Tucker Stone in DVD, Film, Podcast, Stunt Casting | Permalink | Comments (1)
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Sean Witzke: So congratulations on 10 years, man. History wise, do you want to talk about why you started the site? Like Dane Cook, you emerged out of Myspace in the mid-00s with plans to conquer the world, is that correct?
Tucker Stone: I was working at an interior design firm and the guy was obsessed with the idea of it being a real office, even though he was living in it illegally and paying the cleaning lady to hand wash his underwear in the bathroom. What that obsession meant for me was that I had to be there everyday for regular work hours, even though it was a total feast or famine type job in terms of workload. I thought Myspace was semi-moronic--but I started blogging on there at some point about 24, and then I graduated to writing about whatever I had read or watched in these short, enthusiastic attempts to emulate the Wire magazine. At some point it just became clear to me that I should move it off Myspace, but I couldn't tell you why. I think I probably did it just because I thought of the name Factual Opinion and liked the idea of having Factual Opinions about things.
SW: From the start you were always writing about things other than comics, which I think is how you kept the thing alive for so long. In the beginning you were writing about Batman but also music, books, tv, and movies. And doing interviews... but I think you're most associated with how you approached superhero comics the same way you took on Bloodsport or whatever in the post before that. And all of that was mutating from what you say is a pretty formal tone in the beginning to what is more identifiably your voice. Did you have a moment where it clicked?
TS: It's because my job changed and I stopped trying to be an actor. I went from auditioning for commercials and doing these little indie movies and weird plays to being a guy who worked at an advertising agency and nothing else. I would go home and smoke cigarettes and be upset with myself for what I was doing, and all that leftover creative energy went into this idealized version of a person who engages with culture and has these semi-impossible to meet standards. It was initially just a joke, this thing I did in fits and starts, and then it just became a voice that was really easy to slip into. I published them, they made the blog popular, but the real version of them was the way I would read them out loud to Nina each week. They were performative.
SW: That's always been my favorite thing about the site is that you wrote all of this because you wanted to read it to Nina.
TS: I spent a lot of time early in my life and even more so in my early 20's confused and angry, and when I met Nina it felt like it was the first time I understood that I could be a good person and have a good life. I felt like if I just supported her and followed her lead that things would make sense. She showed me a way out of hating myself, of hating being alive. The reading-comics-reviews thing out loud to her probably sounds a little weird, but that was the frame for it. Doing things that were silly but that I was passionate about. Making each week special by having this kind of laborious production. Having the deadline of getting it done so I could read it to her before she had to go to sleep.
SW: That's really sweet. And Nina's always been a major presence on the site, whether it's you having her write about some issue of The Sword or having her hop on the podcast to talk shit about The Intern.
TS: Yeah, if we had time I wish we could get back to that stuff--at one point she was getting sent actual review copies, which would have made things more interesting. I definitely miss being able to talk to non-comics readers on a regular basis, they were always so much weirder and honest in their responses to comics. There's so many things that get taken for granted in comics that it always fascinated me how you'd talk to somebody outside of the art form and they'd have zero patience for it.
SW: That's one of the hallmarks of TFO, was it wasn't just you who didn't have any reverence for this shit but you would show again and again that regular people outside the bubble didn't understand that there was any reverence for it. I think that's partially approaching stuff from a wider cultural context -- like I remember in our first face to face conversation you mentioned that you always get to the Mad Max scene in Watchmen and it stops you cold. It feels like a more honest way to engage with everything. And you've always brought in as many voices as you can from the beginning, which I've always admired.
TS: The thing that makes a lot of comics arguments (especially the ones driven by the comics blogosphere) so fucking absurd was that it takes a solid 20 minutes to explain what drives them. You have to go so deep into the woods, explaining the subject matter, explaining why you dislike this one person and the website they write for, how that old irritation infects the current conversation you're imagining having with them--it makes you sound crazy. The jump that I think I had to make--that I still have to make--is that is IS crazy. It's fucking lunacy, completely, to act as if those little battles have any bearing on anything at all outside the bubble. Nobody outside this thing is ever going to comprehend what the hell you're talking about if you try to explain why you don't like the person who handles press releases about books they've never read at some website they've never heard of. I think that's what makes it a little more fun and crazy (albeit very gross) right now, because you don't actually have to read the comics anymore, you can just go after some assholes for the way they treat women. Nobody has to read DMZ anymore or The Massive or whatever bullshit, you can just all band together under the umbrella of thinking that it's fucked up to get handsy with some lady at a bar under the pretense that you'll get her an inking gig somewhere. I think that's great! Nothing in comics was ever going to change for the better when you kept demanding people read these dopey things that come out infrequently, look like shit, cost too much, aren't as entertaining as the most bottom rung television show, etc. We got rid of that barricade. Hell yes, I say!
The wider cultural context thing that always got me was the way digital comics was gonna save something--that idea that you could put these things in a device capable of showing off the top tiers of media. What kind of lunatic is going to choose the New 52 version of Booster Gold over watching million dollar movie trailers?
SW: So that brings the question up: how do you feel about Comics Of The Weak as a whole? On TFO, when it moved to the Comics Journal — it's not your whole body of work but it is a significant part of it. It's also a relatively broad space -- you were doing rigorous 3 sentence max reviews-as-jokes for a while, but you've also gotten very personal under the same banner. I know reading the column it was always great to see stuff dismissed or savaged but when you hit something that you admired, those were always the writer's clinic because I feel that's the hardest thing to do well and still have a brain.
TS: I feel pretty okay with it. It became somewhat of an albatross at times, because my desire to write them eventually outlasted my desire to read comic books on a weekly basis, but I imagine I would still be doing it now if I hadn't just abandoned that particular ritual. The only thing that ever bothered me about writing about stuff that I liked is how tiresome it became to hear about how mean I was from people who weren't actually reading what I wrote all those times I liked stuff. I would've loved it if I had a great time every week. Who wouldn't want to have guaranteed enjoyment every Wednesday? That sounds fantastic to me. That whole line of argument was just a lie. It's not hard to write about stuff you like. It's easy. What's hard is to write about stuff you like without being a total fucking shill.
SW: Outside of comics, how do you feel about all the other places you took the thing? Economist vs Idiot and the tv column (BAD GIRLS CLUB 4EVR) and everything else? I think it's always been a pretty great place for interviews -- like when you'd do an interview for some other site and have a way more interesting side-feature show up with the same person on the Factual.
TS: I wish I had more time. I would've done Econ Vs Idiot for me and the two other people that liked it every day if there was a way to make that happen. Interviews too. I would've loved to have been able to continue any and all of those things. I miss the guy who did that.
SW: I think of the Factual now, and it's this community you've built -- and not a bullshit community but one where you've built relationships with everyone who writes (or now podcasts) on the site. And many of those people who I think make that a little difficult (at least I know I did). I know you have the "he's mean" rep but pre-social media you were always in comments sections and sending emails -- I think a lot of our class of people who wrote about comics, we were very strident in developing a point of view in exclusion to other people, and you've always had other people here. There was an unspoken thing that everyone had to attempt to write above their level because of where you'd set the bar for TFO but you treated this thing like a showcase, always.
TS: I appreciate you saying that, but it was always vanity and obsession and a desire to be around all of these people who were so much smarter than me. I loved the way people like Joe and you and my friend Marty and all these other people (Tim, Abhay, David, Matt, Chris) talked about stuff and I wanted to badly to be alongside those people, you know? Just to leech off what they were doing. I'd resort to wikipedia and the imdb page for a movie in the end, but there really wasn't anything better in my eyes than to finish reading a comic and then read what Jog wrote about it, or to watch a movie and finally look at that bookmarked piece Abhay had dropped a few weeks prior. And then to meet those people--jesus. The Joe Casey Fanclub and all two of our meetings! Experiencing Kinokuniya with Joe McCulloch and Chris Mautner! I couldn't imagine anything better than that.
I found it easiest just to pick like five people to be really strident with and then focused all my disdain and irritation. But in recent years I've gotten to know most of those people and now that number is down to three.
SW: So do you have any pieces or series or whatever that stand out to you as the best? Or the most TFO? I think for the movie podcast it's gotta be James Cameron on top of Tower 2. Do you think you shit the bed with anything? Things you would take down or redo given the chance?
TS: No, I don't really have anything that stands out. I do remember that I used to copy, word-for-word, these particularly idiotic reviews I'd see on CBR, but I would switch out the specific names for indie comics, and then I did some interview with Spurgeon and realized he (and other people) hadn't caught that and thought those were my actual feelings about those comics. I was kind of happy with that. I liked imitating people who i thought were terrible, I remember a period where I always had a little of that each week.
Most of it was shitting the bed. Jokes are hard to do all the time. I lost the plot a lot and went too long, it became too performative. I wish I could meet that guy who did it all in two to three sentences.
I've taken some reviews down in the last few years, but only because I found out the people/person who made the book was a particularly terrible chicken hawk motherfucker and I wanted to do my own little bit of fuck you to them, to their work. I still notice spelling and grammar mistakes and dropped words, which is the casualty of being your own editor, I try to fix those and maybe someday I'll be more constructive and specific. But if I had to do it again, I imagine it would be the same as it was.
SW: So how do you feel about your relationship to comics now, going from a guy who writes about Batman and to a shop owner to a member of the industry to a publisher for guys like Fiffe & Forsman? It wasn't this staged transition for you, though, before the store you were already a pretty major guy-who-writes-about-comics and even now you're still engaging in criticism with the comics podcast. I mean you had the closest thing to The Soup For Comics for a while there.
TS: I feel like i've been extraordinarily lucky. There is almost no money in comics whatsoever, and it is not packed to the brim with extremely nice, charitable people, and yet I have been blessed with the support of more than my share of those people, and they have handed me a career. Joe, Chris, Dirk Deppey and David Brothers legitimized me as a writer about comics and basically handed me an audience through their support. The guys at comiXology reached out to me and gave me a paying gig. They paid me to make those videos and backed me up when I pissed people off. Tom and Amy got me out of advertising and trusted me over and over again and took me on as their business partner. Image Comics flew me out to San Diego and trusted me for, as far as I can tell, no reason at all. Chris Pitzer said "this is the guy" when Nobrow went asking. When Nina and I were struggling with all the shit that came from Piper's birth fiasco, Mike Cavallaro and Tom came to my house and kept us going. All of that was handed to me. All of that came about because of comics.
There is a lot about comics that I hate, that fills me with rage. There are more than a few people who are seemingly bulletproof, who will get out of this thing clean, whose only consequence will be their own, diabolically shitty personalities. But I am getting better about focusing on the good people, the great people who are taking it to a newer, better place. I am not good at that. I am trying to be someone who helps people the way I was helped. I am not good at that either. But I believe I am getting better.
SW: Well I am going to turn this back onto you, because I would say that you've done the same thing for a lot of people. Like, legitimized people, helped people out, trusted them to do things they didn't know they were capable of doing. I mean, leaving comics out of it,, my two real deal writing jobs were offered to me explicitly on the backs of things I wrote on your suggestion for TFO. And I think you asking me to do the movie cast with you forced me to learn how to be a person. Made me more responsible, better at talking to people. It gave me an excuse to better not just our friendship, but develop relationships with a lot of people I only knew through emails and twitter. Pretty much because you trusted me and have been incredibly supportive just because we both liked to talk about Christopher Nolan way too much nine years ago. I want to thank you for that, and I know you haven't just done that for me, but for everyone at the Factual and more besides.
So would you feel comfortable talking about how you feel about the whole endeavor? I think you've done something pretty admirable, man. Worthy of this kind of look back anyway.
TS: The whole endeavor? I started writing a blog with the same two letters that will take anyone to the most popular website in the world. The fact that anyone ever found it and that it gave me the friends I have, the career I have, the life I have is totally absurd. I can't believe it's lasted this long and that there's still stuff happening with it, that people still come and look at it. That's nuts. I couldn't be more grateful.
Michel Fiffe:
Back when I got a wild hair up my ass to write about comics I loved and cartoonists I loved even more, Factual Opinion was the only place I envisioned as a home to operate from. The site itself was a relentless source of scathing, hilarious insights from a writer I respected - of course I wanted to be a part of that. Luckily, Tucker felt the same way, or at least enough to welcome my amateur efforts. My best stuff was largely defined by working with him. The man's a sharp, no-bullshit editor, and a better sounding board you can't find. Tucker had my back on many occasions, which is more than I can say about any other institution I've dealt with -- you better believe that goes a long way.
Morgan Jeske:
I started writing this draft aiming for “really funny and insightful” things to say about Tucker, The Factual Opinion and the many contributors who have written under it’s umbrella—but then realized there’s ten years worth of writing here that speak volumes. I can’t really fully articulate how much I’ve enjoyed (and learned from) your writing Tucker. Thanks for putting in the the work, and thanks for sharing it.
Joe “Jog the Blog” McCulloch:
The funny thing is, I can't clearly recall a time before the arrival of the Factual Opinion. I mean, you can give me dates and I'll agree. I even remember the first time I read the site, because I read the entire archive that day, including all the interviews Tucker used to do about comics with people in his life who didn't read comics, and I thought "this is fucking genius." But Tucker has been a constant in my life now for long enough it feels like he was somehow there when I was 13 and reading direr and direr issues of Spider-Man, somehow emailing him my cattier thoughts and hoping fervently that he'd fold a line or two into his capsule reviews, those little shocks of standards imposed on books made lazy by sympathy. The underlying fact of the Factual was always that there is a bigger world around us than what media consumption fools us into believing is all we are, and to have shared in its big world is a privilege I can hardly explain. Keep being good, Tucker Stone.
Chris Mautner:
If you’ve listened to Travis Bickle or Comic Books Are Burning in Hell or read any of Tucker’s reviews or articles from the past decade or so then you’ve likely come to appreciate his blunt honesty, sharp analysis (I wish I was half as well-read as he is) and quick wit. What doesn’t always come through over the podcasts and blog posts though, is his kindness, generosity and genuine warmth. Neither Bickle nor CBABiH would be possible without his drive and dedication, not to mention his desire for good, pointed criticism and compelling art. I feel lucky and blessed to call him a friend.
Abhay Khosla:
There's a thing that always messes with me, and maybe it's something you know about, too-- which is how a little thing that you don't pay much attention to eventually becomes part of the overall Story of You. Example: you go to some random website because you're groggy in the morning and you like looking at websites while you eat your Captain Crunch-- but then week after week, podcast after podcast, before you know it, there are these extra voices in your head, your own little cavalcade of Jiminy Crickets, little angels and demons to sit on your shoulder and shout at you when you're floundering on something. That's what happened with me and Bodybuilding.com anyway, and I was forever changed, sloots. But sure, this site, too, also. There were jokes and gags. (My favorite week -- I think there was one with audio recordings mixed in with the capsules, of Tucker telling Nina about different comics??). But time goes by, week after week, year after year, and little by little by little, all the people who've written or podcasted for this site-- they just burrowed in somewhere with me, when I wasn't paying attention.
I hear my own personal imaginary Joe McCulloch in my head all the time-- "watch more Bollywood movies! You're missing out on Uday Chopra's entire career!" Or a Fake Sean Witzke-- "Watch a movie where someone's getting slashed. Hey, slash some teens yourself! Slash all the teens-- you'll get away with it and people will love you for it." It's all I hear when I close my eyes. And on and on, and sure, also, more than a little: a What-Would-Tucker-Stone-Say, floating around in there. Built out of different things he's written that've stuck; or just some choices in how he approaches certain topics; or even just the basic thing of his keeping this site going and ring-leading this thing, which has to be some kind of thankless; et cetera. One time, at an airport, I even picked up a copy of The Economist magazine, and stared at it for a while, befuddled, confused like a newborn. I barely know how to read-- what did I even think I was going to do with it?? That was a weird 15 seconds before I put that magazine down and bought a magazine about space-marine video games instead--Imaginary Tucker Stone almost made me into an Economist, you guys! Just like in the old Charles Atlas ads. Anyways, this all might sound creepy and that's because it *is* creepy. But I also hope it's nice...? Nice-creepy? But okay sure: mostly creepy, but it is what it is and it's too late to fix any of this now. "Let's all just keep inspiring each other to be great" -- the last line of Volume 1 of my shonen manga, Fake Versions of All of You Are Nude Inside My Head. Bring on volume 2! And happy anniversary.
Matt Seneca:
The Factual Opinion is probably the only website I’ve read every word of. (I’ve also listened to what must be at least 90% of the podcasts posted to it that I’m not a participant in, but that doesn’t sound as impressive.) It’s tough to describe how important reading TFO was to me when I discovered it around 2009 or so. There was other comics criticism out there that I had a ton of appreciation for, but nothing else that came close to the type of discourse that I appreciate most, those comic shop counter conversations that can either blossom into the discovery of your new favorite book... or just make you laugh along with the off-the-wall shit the dude you’re talking to just said. More than the jokes, it’s the studied way the work Tucker has published here walks the tightrope between casualness and commitment to craft, the balance between fun and effort that’s so apparent in all his writing, that spoke and continues to speak to me. I definitely never would have decided to start writing about comics if I hadn’t first seen a model that was so approachable, and I definitely wouldn’t have written about them as well if I didn’t have such a powerful example to follow. Trust a guy who ran the best comic shop ever to make a website that feels like visiting the best comic shop ever, I guess. What can I say? Even before I was actually friends with Tucker, poring back over his perfectly-put paragraphs always made me feel like I’d been hanging out with one of my favorite people.
Marty Brown:
Tucker Stone was the first friend I made after moving to New York in 2002. We were in school together – though, honestly, it was acting school so it was really more like camp – and every day after class we post up on a bench outside a Chelsea coffee shop to “decompress.” He’d smoke endless cigarettes while we traded notes on the day and our slow acclimations to the East Coast. It quickly became clear that this dude was one of the more well-informed people I’d ever known; for example, in one of our earliest conversations he detailed for me the differences between the prison systems in America and Japan. I struggled to keep up with him, but fortunately for me I had been writing for a couple of pop culture sites and so was able to recycle for his bemusement my own thoughts from pieces I’d written over the previous year. A few weeks into our friendship, I was surprised to find that Tucker had actually taken the time to track down and read everything I’d written, and was even able to quote some of it back to me. He told me, “I should have known that you’d write about albums just like you talk about them;” and I secretly became nervous that he had caught on to the fact that I only had a finite set of opinions. Nevertheless, we bonded over movies and books and music; Tucker was one of the first people I knew who could talk about art in terms of craft or theory or meaning without losing a fan’s sense of appreciation.
School lasted two years, but as it went on Tucker and I each got sullen and moody. We made the mistake of dating a couple of the same girls, and said some things to and about one another that we’d both probably like to take back. By the time we had graduated, we’d pretty much fallen out completely. We’d see each other at some events, or through mutual friends, and after a couple years of distance we somehow managed to get into a rhythm of seeing live music together. But I was reserved, standoffish, and we never rediscovered the rapport we’d had in our early friendship.
One day, summer of 2006, Tucker asked me to meet him for coffee. Over the last year, he’d been keeping a pop culture journal on MySpace, and he’d grown confident enough in his writing that he wanted to formalize his hobby into a blog. He had a name for it: The Factual Opinion. Beyond that, he didn’t really know what to expect. I think he imagined it almost purely as a place to warehouse stray thoughts on his reading, watching and listening. He wanted to know if I’d be interested in contributing to it. He had a buddy who would write about sports (!); I’d do music, and he’d cover everything else. I hadn’t written anything in years, so I was hesitant at first, but the first project he proposed was super intriguing to me: he wanted to compile and count down a list of the best albums of 1992.
Now, I’m a list guy. In middle school I would make cassette tapes of my forty favorite songs ever and record myself struggling to describe my affection for each of them in between. (#1 was “Dream Operator” by Talking Heads; #2 was “Wind Me Up” from theRad soundtrack; there was a lot of Weird Al after that.) In high school I’d rank my 200 favorite songs, type and format them to fit on a single piece of paper, and hand those out to all the other kids in my class. I continued with these kinds of ridiculous exercises well into my twenties, but over time I’d mostly learned to keep them to myself. And yet, here was a dude—another grown-ass man, no less—who was not only similarly enthusiastic about chasing down the rabbit hole of music-list nerdery, but had managed to top me by suggesting we telescope in on a single random year! After six weeks or so of trading research, Tucker and I spent an entire afternoon arguing about whether anything was better than Slanted and Enchanted; trying to figure out if R.E.M.’s Automatic for the People was actually any good; and wondering whether the Beastie Boys or the Pharcyde deserved placement over Dr. Dre. At one point, I advocated for the inclusion of The Black Crowes’ Southern Harmony and Musical Companion pretty high up in the list. After some incredulity, Tucker relented… though to this day he harbors a grudge about it (which is especially weird because Tucker’s from Georgia and you’d think the Black Crowes would be state heroes down there). Over the next few weeks we published blurbs on each of the 1992 picks on The Factual Opinion, and then repeated the whole process a couple of months late with our favorite albums of 2006. I have no idea who could’ve been reading those things, but in those afternoons of arguing about music—often contentiously—Tucker and I rebuilt our friendship.
I contributed to The Factual Opinion for the first four or five years, mostly inconsistently. My success with writing always depended on how well I could push through my insecurities, and that turned out to be something I was not very good at. So I’d miss deadlines, flake on things I’d committed to, and submit stuff that embarrassed me. Tucker demonstrated more patience with me than I had any right to expect, and because I was a TFO contributor I got to see him in action. Early on, he sort of fell backwards into the idea for Comics of the Weak, which almost immediately became the site’s flagship column. Once he saw that readers were responding to his ideas, he became absolutely tenacious about writing and publishing them. This momentum inspired other regular columns (including one where he would read and react to the entirety of that week’s issue of The Economist; I have friends who have spent years imploring him to bring that one back.) When I’d visit his place, he’d open his computer and have four or five drafts of pieces working all at once, things that were weeks or months away from publishing. If I was lucky he'd test punchlines on me. By this point, he would have already read all his material out loud multiple times to his wife, Nina—who deserves a whole Factual Opinion tribute of her own, if we’re being honest. If I’m remembering right, he’d have to shoehorn his writing time into the hours after Nina would go to bed, and would stay up, chain-smoking and trying to get all of the wording just right.
Because so much of Tucker’s oeuvre was shittin’-on-superheroes, I think it might have been a bit of a secret just how hard the guy worked at it. To me, he seemed relentlessly dedicated. As he slowly built a following for The Factual Opinion, he became equally meticulous about engaging with others’ work, and through emails and comment sections carved out friendships with his peers, most of whom became contributors and collaborators. Other writing work followed, including a chance to interview the owner of a new comic shop in Brooklyn called Bergen Street Comics. Something about Bergen Street excited him—maybe it was the thought and care that had been put into the shop’s creation, its architecture and book selection, which felt revelatory in a comics store at the time. He anxiously quit his day job to join the Bergen Street Comics staff, and quickly became an integral part of the store’s success. Eventually a job in publishing came calling, and by the time he joined up with Nobrow Press he had managed to carve out a career and a life for himself, having started with nothing but his point-of-view, a typepad account, and a relentless dedication to all the small, tedious, and often ridiculous tasks along the way. It is one of the coolest things I’ve ever seen.
One of the hardest things to do in this life is to believe in someone else. It’s even harder to act on those beliefs. Last year, well after I’d written for the site with any regularity, Tucker spent a couple months convincing me to do a music podcast for him. Not only that, but he set me up with Nate Patrin, a music writer I’d followed and admired for years. It might have been a small gesture of friendship for Tucker to repeatedly invite me to be a part of The Factual Opinion, but I do not take for granted that he has continually shared this platform and audience that he built from scratch. He’s consistently encouraged me to write and, now, talk about music, lending me confidence I’ve often been unable to provide for myself. And I’ve gotten to see him make a similar investment in countless other people, from each of the Factual Opinion contributors, to the folks at Bergen Street Comics and Bergen Street Press, to his clients at Nobrow, and also, importantly, to his wife and daughter. He has transformed himself from an advocate for pop culture into an advocate for artists and people, and that is such a special thing in this world. As we celebrate the tenth anniversary of The Factual Opinion, I choose to celebrate a silly little blog where Tucker Stone found his voice and his audience, and moreover had the generosity of spirit to use that voice and audience to support so many others. I am so grateful to have been a small part of it, and I couldn’t be prouder of my friend.
Nina Stone:
I knew what I wanted to write about as soon as I was asked to write.
And then I sat down and started typing and got overcome with memories and feelings and so many thoughts. Factual was born when Tucker and I were dating, and is closely tied to so many personal memories and experiences. I mean, in the span of these ten years, we got engaged, married, had a baby, bought a house and moved. “Miss Nina” wasn’t even a thing yet. When Tucker and I started dating, he’d talk to me about the plots of comic books and the bigger questions they would tackle (Which I often wondered — “Are those questions really in there? Or is that just your ability to see them in there?”). And he was passionate about wanting the stories and characters in comics to be accessible to new readers — young and old, male AND female — as well as the fans. And something about this drove his writing and reviews and was the basis for the column that I wrote, “The Virgin Read.”
This passionate hobby of Tucker’s, The Factual Opinion, blazed a trail for his current career and was the platform for the blossoming talents of many other careers and lifelong friendships.
And that word “blossom” really sticks out for me. My mother said to me, either right before or right after marrying Tucker, “I think you’re going to really blossom being married to him.” I’m not sure what bought her to say that — but I’m pretty sure it had something to do with me writing for The Factual.
Because you know what? Nothing says Love like someone wanting to know your thoughts and feelings, and really listening. In my life, I’ve found the the experience of not being listened to extremely painful and even hurtful. I think most people would agree.
So - someone listening? Someone being truly interested? That was an exhilarating and amazing feeling!
But not only was Tucker always interested to hear my thoughts and feelings about things — he wanted me to write them down and share them with you. !! Now, I’ve always enjoyed writing, but I never thought anyone would care to read/hear what I thought.
Well — y’all proved me wrong! Tucker was so pleased, he encouraged me to write more and more. And, wow, what a ride that was! A lot of fun stuff came out of that including Heidi at Publisher’s Weekly dubbing Tucker and I “the new It Kids of comics”, people sending me their comics to review, and I even have been quoted on the back of few books!!
My main point is, though, that the Factual Opinion is a big part of our Love Story. We fell in love listening to each other. We felt loved being heard by one another -- and all of you. I am so grateful for Tucker Stone and all he’s created and given.
My mom was right.
-- Thanks from all of us, Tucker, for everything --
sean witzke in Stunt Casting | Permalink | Comments (5)
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On a very special episode of Beat Connection, your boy Tucker Stone joins Nate and Marty to count down the best musical happenings of 2015 and pit them all against one another in an epic battle royal to determine the single best music thing of the year. Blood will be shed and friendships will be lost after the jump.
Continue reading "BEAT CONNECTION 014: Your 2015 Music Bracket" »
Martin Brown in Music, Podcast, Stunt Casting | Permalink | Comments (0)
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Michel Fiffe has spent the past 12 months writing/drawing/publishing his own monthly supervillain black ops crew on the run comic Copra. Beginning as an extremely low print run Suicide Squad tribute comic and evolving into its own original story. The series, side-stepping the trap of being an exercise in nostalgia, has been the most consistently masterful and vibrant action comic being made in 2013. Driven by rich characters, fight heavy, smart and fast and dense as the best comics of the 80s could be. But the series thoroughly modern, done in Fiffe's equally direct and abstract flourish-filled style. This is the kind of comics that tricks you into thinking that the off-brand, "made out of pure love and fandom" version of a thing could outdo the officially licensed version. Instead, it's a showcase of Fiffe's commitment to quality and delivering on the demands of the genre in a way nothing has outside of the classics of the genre. This is comics as alive as anything, brought to the world every step of the way by one person, that live and die on a glance or a punch or a cacophony of lines and colors. Nothing else this year even came close.
You can buy issues of Copra here, at Fiffe's Etsy store, and the collected editions here, at Bergen Street Comics.
Michel Fiffe: You know I wasn't expecting anyone to see Deathzone, right? It was supposed to be this... not a joke thing, but a light thing to get me out of my glut. I thought making Suicide Squad as the vehicle to do that seemed ridiculous. It seemed like nothing good could come from it, which compelled me further. And by "joke" I don't mean that I was doing it ironically or anything like that. That's absurd. However, I thought that working on an old DC title that time forgot would be fun. I remember one of the first conversations I had with Tucker was about Captain Cold in SS #18, and I thought he was fucking with me at first. Not the case; we both cradle our Deadshot comics with the same amount of tenderness. Tucker dropping Captain Cold's name is the definition of deep cuts.
So there I was, finally done with this massive second issue of Zegas and feeling exhausted. I put all of my efforts into this one book, this one Zegas issue, so I wasn't totally excited to jump back into #3, y'know? I needed a break, I needed something totally different. Deathzone came out of that desire/frustration.
Michel: No, the writing on that is exemplary. I've been revisiting those issues for the past few years and falling in love with them all over again. I saw this "break" between Zegas issues to be a good opportunity to do... something. I don't know, I was planning on maybe reviewing every issue on a blog or something. Then I thought no one would read it, because who cares? Then I considered doing pin-ups of every character in my style, throw them up on tumblr or something just as practice. I've never been a pin-up guy, so I thought making an actual narrative would be more interesting to me, but I didn't want to make an original story. I just wanted to draw and write the specific details of what I loved about the Squad. So I made a fan comic, bona fide fan fic, right? I knew there were a couple of unofficial-type comics by indie guys, but they were usually demented version of those characters. I wasn't interested in doing that, I wanted to make a "real thing". I wanted to pretend I was given the assignment by Robert Greenberger in 1988 or something. My aim wasn't to make it look weird, I wanted to play it straight all the way.
I wanted to do this thing, this unofficial thing that people would potentially ridicule or ignore because only Tucker and me like this old comic and you know, they weren't mine to play with. So I didn't want to spend too much time on it, the way I labored over Zegas. I had to knock it out and I did. I liked the results and I had a lot of fun doing it. I had them printed up and it was well received! I was proud of this little thing that I lovingly did in tribute to the comics I liked as a kid. The seed was planted, and that's what led to Copra. I treated Copra, again, as if I was being hired by DC and given the keys to the car. How would I do this if I had complete control? Since that would never happen, especially now in this current climate, I took that impossible daydream and spun my own thing out of it. I hammered out schedule logistics, plots points to make sure I had enough story to carry 12 issues, and enough money to at least fund the first issue.
Michel: Ostrander is such a smart writer, he plays the characters just right. He just nails their voices consistently. I never cringe reading his stuff. There are modern comics that make me physically cringe. Like they're trying so hard to impress you, they're self-consciousness is really off putting. Ostrander, back when these comics were for young people - little kids - wrote confidently, he didn't need to impress shit. You have to understand, Ostrander came from acting, he came from improv and the stage. He entered comics when he was 33; this was a man with a life, not some putz who'd been fed on pretentious Grant Morrison comics all his life. Once his wife, Kim Yale, entered the picture, the tone really took off. She balanced him out. She was just as sharp with dialogue as he was, and could write convincing meanness, or pathos, or humor. So, yes, the writing is what really hooked me, because it was profound without trying to be. It was just trying to entertain kids, and the creators were just doing their jobs. Plus, I have a soft spot for Luke McDonnell. He was their straight man.
Michel: No, I knew Ditko through his Daredevil fill ins & an old Spider-Man reprint. I was nine at the time and to me, Shade was just another cool Squad member. I discovered the Ditko connection later on.
Michel: Yeah, about a decade later. I somehow got his address and immediately hit him up for some answers. I wanted to know about craft and aesthetic issues dealing in comics and their potential content, the sort of thing an inquisitive pain in the ass wonders about. I asked, he barked, I asked louder. It went on like this for years.
Michel: I know what you mean. This is the sad truth: I conditioned myself, when I began making comics almost all the time, to not create genre comics in my attempt to "expand the form". I still allowed myself to like what I liked without guilt or regret, which included tons of genre, but I felt I had a responsibility to push past that when it came to my work. I really bought into the ethos that comics can only be True Art by not transcending genre but by completely sidestepping it and that's the rub. I was going against my nature by restricting myself and dressing it up as intellectualization. I stifled myself. There was - still is in a sense - this constant tug and pull form both ends on my part. Always aware that I was participating in junk culture but rejecting the notion that it's junk. Zegas was my first serious response to those concerns. Zegas was me taking all the challenges I placed on myself and dominating them. I wanted human stories but I wanted to draw fantastical things, too, I wanted to experiment with color, I wanted to package it nicely, draw it finely and carefully, write and re-write the hell out of it. It was supposed to by my shining example of what I thought comics could be while not giving too much of a fuck. Copra is not me giving less of a fuck... I DO care. I care about it just as much as I do with Zegas. The difference is that it's easier for me to not be aware of whether I'm making junk culture or not. That concern is completely useless to me now. I'm not making comics to prove anything, or to get Gary Groth or Steve Ditko or my friends or the internet's blessing. I acted on an impulse and exploiting it is the most natural way to honor that impulse.
Michel: Right, right. I wanted to work within the parameters of the old mainstream comics I was inspired by. For example, it had to be standard size, it had to be 24 pages, have a letters column, be as affordable as possible, it had to have hooks and cliffhangers and forward momentum. I also had to work assembly line with myself so when it came down to me sitting and dedicating my life to a thing, I wanted to have a good time doing it, I wanted to be challenged. The thing I was measuring against was the production aspect of it and some of the aesthetic ones. The saving grace of it all was that I had no editor or publisher to answer to. Given that, and to answer your question more directly, yes, Copra involves more extreme physical absurdist violence and action that requires a balanced touch. I wanted the script to have heart and a point of view, but it had to move efficiently and in service of the larger arc.
Michel: Right... Benny, his narration was very specific. Even then, it would drop in and out when necessary. You're right, though, they're all tools. You can restrict the tools, but they exist. Same thing with SFX or thought balloons or color choices.
Michel: Sometimes in groups. Since Copra is a team, I wanted them to pit them against other teams instead of just one source of tension. Plus it's more fun to draw everyone get their own little spotlight. I also wanted to throw new things at them without letting up and that required an army of characters. I wanted to give them that sense of urgency, that chaotic force that works best under pressure. The reader didn't know the threat, Copra didn't either.
Michel: I like them both. The group scenes are very time consuming, there's some heavy orchestration at work. And these are just drawings, I cannot imagine staging a real fight and making it flow while being hard hitting. A one-on-one fight is good because you can really get in there, you can dig a little deeper, you can make it personal. So each one works a different narrative muscle.
Michel: Since issue two.
SW: Oh, man.
Michel: I had to keep it to myself. Almost gave it up in issue 7 during the "Personal Files" story. But as a reader, I would've hated having that knowledge. It paid off I think.
SW: I know when Lloyd just showed up it was a huge deal for me as a reader.
Michel: Yeah, he's a favorite of mine. I sometimes feel like I underwrite him, but that's me confusing underwriting with absence of words. I actually write the shit out of him, but it's all in the restraint with him. Looking back he has very little dialogue. So #10 was a gift to myself. Even then, there's such a reluctance in his voice that I had to be careful not to overplay that either.
Michel: It makes it more relatable for me to write, certainly. Especially dealing with the unreal, with multidimensional landfills or talking brain crime lords in giant size glass bulbs. That's a built in tension right there, in the man-out-of-place setting. That's a standard storytelling thing, right? I'm the wrong guy to ask about certain rules or standards. There are classic, time honored guidelines to go by, then there's Save The Cat. I will never get that time back.
Michel: After reading the last page, someone should've snuck up behind me and taken me out with a silencer.
SW: Whispered as you fell backwards into their arms.
Michel: Yeah, I'm aware of certain rules but I can't... It's like that "22 panels that always work" thing, that Wally Wood thing. That's not theory, it's not critical analysis, it's lazy fucking garbage that Wood did cynically, as a joke. You get these generations of people following that. "Story"... why would I want to read about Star Wars? How to draw the John Buscema Way? That book didn't have Ditko in it - why the fuck would I care?
Michel: It was way easier but man, I really wish I could just slow the fuck down. Not so much to draw more but to just consider things more. To not feel the rush would be great. That's been a good thing for the most part, the rush, but there were points where I was like "fuck all this". I got close to losing my shit but it mostly had to do with the production side of the schedule, not the creative. I have no staff, no shipping department, no accountant. It was me up at 2 am writing the nicest e-mail to my printer asking them why I have a box of damaged copies of my comic. Whatever, no complaints, it had to get done. But it came close to affecting me. I don't think that changed the way I worked on the book, though, at least not on a direct creative level. In that regard I got faster, I condensed all the steps and moved quickly.
Michel: Oh, yeah, I have this larger arc that I cannot wait to work on. I'm also gonna enjoy getting there, like those deeper beats we were talking about. I have a few more characters to introduce... man, I wish I can just tell you then ending. Can I? Can I just ruin something for you?
Michel: C'mon!
Michel: He's got a broader entrepreneurial spirit than we give him credit for, but he's no longer funding anything. He tried to hustle Klaus out of a slow dance with a donkey and one of his girls, so Klaus snuffed him and kept his warehouse.
by Michel Fiffe
In the previous two installments, Tony Salmons discussed his early years, his artistic philosophy, and his role as a cartoonist on the fringes of the mainstream field. We finalize this interview by going over Salmons' reconciliation between his uneasy relationship with the comics business while maintaining passion for the form.
Here Are Some Interview & Art Extras
PART 3
Michel Fiffe: You got back into comics full time with Vigilante, written by James Robinson. How did that project come about?
Tony Salmons: That was a full script. I met James in New York in '91. I contacted him later and he had a few projects that were taking forever to get out to the readers. He offered Vigilante to me. I was already sick of Hollywood so I jumped in. Again, this was in a marriage with kids where I was a stay at home dad in charge of 3 kids, 2 were infants, everything in the house and working on comics. I don't know how I did it.
Vigilante #2, written by James Robinson, December, 1995, DC.
Fiffe: Did your Legends of the Dark Knight story with Robinson come before or after Vigilante? A page of that Batman story was published years before the actual issue came out.
Salmons: The Batman story, “Citadel”, was before Vigilante. Vigil-Uncle, as Bob Camp called it. It was after I got my ass fired from WB but before the script for Vigilante was finalized. I was marooned in LA with a wife and 3 kids. Great planning. I allowed for the expected funk and fiddle of writer/editor dither for some weeks with my rent creeping and finally said to James that I had this other idea why don't we just make it Batman and do this. He acceded, and we were off. I cannibalized my previous story with another character in another time. I had a bunch of booby trap gags for the Batman version but limitations of the pamphlet format foiled them. We trimmed them down to what you see. James did a great job collaborating and changed the title to “Citadel.”
"Citadel" written by James Robinson, Legends Of The Dark Knight #85, August, 1996, DC.
Fiffe: Robinson has mentioned that deadlines were a bit of a problem during the tail end of the Vigilante mini-series. Is that a fair assessment from Robinson?
Salmons: James has taken it on himself to say a lot over the years. The shock to me was that his private conversations with me years after Vigilante were diametrically opposite to his public position. By that time, it was a familiar rusty metal taste on my tongue confirming what I know of people in the “biz”. It is indeed more than fair to say I was late.
Fiffe: This was your first major work for DC. How were your relationships over there?
Salmons: DC began to dock my pay for back payments on the insurance I'd subscribed to with them. It was never available, resulting in some non-lethal lengthy health problems of my own but the point is they were docking me a grand out of every paycheck. I was on the phone with everyone I could reach, including James and Archie [Goodwin] who by then was ailing again. Nowadays, I'd handle it very differently. I would’ve caught the first plane and been back there up their asses until I was paid. Again, I took the position of a guy who wanted to work again. I kept turning in pages and they kept docking me. I told them that if I really owed them the money, we could work it out but they couldn't keep gouging my family's income. I couldn't keep working for their bookkeeping mistake. We were evicted and my wife took the kids to a friend’s house. I went to live in my studio and I told them to go fuck themselves, but not in so many words.
Fiffe: How did you guys manage through all of this?
Salmons: The Penthouse Comix gig came in just in time for my divorce, but only because George Caragonne dumped his fat ass into the atrium of the Times Square Marriot from the 45th floor. Funny story that. It was after he let me pitch stories and characters to him repeatedly, never hired me and then did very pallid versions of them with his own artists. My great pal and all around lovely fellow Dave Elliott took me on for work and treated me exceptionally. I managed to move back to LA as Penthouse folded and wound up at the Dreamworks TV animation division.
"Kodiak" written by CJ Henderson, Penthouse Comix #23, 1997, Penthouse.
Fiffe: Your next big comics project was a Kirby-Era Avengers story for Marvel.
Salmons: Yeah, it was Kirby's Avengers. It was part of the main line. A real superhero book! Finally!
Fiffe: I could be remembering it wrong, but were you writing it as well as drawing it?
Salmons: I thumb-nailed most of the Avengers very tightly, which is how I write, lots of character redesign but restrained toward the original flavor of them, fully plotted it out and scripted much of it. I was completely jazzed, the money was fine but I really just wanted to do something meaty, fun and lasting. I roughly penciled about 5 pages. This was a couple of months of work around shit commission work. Or should I say, shit pay for commission work. And then it was all gone with Bill Jemas.
Fiffe: How did you land that huge project, especially after having so much trouble getting work?
Salmons: I cold called Bill Jemas' office and got right in. He gave me the short story in 411 and was very interested in my pitch. Made a point of shaking my hand and said it was going to be a pleasure. He was great for me but apparently had other people's interest. These led to his departure from Marvel and with him any chance of my Avengers.
"Seeds" written by David Rees, 411 #1, June, 2003, Marvel.
Fiffe: No other editor wanted to pick it up where it left off?
Salmons: Funny aside, an editor up there who promised me work for years – years – got wind I was there and had me ushered into his office. I didn't know Marvel's new digs and I thought I was on my way out of the building and there I was. He ran on about all the people he was up against in meetings and a bunch of stuff that honestly, I don't remember and don't give a shit about. Meanwhile I'm thinking, no wonder these guys don't get anything done. He ended by poking his finger at the wall of his office toward another office down the hall and when he finished barbequing that guy, he settled in to tell me how I could improve my game, how I should fix the panel borders, how he could sell this figure but not that figure. He held them up to me from a sketchbook I'd left in all offices on a previous visit. I just listened like a good freelance troll. He began to describe how he couldn't possibly walk into Jemas' office with this, when I told him I just came from there. He stopped like I just threw his baby out the window. He asked what Jemas said, which was that it was going to be a pleasure working with me. Another silent mental reacquisition by him of what's happening. Then, he starts jumping around his office like a circus monkey dragging out everything he's been doing in the last year. As usual, in the presence of this kind of exposed mind criminal, I just wanted to get out of there because Avengers or no Avengers I didn't want any of this to get on me. I let him wind down and I just left. Later I thought about how this guy had encouraged me to submit ideas, spec art, call, email, endlessly listen to his jabber about comics, media and bullshit, all that he loved about my work. Years of it, and I wondered why after everything I'd extended to him, he just never walked down the hall to Jemas' office like I did and ask for a job for me.
Fiffe: He must’ve been swamped with work, I’m sure. What led you to take up to your most recent comic, the H. P. Lovecraft story?
Salmons: I took it up because I had no other paying work. Mac Carter and Adam Byrne were friendly and committed to the idea they had and the working situation was very generous. Consistent is not a word Mac, Adam or myself would use to describe the process. It was one long haul over about two years. It didn't see print for about 2 years after that. I was already deep in a hole financially when I took Lovecraft for a quarter of my standard pay. Fine, it was my deal and Mac came up with the cash like he said. Way better than the Big Two had done for me in a while. Instead of a quick jab and oblivion it was a long slow sink onto the blade as I lost financial ground or hope of it for the whole length of the project. They never knew my true circumstances.
Fiffe: They were just happy to get Tony Salmons!
The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft # 1, written by Mac Carter, April, 2009, Image.
Salmons: To them it was great that I had a paying job! Sort of. It was for 100 pages. The situation was liberal, the way I like to work so at the end of it I'd handed back around 160 pages.
Fiffe: That’s a pretty huge jump considering the estimated page count per issue.
Salmons: The pamphlet period of comics is over. Paper will remain a niche, like radio, vinyl, movie theaters, television. But it will never command the medium again. So page count, gutters, allowances for stapled spines, et al will never govern again.
Fiffe: The Lovecraft creators were pretty open about their desire for the story to be optioned and eventually succeeded in making that happen. What's your take on comics making such a shift in its focus on being drawn screenplays?
Salmons: The movie sale was always the design for Lovecraft. I didn't have a problem with that. I was pleased that I was allowed to contribute significantly to the pacing and reach of the book. I never wanted part of the movie deal. I work better and faster on bigger pieces and stories where I'm not restrained by shot-for-shot, full script and page counts. Downside is that there's no way to calculate the value of that contribution and most are happy with that.
Fiffe: Yeah, it’s not the easiest to quantify.
Salmons: Regarding the movie connection, it's really the only game in town. Anything that gets over is going to head that way. It only makes sense to plan on it and get the best version you can. I do regard with disdain that comics is stuffed to the gunnels with Hollywood slummers who can't sell their chum-bucket scripts any other way. And it goes to the top. There are offices at Marvel and DC where I can't get work for years after a lifetime of discipline and study for comic work but if you wrote a shit action movie in the '80s, you're golden!
The Strange Adventures of H.P. Lovecraft # 4, written by Mac Carter, October 2009, Image.
Fiffe: Do you think it’s exclusive to comics? The reason I ask is because most of these experiences are rooted in the current structure of the industry. Like you said, it’s the only game in town.
Salmons: If you don't make abeyance with this insidious, this fratricidal closed circle of marionettes you don't get the chance to create something and make a living. Like Three Billy Goats Gruff, you pay the bridge troll or you don't get across. The real sickness is that you don't pay them just once. No one gets off that easily. The relationship these guys say they build with talent, from their perspective, is to have their egos massaged and their buttocks warmed at every word and appointment with your servile ass. Meanwhile, months and years go by before you draw a nickel with their permission.
Fiffe: And really, that’s business as usual?
Salmons: What drives people crazy, me anyway, was trying for hours at a time while I was doing a job is wondering what makes someone do these pointless, mean and stupid things. The truth is there's no answer. Every one is a different recipe of basically the same motivations but different experiences in different proportions and there's no time or meaning to solve each one's damages. “Why” they do these things is ultimately an occulted process, personally theirs. Eddie Murphy's joke in 48 hours is “I'm your worst fuckin’ nightmare… with a badge.” A fan with a badge… in comics, that's a job title and an office in the Big Two.
Fiffe: The industry had been driven by fans-turned-pros for a long time now.
Salmons: Editors at Marvel and DC are unencumbered by talent. No talent. Zip. Zero. So they have endless energies and time on their hands for meddling with my shit. The weight of their day is talking on the phone and plotting against each other in the form of stopping talent and sandbagging projects by other editors and people they don't like. They have nothing else to do all day, everyday. Their direct deposit shows up every Friday. What's your freelancer’s problem?
"Art Rage" written by Ann Nocenti, Doctor Strange #64, April, 1984, Marvel.
Fiffe: Do you think there’s a difference in treatment from editors who used to be artists?
Salmons: George Pratt said it. He said it wasn't just me. As soon as Mark Chiarello got his position at DC, work dried up for several of those Chapel Hill guys. Himself and Scott Hampton are two. He said, “I love him like a brother, but it happened to us, too.” Chiarello’s explanation to George was that he didn't want to be known for favoring his friends. What the fuck? That's the only way any one gets work in any company! I told George that if Chiarello's your brother, your mother got him from the milkman because he's not like us, if he ever was. He's like them. He's a photo-tracer as an “artist” with a rote pallet as a “colorist” that he applies with the subtlety of a 32 oz. roofing hammer to every situation.
Fiffe: You don’t have to hold back, you know.
Salmons: I went to the San Diego Con in 2001, I believe, to confront him about calling me an “idiot savant.” Like he could say and repeat something like that in our circle and not hear back in some fashion. These guys walk between the raindrops because of their position and job titles. Mind you, at this point, I'm still a hapless aspirant to work in the open pit holes of this cultural land mine. So I'm delicate in approach, supplicant in the juncture, and then I back out bowing, just to let him know I heard it. I let him talk in the usual circles of dodges that his type call “good meeting” and left without further challenge. After this, I heard from a mutual friend what was officially, let me emphasize, “officially” in Chiarello's “office” going on in regards to me. This friend told me, “Look, I know he's been encouraging you and you've been knocking your brains out trying to get work at DC. I don't want to get in the middle of you two but I'm going to tell you not to waste your spit, and go somewhere else because this is what's happening here.”
Fiffe: You weren’t able to get work even if you were willing to play the game.
Salmons: A young editor, while my friend also fruitlessly sought work in a visit to this place, stepped into Chiarello's office to say he was going to put me on a mini-series. I know this editor's name and also his verification of this incident, but I still don't know him. This was in the couple of years where I first went bust. I was sleeping in studios and on couches, drawing and submitting things furiously, ghosting storyboards in LA. Also in this time, I wrote two of the most humiliating missives of my life to Mr. Chiarello and Mr. Axel Alonso at Marvel, laying out in un-sparing detail my miserable circumstances. Dot com bust, 9/11, inexplicably Hollywood cowers in its horizon pools, humanitarian causes, goat fuck orgies and closes it's legs to new projects. On the personal side I had divorce, child custody suit, loss of property and true physical and ongoing hunger, the usual results of black balling. This goes on for a good couple of years. Minor health issues ensue. In the middle of all this I supplicate once again, with ideas and art, this is what the sonar ping brings back.
Fiffe: So the young editor was proposing to Chiarello that you draw a mini and…?
Salmons: My name went up like a clay pigeon in Chi's office and didn't hit the ground until after lunch, shot full of holes in an energetic and lengthy debauch of invective. Again, I stayed nice for a couple of more years. I continued e-mails, phone calls and empty exchanges for years. Also with Scott Dunbier. Meanwhile, no one believes I have a job, let alone a career.
Fiffe: It seems like you’re still keeping busy, though. You’ve posted a few things on your site.
Salmons: I'm working on a '20s crime story set in the West that I'm sworn not to talk about. What I will talk about is the projects I'm dragging out of my files for publishing online. I have a metaphysical character that I've written. I'm reaching for the itchy edge of murder, psychosis and maybe something genuinely supernatural but all in good fun. I have a Science Fiction property I really want to get to. It's based on classic SF fetish and tough guy stories. I've done lots of development on that. I'm also restarting my animation work that will involve some of these properties in short bits. I've only ever done rough animation but damned if I'm not a natural at it. It's equipment intensive and requires careful file trafficking for someone with my transience but I can manage it now. I still have a pent up steaming chamber of superhero material, characters, designs and stories that I never had the opportunity to excise. They're there and I can still vaguely remember the motivation to do it so I'll probably posit some of those.
Fiffe: There’s one thing I’d like for you to shed some light on before we wrap up. By your reckoning, and despite your frustrations with the industry, what is it about comics that always bring you back?
Salmons: Comics used to be, and in some places still is, a place to prove your ideas, to hear and see everyone else's and to do something worthwhile. It's been mollified, diluted, fixed and shaved by corporate feint in the figure, in the-shape-of so-called progressive editors, and in Shooter's own words, "the little fucks" lap it up. Gary Groth, the finest comic publisher in America in the last 30 years -- yes, he's pissed me off, too -- opined in the '80s that American comics were eating its own young. I didn't think it would be me, but it wasn't only me. Everyone who can, gets out of comics. Fans pined after Frazetta and I've defended Steranko and others for getting out over the years. Some jabbed Steranko for weighing in on modern comics when he doesn't do any. Guys like him made the statements they could make in a great medium run by backwater business types and then they moved on. Most of those works are still unmatched by anyone I know of today. Steranko can say whatever he wants and you'll take it.
--Michel Fiffe, 2012
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by Michel Fiffe
In part one, we covered Tony Salmon's cartooning theories and muses, his breaking in and struggling through his early years at Marvel Comics. Today we cover his work on the short lived Dakota North, his minor fling with the independent scene, and his branching outside the world of comics.
Dakota North promotional image, Marvel Age Annual #2, 1986, Marvel.
PART TWO
Michel Fiffe: Let’s get into the next project you worked on, Dakota North. I was under the impression that it was supposed to be an ongoing series, and when it started getting momentum, it suddenly ended. Were the sales not enough to support it?
Tony Salmons: The book and characters were full blown and Martha Thomases was as green at writing something like a regular series as I was at drawing one. It was a rough ride. It was published every 2 months. In those days, direct sales were just coming in and were only partial of the circulation. The numbers on a book were not in from retail and rack sales, the most important then, for 12 months. We did 5 issues which is just 10 months short of the numbers coming in and Dakota was canceled because they were trimming the line to make circulation sexier as Marvel itself went on sale. That's the word I had on it.
Dakota North #3, October, 1986, Marvel.
Fiffe: How did the title originally come about?
Salmons: It was totally Larry Hama's idea. He hired me cold at the offices one day. We were zipping up at the urinals appropriately enough, and he told me to bring my stuff into his office. He told me I could draw better than most of the guys working there, the first and only editor to ever say anything of the like, but was emphatic that my storytelling “sucked.” In the year plus we worked on Dakota North he showed me why and what's better, how to fix it if I would take the advice. For me it was the beginning of the lengthiest, troubled and most rewarding working experiences in comics.
Fiffe: What do you mean by troubled and rewarding?
Salmons: I redrew more work under his editorship than any other place I've worked but he always showed me why. It was never arbitrary or just because he didn't like it. It was what I'd wanted, to find my way through stories. He could speed up the pacing or slow it down, focus on a character versus an action and always make the image serve the story. That is, keeping in mind the continuity before the image in question and it's relationship to the images after to form a coherent whole; keeping this in mind both within the scene and the longer continuity of the story itself. It's not rocket science but it is fully the art of storytelling. It dove tailed perfectly with my own ambitions, for craft, not for fame, and sent me spinning on a whole new course of personal studies. It also kept me out of mainstream comics for good.
Dakota North #2, written by Martha Thomases, August, 1986, Marvel.
Fiffe: Which was around the time your stint over at Dark Horse began, back when it was still a very young company. Were you getting a clearer idea as to what you wanted to achieve as a cartoonist? Was there more artistic leeway in this environment?
Salmons: Before Dark Horse there was First Comics. I was scheduled for a three issue stint on Jon Sable, Freelance. Mike Grell is one of my favorite writers in comics. One of the few I would ever choose to work with. He wrote a terrific, tight story. It was my first job after Marvel. I was stunned that after the 56 pages I did for them they asked me to redraw not a single figure or panel. Not what I was used to. While there are some rough spots I made some real headway in those 2 issues. I'd moved home to Arizona for some months, staying at my parent's again with my tail between my legs. I landed Sable and thought it was something great. I moved back to NY to a loft full of hippie artists, including the great Bob Camp and erstwhile Vincent Waller. As Bob said at this farewell speech after Ren & Stimpy production: It sucked great. We were young with a future and the traffic through that loft was insane and truly New York.
Jon Sable, Freelance #54, written by Mike Grell, December 1987, First Comics.
Fiffe: What was the working situation during this period?
Salmons: I turned in pages continually that summer of '87 but the pay was always a problem. I got the run around every time I called the First offices. People weren't “in,” where's the invoice, talk to accounting, sorry they're not in, either. This went on for over three months of sweltering Summer in NY, if you've ever known one. I was doing short jobs and commissions but Sable was my main feed. Flat broke in NY again, with a full time job. I'd finished 2 issues of Sable and hadn't even been paid in full for one. By now, my back was coming up over, “turn off the lights, hide behind the couch until he stops knocking” office hi-jinks. I guess the telling point is that when I informed them I wasn't doing the 3rd issue without payment for already finished work, they didn't argue. Sable was over and somehow they got another sucker to finish the third issue. They were tits up in the next year and good riddance.
"Fossil", written & drawn by Salmons, Dark Horse Presents #9, July, 1987, Dark Horse.
Fiffe: Then you went to Dark Horse? How did that go?
Salmons: Dark Horse was fun. They weren’t nuisances, editorially speaking. They let me do what I wanted and even write. We did have a few sticky places over paper and pay. Right after the Sable job I was home again and broke. This was tiresome for folks at the farm, if you've ever tried something everybody thought you were nuts to do in the first place.
"Monq: Message From Earth" written & drawn by Salmons, Dark Horse Presents #7, May, 1987, Dark Horse.
Fiffe: You did okay at Dark Horse, though, right?
Salmons: I did a couple of short jobs for Dark Horse Presents and then they bounced a check on me. I'm probably the only guy you'll hear that from. In those days, if you had a bank account in NY, it was inaccessible from the West without a costly and untimely money transfer. My sister cashed the check from Dark Horse against her own checking account. When it bounced, it in turn bounced 12-13 of her small household checks. The fees were hundreds of dollars. When I called DH, they explained the whole thing to me. I knew a bit about business accounts because my family runs a couple. I understood it was an error but they would only make good on the original amount. Randy Stradley said I “cashed it wrong.” You wrote me a check, how did I cash it wrong? Still being a lucky-to-be-working freelancer I zipped it and went ahead. I did an issue of the Mark for DH after that which I'm still proud of and I think I could've done some very similar stuff quickly after that but it was just too hard to get paid from indies, already even at that point. I couldn't convince my parents or anybody that I had a job! Jeez. DH was paying me in quarters: two halves in pencils and two halves in inks. I had half the job in and the other half nearing finish when again my rent was due. I tell them I have no money for half a comic I've drawn; I don't want everything, just $300 to pay my rent. Stradley blazes back that they have half a comic they can't print! It was maddening. I seethed for about a week and then just sent in the finishes. That was the end of my DH tenure.
Mark #4, written by Jerry Prosser, September 1988, Dark Horse.
Fiffe: Sounds like the tipping point for you. Was this common for Dark Horse or any other minor publishers of the time? I can’t imagine this happening on a continual basis.
Salmons: I must stress that these are not unique stories. They're not even personal to me, except that I got the full Jimi Hendrix experience in corporate comics! And I'm not going back again. I might be crazy, really. But I'm not stupid. Not by that much.
Fiffe: Was self publishing or contributing to more alternative publications ever a consideration for you in order to branch out from the mainstream?
Salmons: First and Dark Horse were my only experiments in the indie press. I couldn't get paid by the more mainstream indie publishers. Lots of people went broke self publishing from their kitchen tables. It was a full conspiracy, knowingly or unknowingly, by the companies and talent, the distributors and even the retailers. Why display Neil the Horse or Itchy Planet when X-Wads are outselling them 300 to 1? The circle of idiots was complete. When they started to go broke, beginning with mom and pops, they all deserved it. A few didn't. Some of them are still around. But it was a conspiracy of dunces. They strip-mined the speculator and collector market for all time with fake collectibles, foil covers, multiple covers, cards, and glittery crap. Well, they're all broke now and it ain't never coming back. Now there's this artificial movie connection. Feh. It'll blow up soon, too and most of you guys crowding in now are too late. I've already stated how long it takes to get a comic on paper. Wait'll you get to “turn-around hell” in movie land. Hey, I'd love movie money. It's just never come along.
Saturday Morning Comic #1, written by Ralph Sall with Mike Lackey, March, 1996, Marvel.
Fiffe: Well, after this period you did less and less comic book work anyway, and now I can understand why. What kind of work were you doing in the early 90s?
Salmons: I did lots of things. Commissions, spot illos, there's a bar in Wickenburg, AZ that’s decorated with my work. Used to be, anyway. Wall art, western. Not much money in any of it. Then I was married and had kids. Extra distractions and stresses. I went to Los Angeles alone in '90 and was hired at WB for the new Batman Animated series and brought my family over. It was the best job I ever screwed up. But by then I was a full casualty of politics and office wankery. This new corporate scene and seeing it every day walking past my cubicle was too much. The next 10 years in and out and around animation and comics showed no evidence I was mistaken.
Foot Soldiers #2 pin-up, November, 1997, Image Comics.
Fiffe: Can you get into your experience in animation?
Salmons: In animation, draw-ers are the bottom of the food chain. Rightly so. I used to have to sit with the board and character artists while they endlessly discussed that The Rock with Nick Cage was the greatest movie ever made. Ever made. They would run scenes from the disc over and over on the video equipment. Every time was like the first time they'd seen it. One reviewer said that Cage went through the film with his eyes at eternal half mast as if to show that there's nothing more boring than being excited all of the time. Any wonder the audience of the media we produce isn't any brighter than this?
Fiffe: They’re responding to the superficial elements of what they’re experiencing. Maybe digging a little deeper into something like The Rock is pointless.
Salmons: Well, on Batman, I wheeled my chair into Kevin Altieri's office where Brad Rader and Dan Riba worked. We'd discuss art, history, culture, Science, applied and theoretical, our own craft. Then I'd wheel my chair back to the storyboard artists where they were discussing how to draw cool hands or Bernie Wrightson trees or something. I'd walk in on them while they were saying, “Why didn't they just kill Gilligan? Then they'd' gotten off the island.” It was one of many Edward Hopper moments in studios of surface thinking draw-ers.
Fiffe: A sort of conflict of interests.
Salmons: I'm shooting for the eggheads and they're not all Ivy League. Good sense and depth of internal experience is common, even without education. Exerting, especially in American media, to connect with that in a network of others is not.
Fiffe: You've considered yourself to be a non-mainstream artist and more of an "underground" artist. Did you feel as if though your sensibility wasn’t embraced by fans on top of your editorial troubles?
Salmons: I don't think there's much of a question. Richard Corben's done more Marvel comics than me. But then he's done more comics than I will probably ever do! And I add, better. As for fans, they absolutely get what I'm doing. But corporations and corporate handmaids, called editors, have another agenda for the audience. Why sell them just a triple-espresso when they can run an entire city, state, nation on heroin, coke and crack. Money-shot, money-shot, money-shot. Why not just take money-shots forever? Excitement, excitement, excitement.
Fiffe: I always saw your style as being too bizarre for the typical mainstream comics audience, yet because of the genres you work in, your work may be lumped with typical mainstream artists and ignored by those who may actually appreciate what your work represents. It seems like a frustrating position to be in.
Salmons: I know. I hear people shocked at certain work or statements by me because they think of me as a Kirby artist or a superhero guy. Amazing, after all of this! I just had this conversation with a young artist. He liked how my work is idiosyncratic in spite of occasional obvious apes that I pull. I replied that I succeeded too well. I never wanted to be pigeonholed as a superhero or horror or war or sci-fi artist, etc. I wanted to be like an all-purpose tool that could be fitted with new purposes and do anything. I knew early on that trends and audiences changed fairly often in comics and media. I can carry off some acceptable version of any genre I take an interest in. As a result, the simple minds in editorial don't know where to put me in their thinking or work line up. At this point, I'm their monster. I know a lot about them. I don't need them and I never want in again. I didn't insult or burn any bridges, I just walked away but the work I did makes them jaw and now I have to say something.
Savage Sword of Conan #146 pin-up, March 1988, Marvel.
Fiffe: I’m a little surprised that nothing had been said prior to this.
Salmons: At any point in this inanity I could've sold out and done what every one else did. I chose not to. I could pencil a shit superhero book in a week; and ink it the next. People who've worked with me in studios know it. It would've exhausted me for anything else. If I had sold out, nothing I've done would exist. If I'd listened to editors, writers, or even other artists and corporate fulfillment house wienies, nothing I've done would’ve existed. There would certainly be something else but not what I've done. I would be in a “higher,” monied and therefore better and accepted society. I just won't do it.
Fiffe: That would require that editors actually call you back.
Salmons: After years of meetings in the office, on the phone, ping-pong emails, pitches, and spec art, I couldn't get an action project through at [this one particular] company. They had plenty of money at a still swell point in the Image afterglow. Finally, another editor took me into his confidence. He told me it wasn't me, it was the editor in charge. He said he had a stack of approved projects on his desk right now, the moneys were allotted, the teams idling in the hinterlands with house payments and kids to raise, everything ready to go. This other guy just wouldn't waddle his fat ass down the hall and sign off on them. Dangling people because he could. There're other stories on this clown and they're well known but people want to work again so they don't say anything. I wrote him a pretty tough e-mail and fired him. He didn't do his job, and isn't doing it.
Fiffe: There’s a part of me that wants freelancers to share their horror stories with editorial in order to at least start a dialogue about it in hopes of bettering the situation. But I know it’s a naïve wish, that it won’t really solve anything.
Salmons: If the readers only knew who was blackballed at certain places they wouldn't believe it. There are top people blackballed right now. Not me. I'm out, of my own choice. Kirby was blackballed at DC in the '60s. Then he was sabotaged at DC in the '70s by people at DC and never allowed to finish his Fourth World series. Comics business was not a safe or fun place for Jack. It's not all it's cracked up to be when you're the prettiest girl in the room. If they can do it to Jack and they can do it to Alex Ross, who am I?
Fiffe: The way they’d see it, it wouldn’t be their loss.
Salmons: I won't draw their corporate properties ever again, even for commissions, of which I have only one outstanding. Why should I shine up Spider-Man or fatten up Batman when they don't hire me or pay me for turning out the best stuff I could do for them? Enough. As in comics or any show business, Dorothy Parker observed long ago that Hollywood is the only city in the world where you can die from encouragement. I would add comics, too.
Savage Tales #3 pin-up, February, 1986, Marvel.
To be concluded in Part Three...
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by Michel Fiffe
Tony Salmons sees shapes in terms of inkblots and frantic streaks, all pulled into his clipped yet subtle narrative pace. It’s a rarity, such a confident mixture of natural grace and kinetic brushwork. Not a single line goes to waste, no bit of detail is devoid of life, and every drawing has a fighting spirit that refuses to give in to the confines of the page, the story, and even the industry.
Salmons’ infamous reputation as a professional cartoonist has been developed by decades of being at odds with editors and peers and publishers, freelance battles that were traditionally relegated to behind the scenes. It would be easy to single him out as the one with the problem in today’s age of “company first, creator die”, so it’s only fair that Salmons takes a turn in denouncing the pitfalls and treacheries of the business. Tony’s experiences are his own of course, but that doesn’t mean they’re not wholly indicative of a common editorial attitude that’s inherited by every passing generation of overseers.
As harsh as Salmons is about the industry, he’s just as quick to champion the many things he draws inspiration from, as well as expressing his creative excitement all throughout his career. Here is a rare look at an artist whose brilliance, for better or for worse, has set him above and beyond – definitely apart – from the rest of the pack. Readers may sometimes reach the conclusion that comics are an art form dressed as a business of diminishing returns, but if one looks further into the matter the way Tony Salmons has, one may find that it can easily be the other way around.
PART ONE
Michel Fiffe: I'd like to jump right into your basic philosophies in regards to the art of comics, the way you think about comics.
Tony Salmons: First of all, passion. Mere fascination and intellectual pursuit, deep and informed appreciation, association with like minded sorts, walls full of books are not enough, though they are helpful and may aid an artist. They may also detract and hinder by the smugness of just holding the images on paper. What is indispensable is a singular pursuit of ecstasies that separate you from nearly every one because that's what ecstasies do, and that's what we're selling. Personal narrative. Art has been called a magnificent obsession, so it is for me. This is going to sound pot-headed but art isn't even the word. Story fantails artistic effort into a beautiful horizon, better than any single image.
Fiffe: Can you describe your approach for me?
Salmons: I can describe my approach as noted by other pros. Most of them never think of the story behind a drawing. They only think of drawing a collection of physical surfaces in a contrived arrangement that fills the order of the script. Some guys said they'd never thought of the motivation of certain characters except to keep their balance, show an emotion, to escape a burning elevator, whatever the mechanical aspect of the scene is.
"Siege" written by John Arcudi, The Savage Sword Of Conan #165, October, 1989, Marvel.
Fiffe: So you’re interested in comics-making on a deeper, more involved level.
Salmons: My problem with writers is that I'm a writer. I've co-written everything I've ever done. For no money and no credit. I didn't get into this to draw cool punches and baggy pants, flexing extremities and cleavage. At a certain point of proficiency these are routine and insipid. The purpose, idea and the motivation of the characters that make the scene are my purpose for drawing it. Guys like Paul Pope and Adam Hughes fully demonstrate this. They can be imitated but their sensibilities are subtle and fully expressed. The stories in their single images are cute and fitting to the subject. The full stories they do satisfy and are involving.
Fiffe: Being cute doesn’t necessarily interest you then.
Salmons: I have a liberal dose of anxiety and creepiness that keeps things from getting very cute but I continue to study Pope and Hughes. So, short answer to my personal philosophy is passion for a singular vision. And be nice while you're doing it. We're all bozos on this bus.
Fiffe: I understand that you’re a self-taught artist. What were your influences while you were developing your art?
Salmons: A better question than “who are your influences” is “who do you like and who are your influences?” Many artists don't even know the difference. They list the same people often: Frazetta, Kirby, etc. But none of that stuff is evident in their own stuff. These are artists they like, not artists they take influence from and have taken the time to reverse engineer. Often as not what is evident in their work is the last half-dozen people who drew Iron Man or X-Men for the editors they're targeting for work.
Fiffe: I get the difference between “liking” and “being influenced by”. Can you give me an example of how you differentiate the two?
Scarlet Witch commission.
Salmons: I'm enthralled by Robert Crumb and Basil Wolverton but I don't try to draw like them. I like them. I love them! But they're not what I would call influences except for their relentless pursuit of singular visions. Evidenced in some pieces of my work but not all, are Kirby, Toth and Michelluzi but I don't drag them out for every shot or every job. Owning an artist's book or retrospective does not make you one of his. Only full study, taking apart his figures, line work, volumes, and compositions -- if you can reach his impulses -- can move the needle. It's the cauldron of your own soul, all by yourself. Anything else is good honest work. It can pay well and is respectable and it may even get you lines of autograph hounds crowding for smooches, but it's mostly not art. The evidence is standard and all around us. There's not that much genius out there. I'll go further and say the word is bastardized and overrated and near meaningless except from very particular persons.
Fiffe: It’s used pretty loosely, the term “genius”.
Salmons: The main failure with comic artists, as I observe it, is that they become located around one school or worse, one artist. Neal Adams and Michael Golden have so many unwashed bastards out there I wonder how it affects the way they see their own stuff, whose face they're shaving in the morning. Most of the guys in comics, animation and such are like the guy who paints portraits of his dog over and over again and tries to sell them at tag sales and flea markets every month. I mean, he bought the materials and put in the work and you can't stop him, you have to respect that, but jeez …
Fiffe: You just described a comics convention.
Salmons: What never surprises but always amazes me is the change in seemingly perfectly innocent souls who come into this discipline earnestly and honestly, some with great promise, and only one mini-series later… hot-cha! Genius! And they'll hold you to it.
Fiffe: Speaking of schools of style, I can never trace anyone else's style in yours. Occasionally I’ll see a tiny bit of Kirby, but that's really only in a sense of weight and power. And maybe even a bit of Kyle Baker, except it's reversed; I think you may have influenced him. Maybe you just shared the same sensibilities.
Salmons: Hah! The Kyle Baker thing! It's funny because he and I've talked about that. We both run into the comparison. Maybe he would say something else but I know I collected and studied his stuff from the first time I found it. His vernacular extends way beyond anything he could be asked to do in mainstream comics. He was really different but goddammit he kept getting work! But he's also a workhorse! Part of his success is very quick finish. It served him well. And he has a very smart, New Yorker, classic Kurtzman smartness that is at once elegant and impressive and disarmingly finger-in-your-ribs. He's also a very appealing personality. Great guy. I'm also compared to Miller. Frank must've gotten some of it, too. I'll just say that from the first, Miller taught us all how to do comics again. Not too many true creators can make the claim, or should. While I don't love everything he does, Frank deserves his laurels.
The Savage Sword Of Conan #109 pin-up, February, 1985, Marvel.
Fiffe: There's a Defenders comic where you’re listed as the inker, and I’m almost positive that it was your first published work. It was years before you were a regular pro, though, so I’m left to wonder… was that you?
Salmons: The Clea story! That was me. That was the wonderful Sandy Plunkett! I seem to remember completely ruining his fantastic pencils. Poor guy. I was out of my depth. It was also after my first horrible expedition to NY and pro comics in '76. I was desolate. I considered myself finished in mainstream comics. I was right!
Fiffe: Then how did you break into the comics business the second time around?
Salmons: [The Defenders issue] was the only real work I got in '76 besides some background work from Howard Chaykin who did his best to take me in and keep me encouraged. I didn't really “break” into the business. It was more like sneaking in or wedding crashing. It stayed that way for many years. My reviews were always shaky at best and even if positive, were left-handed. I got only a few pieces of fan mail at Marvel, all bad. I never knew what an editor thought of my work until sometimes a year or two after I lost the gig. “Minimalist”, “scratchy”, “unfinished”, “bad”, and just “wrong” weren’t uncommon. The storytelling was excoriated and often enough, rightly so but not for any reason that they could explain. Editors just didn't like it. Dr. Strange [#64] in '83 was the first noticeable book for me.
"Art Rage" written by Ann Nocenti, Doctor Strange #64, April, 1984, Marvel.
Fiffe: You worked with Ann Nocenti on that one. This was around the same time she started out coming out of editing and into writing. How was your work dynamic with her?
Salmons: Annie is a sweetheart and a pleasure to work with. She's a very different thinker and storyteller and not always appreciated for it in comics. We were sympatico in that respect. Wish we could've done more together but the distance between corporate comics and myself was growing and I lost faith in the idea of continuing.
Fiffe: How was your Dr. Strange story received?
Salmons: An editor told me he'd just been in a meeting where Jim Shooter held it up to the staff and warned them that “this is not what a Marvel comic should look like.” I mentally hi-fived myself and then the editor said it meant I was getting no more work. Shooter was notifying the editors from the top down that if they used me, their books would be bounced, which they were. Virginia Romita is a lovely person and all the Romitas are great folks but she made those books run on time. Editors recounted a drop of piss running down their leg when she showed up in their doorway! Hah!
Fiffe: But you were still used pretty regularly for a couple of years after that… on New Universe titles, at that. Did you just slip under Shooter’s radar?
Salmons: The only reason I got much work at Marvel thereafter was because Larry Hama's books were outside of the Superhero Gulag of the Marvel Universe. Like Epic Magazine, it was where ideas and people ended up after being shit-canned from the regular line up, especially if editorial didn't want them around but also didn't want the evidence that they were cutting off undesirable new talent outright. All through this time Marvel was increasingly stringent about enforcing their house style, even while they adamantly, even indignantly maintained that there was none. But the hyper-steroid escapee Image-virus bubble a few years later announced the result and proof of it. Bret Blevins was under contract at Marvel all throughout this time. He noted that marketing's, and so, editorial's, fiat went from “do more comics like this” to “do more comics like this or else.”
Fiffe: That explains a lot.
Doctor Strange Classics #2 pin-up, April, 1984, Marvel.
Salmons: Remember the “little fucks” memo? A leaked copy from Shooter's office was printed by The Journal. This vernacular, and worse, was common and disheartening for me.
Fiffe: Yeah, I read that in an old issue of The Comics Journal. I thought it had to have been a joke. That was the common attitude in the offices?
Salmons: It was worse than that. Much worse. Was and is. Important as it is in the story, that's a mere trace of evidence. What was observable in the offices was revolting and demoralizing. People react to demoralizing and debasement mostly in two ways, they kneel and start licking boots or they opt out. You know my choice, even though it took a number of experiences and some time. Common parlance in meetings was, "Let's put this out next. They'll lap it up!" Marvel at that time was on two floors; 9th floor was bullpen/editorial, 10th floor was executive/marketing and whatever the fuck those guys call work. 10th floor referred to 9th floor as, "the animals." When some one was looking for paperwork or something and it wasn't around they would be told, with casual indifference, "It's down stairs with the animals." The Romitas were down there, Romita's Raiders in the Bullpen, so was beloved Sea-Devil Jack Abel. I was incensed but I didn't and couldn't react to it because I made a practice of not doing so. I wanted to work.
Fiffe: And this must’ve been your first year of working.
Salmons: Someone gave me a short stack of Roy Thomas' Alter Ego mags recently. He thought I'd snuggle warmly into revisiting those Halcyon days. That rag is the penultimate smothering wall of what I was personally and professionally swimming uphill against my entire life: off-center, bloated, static, recombinant, self-referencing superhero drek… and from a whole field of putative creators over all those years. Shinier and shinier titties on the women and the men, shinier and shinier grew they! And so it continues today! Shinier titties, cool punches and a pose-in-costume on every page. Don't get me wrong, a few of those artists have enviable chops and nearly dignify the phenomenon, but the writing is even worse! Primetime cop-soap rehashes and sweepings from Hollywood star vehicle turd advisories. Flash and dash but no substance beyond vacuous borrowed dramaturgy.
Fiffe: So even on the most general, technical terms, you don’t think the basic standard of writing in mainstream comics has improved since the 80s? I admit to having some difficulty maintaining that notion, but for the sake of argument…
Salmons: The case may be made for that. I personally believe that comics are in a renaissance at every level. I feel very lucky to be anywhere in this line up. No false modesty. The examples of the strength of the medium are sterling, Alan Moore, Miller, Al Columbia, Jim Woodring, the continual infusion of stuff new and old, from Fantagraphics and Gary Groth. Beyond that, the proof is still emerging in the virility of new hands: Matthew Southworth, Dave Johnson, Dan Clowes for Christ's sake. We used to have to hunt this stuff up in dusty corners of second hand shops. I had no measurable amount of Caniff or Sickles or Eisner 'til the middle '80s. Now the stuff is everywhere. But the highest always exists with the lowest. Best of times, worst of times. There're the fetishist superhero guys who're inducted by the corporations to suck along the brain-dead and make them think they're entertained, praises to Brad Rader for the phrase. Then there's the guy making a comic book on a sheet of masonite-drawing board at his kitchen table and trying to make up 3 months of back rent. This is not new. Read the Steranko History of Comics to know what Siegel and Shuster, young Jacob, the wonderful Jack Cole and others went through.
Conan Saga #12 pin-up, April, 1988, Marvel.
Fiffe: I don’t mean to make strict camps out of mainstream and non-mainstream comics. They aren’t mutually exclusive even though there are substantial differences, but when I ask about comics writing, I want to put what you’re saying into context.
Salmons: They used to be camps. It was better when they were camps. The two will never meet except when Wallace is betrayed. It only seems that the distinction is irrelevant because corporate wonks – editors – are subverting the revolution in this very medium we're discussing in order to televise it and turn a buck for the boards of directors, basically like everywhere else on the planet. John Lennon said in the '70s that the same people are in charge, they just have longer hair. It's gentrification. I lived in Tribeca in the '80s. It was changing then but it was still fish markets and minor living spaces. I was just there again last year and I couldn't find my way around. Everything from before and during my life there is gone. It has, like the rest of New York, been turned into a yuppie mall. Used to be you were taking your ass in your hands when you went into some of those areas. Not glorifying it, but now the worst you can get is a ticket for your car alarm.
Unused and final cover for Marvel Fanfare #27, July, 1986, Marvel.
Fiffe: I want to get back to your drawing for a bit. What’s interesting about your early years is that you were allowed to ink your own material, something that wasn’t the norm back during that time, especially for a young new artist. Did you insist on having complete control of the work?
Salmons: It wasn't so much that I was allowed to ink it, but that no one else wanted the job! One top slick, house style inker was offered one of my books and declined. “Too much drawing in it.” This from guys who inked everything with one dead line without meaningful weight that amounted to really nothing more than a nervous twitch and jab over and over again. They reduced the anatomy and articulation of any well-drawn form to a string of sausages flexed like a human limb. These guys were making money hand over fist. I have some embarrassing examples of house style I attempted. They found no favor. They're not bad, looking back over them, but I'm glad none of them got out.
Unused cover for Web Of Spider-Man Annual #1, 1985, Marvel.
Fiffe: Would your Web of Spider-Man Annual be one of those jobs? Some of it looks like other inkers. Some heads look completely redrawn.
Salmons: Oh god. That was another inventory job. It was supposed to be an issue of Iron Man, then an issue of Spider-Man, then it was an Iron Man/Spider-Man team up. Didn't even know it was still going then. Then it was decided that it should be an annual, which added 18 pages to it. Pages I was told to come up with. And because it was now an annual it went from an inventory job to scheduled and it got later, of course. They pulled it from me but every time I went into the offices for weeks after that the pages were circulating with crusty layers of white out and many things redrawn. I believe Vinnie Colletta inked, a typical public punishment for lateness. He subbed it out to Frank Giacoia which would've been great but Giacoia subbed it out to unknown assistants and then the bullpen guys backed over it a few times. Oy.
Fiffe: That doesn’t sound like deadline art, it sounds like torture.
Salmons: I had taken the precaution of only taking inventory jobs, jobs without deadlines, pointless it turned out. It seemed perfect for some one like me who didn't know what he was doing yet. But uniformly, at a certain point of finish, they would be suddenly scheduled. Two of them were called in over two different weekends! I had to pull all nighters to finish the inks. Monday morning I was in there with the finished jobs, bleary eyed with fatigue toxins. But they were not late. All the stuff I did in Marvel Fanfare was inventory but again they would be called in. On the inside cover of the Cloak & Dagger Fanfare issue [#19], Al Milgrom's regular “Editori-Al” commentary made me a cutsie problem freelancer turning in late pages. I was not late on inventories, but Al was a continually late part time editor. He's remembered as being in the offices a couple hours a day and not on business, mostly lounging in other offices. There was never anything near finished in his file drawers. When the heat came on to fill an issue he called in the one closest to finish. That I didn't mind, so much as I minded him hanging the late thing around my neck when I was a new guy and it was one of my best jobs and turned in as fast as anybody working then.
Al Milgrom's "Editori-AL", Marvel Fanfare #19, March, 1985, Marvel.
Fiffe: Those “Editori-Als” themselves look pretty rushed. That one Hulk job of yours looks really good.
Salmons: That's what killed him, I think. He bounced the splash page to that job. I redrew it 3 more times and he bounced those. Then he patched the original with his own work. Literally defacing the job.
Fiffe: That splash isn’t you?
Salmons: No one's ever seen the splash. It went from this huge explosive figure blasting off the page in one of my first successful Kirby experiments, to a Macy's day balloon, dead in the air. Al's one of the few guys in comics that never learned his basic Bridgman of reversing the arms and legs of a figure in motion to increase dynamism. He had the misfortune of following Miller onto Wolverine. He was making plenty of money but seeing a whole batch of young hotshots sweep in around him. I was not one of those, but that's how it was explained to me by others at the offices. Everyone's had those feelings but it takes a diminutive nature piqued in a special place to do something like that to a new kid.
"A Day In The Life..." written by David Anthony Kraft, Marvel Fanfare #17, November, 1984, Marvel.
Fiffe: That’s unfortunate. Out of all of your Fanfare work, that one’s the best. It has the most energy.
Salmons: I penciled that 12 page Hulk job in 3 days at Bret Blevins' house and inked it in around a week. I didn't get an “Editori-Al” for that. Nor did I work in that office again. And here's another note on comic book deadlines: they're bullshit. They're all late. All late. L-A-T-E! Every motherfucking one of them. The average monthly comic comes out 9 maybe 10 times a year; do the math. Many of them even less. A few years ago, Marvel lost a class action suit brought by retailers for late releases and -- get this -- substitutions of one book for another that was solicited but unavailable. They settled. The whole business is l-a-t-e. But, like the old “continuity and creative team” vice-grip on a title, they use it to squeeze out people they don't like or don't think they can sell.
Fiffe: What about the last minute pushes, the freelance all-nighters. Those comics are made right before going to press.
Salmons: Half of schedule fuck ups aren’t freelancers, it's slack and malfeasant editorial. See the Bill Mumy opine in Comic Buyer's Guide some years ago. He'd seen whole music projects go from idea/conception to marketing and sale in less time than it takes to get something just approved at the Big Two. You may remember the Avengers/JLA crossover that never happened but hung dazzling loyal readers for some years. It seemed to never go away but never happen at the time. I was there. DC was on board. This was nothing but purposeful sandbagging by top egos at Marvel editorial. They played zero-sum that some one might get something they wouldn't. The wonderful George Perez worked continuously on it, working on spec and working to make it happen, as did many others. It wasn't my kind of project but it was too much to let the “little fucks” enjoy, even if it would’ve made tons of money for everyone.
"Siege" written by John Arcudi, The Savage Sword Of Conan #165, October, 1989, Marvel.
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By Michel Fiffe
Originally pitched as a modern horror comic anthology for the 80s, the tone of Wasteland was quickly established as morbidly absurd and existentially frustrated. Wasteland pushed the levels of comfort by examining murder, memoir, and Krishna, by questioning the validity of romance, black magic, and cole slaw, and by unnervingly tackling topics such as suicide, child abuse and apartheid. Even guys like H.P. Lovecraft and L. Ron Hubbard make respective appearances. Anything and everything was fair game to writers John Ostrander and Del Close, who used the real estate of an eight page comic story to test these boundaries.
Up to that point, Ostrander had been writing DC’s own Suicide Squad and Firestorm comics, but was also working on his co-creator owned futuristic noir, Grimjack. Del Close was already an icon of comedy and improv, having been the House Director for the Committee and Second City and the teacher of many accomplished comedian/actors. Wasteland was the one time Ostrander and Close were given the opportunity to take control of an entire title and do whatever they saw fit. In the process, they managed to intrigue, amuse and offend in equal parts, all in the service of telling a good, modern horror story.
John Ostrander was kind enough to shed some light on Wasteland’s origin, its process, the way the title was perceived in light of a company re-imagining itself, and his collaboration with Del Close.
THAT’S ENTERTAINMENT
JOHN OSTRANDER: I’d known of Del for a number of years (who in Chicago didn’t?) but I’d never actually met him until we were cast in A Christmas Carol together at the Goodman Theatre in Chicago. We were given a dressing room together and, to be honest, I was more than a little intimidated. Del had this wild rep and was said to be a witch or Satanist or some such and I was this Recovering Catholic boyo. However, Del was a big fan of Science Fiction and of comic books, extremely knowledgeable, and already knew of my work so he was actually very easy to get along with. He then invited me to attend his Improv classes that he taught at Second City. Improv wasn’t my strong point and at first I demurred, telling Del I wasn’t really interested in being in Second City or Saturday Night Live. Del said that was perfect – he was sick of people looking at the classes as a stepping stone to Saturday Night Live. He wanted people who could get into the art form of Improv – he wanted writers, lawyers, accountants, doctors, plumbers and so on. So I took the classes and they were the most liberating experience I had as a writer.
JOHN OSTRANDER: Del and I began our collaboration in the Munden’s Bar back-up stories that appeared in Grimjack and, in many ways, were the precursors to Wasteland. In fact, getting Del as a co-writer helped sell the concept of an anthology of eight page stories to my editor, Mike Gold. Munden’s Bar is the place that the title character worked out of, his base. I knew there was going to be a series of back-up stories and I wanted to keep it all related to the title character. Mike wasn’t sure; anthologies were more work and a difficult sell. Then I mentioned the possibility I could get Del to co-write some of them with me. Mike’s eyes gleamed. That excited him – having Del Close writing comics. I put it to Del and he was really interested. That’s how our writing collaboration began.
I was cool to it at the start. It was Mike’s concept. He had moved over to DC and had brought me and a few others with him and he wanted to get Del in on the mix as well. I went to visit him in Connecticut and we had a walk around a duck pond in a drizzle and Mike gave me the basic concept – horror but for our time. More psychological horror than zombies and such. I wasn’t real sold on the idea at first – despite everything, I’m not a real horror fan – but we got Del on board and then the thing took on a life of its own. Specifically – it developed it’s own sense of humor. Not every story was “funny” but there was a thick streak of black humor running through the book. Mike called it “black hole humor” – so dark no laughs escaped.
OSTRANDER: It was a difficult book to write. With the exception of Del in his autobiographical pieces (the only place that I know of that Del ever set down any part of his biography) and The Dead Detective, there were no continuing characters or stories. Every eight pages we were starting all over and every issue had three stories. That’s tough, especially on a monthly schedule.
We also upped the ante is story after story. How far could we push it? Did we get away with things in this story? Well, let’s see if we can push it farther on the next one.
AMERICAN SQUALOR
“Insofar as I can determine, the events in this story are true.” –Del Close
A substantial portion of Wasteland is made up of Del Close’s stab at autobiographical comics. These stories never explicitly state that they’re cut from the honest-to-god fabric of confession comix, a credit box decision that undermines the main tenet of autobio: truth telling. By claiming that these yarns were half true -- and a screw it, figure it out for yourselves attitude -- Close was hilariously and somewhat inadvertently criticizing the genre. Taking a grain of salt when reading a “true story” is par for the course because after all, if perception is the driving force of autobio, readers have to make allowance for any discrepancy between being honest and bullshittin’. True or not, Close crafted some great stories.
OSTRANDER: Del was always interested in stories and the facts were adaptable. If changing the facts on a true story made it a better story, so be it. I added percentages of what was true in each of those stories but Del wasn’t crazy about those. He felt they should just be allowed to stand as they were and, in retrospect, I think he was right. That said, each story had something that was “real”; I felt they were all “true” but not all of them were real.
We actually did a story about us trying to write a story and aside from the fantastical elements, it’s pretty close. We had several ways of working. We might spitball an idea back and forth or Del would come in with something of a script written on a yellow lined pad. I’d then do an “adaptation”, working it into a comic’s script form. He might come in with a list of ideas or concepts, which I would then develop. Sometimes I had to go ahead without Del. We had no one way of working.
MURDERERS’ ROW
Taking no small part in the distinctiveness of Wasteland were the artists. For the first half of the run, there was a set of four cartoonists who would play musical chairs per issue (1 for the cover, 3 for each story). This method took disparate art styles and made them seem cohesive while giving order to a potentially chaotic schedule.
Among the first roster of cartoonists you had David Lloyd, who was almost a year away from completing the resurrected V For Vendetta series. Another artist, and Alan Moore collaborator, was Megaton Man creator Donald Simpson, who was also one of the few who lasted to the very last issue. George Freeman found the most consistent post-Captain Canuck stint of his career (as an artist firing on all cylinders) within the pages of Wasteland. And somewhere between ending his run on Journey and writing the Flash for several years, William Messner-Loebs became an integral part of the creative team.
Not to be forgotten is Lovern Kindzierski and his fantastic color palette. It was one of the few times a colorist used the advantage of the Deluxe Format to make unusually bold decisions. Other cameos, fill ins, or tail end additions to the art team include Grimjack co-creator Timothy Truman, Ty Templeton (artist on the controversial “Dissecting Mister Fleming”), Joe Orlando, Tom Artis, Michael Davis, Rick Magyar, and Bill Wray (with assist from Tony Salmons, as seen below).
THIS TIME WE WIN!
Wasteland, in its defiance of neat classification, is easily one of the riskier things DC Comics has ever published. Trying to sell product while remaining true to a personal vision is a time-honored struggle, but the truth is that Wasteland was a non-commercial commodity that wouldn’t have existed without a commercial company to produce it. The talent involved, coupled with the production value, monthly output and distribution would require the overhead that only a company of Warner Bros.' stature can provide. A book like this would never be made today under such conditions. The ultra conservative sameness of mainstream comics would dare not allow for Wasteland-level work, as the bottlenecked work force struggles to maintain mere employment; there’s simply no room, or interest, for experimentation.
It’s worth mentioning that Wasteland has never been collected and may very well remain out of print. I’m not sure if the world of comics would be any more inviting to such a series today than it was back in 1987, but don’t let public taste deprive you of these great comics. Every page is worth seeking out and with minimal effort, you’ll discover that I’m not wrong.
I’m still fascinated by the fact that this comic was made on Company Time. It’s a far cry from a vanity project, but it’s so off model that the idea must’ve been accepted based on the sheer talent involved. Getting the concept approved is the obvious victory, but sustaining the green light for 18 issues is a feat unto itself. I got the sense that everyone worked on each issue as if it was the last.
OSTRANDER: Mike used to tell me that other editors or artists would read what we did and then come up and demand, “How did you get away with that?” As for the fan base – I think that was pretty well represented by the letter columns, which for my money were some of the best letter cols being published at the time.
OSTRANDER: My biggest problem was coming up with each issue on a monthly basis. Mike has noted elsewhere that it probably took me as long to do one story in Wasteland as it took me to write a full issue of something else. Towards the end, I was just giving out. Mike has told me that we could have gotten another six issues out of Wasteland before the numbers demanded we stop but he didn’t think I could keep doing it that long. I am surprised that they let us keep doing the book as long as we did it.
I’ll note for the record that we weren’t trying to make each story more disturbing than the last – at least, that wasn’t our only goal. We wanted to test the parameters of what could be done in the format.
FINAL ISSUE
OSTRANDER: By that point, Del was experimenting with a long form improv concept, which was known as the Harold over at the Improv Olympics (Del and Second City had parted ways). Part of the format was, at the end, to find ways to re-incorporate all the scenes that went on before and our final issue of Wasteland became, by design, a Harold. We wanted to work in as many aspects of the different stories as we could in what would be a book-length issue. We knew it was the last issue but that was alright — it was time.
I think Wasteland was of its time but also stands up to time. I think they’re still readable and still have a jolt, an impact. And I’m very, very proud of it.
It’s not a stretch to suggest that John Ostrander and Del Close applied elements of improv thinking to comic book storytelling. As it stands, Wasteland is compelling not only because of its portrayal of violence, drug use, and sexual lucidity, but because it dealt with adult psychological concerns in subversive shots of fiction - under a corporate umbrella yet. Wasteland remains solid in its identity, and while it struggles with itself at times, it’s an unforgiving read that reached transcendent fruition.
--Michel Fiffe 2012
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