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Where was I?
Oh, yeah, late April, 1996. Karen and I had returned
to our home in Atlanta, after the Pittsburgh Comic Con, where I got to
hang with my then-regular penciller, Jason Armstrong. We knew our book,
The Ray, was cancelled, and I had the few final pages to wrap up when
I got home. When a penciller and inker lose an assignment, if the personal
and professional chemistry is good, you hope to continue as a team for
another title, sometimes with another publisher. Unfortunately, Jason
and I rarely reunited, except for an issue of Legion of Superheroes, a
Marvel Hooray for Hercules coloring book (!) and my still-unpublished
Hotwire short story that I rarely made time for during my other (paying)
work. We both got separate gigs in other books, and conflicting schedules
prevented us from staying a team.
Back then, I was into inking massive amounts of pages,
vainly trying to cement my immortality in as many comic books as possible.
But you can only do that so long before being declared a hack, develop
health problems, or strain a marriage. Very possibly, all of the above.
It took me years to be comfortable with the concept
of downtime, so for the longest time, my assignments overlapped. I worked
seemingly 24/7/365 because being in the business was still so new to me
that I almost never turned down an assignment. Karen would almost have
to wrestle me away from the drawing table, as I was a bit of a selfish
monster then. These days, I have less to prove to myself (My cousin Sean,
on a business trip in Australia, saw one of my comics at a shop Down Under,
and that's satisfaction aplenty) and enjoy time off with Karen.
There I go straying off topic again: The following Thursday
after the '96 Pittsburgh Con, I was putting the finishing touches on The
Ray's last issue (#28), when I received a call I never would have expected.
I was in from the backyard playing with our pet rabbit, Lucky, when Karen
told me to pick up the phone. On the other end of the receiver was Mike
Carlin, one of DC's top brass, asking if I was interested in inking a
four-issue Elseworlds directly under his editorial purview. For a minute,
I had a shudder of disbelief, thinking it was Dave Johnson pulling one
of his famous phone pranks on me. I thought better than to tell "Mike
Carlin" to do something indecent with himself, before his authoritative,
yet friendly tone convinced me it was the real deal.
It had turned out that penciller Dusty Abell had spent
the past few years working on a Superman/Wonder Woman Elseworlds series.
The four issues were 48 pages each, so including the covers, it was 196
pages total. The only catch was that I'd have little more than four months
to do everything. Doing a hasty calculation in front of my calendar, I
was struck with the discomforting notion that my entire summer would be
already planned if I accepted. I'd have to be a virtual shut-in. I would
not entertain any other personal plans.
Then again, I, a virtual nobody in the funnybook freelance
pool, had the chance to impress the great Carlini!
Impressed by my inks on the cover to SuperPatriot: Liberty
& Justice #1(See the Rarities section of this site), Dusty had put
me on the short list of inkers he gave Mike. That's another one I owe
Dave, giving me a big ol' signature on said cover.
Intimidated by the enormity of the task, I asked Mike
if I could sleep on it and get back to him the next day. He respected
my wishes, but didn't want me to dawdle. He needed an answer by noonish.
I called him before ten in the morning. It was on.
The first issue was extremely detailed. Dusty loves
drawing architecture. Little did I suspect that Dusty & I would be
a team for a while after this mini, so I got lots of practice inking every
window on the streetside of St. Patrick's Cathedral and other landmarks.
On a personal level, we got along so well, we could've been separated
at birth! Ran up some huge phone bills, we did!
With this Elseworlds project, I even made DC's 'Watch
this space' column (their equivalent to Marvel's Bullpen Bulletin page),
which read (emphasis theirs)...
60 years in the making! (Well, maybe only four...)
The long-awaited SUPERMAN/WONDER WOMAN: WHOM GODS DESTROY project is finally
off the drawing boards and at the printer's - and soon to be in
your local comic shop! The product of the titanic teaming of long-celebrated
writer Chris Claremont, long-board ridin'-penciller Dusty Abell
and long-admired inker Drew Geraci, Supes/WW is a 4-issue prestige
format miniseries edited by the long-suffering Mike Carlin (which
was only begun way back when the great Carlini was still head honcho
on the Super-books)!
As the miniseries progressed, Dusty had eased up on
the backgrounds for expediency sake. He didn't abandon them completely,
he just saved them for occasional establishing shots. After a slow start,
I was kickin' into high gear! At my peak, I was inking two pages a day,
seven days a week, mailing in 14 pages a week, much to the delight of
Carlin. I made pretty decent pocket change, just on volume of billable
pages alone.
S/WW:WGD involved several heavy themes:
SPOILER WARNING: SKIP NEXT
THREE PARAGRAPHS-YOU'VE BEEN WARNED...
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It takes place in modern times. Superman has been around
since 1938 real time and hasn't aged. A bitter Lois Lane HAS aged, but
still maintains close ties to The Man of Steel. Did I tell you that the
Nazis also won WWII? And the Greek Gods transform an elderly Lois Lane
into Wonder Woman? Well, I meant to.
There were lots of Greek characters, like female centaurs.
Topless female centaurs. I was asked by Mike to draw tasteful halter tops
on them. I consulted Dusty, and he doodled a wraparound-the-neck halter,
and I fixed every friggin' one of them. Also, I had to add thongs and
halters to the nude harpies.
Also, I was asked to add elements into panels that would
ease the storytelling transition to the next. In the third issue, someone's
driving down a winding road, only to have their jeep stopped by a full-on
assault by a male centaur. For the two-thirds splash page of the centaur,
I added the front of the jeep, just inches away from impact, because the
images were drawn in isolated panels.
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The first issue of our mini was coming out the same
Wednesday as the Super-sized Wedding issue of Lois and Clark, which received
national media coverage. The Lois & Clark TV show was going to have
their wedding the same week, a rare case of comicbook media synergy! I
had ridiculously high hopes that each curiosity-seeking collector would
snap up our first Elseworlds issue as well, as they would be displayed
together with that week's releases.
If only that were the case. I think it got lost in the
countless Superman one-shots, Elseworlds and minis that comicstore owners
pulled out from their recent backstock to capitalize on increased traffic
from new casual customers (a strategy I applaud, by the way). I suppose
our Elseworlds didn't stand out, and it's a shame that all our hard efforts
didn't pay off like we'd hoped. But it's funny how the little things seem
to delight a comic geek like me: Seeing my name printed on the squarebound
spine of each issue, as well as the calligraphy on the covers gave my
name the look of respectability (Okay, I'm delusional, we've established
that). Tom Orzechowski's one-of-a-kind lettering and Gloria Vasquez's
tasteful colors made it a great package to be a part of. Most importantly,
the enormity and speed of my task got me better DC gigs in the future!
Now that Claremont has recently re-ignited his star
with Alan Davis and Mark Farmer on Uncanny X-Men, maybe it's time for
a trade paperback of Supes/WW: Whom Gods Destroy! I know email campaigns
are dicey when it comes to results, so lets just have every Superman fan
from across the country hold a candlelight vigil outside the DC offices!
Alright, you have your marching orders! Disperse! Assemble! Whatever!
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