marvelman creator Mick Anglo and his contributions to the original British strips, Steve Bishop wanted to know, "Given that the Marvelman series that ran in Britain during the '50s and '60s was originally printed in black and white, does Marvel have any plans to put out an 'Essential Marvelman' series?"

Joe Quesada: Hey there, Steve Bishop. I would say it’s a very safe bet that you’ll see the older material printed. In what form, I couldn’t tell you just yet. This has also been a part of our internal conversations.

Eight months after the last piece, on Friday, April 2nd, 2010, we have Joe Quesada answering more questions submitted on the CBR message boards:

Kiel Phegley: Another piece of news ... was that Marvel is ready to release some Marvelman product starting in June with a Marvelman Classic Primer. You spoke at the convention about interviewing Marvelman creator Mick Anglo recently, and I'm assuming that was for the Primer. What was that experience like, and what can fans expect from this opening one-shot come June?

Joe Quesada: Meeting Mick was a huge thrill, and despite his age, he's still spry and sharp as a whip. What was interesting about Mick is that he really doesn't understand to this day what the big deal is with respect to Marvelman and his past work. It was just a job for him back in the day. While he is certainly appreciative, he is incredibly humble about the whole thing - but also incredibly eager to see his old work in print, which is what we'll be starting with.

Phegley: As exciting as this all is, many have been wondering what the classic material on tap for the summer means for the famed modern material? What can you say about the full rollout in terms of why you've started with the original British material and when readers might expect word on more plans for Marvelman at Marvel?

Quesada: A publishing plan has been set internally at Marvel, and we'll be making this all public very soon. But that said, we think it's important to put MM in historical context, so it only seems fitting that we start with the original Mick Anglo creation and run. While Mick is well known in the UK, I think this will help people here in the states realize what a great artist he was. It's a perfect primer for anyone wanting to really immerse themselves in the rich history of Marvelman. So, patience, grasshopper, patience.

The listing for the Marvelman Classic Primer on Marvel’s website says:

Who is the mysterious Marvelman? The answer to that question is one of the most mysterious in comics lore. Created in 1954 by writer/artist Mick Anglo, the character enjoyed a long run in the British comics market as one of its most powerful heroes. A few decades later, the character was revived with a dark, moody, deconstructionist bent, and produced one of the most important works of comic art in the medium's history. But now, miracle of miracles, Marvel has stepped up to the plate to deliver on the promise of Anglo's incredible characters. The Marvelman Primer will help readers unfamiliar with that character get up to speed on the past, present and future of Marvelman stories. We'll check in with Mick Anglo, Neil Gaiman and others who contributed to this character’s history over the years. It was the news that swept the 2009 San Diego Comic-Con and the Marvelman Primer explains why.

Despite this, there was no interview with Neil Gaiman, or indeed any ‘others,’ and the interview with the late Mick Anglo was sadly uninformative.

Just five days after the last piece on CBR, on Wednesday, April 7th, 2010, there was a quote from Axel Alonso, vice-president and executive editor of Marvel Comics, speaking at WonderCon on Sunday 4th April:

Another fan wanted to know if new Marvelman stories are coming soon, and when Marvel will reprint Alan Moore's run on the book. ‘I'm not at liberty to talk about that,’ Alonso said. ‘There will be an announcement soon about the reprint.’

He added that ‘there will be new Marvelman stuff. We will be meeting en masse, all the right people, to talk about how to do it. We've already begun some of those conversations. We're very excited about this, very excited about it. We want to make sure we have the appropriate game plan to roll forth.’

Four months pass before we next hear from anyone at Marvel. On Tuesday, August 31st, 2010, more than a year after Joe Quesada’s initial announcement, Marvel Comics editor Tom Brevoort was at Baltimore Comic-Con:

With respect to Marvelman, Brevoort said, ‘Not only do we need to make sure everything is right and proper with everyone associated with the character, but we need to do Marvelman right.’ Marvelman writer Neil Gaiman has spent some time with the Marvel staff to share his ideas. Brevoort is aware of people waiting for developments with the property, but said it is still some time off in the future. ‘Not a day has gone by that we have not worked on Marvelman in one way, shape or form,’ including the remastering of the early material.

Nearly a year passes, however, before we hear anything else. On Friday, June 3rd, 2011, now nearly two years after Quesada’s announcement, Tom Brevoort, now billed as Marvel’s Senior Vice-President of Publishing, is interviewed by comics retailer Jud Meyers:

Jud Meyers: When are we getting Marvelman?

Tom Brevoort: Honestly, the short answer is ‘As soon as everything is ready.’ It should come as no surprise that while we have overcome 80% to 90% of all the loop closing that we have to do, there's still more to be done. Everybody's ready and lined up, and now the book's been announced for two years. But we've spoken to Neil [Gaiman]. We've spoken to Mark Buckingham. Eventually, once every single thing is lined up, we'll get to a point where they can come back, finish The Silver Age and do the Dark Age story they always had planned, and we'll get the earlier four collections in some way, shape or form back into the marketplace. It should come as no shock to you that Marvelman has been screwed up in terms of one issue or another legally for decades now. So while we have gone over most of it, we really want to make sure that we have every hatch battened down before we try to roll any of this stuff out. We're getting there.

I'm sorry it's taken so long since we announced the whole thing - we were excited about it! And we thought other people would be too, but we didn't anticipate it would take this long. Things move slowly, particularly because we’re trying to make sure everything is done right and above board and everyone involved is satisfied. So have patience. We're getting to it. It is coming. We will get there. We're trying to do that thing that fans talk about every once in a while where they say, ‘Rather than having this come out haphazardly, couldn't you just get the whole project done and then release it?’ We're not quite doing that, but we're doing that sort of thing. We're making sure everything is as it should be before we start to roll these out so we don't have an enormous problem after we've put two issues out and then everything is jammed up again.

Meyers: Well, luckily it's no secret that every retailer in the world is just dying to give you all their money for this.

Brevoort: Me too! I can't wait to have those stories back in print as well. I have copies of all the old collections and the Eclipse issues. Hell, I have them in Warrior. I was buying Warrior back in the '80s! So I know that material forwards and backwards, and I'd love to have it back in a more modern package and in a more modern edition. We're making steady progress. One after another, things get done, but then some new complication will crop up. It's all behind-the-scenes legal stuff, and even the differences between American copyright law and UK copyright law make for a whole different set of issues to deal with. Back in the day, I don't know if Eclipse closed all those loops either. So we're trying to make sure that when we're ready to go, everything is as it should be.

Meyers: I had to ask, my friend.

Brevoort: That's what I'm here for. But for now the news on Marvelman is: We’re working on it!

Four more months pass. By now, Joe Quesada, who announced that Marvel owned Marvelman, is no longer Marvel’s Editor-in-Chief, but rather their Chief Creative Officer, whatever that actually means. On Saturday, October 15th, 2011, at the 2011 New York Comic and once again in the company of publisher Dan Buckley, they addressed the issue of Marvelman one again:

The perennial question about new stories for Miracleman/Marvelman received the standard response that things are in the works, but no hard news was announced. Buckley said, "I will give as much as I can give... there's a lot of very complicated things to navigate to ensure that every creator involved in said property [can be taken care of properly.]" He added, "If we're going to do it, we're going to do it right, and we're not going to have anybody questioning what we're doing."

And finally, on Friday, January 13th, 2012, Axel Alonso, now Marvel Comics’ Editor-in-Chief, answered the question, "Marvelman in 2012?" with this:

“Sit tight. We'll have some additional news soon.”

And that’s everything that Marvel have said about their plans for Marvelman. Which, as you can probably see, is a mixture of stonewalling, saying that things are complicated, and telling us that there’ll be news soon. In fact, we’ve been promised news ‘soon’ on a number of occasions, and told several times that we’d be given details on their plans for Marvelman, without ever being given any actual details. Will we ever actually be told anything? We’ll just have to wait and see.

Alan Moore, The Magic Keyboard, and the NoHo Bowl of Harm

2011-12-13T15:07:00.002Z

On the 8th of December 2011 an unusual item appeared for sale on eBay, titled Alan Moore’s Signed Computer Keyboard (May Have Mystical Powers). This listing further went on to say,

As you know, Alan Moore is the world renowned author of Watchmen, V for Vendetta, Swamp Thing and a load of other fantastical gubbins, and here for sale is his old computer keyboard. He definitely didn’t write any of the aforementioned works with this, and by the looks of things, it was mainly used as an ash tray.

I’ve had a go on the keyboard, and in doing so, felt the power of Alan surging through it. It immediately inspired me to write a fifteen chapter novel, comparable to the Russian Masters, which took no less than four and a half hours, without even stopping for a toilet break. Unfortunately, the keyboard was not connected to a computer at the time, and all the work was lost. Therefore I cannot verify the functionality of the keyboard, as it hasn’t been rigorously tested. Or even connected to a computer since Alan owned it.

How did I come to have this keyboard in my possession? It’s a long and convoluted story, but here are the highlights: Portrait painting mother; a wall of death; a lack of funds (for previously mentioned wall of death); Alan upgrading his keyboard (not sure which model he has now) and a heavy dose of serendipity.

A short synopsis would be: Whilst on a break from sitting for his portrait, Alan asked how the wall of death was going. My response was funds are low, but spirits are high. Alan then mentioned he was upgrading his keyboard, so I tentatively enquired as to what he was doing with his old keyboard, and asked whether he would be prepared to sign and donate it to the cause, hoping it would reach upwards of seven pounds fifity, as after all, it is akin to a modern day version of Shakespeare’s quill. In mind of it being auctioned, Alan was astute enough to sign it with a non-specific message of goodwill – with lots of love from Alan Moore.

So, the first question to ask myself was, is this genuine? The short answer is, yes, I have every reason to believe it is. This first came to my notice through a Facebook posting by a mutual friend of mine and the seller, and said mutual friend is also a friend and collaborator of Alan Moore’s, so there’s a solid and verifiable connection there between the seller and Alan himself, as far as I’m concerned. Also, the seller - who I now know to be called Bill Pollard - mentions his mother painting a portrait of Alan Moore, which he provides a link to. By pure coincidence, I’ve actually met his mother, Elke Pollard, who has indeed painted a portrait of Alan:-

Now, what’s all this about a Wall of Death? Bill Pollard told me,

The truth is, it's more a ‘Bowl of Harm’ than a ‘Wall of Death’. We've not yet graduated to motors; we prefer pedal power. A bunch of Americans gave me the idea. Whiskeydrunk Cycles, the link below is to the one they built, it's based on Keiths Board Track, a touring cycle display from the early 1900's.

There's also an answer to a question on the listing that sheds a little more light on this:

A Wall of Death is a bowl with vertical sides, about 20 feet in diameter - the idea is to ride motorcycles around it in a horizontal position. Seeing as we don't have any motorbikes, what we will actually end up with is more a bowl of harm... hope that clears things up for you.

So, so far, so good. While Alan was having his portrait painted by Elke Pollard in 2008, her son Bill got talking to him about the plan for a bicycle Wall of Death. A few years later they meet again, and Alan mentions that he's going to upgrade his computer (yes, he really does have one. It's not all quills and parchment and passenger pigeons in the Moore household, no matter how much you want it to be. He still won't have anything to do with the Internet, though.) Bill asks if he can have the old keyboard, and here it is, for sale, and all for a good cause.

So, how magical - or indeed magickal - is the keyboard? According to the eBay listing,

Pros and cons of owning Alan Moore’s old Microsoft Basic keyboard 1.0A

Pros:
DNA between the keys – you may be able to clone your very own Alan!
There are no computer viruses as it has never been connected to the internet.
Unique surface patterning.
Fag ash.
Sleek all-black casing with fetching violet coloured PS2 connector.
As an avid practitioner of Magick (Alan, not the keyboard), it may contain otherworldy powers (again, not tested), these have been protected by a magick circle and various dark items (as can be seen in the photos) since taking delivery of the keyboard, the dark items are not included in the sale, however I may be tempted to part with the empty can of Lynx if you really want it.
Interesting conversation piece – casually leave it lying around! Take it to parties! (Although I recommend vacuum sealing it first to retain fag ash and DNA samples)
Doubles up as a useful doorstop if found not to be working. (not tested as door stop.)
“Z” key has had very little use.

Cons:
According to videogame forums, it can’t be used to play Guitar Hero 3 above intermediate level, this apparently applies to all Basic 1.0As not just Alan’s.
Missing pop -up stand on left hand reverse.
Might not work.

Is there anything else we need to know? One questioner ask an important but often overlooked question:

What does the keyboard smell like? Please give a good sniff, especially of the bubbly, ashy left side, and detail back your thoughts?

Bill answered,

Deeply-scented cheroots fuse with toasted plastic, sweaty digits and house dust. Well-seasoned tab key supports the dry scent of musky violet ps-2 connector and a savory thorny understory like a briar growing through straw mulch after being urinated on. I hope this is of some help.

If you want to own Alan Moore's Magical Keyboard - and who wouldn't, really? - you can still bid on it here for the next five days. It is, after all, as Bill Pollard says, akin to a modern day version of Shakespeare's quill.

The last line on the eBay listing says Alan Moore Knows the Score, which leads me to Pop Will Eat Itself, and eventually back to a post that mentions me. It's a strange Alan Moore world out there, and we're all in it somewhere.

Alan Moore Knows the Score

Swamp Thing

2011-02-12T23:24:00.003Z

A friend pointed me at the excellent Corpus Libris blog, where they're doing interesting with photographs of people and book covers, so I decided to have a go at it myself, with the help of my ever patient wife, Deirdre. So, here's me with the cover to the recently published hardcover edition of Alan Moore's Saga of the Swamp Thing (DC/Vertigo, 2009), featuring an illustration by Steve Bissette and John Totleben.

Books Bought

2011-01-08T00:11:00.005Z

Amongst various thing picked up today are these two lovely gems:

Micilín agus an dá Leipreachán
Máiréad Ní Ghráda

Printing Reproduction Pocket Pal
Advertising Agency Production Association

This is the thing about hunting around in charity shops and the like: you just never know what you're going to find.

Bill Sienkiewicz speaks about Big Numbers #3

2011-01-02T01:30:00.004Z

Bill Sienkiewicz originally wrote this piece for Heidi McDonald of The Beat, but she never used it, for reasons that are not clear. It was written in response to the large amount of interest that was generated after I managed to buy a photocopy of an apparently complete copy of Big Numbers #3 on eBay, and posted it online in March 2009. At the time I specifically sought out Alan Moore’s permission to do this, but didn’t have any contact with Bill Sienkiewicz, so didn’t speak to him about it. Time passed, and I even ended up ‘friended’ to Sienkiewicz on Facebook, but still didn’t mention it to him. However, after he commented on something I wrote, I plucked up the courage to actually write to him about it. As it turned out, not only was he in no way unhappy about my posting the forty pages of Big Numbers #3, but was actually looking for somewhere to post this piece publically. So, I offered to take it, particularly as we are hoping to do an interview about his work with big numbers to follow this up. Bill wanted to rewrite it somewhat, but I persuaded him to leave it as it was, as I felt that the somewhat chaotic nature of it nicely reflects the very essence of its subject matter.

So, enough from me: It gives me enormous pleasure to be able to publish this piece by Bill Sienkiewicz, one of the truly innovative comics artists, about one of the most ambitious comics projects I’ve ever seen.

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I've been getting emails and links sent to me with a fair degree of regularity since the ‘Big Numbers issue’ over Big Numbers #3 hit the spotlight... again. I say 'again' because quite a few pages of issue #3 emerged a few years ago. There was speculation surrounding the pages then and, if anything, I've discovered that the ensuing years have done little to assuage, or diminish, that conjecture. And in the interest of full disclosure, I should note that having heard just about every conflicting ludicrous reason, every single link of spaghetti in the chain of events (somehow since miraculously renamed stainless steel rather than pasta), that no matter how inane the reasons given were, ultimately, each and every one - without exception - came from absolutely unimpeachable authoritative sources. Heeuuge air quotes around that phrase, if not actual boldface ones. By now if you haven't yet gleaned my admittedly sarcastic incredulity - yes, even at this late date - well, so be it.

The situation is still rife with speculation. Some folks who have been emailing me ask directly about the provenance / pedigree / credits / yayas regarding those recently resurfaced art pages from that issue. It certainly seemed to me that there are quite a few readers who are at least moderately curious as to what portion of issue #3's artwork is mine and what portion was drawn by Al Columbia, who was my assistant at the time. I'll clarify as best I can, in part because this matter of speculation has exceeded critical mass; it exceeded it ten years ago, but that's one guy's opinion.

So: Though only ten pages have been seen of Big Numbers #3, the entire issue was drawn and completed. All of it. Not merely the ten pages circulating. Now as to who drew what: Except for a few minor backgrounds (and to be completely honest, I don't think he drew anything in that issue at all - but I will admit I may be hazy on that point - I’ll simply say that I'm erring on the side of generous caution, or cautious generosity) that except for perhaps a few possible backgrounds, that ALL of issue #3 - repeat: ALL of the artwork on Big Numbers issue #3 was drawn by yours truly. Or, for those who prefer the obverse: NONE of Big Numbers #3 was drawn by Al Columbia (and again I add the caveat - except for possibly a couple of backgrounds). Certainly Al drew no figures in the background or anything story-related. I can't imagine he'd want to take credit for my work any more than I would covet credit for work drawn by him. I imagine he'd want to take credit for - and rightly so - the work that is completely his own: meaning that of issue #4 (I personally have never seen any of the issue. I hear Al destroyed it in its entirety, but I can't say I witnessed this destruction firsthand). So I freely admit that, except for the cover - I had done covers for approximately half the series at this point - I drew nothing at all in issue #4.

Perhaps the question as to who did what in issue #3 may have arisen due to the change in art style from the first two issues. Issues #1 and #2 were done in a more photographic, soft focus atmospheric airbrushed painterly style. While I loved the style and enjoyed working within those parameters immensely, I came to realize that by choosing to work that way for twelve issues, I was almost literally painting myself into a corner. This approach was incredibly time-consuming and ultimately proved overwhelming and unfeasible. Things were changing from issue to issue and becoming, by nature of the story, more interwoven and chaotic - the series was to have been painted completely in colour by issue #12, with each issue introducing more variables and approaches, colour being a dominant element. Adding to the workload for each issue was the necessity to thumbnail Alan's script thoroughly.

At this point I'd like to say that everything you've heard about Alan's scripts is true, and then some. Alan's a genius, an absolute gentleman. Plain and simple. Yes, his scripts are dense. They're brilliant, layered, nuanced, variegated, textural, beautiful and daunting. Simultaneously so. And although Alan is incredibly deferential and generous as to allowances for alterations made by the artist, the scripts veritably beg, no, demand, to be adhered to in their totality. It's practically sacramental.

So, I admit I found Alan's scripts a challenge of incredible dimension and beauty. Every page was a gauntlet of ornate opulence tossed at my feet, if not swung abruptly at my face, thwacking me a bloody good one. If I cursed him for this, I'm sure it was due to outright awe. Working with Alan was like going from the multiplication table to the periodic chart to quantum physics all in the space of one panel border. Concentrating only on the work Alan and I did collaboratively, foregoing for the moment his impressive oeuvre, just think of the depth and differences between his Shadowplay (Realpolitik via Kafka) and (though only a few issues), his Big Numbers (Reality via Schrödinger’s Kafka.)

So I'd do the thumbnails. I'd then use those thumbnails to choreograph, and then photograph, on average, forty five different people as characters, both primary and secondary. (I should mention that only one of these models was an actual model model. The rest of this Dickensian (Mooresian) cast was comprised of real people with real lives, many of whom, though not all, had little or less than zero interest in comics. Primarily, they held the preconception that comic books were Betty and Veronica, Superman or The Hulk. To them, The Avengers was less Captain America and more Emma Peel, bowlers and brollies. And some didn't even register comics to that minute extent. Some had never given a single solitary thought about comics. They had no relevance or import whatsoever in their lives. That said, I don't want to give the impression that this multi-ethnic ensemble was in any way some sort of artistically disinclined Diaspora. No, pretty much everyone actually seemed very open to this 'comic book experiment.' They were decidedly game, God love 'em, but that's not to say there weren't speed bumps and downright caldera-sized potholes en route. Several of the folks - like the sweet Indian gentleman, who posed for the role of the store owner /model train aficionado, wanted to make sure he wasn't being portrayed in any way contrary to his religious beliefs; the black father wanted to be portrayed with dignity. I understood his concerns but I tried to explain - and thus came up with a release form, that basically laid out that if the characters they were posing for did less than savoury things, it in no way reflected upon the models as people. I know this sounds exotic and extreme, but we have to remember that a great percentage of the populace have no clue as to what posing for another character means. They're simply who they are. It was an interesting adjustment. Time consuming, too.

Then there were the parents who were understandably less than thrilled by the prospect of some crazy comic-book punk taking photos of their little darlings making Molotov cocktails. Can't say I blamed them. But the fact that the town where I lived and worked - Westport, Connecticut - and environs, happened to be the inspirational setting for the novel The Stepford Wives did seem particularly apropos. The contrarian in me loved the wicked irony.

And the 'little darlings' learned a skill.

I was certainly in the thick of it, awash in actual ‘big numbers,’ where coordinating this monstrous and increasingly time-consuming photographic schedule would have been - in and of itself - more than enough lunacy for any sane individual to deal with. The key word here is ‘sane.’ My favourite local watering hole was a way-station for folks in a variety of entertainment and news arenas. Everyone knew everyone. Or knew someone who knew someone. It was two degrees of separation, not six. There were amazing illustrators (Bernie Fuchs, Al Parker, Bob Peak, Robert Fawcett), actors (Paul Newman, Joanne Woodward, Chris Walken, Keir Dullea), artists like Charlie Reid, Bob Baxter, writers like Erica Jong, and many comic book and comic strip artists and writers - too many to name. It was Heaven. An incredible artistic hub. I mention this because I realized that with the huge chunk of reference-gathering I'd bitten off with regards to the photography of so many people, I was negotiating my way around myriad potential landmines. I came incredibly close to calling the driving force of the Westport theatre scene - Joanne Woodward herself - with a plea to recommend actors-people who knew what it entailed to act a part. The only double-edged sword would be in paying so many people for their expertise, and as importantly: for their time. Financially, Big Numbers started to become a money pit. Too much time and effort was involved in getting the reference, leaving very little time to create the artwork. Time. The ultimate tool. The ultimate foe.

Still, as it was, many friends made themselves available as models, gratis. One, the phenomenal cartoonist Stan Drake, who was my father-figure, my dear friend, and artistic mentor, posed as Christine's father, the gent eating his dinner whilst seated on the porcelain throne. A helluva thing. But Stan thought it was great. Odd, bizarre, but fun. John Prentice also posed. He was the abused wife's landowner dad. Frank Bolle Jr. was the traumatized cabby. And at the watering hole, I'd asked a regular, a gent I'd occasionally drink with, a gent named Harry Reasoner, to play a newsman on the English telly. He laughingly demurred. C'est la vie.

Another friend of mine - the one who played the architect - actually was an architect. He'd formerly been a Navy Seal, and true to form, he brooked no shit. Here was as militaristic a guy as one could ever fret to meet in a dark alley or beachfront, and then there was yours truly: the most liberal confrontative wiseass comic book guy in a town of young republican bankers - needless to say, Mr. Seal and I got along famously. He loved comics. And it was he who suggested that I photograph his two sons as the architect's sons. Their ages were exactly as Alan had written. Order from chaos, indeed. (The architect's daughter was played by a friend of the woman from whom I was splitting, so tensions there were high).

Things seemed to escalate in direct inverse proportion to levels of sanity... More, they actually degenerated: Horribly, sadly, two of the models died. One good friend drowned in a freak boating accident. His passing was horrible on so many levels. Both he and his girlfriend worked at the watering hole. The entire town of Westport mourned. It was a death in the family. Another friend, Ray, and I were fellow members of the Loyal Order of Raccoons - yes, those Raccoons - with a nod to the great Gleason. Our once-monthly meetings were really an excuse for fifteen guys to get together to play pool, cards, darts, embarrass our fellow Raccoons by holding wildly inappropriate bachelor parties etc, all done under the influence of the demon rum. Ray died from pancreatic cancer and left a wife and a four year old daughter... Art and life were distilling to a quintessence of extremes. Chaos, love, loss, overwhelmingly intense experience of going through a war together. So many people, so many lives, intersecting as lives and under the rubric of the Big Numbers family...

The biggest challenge to the series was yet to come. The main character, my friend who modelled for Christine, chose that particular time period to get married. Now, that shouldn't have been a real problem, right? Well, normally, probably not, except that she married into the military, and her newly-minted husband was stationed in Germany. So, after the newlyweds cut the wedding cake, and washed it down with champagne, it was auf wiedersehen Christine. I couldn't very well deride her by exclaiming, “How could you do this to me?! To US? After all we'd been through?!” Even I'm not that much of a narcissist. But come on, how dare she presume to have a real life?

Additionally, the backdrop for this time period was chockablock with huge personal changes in my life, such as it was: the fairly well known rift with Al Columbia - well, in the comics universe, it was Peyton Place meets All about Eve . Outside of that arena, no one gave a damn, thank God. - which again only served to fuel greater levels of wild speculation. I should point out that Al and I have long since made our peace. I bear him no ill will. Chalk the feud up to the folly of youth.

Oh, and I just remembered: the musical soundtrack for this period was The Cure's brilliant album, Disintegration. Coincidence? The cut The Same Deep Water as You seemed to become a spooky mantra. In his lyrics, Robert Smith seemed to acknowledge the coexistence of entropy and resignation. I freely admit listened to that album for weeks on end, and tossed in a fair amount of hope and redemption, just because the music was too beautiful to be so overwhelmingly bleak. To this day, the song takes me back.

Anyway - Things couldn't continue to get more bizarre, I thought. No way.

Until they did: i.e., between issues #2 and #3, the Seal's youngest son grew six inches in height. Got very lanky. Endured the awkwardness a breaking voice engenders. Entering puberty will do that to you. He was hardly a ‘little kid’ anymore. More, he was hardly the ‘little kid’ I needed to pose for pix of the youngest son of the architect. I just had to roll my eyes.

Another digression: I should explain at this point that I'm not at all a slave to photography. I hate being a slave to anything that could become a crutch. Photos are tools to be used and modified for any specific need of any specific gig. I myself have posed as everyone from an old crone to a teenage alien. I would use the photo as basic position and proportional guide. Then I'd change things based on my accumulated knowledge from drawing from life - around forty sketchbooks of life drawings. Other times I'd simply 'make shit up'. Artist's prerogative. As Al Williamson once remarked to me about when he was trying to draw scenes from his imagination, rather than using photographs. He referred to it as having to ‘fall back on talent’.

But with Big Numbers one of the demands – prerequisites - I'd placed upon myself was to work almost exclusively from the model as possible. I was going for as great a degree of illustrative photographic verisimilitude as I could muster. Dammit, I was going to adhere to the accurate reference no matter what. It was, in retrospect, a vain attempt to control everything - everything - completely, as things swirled and collided in midair all around. This was my Stanley Kubrick period. Of course, the more I tried to control everything, the more Real Life kicked my ass. Up and down the Route 95 corridor.

So, the more time flew by, the more detritus was spawned, the thicker the sorghum got. I realized, after reading issue three, that a stylistic alteration seemed appropriate, as I'd done in Elektra: Assassin. The benefit would be showing the increasingly chaotic milieu that the characters inhabited, AND it would also speed up the process and output of pages. (Or so I'd hoped: I needed to gain - as I said - a semblance of control of this runaway behemoth.) So, I switched to doing the pages in pen and ink, with additional airbrushing, spatter, and pencil on Craftint board. The stylistic - or rather technical - switch felt incongruous to some, but I was determined to make the stylistic shift work in the contextual Gestalt of the series. Big Numbers was about finding Order in Chaos. And things couldn't have been more chaotic than they were right then and there. And besides, my work has always been about trying to make order out of messes. Or simply making messes - only messes - and nothing more than messes to my detractors' perceptions as in: “What's with all his scritchy-scratchy shit? UGH!” But I just did what I do. It was like breathing to me: making artistic corrections out of what to me were screaming errors begging to be addressed, making silk purses out of a sow's ear or cow sphincter, or creating a sow's ear out of silicone, molly bolts, and matchsticks... but you get the point.

Somewhere along the way, this secular book on mathematics and chaos had blurred the boundaries between religion, and real life – or, rather than religion, more appropriately, say, spirituality - like the Gnostic gospels and pagan idolatry being co-opted for political expediency by nascent religions of Christianity and Judaism (at the time they were probably the equivalent of ‘cults’ - until they went nova for the masses.) Art bled into commerce. Commerce just bled and bled, exsanguinating like crazy. Chaos as Theme met Chaos in Reality... and the clock continued to tick down, calendar pages whirled in a parchment-based purée around my drawing board - as if from some bad film montage. Deadlines were blown. To smithereens. I couldn't sleep, and it served me right. It was entrusted to me to pull it off, to 'suck it up', grow a sack, and I was going under for the third time... Money got tighter and tighter. Productivity suffered severely. Big Numbers became my life. Not just the series Alan and I were attempting, but Big Numbers the actual Petri dish of real life chaos. I'd lost a parent, a relationship, began a new one, went through the art assistant debacle, and realized just how far behind the proverbial eight-ball I'd placed myself. And placed Alan, Big Numbers, and the folks at Tundra - and of course, the all-important readers.

So in plain English, between issues #2 and #3, my so-called life went to complete Hell personally: I'm not saying this as a 'Woe is me’ scenario. Screw that pansy bullshit. I'm reporting it for another self-serving reason: I want to confront the speculators and all these ‘excellent unimpeachable authorities’ - who, please remember, weren't even there! - and who are still actually taking it upon themselves to - quite frankly, as I see it - talk out of their asses (which is a nifty parlour trick, but as a stand-in for expository accuracy it's, well, like talking out of one's ass. Things can get pretty rotten in Denmark. Or in Oz. Or in...) Yes, I know, I'm probably spitting into the wind, stressing all this stuff in an effort to end, once and for all, the speculation, presumption, and ‘he said - he said - she said’ innuendo. As if.

So - All this finally leads to the moment I finished up issue #3 in its entirety, after agreeing to release the reins on the series - and so I handed all the art for Big Numbers #3 to Paul Jenkins and Kevin Eastman, and moved on to doing advertising and illustration work... A break that was imperative... and in doing so, I effectively passed the torch to Al.

I thought that was the end of it.

In many ways it was only the beginning. The 'behind the scenes' tumult of Big Numbers was an amazing correlative to Alan's script. It became Art imitating Art imitating Life imitating... well, at the very least, severely blown synapses.

For those of you not inclined to take this in any sort of light of awareness, okay. I'm not looking for absolution. I'm not looking to duck responsibility, or to make excuses. I'm simply presenting the chain of events to the best of my recollection. To give my responses (good, bad and mezzo-mezz) to each situation that arose. I take full responsibility for losing control of things that should have been in my control. I was the de facto adult in my studio. My assistant was a kid, in many ways ill-equipped to handle certain responsibilities. I'm sure he'd agree things were pretty off the wall back then. We were all riding a wild bull-dragon that hated spurs in its ribs. I'm hoping Al and his family have a tranquil and happy life.

I'm blessed to count Kevin Eastman, Paul Jenkins and Alan Moore as my friends, and generous ones at that. I love these guys. They make my world brighter, both in comics and in life.

If I may be narcissistic for a moment (‘only a moment?’ some of you are no doubt thinking. ‘He's been writing a self-serving treatise since word one.’). Nevertheless, here goes: I pride myself on being a professional, - more than ever these days - and I felt like Big Numbers became my Moby Dick - the great white metaphysical whale that had gotten away from me.

To this day, I've lamented that Alan and I never finished the series. I actually literally can't stomach the thought of it remaining a hole in our creative lives, certainly in mine. And honestly, there's not a week that goes by that I don't think about completing it, about contacting Alan and saying, “Adult here. What say you? Let's kick out the jams!” I understand his great disappointment, though I've no doubt he's moved on. And gotten even more brilliant, if that's possible. I've apologized to Alan personally, and to the others, for my part. And I apologize to you - the readers. You're each and every one of you a diamond, a clear reason to strive, to give something back - a something that makes some small difference - via my limited abilities and in spite of my human failings. I'm by no means religious (as spirituality and religion aren't synonyms). Even so, I'm praying I'm older, wiser, perhaps even better, than I was those many years ago. That cooler, more mature heads have prevailed.

I've simply tried to present my side, the POV of one guy who was at the epicentre of the quake. I really doubt that what I've written will end speculation, or alter other folks' agendas. I'm not naive. I think that in hindsight, that there were simply many many factors that played a part in the Big Numbers implosion. I was but one. A big part, but only one.

I know what it would take to make completion of Big Numbers a reality. But whatever ultimately happens, this will stand as my own Chaos Theory.

Thanks for your time.

Bill Sienkiewicz
Somewhere in Connecticut

Flann O'Brien Writes Sexton Blake...?

2010-12-19T22:50:00.005Z

All in all, there are three Sexton Blake titles that Flann O'Brien is supposed to have written under the name of Stephen Blakesley. I've recently bought two of these, and here they are.

Riddle of the Blazing Bungalow by Stephen Blakesley

Man with a Number by Stephen Blakesley

The other title, which I have as yet to get, is The Trail of Raider Number 1. There is one further, almost certainly apocryphal, Sexton Blake title he is meant to have written, called The Cardinal and the Corpse...

Christmas TV 1973

2010-12-11T14:15:00.007Z

What we would have been watching on TV on Christmas Eve and Christmas Day in 1973. It's better than what's on this year!

Women Are Writing Science Fiction!

2010-11-21T18:23:00.005Z

The back-copy writer for Margaret St Clair's Sign of the Labrys, published by Corgi in 1963, seems to be finding it genuinely difficult to believe that women can write SF.

Cathal Ó Sándair's Réics Carló

2010-11-17T21:45:00.013Z

Cathal Ó Sándair was about the most popular author in the Irish language in the 1940s, '50s, and '60s, but is largely forgotten today. He mostly wrote short chapbook-sized pulp adventure stories for younger readers, across all sorts of genres. His most popular series by far was that featuring the adventures of Réics Carló, a sort of Irish Sexton Blake detective character, whose escapades often featured aspects of the fantastic.

Here are the first five adventures of Réics Carló, with their wonderful bright covers.

Eachtraí Réic Carló - Uimhir a h-Aon
Na Mairbh a d'Fhill

Eachtraí Réic Carló - Uimhir a Dó
An tEiteallán Do-Fheicthe

Eachtraí Réic Carló - Uimhir a Trí
An Curpán sa Trúnc

Eachtraí Réics Carló - Uimhir a Ceathar
Dúnmharbhú i bPáirc an Chrócaigh

Eachtraí Réic Carló - Uimhir a Cúig
Uathbhás i mBrú na Bóinne

Marvelman Copyright: Same Comic, Different Gun

2010-01-03T18:11:00.002Z

At the end of November 2009 I posted an entry here called Marvelman Copyright: I Found My Smoking Gun, where I stated that I’d found evidence of a copyright notice by Mick Anglo Ltd in a very early issue of Young Marvelman. This seemed to indicate that there was evidence of Mick Anglo at least claiming some sort of copyright entitlement to the group of characters as early as May 1954, right at the beginning of the nine year run of the title. As at least partial justification for my discovery I said this, “Of course, it is just possible that the copyright notice was added at a later date, like when Anglo was preparing Nostalgia - Spotlight on the Fifties for publication, but I think this is unlikely, as he would have been more careful of its positioning, rather than having it being slightly cut off, as it is on the page that's in the book.”

But I was wrong.

The first indication I got that I might have been a bit over eager was when I received an email from Derek Wilson saying, “ I have a copy of YM #38 and the copyright notice is not in the frame as shown in the Nostalgia - Spotlight on the Fifties book.” Derek Wilson knows a thing or two about Marvelman, having provided an introductory article for TwoMorrow’s recent Marvelman issue of Alter Ego, which is more or less reproduced here on the Crikey! website. After everything I had said about conservative approaches to information and backing up any claims with further research, it seemed that I had all the while been digging my own trap, and blithely walking into it...

So, further research was called for. I needed two things. Firstly, I needed my own copy of Young Marvelman #38. Although the person who wrote to me sent me a photograph of the page in question, I very much felt that I wanted to have empirical first-hand knowledge of everything I had referred to, so went looking for a copy of YM #38 on the internet, and was lucky enough to locate one quite easily. The other thing I wanted to find was another copy of Mick Anglo’s Nostalgia - Spotlight on the Fifties. My original copy of this was not actually the first edition published by Jupiter Books in 1977, but a later edition published by Universal Books in 1985.In the eight years between 1977 and 1985 Marvelman had been revived in Dez Skinn’s seminal Warrior magazine, so I felt it was important to be completely sure of all the dates of the appearances and non-appearances of the copyright notice. Again, I found a copy of this quite easily, so I’m now in a position to address the whole think once again, this time with more accuracy, hopefully, and also with even more pictures.

So, to go back to where I started, Michael Anglo’s Nostalgia - Spotlight on the Fifties - originally published by Jupiter Books in 1977, and republished without any changes by Universal Books in 1985 - contained this page from Young Marvelman #38:

I drew especial attention to the top right-hand panel:

I particularly wanted to highlight the copyright notice written on the right-hand side of the panel:

And that was my smoking gun. Except that it wasn’t.

Here’s the cover of my very own recently purchased copy of Young Marvelman #38:

And here’s a scan of page two of that comic:

(If you think I’ve been scanning things off centre, by the way, I haven’t. The artwork is really that far askew on the page. But I digress...)

And here’s a scan of the top right-hand panel:

So, no line claiming copyright, and the lack of that line completely undermines my earlier theory that Mick Anglo had attempted to claim at least some sort of ownership of the Marvelman characters very early on. Indeed, the indicia from Young Marvelman #38, which you can see here, states, amongst other things, that “All stories and illustrations are the copyright of the publishers...”

So, where did the notice come from, and why would it have appeared? The first think I wanted to know was, was it Mick Anglo who added the inscription to the page? Here’s the cover of the 1958 Young Marvelman Annual:

Down in the bottom right-hand corner of this there is a line of handwritten text, which says -Mick Anglo Ltd (London) - , as you can see here:

You can compare this to this signature from the page in Nostalgia - Spotlight on the Fifties:

At the risk of once more going out on a limb, I’m going to say that it’s the same hand doing the lettering in both cases, and I’m also going to suggest that the person doing the lettering is Mick Anglo himself. As far as I know, he did a lot of lettering for the comics produced by Gower Street Studios, and who else would be likely to add a copyright notice to his art after it had been used? So, is there any reason that this notice, appearing in a book in 1977, might have any significance. Well, yes, I rather think there might well be.

In this post on Steve Holland’s excellent Bear Alley, Holland says:

Alan is perfectly correct in saying that the publisher -- Len Miller & Co. (Hackney) Ltd. -- didn't go bankrupt. However, it did go into voluntary liquidation. The decision was made at a meeting of directors on 21 June 1972 and the company was officially wound up on 24 September 1974. From my non-lawyerly perspective, that means that any copyrights held by the company did not go into the hands of a liquidator or trustee in bankruptcy to be sold off as an asset of the company. It was a decision made by the directors (Florrie Miller, Arnold Miller and Doreen Lewis), debts and wages were paid off and the company was shut down. The contents of a warehouse full of old unsold copies of magazines was sold off; a British dealer by the name of Brian Jepson bought a lot of it and others may have tapped into the same source. That's why you can occasionally find mint condition Miller comics, although that's increasingly rare these days.

So where did that leave the copyright of Marvelman? The question that needs answering is: when a company shuts down voluntarily, do the copyrights held by that company remain with that company despite the fact that it no longer exists, or do the rights revert to the original creators, or do they become public domain?

This is why I find the date of the publication of Anglo’s Nostalgia - Spotlight on the Fifties so intriguing. L Miller & Co. Ltd went into liquidation in 1974, and three years later Anglo publishes a page of Young Marvelman artwork from 1954 with a copyright notice added to it. Miller’s copyright was now no longer in effect, as a nonexistent company can’t own anything, so Anglo is the next in line, it would seem, and certainly would have seemed so to himself, I imagine. And the copyright notice appears in the original edition in 1977, as well as in the later edition in 1985, meaning that Anglo was claiming this for himself in 1977, five years before Marvelman’s reappearance in Warrior in 1982, so was not motivated by the desire to capitalise on the character’s success there. It can only be that Mick Anglo wished to reclaim his own creation, even if, as seemed likely at the time, there was no likelihood of it ever reappearing, and the liquidation of L Miller & Co allowed him to, more or less legitimately, do this.

So that’s what I’m putting forward this time: Mick Anglo attaching a copyright notice to old artwork for a 1977 publication is even better proof of his claim on the Marvelman copyright that if the same copyright notice had originally appeared in 1954. I will have more to say on all of this at a later point...*

(*In the original article I also alluded to the fact that all of this springs out of research for what might become a book. This is something I can now confirm. In the summer of 2011 MonkeyBrain Books will publish what I’m provisionally calling Poisoned Chalice: The Extremely Long and Incredibly Complex Story of Marvelman. I am, to say the very least, extremely excited about this, and much of 2010 is going to be spend immersed in research for the book, as well as actually writing it. I’m already about ten thousand words into it, and I’ve absolutely no idea how long it’s going to be in the end, but long it certainly will be. It’s entirely possible that there’ll be more posts here of sidebar issues arising out of that research, though. But this post is probably the last one that will deal directly with material from the book itself.)

Day of the Triffids

2009-12-30T11:06:00.005Z

My wife Deirdre has several paperback copies of John Wyndham's Day of the Triffids, and this seems as good a time as any to scan them and put them online.

Penguin Books, 1961, Cover Price 2/6

Penguin Books, 1963, Cover Price 3/6

Penguin Books, 1970, Cover Price 5/- 25p

Penguin Books, 1981, Cover Price £1.25

Penguin Books, No Date Given, Cover Price £4.50

Crest Books, June 1962, Cover Price 50c

There are other collections of covers for Day of the Triffids, of course, including the excellent Art of Penguin Science Fiction, but the covers here are special to me, because they're the ones in this house.

I once had a first edition of Day of the Triffids, with a really badly battered dust jacket, which I managed to melt the ink all down the back of while trying to remove Sellotape marks with a nail varnish removal pad...

Gladiator Vs Superman

2009-11-25T23:33:00.005Z

While researching the history of Marvelman, I found myself going back quite a bit farther than just to the point where Mick Anglo and Leonard Miller created the character in 1953. I actually ended up going all the way back to 1930, and the publication of Philip Wylie’s novel Gladiator. Why? Well, If Marvelman is based on Captain Marvel, and Captain Marvel in turn is based on Superman, then I wanted to spend a little time looking at the allegation that Superman was, in his turn, supposed to be based on Hugo Danner, the protagonist in Philip Wylie’s Gladiator. This became the first chapter of my book, and I present it here for anyone who’s sufficiently interested to read it.

Gladiator Vs Superman

The 1949 Avon paperback publication of Gladiator

Gladiator, published in 1930 by Alfred A. Knopf of New York, was Philip Wylie’s third published novel, although it was his first completed one. He’d written it in 1926, at the age of twenty four, under the title of Titan, but he didn’t want to publish a science fiction novel as his first book, and waited until two other more mainstream books, Heavy Laden (Knopf, 1928) and Babes and Sucklings (Knopf, 1929), appeared before finally allowing Knopf to publish it, in a somewhat different version than the original from 1926. The book features the life story and adventures of Hugo Danner. While still an unborn child in the womb, Danner is injected by his father, scientist Abednego Danner, with a serum that gives him superhuman strength and abilities. The young Danner discovers he can run at extraordinary speeds, and is extremely strong, and later finds that his skin in unbreakable, and that he can withstand bullets. This had really never been done before, surprising as it now seems. Previously, if there was a super-strong character, it was due to their circumstances. For instance, Edgar Rice Burroughs’s John Carter of Mars was super-strong because he was in the weaker gravity of Mars, and John W. Campbell's Aaron Munro, the protagonist of his 1934 novel, The Mightiest Machine, was born on Jupiter, so was very strong when he came to Earth. Hugo Danner was different, though. He was a superhuman human being, which was a completely new concept to 1930s science fiction.

Although it didn’t sell particularly well in its original hardcover run, prompting Wylie to leave Knopf for what he saw as their lack of publicity for the book, Gladiator was apparently a bestseller in its day, and was reviewed widely, not only in professional papers, but also in the fan press, and was well known to the science fiction fans of the time. There was even a film based on the book, Columbia Pictures’ The Gladiator, in 1938, starring Joe E. Brown and June Travis. There are two reasons these days, however, that the book crops up. The first, lesser, reason is because a copy of Gladiator can be seen on Hollis Mason’s shelves on page nine of issue one of Alan Moore and Dave Gibbons’s Watchmen (DC Comics, 1986). The other reason it is spoken of is because of its apparent influence on a young Jerry Siegel, writer and co-creator of the world’s comic book first superhero, Superman.

Superman, co-created by writer Jerry Siegel and artist Joe Shuster, first appeared in Action Comics #1 in June 1938, published by Detective Comics Inc., a fore-runner of National Periodical Publications and DC Comics. The Superhero had been invented, and the world of the American comic book would never be the same again. Virtually overnight it became a huge seller, and is running to this day, with uninterrupted publication for over seventy years. A vast amount has been written over the years on the history of Superman, and by people substantially more qualified than I, so I’ll confine myself here to what is directly relevant, which is the allegation that Wylie’s Gladiator was a significant and substantial influence on the creation of Superman.

Sam Moskowitz's Explorers of the Infinite

The origin of the allegation that Superman was based on Hugo Danner was Sam Moskowitz’s Explorers of the Infinite (The World Publishing Company, Cleveland, 1963), where he stated on page 278, “In March 1930 the Book League Monthly, a paperback book club, offered its readership a selection filled with some startling situations: a man who could lift weights of four tons with ease, leap such distances that he almost seemed to fly, shed machine-gun bullets as a bridegroom sheds rice, rip bank vaults apart as though they were papier-mâché, or break a charging bull's neck with a side-handed cuff. The book was Gladiator by Philip Wylie. Most of today's readers will probably recognize the character: Superman, of course - the original.

A few years later, a Cleveland cartoonist Joe Schuster [sic] and his author associate Jerome Siegel would borrow the central theme from Gladiator, even paraphrase some of the dialogue, to create one of the most popular cartoon adventure strips of our time and no one would dream the idea had once been the basis of a serious novel.”

Philip Wylie’s biographer, Truman Frederick Keefer, also seems to agree. In Philip Wylie (Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1977) he states on page 48, “One of the main challenges to Wylie in writing Gladiator was the need to devise spectacular feats for Hugo to perform and then to make them seem probable. Our exposure to the Superman comic strip unfortunately obscures the originality of many of these inventions, which, according to Wylie, as well as recent scholars [presumably referring to Sam Moskowitz], were "borrowed" from Gladiator. Hugo hurtling across a river in a single leap, bounding fifty feet straight up in the air, holding a cannon above his head with one arm, killing a shark by ripping its jaws apart with his bare hands, felling a charging bull with a fist between the eyes, lifting an automobile by its bumper and turning it around in the road - all of these were, in 1930, fresh and new and very exciting to read about.”

Even the current publishers of Gladiator get in on the act: the back cover of the Bison Books edition, published by University of Nebraska Press in 2004, includes this, “An enduring classic in speculative fiction and the reported inspiration for the original comic hero, Superman, Gladiator is a melancholic tale of a boy set apart because of his unique gift and his lifelong struggle to come to terms with it.”

Gerard Jones's Men of Tomorrow

There are persistent claims that Jerry Siegel had reviewed Gladiator in the second issue of his fanzine Science Fiction: The Advance Guard of Future Civilization, published in November 1932, most recently seen in Gerard Jones’s Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book (Basic Books, New York, 2004) where he says on page 78, “The second issue [of Science Fiction] already had less to offer, except for one short piece that recorded Jerry's collision with a world very different from his own, one that sent his fantasies spinning in a new direction and pushed him closer to his first truly new creation: a review of Philip Wylie's Gladiator.”

And later, on page 80, Jones says, “When other fans called Jerry's attention to Gladiator in 1932, it had already been on the shelves for two years. Wiley had had two more books published and was deep in his first big novel, Finnley Wren. He'd have cared nothing for a young science fiction fan's love of Gladiator (and would no doubt have been shocked to learn that eight years later he'd be preparing to sue that fan for plagiarism).”

Finally, there’s this on page 346, “In Gladiator we find a clue to much that is mysterious about the shifting tales of Superman's creation. Siegel flatly denied that Wylie's novel had influenced him in any way, despite the timing and the striking similarities that would seem to leave no doubt of Gladiator's role. His denial seems to date from Wylie's threat to sue him for plagiarism in 1940 - Siegel reportedly even signed an affidavit attesting to it - and appears to have been a self-protective act.”

Unfortunately, despite this last piece being in the Notes on Sources section at the rear of Jones’s book, there is no source given for any of Jones’s allegations, either of one work’s influence on the other, or of the threat of litigation.

Action Comics #1

There are also persistent rumours that Wylie threatened to sue National Periodical Publications, the publisher of Action Comics, for infringement of copyright, as seen in the quotes above from Gerard Jones’s Men of Tomorrow. In a 2008 online article on io9.com, called Superman Takes on Other Superheroes - In Court, writer Lauren Davis says, “In 1940, Wylie threatened to sue Siegel and National comics for plagiarism of his work. Although nothing ever came of the suit, Siegel did sign an affidavit claiming that Gladiator was not an inspiration for Superman, although Siegel had reviewed Wylie’s novel in a 1932 issue of his fanzine, Science Fiction.”

Another online article, Will Murray’s Gladiator of Iron, says this, “Jerry Siegel is said to have denied ever reading Gladiator. There are rumours that Philip Wylie threatened to sue DC Comics for copyright infringement in the early 40s. DC management had Siegel produce a point-by-point refutation of the charge. No suit was filed, as far as anyone knows. Rumour has it that Wylie backed down when he discovered his publisher had neglected to copyright Gladiator in the first place.”

However, as usual, no source is given for either of these claims, and a substantial amount of searching on my part has completely failed to find any verifiable evidence of either of them. And I’m not even going to try to chase down the allegation that Gladiator was never copyrighted in the first place, although this may just be a misplaced and mangled version of the later allegation that the copyright on Superman was abandoned by its owners.

And there, if you like, I rest the case for the prosecution...

On the other hand, there are sources that assert that Gladiator wasn’t an influence on Superman at all, or at least not as much as was being claimed by Moskowitz and those who came after him. In Science Fiction Studies #95 (SF-TH Inc, DePauw University, Indiana, March 2005) Gregory Feeley writes, “The claim of paraphrased dialogue would seem decisive, but a comparison of the two texts shows no such similarities. It seems unlikely that Moskowitz examined either the original 1938 Action Comics - not readily available in the early 1960s - or went back to check newspaper archives for the 1939 syndicated strip from which the earlier version was abridged. Moskowitz, who gives no source for his contention, is notorious for uncritically accepting what the writers he takes as his subjects tell him, and the biographical sketches in Explorers of the Infinite and Seekers of Tomorrow are largely hagiographic.”

He also says, “Keefer interviewed Wylie extensively over a period of years, and he provides as much scholarly information as his subject is likely ever to get. He notes that Wylie strongly believed that Superman was largely based on Gladiator. Keefer, a competent scholar, cites Moskowitz’s claim, but notes that Moskowitz’s source was a telephone interview with Wylie. Moskowitz’s assertion thus has no independent basis, and Keefer offers no argument to support it, although he does cite a private correspondence from a third party as supporting Moskowitz.”

The “private correspondence from a third party” mentioned above is probably J. Randolph Cox’s letter of January 30th 1970, as mentioned on page 159 of Keefer’s book, in the Notes and References section.

With regard to the claims of litigation by Wylie against Siegel, Feeley has this to say, “Wylie was rich and famous - and, as the admiring Keefer shows, very combative - in the late 1930s, but he seems never to have brought suit for copyright infringement. (The early litigation surrounding the copyright of Superman, in which its publisher figured as both plaintiff and defendant, has been widely discussed by comics historians.) By the time he spoke to the credulous Moskowitz in the early sixties, Wylie was an embittered alcoholic, with a long history - evident in his non-fiction, and acknowledged by Keefer - of exaggerating to make his points. The claim of paraphrased dialogue seems to have its origin there, and has been repeated (unchecked) ever since.”

The unsubstantiated claim that Siegel reviewed Gladiator can also be called into question. Science Fiction historian Jerry Weist apparently went through long-time SF fan Forrest Ackerman's complete collection of Siegel's fanzines without finding any mention of Philip Wylie at all, let alone a review of Gladiator. (I can’t find my source for this, I’m afraid, meaning it is for the moment unsubstantiated as well, but I saw it written down somewhere recently, and made a note of it at the time, and I’ve every reason to believe it’s correct.)

The other regularly repeated assertion about Siegel is that he always claimed not to have read Gladiator, as can be seen in various quotes above. The truth is that, as usual, I can’t find any actual verifiable source for this, one way or another. I can’t find him claiming he didn’t read it, but I can’t find him claiming he did read it, either, or any reference to him ever being asked about it, one way or another. If fact, there’s so much supposition and unverified claims surrounding this story that even my own account of it here is necessarily filled with words like allegedly, apparently, and supposedly. I’ve quoted whatever sources I can find, but in a lot of cases even these sources are vague on the sources of their own assertions. It’s obvious to me that some of the people writing about this wrote things that they wanted to be true, and didn’t let the lack of factual evidence get in their way. Gerard Jones’s somewhat breathless prose is a good example of someone not letting the lack of facts get in the way of a good story. It’s also obvious that Gregory Feeley didn’t have a lot of time for Sam Moskowitz’s abilities as a popular culture historian, so even there one needs to filter what he says in light of this.

Of course, none of the above proves that Siegel didn’t read Gladiator, either, and I’d have to say, for myself, that there would seem to simply be too many similarities between the two works for him not to have done so. Both characters were super-strong, virtually invulnerable, and could out-run trains. If Superman could leap tall buildings in a single bound, then Hugo Danner before him has leapt across wide rivers, and could jump fifty feet up in the air. Both broke their cribs as babies. Both kept their abilities a secret, both join football teams at one point, both spent at least some of their time forging their own brand of social justice, hunting down the likes of crooked politicians and mine-owners and making them reform their ways. Both intervene in their respective World Wars, Danner in the first, and Superman in the second. It is not just the similarities in abilities, either, but the similarities in how they dealt with those abilities, and what they chose to do with them, that make it almost a certainty, at least in my own opinion, that the young Jerry Siegel not only read Wylie’s Gladiator, but was profoundly affected by it. At one point, as a child, Danner says to his father, "I can do things, dad, it kinds of scares me. I can jump higher’n a house. I can run faster'n a train. I can pull up big trees and push 'em over." This could just as easily be a young Clark Kent speaking to his adoptive father Jonathan, right there.

Undoubtedly there were other influences on the creation of Superman. Jerry Siegel certainly admitted having read the Doc Savage stories, for instance, although he prevaricated somewhat in actually admitting anything beyond that. He said at one stage, when asked if Doc Savage was an influence, “Of course I read Doc Savage at that time, but that is so long ago that I can't really intelligently answer that question,” but a number of early Superman plots are apparently lifted straight from the pages of Doc Savage Magazine, and the fact that Savage’s actual first name was Clark, the same as Clark Kent’s, would seem to suggest that at least some form of influence was at play. Although, at that, Joe Shuster claimed that the name actually came from Clark Gable, the film actor, so once again there’s room for doubt. Other influences, according to Siegel, included the John Carter stories of Edgar Rice Burroughs, and the films of actor Douglas Fairbanks Senior, as well as Fritz Lang’s Metropolis, after which the city in the Superman stories is named.

An interesting point in the above is that both Wylie and Siegel regularly compared their creations to, amongst others, Hercules and Atlas, who also make up the second and third letters of the acronym SHAZAM (S the wisdom of Solomon; H the strength of Hercules; A the stamina of Atlas; Z the power of Zeus; A the courage of Achilles; M the speed of Mercury), the magic word that transforms Billy Batson into Captain Marvel. In this case, however, this is presumably less to do with any sort of influence or plagiarism, and more to do with the fact that, in pre-Superman days, the most obvious sources for comparisons to super-strength and other more-than-human abilities were to be found in mythology, rather than anything more contemporary.

But that was all about to change.

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Bibliography
Books:
Men of Tomorrow: Geeks, Gangsters, and the Birth of the Comic Book, Gerard Jones (Basic Books, New York, 2004)
Philip Wylie, Truman Frederick Keefer (Twayne Publishers, Boston, 1977)
Explorers of the Infinite, Sam Moskowitz (The World Publishing Company, Cleveland, 1963)
Gladiator, Philip Wylie (Alfred A. Knopf, New York, 1930)
Gladiator, Philip Wylie (Bison Books, University of Nebraska Press, 2004)

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Periodicals:
Science Fiction Studies #95, Gregory Feeley (SF-TH Inc, DePauw University, Indiana, March 2005)

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Online Articles:
Superman Takes on Other Superheroes - In Court, Lauren Davis
Gladiator of Iron, Will Murray

Marvelman Copyright: I Found My Smoking Gun

2009-11-21T12:59:00.002Z

I've been spending quite a bit of time this year in finally getting down to writing an article about the history of Marvelman, something I've been threatening to do for at least the past six years. I say article, but it's much more likely to be a book at this stage, as I've just reached the point at which L. Miller & Son Ltd. are publishing reprints of Fawcett Comics' Captain Marvel comics, and I'm already nine thousand words in. I have nine chapter headings at the moment, with titles like From Gladiator to Superman, From Superman to Captain Marvel, From Captain Marvel to Marvelman, and so on. At the very end of the piece, I have a chapter called Who Owns Marvelman?, where I'm going to attempt to address the issue of who actually does own the character.

Currently, both Alan Moore and Neil Gaiman, the two most recent writers to work on Marvelman (mostly in his next incarnation as Miracleman), and two of the most honourable and respected men in the field, are of the opinion that Mick Anglo, who created the character for L. Miller & Son Ltd., held copyright all along. It's not that I wished to disagree with them, but I had always wanted to find some sort of proof that this might have been the case. I've seen a few mentions in articles about Marvelman that state that Anglo had inserted copyright notices into some of the Marvelman comics pages he produced for Miller, but in the absence of any actual proof of this, I was inclined to be cautious. In the course of the six years that I've been researching this article, I've accumulated a lot of bits and pieces in various books and magazines about Marvelman, and not all of them are wholly accurate, and I've tried to take a conservative approach to what I'm writing, so if I can't find a reliable source for a piece of information, I'm not inclined to included it, and I cite my sources as much as possible, except for information that seems to be well known, and that isn't in dispute. So, if I couldn't find some sort of proof for myself, I was just going to have to ignore it.

There is one claim that's worth mentioning, before I move on: in the second edition of Matthew H Gore's The Origin of Marvelman (Comics Monographs Vol. 1 No 1, Boardman Books, 2006 & 2008), there is a reproduction of a copyright notice that reads, Mick Anglo Ltd. © 1958, which is explained thus: "Anglo's claim to Marvelman is based on copyright statements like the one reproduced above. Reportedly taken from Marvelman and the Ghost of Old Backwoodsville in Marvelman #297 ..." I have a few problems with this. Firstly, the fact that the author says, "Reportedly taken from..." means that he seems to have only seen a photocopy of the copyright notice, rather that the full story that the notice comes from. Secondly, this notice comes from quite late in Anglo's involvement with the character. The creation of Marvelman took place in late 1953, with his first appearance being in February 1954, in the confusingly numbered Marvelman #25. Although Miller was publishing Marvelman comics until 1963, Anglo ceased produding them in 1959 or 1960. So, a copyright notice from 1958 might only prove that Anglo belatedly decided to lay claim to the character, before finally leaving it altogether soon afterwards. Although of course to mitigate against that is the fact that Miller did actually publish the comic with Anglo's copyright notice in it. In any case, the whole thing is unclear, and not really the kind of unambiguous proof I was looking for.

Which, finally, brings me to the main subject of this post! As I said above, in the course of my researches I have accumulated quite a number of books and magazines. One of these is Nostalgia - Spotlight on the Fifties by Michael Anglo (Jupiter Books (London) Limited, 1977). This is it:

This contains an article called The Age of Marvelman, which tells of Anglo's involvement in the creation of Marvelman, and some more general information about his early years working in comics, and the book is well worth find a copy of if you can just for this. The article is accompanied by some illustrations, and while looking at these I noticed something that I hadn't noticed before. Here's the cover of Young Marvelman #38, which is reproduced in Nostalgia - Spotlight on the Fifties:

And here's a comics page that's reproduced in Nostalgia - Spotlight on the Fifties, which is obviously related to the cover illustration on Young Marvelman #38:

Here's a close-up on the top right-hand panel:

And here's a further close-up, and a 90 degree turn anti-clockwise, of the writing on the right-hand side of that panel:

So, finally, it seems I have all the proof I need. Young Marvelman the character was created at the same time as Marvelman, and Young Marvelman the comic shared the same numbering as Marvelman, so started its weekly schedule at #25. It follows that Young Marvelman #38, from which the above is taken, was published thirteen weeks in the title's run, putting it somewhere in May 1954, and from this there would seem to be no other conclusion to be drawn except that right from the very beginning, Mick Anglo was claiming that he owned the copyright on Marvelman and associated characters. Of course, it is just possible that the copyright notice was added at a later date, like when Anglo was preparing Nostalgia - Spotlight on the Fifties for publication, but I think this is unlikely, as he would have been more careful of its positioning, rather than having it being slightly cut off, as it is on the page that's in the book.

This is it. This is my smoking gun. I cannot tell you how excited I was once I put all the pieces together in my head and realised what I'd found. It gives a whole new focus to my ~~article~~ book. Now all I need to do is find myself a publisher...

The Obligatory First Post

2009-07-26T20:33:00.000+01:00

I have decided I need a blog, above and beyond the few I already have on LiveJournal, so here it is. I have plans for this, which I hope will actually come true...