Happy Father's Day!
Years ago, I got a question on my Tumblr about my dad’s tastes compared to mine. In late 2020, with dad as you’ll be able to tell sufficiently loosened up, I did a big long interview with him on his background in the subject. For 4 years I wound up sitting on it.
Happy Father’s Day.
David: Alright, here we go. This is new for this blog (at time of recording - Sean Dillon and I since had a roundtable on All-Star Superman with Doc Shaner!). I am conducting an interview with my father, Gary Mann. I bring up frequently in my weekly reviews (some) particular comic that I don't like, with the caveat of, that's because I'm getting that for Dad. I realized recently I've been doing that quite a bit and wanted to clarify that I did not mean to denigrate his general tastes. He and I like a lot of the same stuff, but there's some stuff that I don't get that he does want to get. In response to bringing that up, someone asked, hey, what are your dad's tastes in comics? I kind of suggested interviewing him, turned out he was up for that, so this is my father, Gary Mann.
Gary: And it's very nice to be here. I can't wait to hear what your first question will be.
David: Simple one. How did you get into comics?
Gary: Wow, and you just opened a door. Well, I started out as a child, and my moms’ father and brother, my papa David Sauber and my uncle Morty Sauber had a used bookstore, and it was across the street from their apartment on 3rd street which I dearly miss. And I used to be down there…what has become the story is that I'm down there every Saturday. And I have no idea if it was every Saturday or just, y’know, a couple times ever, or whatever. But I remember being down there and they had comics[…]what I remember is something about the shape of the store and where things were, but I swear I remember where the comics were…jeez I’m old. That is certainly over 60 years ago. It's a long time ago! Anyway, I got comics in there every Saturday, or once, or something in between. And I loved it. I think I remember there were EC comics in there. You know, it was the Silver Age, everything was wonderful! When it sucked it was wonderful! I like that, that might be a pull quote. It was such wonderful memories. You know, I mean, I can remember the chair I sat in, and my grandfather's like 1890s typewriter that he had there. Anyway, the store closed. They were done. And I went to...Mario's which is now near where (family friend) Tom lives. And it was across the street from the spudnut shop, which was my dad's. See, this is where all the family history is. Mario's, you get comics there, and again it’s such a tentative memory, but…see my other grandfather, David Mann, your namesake, it feels like he was there and you know, I mean, maybe he was maybe he wasn't, I don't think it was relevant but he seems to be there in the memory, which is nice to have, and I would get comics at Mario's. But they charged for them, unlike my grandfather and my uncle. And this seemed unfair! And I stopped. I stopped reading comics.
But! This is a discrete memory…I believe the senior year of high school, I had a study hall in the theater room, big room, near the back and near the left. And in the desk, for at least several - I wanna say a week, but at least several days in a row - there was a copy of a comic book. And it was...damn, I should know that issue number, and I, sorry to say that I don't. Ooh, was it 158, 159? Something in there. Yeah, somewhere in there. It was a Jack Kirby Galactus Thor issue.
David: Whoa.
Gary: You know, I mean, I kind of knew who Thor was, but I mean, every day I would look at this thing and marvel, you know, I would just fucking marvel at the thing.
I went to college. Mario's convinced me it's time to grow up. Not gonna read comics anymore. Then I had the one brief exposure, you know, to this remarkable Jack Kirby comic, and it really drew me in, but I didn't know what to make of it. And then I got to college. And Joe Orbello, and Larry...I can't believe it, I can't think of his last name right now. But these two guys were in my dorm. They were not roommates, Joe lived alone, Larry had two other roommates, but everyone was kind of into comics, but these two guys were really into comics, they were collectors. And so I remember being in Joe Orbello's room and saying, you know, ‘I'm just curious what the old gang has been up to’. And I think maybe it was an issue of Robin or something. I mean, it wasn't. It was just…
David: Robin? Well yeah, but he didn't have a book till the 90s.
Gary: Something Robin was in, I don't know.
David: Okay.
Gary: It was a generic comic book for all practical purposes. You know, here's something completely random, see what you think. And it, uh, it tasted good. [laughs] And I started getting comics and I still have, I guess there are downstairs a few in the collection that in like a...a blue felt marker or magic marker, whatever it was at the time, room RM.418, which was in Gregory Hall, my freshman year of college. You know, I was getting comics, people wanted to borrow them, I wanted them back, so it was the way to go. And yeah, and that is when I'm…okay…which year was it? I think about the third year in, it was the first time I ever went to New York City.
David: Before going on that route, meant to ask, you mentioned this early exposure to Kirby with Thor (&) Galactus, I was curious, because you do have that early issue of FF where they go to Planet X, was that earlier?
Gary: No, that leads back to college.
David: OK.
Gary: That leads back to college. I was in college, I got back into comics, I started buying them. I had them, you know, before 18, all that. But then I went to my first convention. I had an independent study course that I designed with the guy in the English department, one of the professors there, and I did a comics term paper that I think you've seen. I wish it, boy, I wish it was better, but there it was. We had the Fredonia Comic Book Club. Oh, this was so cool. Fredonia, my school has this big ass library. It's a big big, physically large, pretty cool building actually. The Fredonia Comic Book Club had space there. And I had a pretty nice original art collection. For instance, Gil Kane would work by doing real rough sketches, full-size pages, you know, and the panels and everything, but everything was kind of rough sketched out, you know, a little tighter sometimes, but he just wanted to get the positioning of the figures and so forth. And so he would do the whole book that way, and then he would put it on a light table and go back, you know, to get the layout, but then actually, you know, penciling in detail the figures. But those roughs that he did, he sold at conventions. And I had an entire 20 page issue of Gil Kane pencils.
David: [awed exhalation]
Gary: It was a Man Thing crossover book. And it was absolutely gorgeous. So in our library, I had page after, you know, I mean, you could just walk along and read, visually read the whole story. It was cool. But yeah, I mean, it was like, it was real low grade heroin.
Okay, boy, I think you've heard this. This is pretty good. In my senior year-
David: What about your first trip to New York City?
Gary: Good point. Okay, but remember in my senior year, that's gonna be good. First trip to New York City. Came back from Thanksgiving vacation to my roommate, Jim Vega, of New York City, across the street from Lincoln Center in New York City, which was itself pretty cool. And he had gone home for vacation and he came back to let me know that on January 25th of 1972, I think, was going to be A Marvel-ous Evening with Stan Lee at Carnegie Hall. And did I want to go? And I did. So I went to New York and you know, I'm gonna jump ahead for a minute. You and I, in the peak of my comic book life because of where I was and that we were together on it, was the San Diego Con. And that was, it's funny, you and I both I think were just horribly freaked out and uncomfortable and so forth for, I don't know, the first twenty minutes or something, and then it shifted and it just became, “this is where I want to live”. Y’know it's been a good comic book life, and I'm kind of retired from it now. You know, I'm retired (from work) and retired (from collecting comics). And it's great to still be able to watch stuff but…and I really like a lot of it. There used to be a commercial. And I don't even remember what it was for, but kind of the tagline, the catch line was, “I liked the old.” And, you know, overall probably so. I mean, there's so much really cool stuff now. But if you take the overall average of, you know, what was done then, what was done now, yeah, that's it for me. I love that stuff. But it's great to see it all. I'm so happy I did the Cerebus reading (that he’d planned on for his retirement). Boy, even the absolutely horrifying, horrific parts, but…it was a remarkable achievement. And a well executed achievement, and boy, often a funny achievement, and a mindfuck of an achievement. And…and then just such a weird one in so many ways and then (Cerebus) died alone, unmourned and unloved. And the end. So [laughs] and there you have my comic books. Oh, except if you look behind you, you'll see (dad’s bookshelves with various comics related knicknacks) - I love having those. I love sitting in this chair, it's like that's become my little set there. I don't even know what it represents, but I like it. Any other questions?[laughs]
David: So Carnegie Hall.
Gary: Carnegie Hall! I didn’t come back to Carnegie Hall. Carnegie Hall was kinda cool. I went with Jim Fay. Boy, you know, it was my New York City trip. It was my first New York City trip, and that was pretty cool. I was very drunk a lot of the time during that trip. Every night, I remember Jim Vega, who's this Puerto Rican kid who I'd love to know where he is now, I hope his life is great, but I wouldn't have a clue how to find him. But very nice guy, and you know, I was there with him and his friends who I don't have any memory of. I'm sure we got along and everything, and every night we went to the Bronx and I was always just like not unconscious in the back of a station wagon -
David: [laughs]
Gary: - but very relaxed, and I thought “oh man, I wanted to see that town I had missed it.” But we went to the convention, you know, to Carnegie Hall rather. And boy, then I remember the Steve Skeates connection. But we'll come back to that. It was, it was, oh boy, you know, I remember Roy Thomas was there, and Barry Smith was there, and Herb Trimpe was there and you know, Romita and Kirby were there. And Stan Lee was there. And the show was very cool and very lame. There was a lot of drawing involved, a lot of music. Roy Thomas does a mean Elvis. Oh, Buscema was there, John Buscema was there. And at the end, Stan and the gang linked arms and were swaying back and forth and singing the Mighty Marvel Marching Society song. And a few people in the audience ran up and got on the stage. And I know you've heard this before, but I decided, when will I ever have this opportunity and what better opportunity to do it? I got up there and got in the line and we linked arms and we were singing the Mighty Marvel Marching Society song. And it was very cool. I got an autograph from Stan which I lost. And that was that. It was a pretty cool evening.
And follow up to that and I believe you were with me I think. Ah…it was Herb Trimpe. We were at a convention and ran into Herb Trimpe. I mentioned to him, “oh, I remember seeing you when I was at Marvel at Carnegie Hall.” And he said, “Oh, I’ve been trying to find out when that was. I don't know what the date was and I've wondered, do you remember what the date was?” So, you know, doy, and the internet. But I told him and it was very nice and I have a little head sketch he did of The Thing which I thought was a very nice gratuity. But yeah, there was that. You want the…
David: Senior year?
Gary: The senior year, yeah. I was in the comic book club. As you know I was a philosophy major. And it turns out that the comic book club, which sold comics in the student union, which was a big building and it was round, it was like a center circle. It was, you know, like, I don't know, 80 feet across or something. And the Fredonia Comic Book Club sold comics at one point on the circle; at 120 degrees away on the circle was fellow philosophy major and a head of the…Jesus group? Kim France, and 120 degrees away from him, and again, 120 degrees from me, was Rich Maker, philosophy major, and head of the local student gay organization. They were not pals. And I was there. And it being senior year, you didn't really have to go to a lot of class at that point, but sometimes you did. So we would cover for each other, except either of them would cover for me, and I would cover for either of them, but they would not cover for each other. So sometimes they would both be gone and I would be there, and I would be the atheist at the Christian, Jesus giveaway information stand, which I did, or I would be the straight guy handing out the, you know, the gay information and communication and, you know, however the community was organized. So there I was and it was good.
I remember maybe I told you this the one day, we had…you know, here's the example when I say that I like the old. In my senior year, I remember there was Steve Engelhart/Frank Brunner Doctor Strange, which is still such a…you know, I did Cerebus, I have to really redo that because it was so cool. But that was going on then. Barry Smith's Conan was going on then. Lots and lots of really good stuff. I was just livin' on this great stuff. Guy came in, new issue of Conan was there. Conan #2(4), he was so happy, The Song of Red Sonja. And he got it, he said, “I've been waiting for this,” And he got it and he took it and he folded it in half and he folded it in half again-
David: [cartoonishly hyperventilating]
Gary -stuck into the right back pocket, away he went. There you go. That's my senior year story.
David: So you're sharing this with the audience. I've grown up on a lot of these stories and, and you know.
Gary: But they've never been put on the record before. And that's why I appreciate the opportunity. I like hearing them! I like telling them.
David: I always think of your era as like, mid-late 60s through maybe the early 80s, Silver Age Marvel and DC, pretty much everything that came out of the Bronze Age. But you kept on collecting pretty regularly through I'd say the late 2000s if I recall. What was it like living through that? You know, Alan Moore coming on the scene and the 90s boom and bust and Morrison becoming a name and all that before you really started to gradually filter everything out. I mean, I'm sure there was some gradual filtering out throughout, but.
Gary: Yeah, boy, let's start with this, I don't care for Rob Liefeld. There was a whole era there and I don't even know, but I associate it with an 80s kind of vibe. I'm not sure if that's, you know, chronologically right or not, but comics got real ugly. I remember Avengers was going through stuff and…just, I mean, the art was weird and the stories were weird and not my cup of tea. But…then you'd get Watchmen. Then you'd get Maus. Then you'd get, you know, there were so many things. Underground comics were so much fun. Robert Crumb, Spain (Rodriguez), and... I can't even think of all the names right now, but just terrific stuff. And, you know, often fouler than you can imagine. But, you know, then that's part of the charm too! And, yeah, I don't think an equivalent exists to that anymore. Not really sure because you know, you don't look there so I don't especially…
David: I think a lot of the modern equivalent to a lot of that kind of material is online not at what you'd find at your regular LCS.
Gary: Okay and there's a huge divide. I don't do that. In fact, you know, boy for a few months I had, I can't even think now of the name of the site but it was a newspaper comics site that I had, Go Comics, I had established an account at Go Comics, it didn't cost anything, but I could read whatever comics I wanted every day. Excuse me, newspaper comics. Some of them were current, some of them were old, some of them were real old. And I had a nice little group going there, but...it was a slow and clunky site I thought. I liked seeing it, but I've stopped. So if I'm not doing that, I'm sure not reading comic books on it.
David: Yeah.
Gary: It makes perfect sense to me, but you know, I'm getting off of this stuff.
David: You mentioned, you know, Moore, the 80s, and then comics getting ugly for a while, and then I came on the scene. You got me in for, I mean, [laughs] was there ever any question that you'd be working to get me into comics to some extent?
Gary: You know, I hope I haven't pushed you into anything. I don't want to think you've joined a cult. But, uh... Being a dad is so cool. I hope you have a good life. If it includes that, good for you. I was who I was.
David: Yeah.
Gary: And that's something that you saw and you glommed onto, which made me want to give you more. “Oh, he likes this stuff!”
David: Yeah, I mentioned just the other day on the blog, you got me via The True Story of Superman by Louise Simonson and Mike Parobek, which I appreciate a lot and other stuff like that. And you would let me read whatever you deemed appropriate a little after that with stuff like Byrne’s Man of Steel and JLA and Spider-Boy Team Up. And I know you pushed me to try Tom Strong from pretty early on, although it took me a while to get to that. And around, yeah around 2008, because you had been getting most of Morrison's Batman up to that point. But you weren't getting R.I.P. but I had seen online, “oh there's a story, Batman's gonna die.”
Gary: I wonder why I wasn't, I mean, if nothing else for the Alex Ross covers.
David: If I had to hazard a guess, you were probably kicked off by the Resurrection of Ra’s Al Ghul crossover, that was pretty tepid and I think that was the last of the Batman stuff you you'd been picking up for a while.
Gary: That that could very well be and that would make sense. Yeah. Hey, I wanted to go back when you were mentioning about uh stuff that we had, you know, showing you and exposing you to and you seem to be leaving out a significant one.
David: Oh?
Gary: The tale of, was it, where David, Grammy, and Jill help Superman?
David: Oh yes! Well I've gone into this on the blog before, but there was - at least I think I have - there was this book service that did stories about various characters, including Superman and Wonder Woman, and they would put the name, publish it specifically for a kid, and put their name and the names of family members in it. I helped Superman and Wonder Woman save a museum from Mxyzptlk, proudest achievement of my life.
Gary: [laughs]
David: And the George Reeves Superman and the Fleischer Superman and lots of Superman, but with good reason, and the DCAU stuff with Batman and Superman and Justice League Unlimited, which was probably the first stuff we really bonded over like...liking together as it was coming out right then.
Gary: I'm real glad that you mentioned that, that was probably, you know, it jumped the tracks, it switched media, but that whole area to me was the highest expression of the ideas that they're giving us in comics. I love the animated series, you know. Obviously the voice work was just outstanding. You can't imagine better than that was, but the animation was beautiful. And yeah, it certainly wasn't a copy of the Fleischer stuff, but it was that same level of attention to detail, and beautiful imagery and wonderful music and the stories were really cool. The stories got more complicated and that was the level of complication in the stories that I'm real comfortable with. Stories are too fucking complicated.
Both: [laughs]
Gary: Sorry, but it had to be said.
David: And yet you had so much Morrison stuff ready to go for me.
Gary: Oh yeah! Yeah, Morrison is just like a magician doing tricks, and even when it's too complicated to follow it's such a great ride. I enjoy his stuff. So (The) Green Lantern, his current Green Lantern I started out pretty strong with, and boy, I'm very confused and I know that getting the benefit of all the ideas that he's putting into it, but it's just, I don't know, it's too big for my head or something. Comics have gotten way more complicated and complex, and I like that, but I don't want everything to be that. You know, you can't pick up, I don't think you can pick up a Marvel comic that isn't part of some huge ongoing storyline all the time.
David: I feel like the only one that's really distinctly not that is (The Immortal) Hulk, and that's because Ewing made it a policy to not do that with Hulk, and made it a point of anytime Hulk right now meets other Marvel characters in crossover type stuff it's in one-shot spinoffs that aren't part of the main book.
Gary: Y’know, good point here. You look at Hulk for however many decades, it was always the same approach to Hulk. And what Ewing is doing right now is so impressive, a completely different take on the exact same character, but really broadened out, and beautifully drawn. It's terrific stuff. And that's what's so cool when they can really take something and bring in these changes. So it’s…I like the characters as they are. It's the ongoing tension of comics. I love the characters as they are, I always want them to change and I never want them to change. So what do you do?
David: And yeah, and I'm so glad you are still enjoying a lot of the stuff coming out right now. You know, like I said, you were coming off of R.I.P., that's where I came on. That's when I sort of became the collector of the family. And I've talked a lot on this blog about, you know, how I grew as we were getting in through the New 52 to getting DC in general, after having sort of just picked up Batman (and) Green Lantern because those were the hot stuff. And I still remember showing you the first real big promo image of the New 52 and the first real look at Superman's new suit, not the t-shirt and jeans, but the Jim Lee suit. And I think I remember now, I said to you, “it was sort of like what you said about the new Simpsons opening. If they had to change it, this is what they had to change it to.” And you said, “no.”
Gary: Yeah, I think I stand by that.
David: An instance where I'm gonna go on the record with this one, you were right and I was wrong.
Gary: Boy, you know, thank you, and I agree with you. I was right and you were wrong.
David: I was 16.
Gary: Yeah, yeah, no offense or anything, but yeah, that's just the right answer. I was so happy. You know...let me turn it around. I was so unhappy when New 52 Superman came in and “real” Superman, you know, which was still essentially, I guess, the end product of the Byrne Superman, but, you know, that guy was gone seemingly forever and the new guy...I could never figure out just what it was, but no, this is someone else. It's a different person in that suit with that face, and not my cup of tea. So when they brought him back and…I think it was a little clunky at first. But, you know, it's him again and this is the world and, you know, things are happening, but yeah, it's still him, it's still good. Boy, you know, Bendis has been really interesting. I think I mentioned to you a week or so ago that every issue of his that I read, I think “this needs to all be collected because I want to read it all in one piece.” I think he really suffers from being broken up as choppily as he is. But, you know, oh well.
David: It's nothing new for him.
Gary: I guess.
David: And so I guess that covers some it already, you know, Hulk and Bendis Superman, but you know, much as it is not your cup of tea in the same way as old stuff, what all do you like right now, particularly?
Gary: I like Batman. I think Tynion is really good, you know? I think it's been a nice long string of good, and I realized, you know, I'll say “we”, you know, you, and therefore me as a hitchhiker or parasite, but we're not reading all the Batman there is, but it's like there's for a long time now always at least been a really good Batman writer from, you know, Morrison, and Snyder did such great stuff and, you know, wherever it ended up. Tom King and people who, you know, have gotten their hands on this character, it really seems to bring something wonderful out of them. And it's a book that tends to have really good art. Do you know about the…hell, I can't think of the artist's name now. He was the guy who did the newspaper strip, Johnny Hazard, but I can't think of the artist's name, which is strange. But boy, he did Batman for a while, wrote and drew, and it was really interesting, but it was such, oh boy. I don't know how to visually characterize his style, but it was not the style I wanted to see Batman in, for sure. But, you know, there's been a lot of really good writers. So, okay, Batman is something, let me jump around. I like Batman, I have liked Batman. I like Superman, I have liked Superman. I like Supreme. Supreme is one of my favorite books ever. I just thought that whole thing was just terrific. Boy, you know, I've mentioned before, Doctor Strange, Engelhart/Brunner stuff, Cerebus, obviously. Concrete, Concrete is a great strip. And I've mentioned Maus before, you know, that's gotta be in there. But, you know, I go to...just the general run of the mill Marvel Silver Age, DC Silver. Great stuff. Another story comes to mind. It's a painful one. It's the sad one.
David: I think I know this.
Gary: Yeah. The, uh, the selling of the collection.
David: Ah, okay. Well, uh, I had another, I had Cap 102 in mind, but I certainly know this as well.
Gary: That's, that's a good one. Remind me, I'll get back to that. Yeah, mom and I hadn't been married for long. We were still living in my condo, which was a smallish little place. And you know, and we're trying to figure out how life works and everything. And two things that we needed were space and money. And here's an idea. And you know, it was an absolutely mutual, “I don't want to do this, but yeah, I agree with the decision. Let's go ahead” and I didn't have a complete Silver Age Marvel, but it was pretty, pretty close. I had all kinds of stuff from way back then. And I had some things that really predated those things. I remember in Niagara Falls…it's funny, every time I go past the place, the place probably hasn't been there for 40, 50 years I look at it to see if the place is still there because if it's magic I can go in and get stuff. It was like an antique place, it was almost like a collapsed garage, but I went in and I found Tales to Astonish, it was absolutely that, maybe it was number 12? I'd be curious to look at early covers. And I don't remember what the cover was, but I suspect I'd recognize it. A nickel? I'm glad I remembered that. That was a good day. Geez. What's the story I'm telling you?
David: Well, when I think of you selling the collection, I always think of you selling the first appearance of Wolverine. And your lack of regrets regarding that.
Gary: You know, I said nice things before about Herb Trimpe and he's a fine person and I enjoyed his artwork, but it wasn't the kind of stuff, he wasn't an artist I was crazy about. It was, you know, well done, well executed, good storytelling, all the stuff you want, but it wasn't, you know, fireworks or anything. And...you know, the Hulk is fighting Wendigo and then in the last panel of issue 180, Wolverine jumps out of a bush [laughs] and you don't know who he is. And then 181 is where it started. And, uh, you know, Wolverine had caught on in the meantime. And, I knew that it was a valuable book, but. You know, it was a crappy book. Guy came over and bought it. And I don't know, maybe it was a quarter, I don't know. He said, “do you know what this is?!” “Yeah,” I said, “it's a crappy comic book.” I, uh...in retrospect, I both…you know, I feel good about it. It was a stupid decision. I mean, maybe I really could have gotten a good chunk of money that would have helped us a lot.
David: Well, what I recall was, you've told me this before and he said like, “dude, this is like worth $20!” And you sold it for like a dollar. So, no, I think if you had done that later, you would have had maybe more reason to rethink it.
Gary: I remember, I sold the run of Miracleman to a guy who bought it in its entirety. And boy, he was so happy. And he knew what he was getting and that he was getting this wonderful deal. And I was happy to say, “go to a good home.” This guy was going to just love the hell out of these comics and that's what they deserve because they were really that good. You mentioned ABC stuff before. Boy, I would love to go back. You know, I did the Cerebus reread and the ABC stuff might really merit that.
David: Oh, yeah, I got I got a lot of that stuff in my room. I can pull that out for you.
Gary: Yeah, I might be doing that.
David: If there was one thing I might think of in terms of collector terms, I feel like there's very little ABC we don't have, like, the very little we don't have might be worth hunting down someday. If comic conventions are everything again.
Gary: Oh yeah, although I would say the Alan Moore ABC stuff.
David: Oh yeah, but like, there was- I know, like what was supposed to be his closing anthology miniseries, ABC A to Z, that only published like two of six issues or something. And a couple others. And Rick Veitch did a Tomorrow Stories miniseries. We do have that. That was real good.
Gary: Yeah, Rick Veitch was, yeah, he was around for a little, maybe he's still around. I don't know what's going on with that.
David: Yeah, yeah. He did recently, and I remember sharing this on my blog, but you might not remember, some guy did a makeshift, “here's the actual end of Supreme” thing, because, you know, Larsen took it and ran it in a whole other horrifying direction, and he got, he commissioned Rick Veitch to do a cover for it, and it was really pretty, so that's the last I know of Rick Veitch and what he's up to.
Gary: But he did some really interesting, you know, they were kind of the bridge between underground and what we’ve got now…The One. Do you know about the one?
David: I know, yeah, Veitch did that, right?
Gary: Yeah, yeah. I hope we have that. And that would really be something that I would recommend.
David: I don't think we do. I've seen it mentioned before. I don't think we have it. I can check.
Gary: Boy, I did have it. And...
David: Was that the one about - because if so, I've at least read it out of the library - was that the one about, like, Superman, essentially? About the Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster type, contrasted with this weird creation myth of this Superman? Because I know I've read that from Veitch, it was absolutely disgusting and very fascinating, but...this might be something else.
Gary: It's something else.
David: Let’s see, all that. You mentioned stuff you've liked for a long time. You’ve mentioned not liking-
Gary: Did I mention Steve Skeates? You're taking my history.
David: You mentioned the... well, I guess I'll ask you the stuff I wanted to cover. You mentioned the stuff you like now, y’know, Superman and Hulk and Batman and other odds and ends. But those are big things I'd say you're really liking right now. Although you did like Commanders in Crisis, if I recall.
Gary: I like Commanders in Crisis. Ice Cream Man?
David: Oh yeah, yeah yeah yeah.
Gary: That's, you know, classic, wonderful material. It's, it is, I hadn't thought this before, but it is, I guess, my contemporary equivalent to EC Comics.
David: And yeah, those and...Skeates and Cap 102 and then I guess I had one final question. But uh, Skeates or Cap 102, which(ever) you feel like.
Gary: Okay well I'll start with uh Cap 102 then because…in the Fredonia Comic Book Club, the purpose of the club was to send me to conventions.
David: [laughs]
Gary: And other people too, but I was mainly concerned with me. That's what we did. And I went, I believe only ever once to a student government association meeting, and the Fredonia Comic Book Club was singled out by, you know, management, that. All we did was make money.
David: [cackling]
Gary: Every other campus organization was a problem in some way or another. All we did was make money. So, you know, we got a gratuity. We got to go to these conventions because, you know, that's what you do when you're in that kind of club. So I went to my first ever convention and it was Cosmocon in Toronto. There was a t-shirt that I still own and can still fit into pretty well. By Jim Steranko, no less. And I went in there-
David: The shirt's a Steranko shirt?
Gary: Yeah.
David: Cool.
Gary: Yeah. You've seen that.
David: Oh, Steranko Fury if we're bringing up, well, or in Steranko in general, bringing up stuff, long time favorites of yours.
Gary: But it did come to mind. Okay, (I’m) at the Toronto Convention and I walked into, you know, the first thing I did when I got there was I went into the dealer room and I went to the first table, the first dealer room at the first convention and the first thing I saw was something that I could buy. I had the money and I could buy it. But it was the first table at the first convention I'd ever been to. And I wanted to see what else was in the room. So I wandered around the room and I saw lots of cool stuff. But I thought I would still like that, and it was gone. And as you know, and as it makes me…I've come to terms with it, I'm okay. But it gives me pause every time certainly to realize, you know, I'll stop that and say, I'm just glad I got to see the thing, I got to hold the thing. I have no regrets. You know, I would have bigger regrets if I had bought it and then sold it for double my price and felt smug about it. But it was the Jack Kirby cover to Captain America #102. The Sleeper, the fourth Sleeper, is throwing Cap into the foreground, and it looks pretty rough. And I held it in my hands, and it was so cool, and it was $25. And I had $25, but, you know, first table, first so-and-so. So I didn't get it, and I would love to know the history of the piece. You know, how many people it's gone through. And I think I've told you that I have seen it having been sold in the not too distant past.
David: Yeah, yeah. You've kept me appraised.
Gary: Yeah, it was more than $25, but why dwell on details?
Anyway, so that's that. But I did get lots of cool stuff at other conventions. I have the Dan Adkins, this you've seen I believe, the, it's on lined notebook paper, done with a bic pen. Dan Adkins in Buffalo Comic Con, around two in the morning. I didn't ask for a sketch. We were just sitting around semi-conscious in the lobby and people were, you know, hanging out and talking. Somehow Dan Adkins was there and he took this sheet of notebook paper and he drew what he described to me, his description, it is a gay pot-smoking Submariner. And it's, I don't think, offensively gay, and he's clearly smoking something. You know, it's just a little limp wrist, but otherwise it's Submariner. And, here you go. So I got that. I got stuff from Steve Skeates, who I figured we were gonna come right back to. I went to Detroit Triple Fan Fair, 1983 maybe. And it was pretty cool because, and I was on my, you know, this wasn't in school or anything, certainly, years later and I had I guess some money to spend there, and one of the great things that was going on is they were auctioning off artists. They were auctioning an hour of their time. Although the other item for auction that came up was, Russ Heath was there, Ernest Russ Heath, and he used, I guess, watercolors, and so, and he would blot his brushes with all the different color patches, you know, and so he signed the blotting paper and they auctioned it off and it went for $50.
The big event of the evening was Barry Smith and Michael Kaluta were there, and you could bid for an hour of the time from each of them together. I didn't get in on that. Boy, it went for like $180 or something, which is just insane. But I got an hour with Frank Brunner, which I couldn't believe. He was, it was early in his career, but you know, I loved his stuff. And it was $50 and I think he was not happy about the fact [laughs] that he went for that, but he was very nice to me. And I spent...and you know I have the Doctor Strange/Man Thing piece that he did, which has been used as an edited version was the cover of Comic Book Artist #6 because Tom borrowed it from me and they used it for a cover. So I'm at the convention and, you know, Brunner is working on this thing. And I'm in his room and uh...what? That's the Brunner story, but, it's a separate story. I forgot, sorry. Confused conventions. Well, I'm glad I got to explain about that. I'm in New York. I'm at a New York convention. Oh, it was, it was, okay, I'm sorry. It wasn't at Detroit. It was at a New York convention, sorry. We're back in Brunner's room. He's doing all this stuff and there are people there. Denny O'Neill was there, the Denny O'Neill story. I'll make this fast, when I was in college. Denny O'Neill was supposed to come to address the comic book club and you know the campus at large, I envision a crowd of thousands, and went to the airport in Buffalo to pick him up and he didn't show up and got a phone message saying he wasn't coming ever.
David: [chuckle]
Gary: So it was a sad evening. But years later I saw him because he was hanging out in Brunner's room while Brunner was working on the sketch. And he explained, he did in fact remember it, he had been deathly ill at the time, and then couldn't travel and so forth, and was very nice about it. Steve Skeates was also there. And you know, I don't know much we interacted but you know he was there and it was okay, so then six months later I'm at Fredonia. It's just before the Christmas break. And I'm at the finest restaurant in town, which doubles as the bus terminal. Those things are both true.
David: Oh I believe you.
Gary: I'm in the lobby waiting to meet someone, and I see this guy walking around and he looks familiar, but I figure he's a guy from campus, but that feels wrong. And then I realize it is famous comic book (writer), Steve Skeates. I said, you know, are you Steve Skates? He was. He was in the process of hitching along route 17 to get Christmas stuff to his daughter who was with his ex-wife, but he ran out of hitchhiking. So he was there and it was starting to snow. So we invited him to dinner with us and then we found him a ride. So that was cool and you know, it was like this real treat to have this guy, our ‘captive’. And a few months later again, I was at another convention. I don't remember offhand which one. And he was there and he sought me out and said, I've been looking for you. I want to write a novel and I can't write it in New York City. New York City is too distracting to me. I wanna move to Fredonia. Do you know where I can live? So I got him a cottage, which I was aware of. And he lived there for the better part of a year. And it was cool. Y’know, I used to see him around. Hang out downtown and it was very nice. Nice to knowing a famous guy, nice guy. So that's how that happened. And he was around for a long time. He came by in Elmira a time or two after that when he was traveling close to the area so we got to see each other a few times, and then we're out of touch and that's too bad, that happens.
David: Going from convention, I guess the last convention story I have in mind, I guess the last two story type things I have in mind are that and the time you dressed as Black Panther.
Gary: [laughs]
David: And that one's brief enough that I think…but, uh, our time at San Diego Comic-Con and the bit from that you've held over my head for seven years.
Gary: [especially joyous, dare I say cruel, laughter] when it's too good a story not to tell. It was a remarkable thing being there. As I said, we both freaked out initially because it's so strange and then it was wonderful and I think we both really enjoyed ourselves.
David: Absolutely spent much too much money.
Gary: But it was great because you know, there'd be so many things going on at once and you could go from one to the other, and when things were going on the hallways would be pretty empty. And then, you know, they'd let out and it would be all jammed up with people and cosplay and just gawking at each other and so forth. But I was, you know, going from one place to another, whatever they were. And I was walking down the hall, which was kind of empty. And you know, this is an immense building. This wasn't a huge hallway, but it was a pretty big, long hallway. And there was really nobody around in it. And I'm walking, approaching for, you know, a little bit of time. I see coming from the other direction was Grant Morrison. And so I had this whole period of time, to form this in my head as far as what to do, or to do anything, to do anything or if so what to do and, y’know, I don't wanna intrude. He comes by and I say, hi Grant. And he says, hello. And that was our conversation and it was perfect and it said everything.
David: Readers, he's been holding that over me for seven years.
Gary: [laughs]
David: I remember him telling me about this and just flipping the hell out as he knew would happen.
Gary: [laughs]
David: I didn't get to say hello to Morrison, I did speak with them, you know. at a couple panels briefly, but it's not the same.
Gary: Oh, but you did win the iPad and thank you for...
David: Oh, the Kindle.
Gary: The Kindle, yes.
David: Yeah, yeah, I asked a question at a Superman panel that year and won a Kindle, that was cool.
Gary: You were the only person, I believe the four days of the convention, you were the only one to ask an editor anything, and for that alone.
David: Oh God, it might've been Berganza. I don't know.
Gary: Oh, that's interesting. Yeah, I don't remember who it was.
David: Cause yeah, cause it was 2013 and I know it was related to…it was about the Earth 2, the Batman/Superman book that had just started because they were meeting the Earth 2 Superman and Batman and that Superman was married to Lois and that Batman was kind of well-adjusted and I was like, okay, you're obviously not literally doing this, but is this spiritually like the New 52 guys meeting the pre-Flashpoint guys? And they're like, well, no, not exactly, cause, yeah (they weren’t gonna say it). And I was asking the editor because Greg Pak wasn't there and he would have been the one to ask, so I went for the next best thing. And I got a Kindle.
Gary: [laughs]
David: Snyder was there too, and he mentioned there was a bit coming up in Superman Unchained where, uh, Wraith uh, William Randolph’s Ace In The Hole, punched Superman, and it cuts to a map diagram with like a red slash across it to show like he's just been bunched across all these states. So I got to know about that in advance, so that was cool. Okay, I guess the last thing before the last thing, uh, the Black Panther costume. I think my readers would be amused.
Gary: Well, how rude of them. Yes, for your amusement, I offer this. It was about 1972. And I was in college. And it was Halloween a-coming. So, and I was living in one of those cottages actually that I would later get for Steve Skeates. I was living out there and it was maybe a mile and a half, two miles out of town. And I would go up and down route five, sometimes walking, very often walking, cause you know, it was a nice walk and if the weather was okay, it was fine. A little uphill, but it was okay. But when I couldn't, you know, if I wasn't walking, I would hitch a ride. And you could do that, and you know, it was not unusual. So that's the setup, and it's Halloween. So I'm gonna go, what am I gonna do? Because, you know, costume and all. T'Challa, Prince of Wakanda, you might not immediately make the leap to me, but I don't even remember who I would have known I could have borrowed such things from. But apparently I knew women? Question mark? And I was able to borrow like a black leotard and black, I guess, pantyhose. And I remember I had black gloves and then, you know, some like some kind of, I don't know, pantyhose or nylon or something over my head. All black. And I was the Black Panther. I went to the party.
David: I would love, you know, some indeterminate future date, whoever plays Black Panther next, wear that. That'd be a...same as, I want Spider-Man in the movies to look like his costume is homemade.
Gary: Well, this was very homemade. And I went to this thing, I’m Black Panther, and the party is over which means that it's early, early, early in the morning of November 1st in upstate New York, about 1AM, time to go home. It's cold out. I'm going to hitch a ride. Well, and you may have peeked at the ending to figure this out in advance, but if you're dressed as the Black Panther, people can't see you too well, and if they can see you too well, they're not going to stop for you. And it was cold.
David: Not gonna stop for a perfectly innocent man covered in head to toe black pantyhose covering their face, you know, in the middle of the night of Halloween.
Gary: I feel everyone should be entitled to their own way. But there I was and, you know, at this point, it's really cold and I'm basically not covered. I'm completely covered, but I'm kind of not covered. And there was nothing to do but to walk home. And it was not a good night. It had been a good night. That wasn't a good night.
David: Okay, so finally, one hour and 11 minutes of discussion later, I'm going to ask you the question that was asked of me that prompted this.
Gary: Oh, I forgot all about this.
David: I was asked about the differences between your tastes and mine in comics, and I would be curious for your take on that.
Gary: Well, I feel like I already talked a little bit about it. The storylines of current comics, it's, I don't know if I should be embarrassed about it or not, but they are, they are certainly too complicated for my taste. I don't know if they're too complicated for my ability, that might be the case, but certainly for my taste. I like, you know, uh, The Kree-Skrull War was terrific. That was something and boy, and it felt so complicated, layered at the time. And now you look back on it and it's, you know, it's straightforward and simple as could be, but, uh, you know, always one of the great shames is that Neal Adams didn't finish it. And I really love John Buscema, but you know, it really should have been an Adams book from start to finish. And you know I owned a page from Avengers #93 for a while.
David: Sounds familiar, yeah.
Gary: Ooh, yeah, so quick story. This great Neal Adams, Tom Palmer page, and it contained an error on the part of Neal Adams, which was wonderful, and I felt like I'm the only person who knows this. Ant-Man and two of his ants were on Cap's palm. This was where the Vision has come in and he's all paralyzed and Ant-Man ends up going inside of him and the line about Metropolis, you know, Fritz Lang's, not Clark Kent's. But I had this page where Ant-Man is on Captain America's hand in one panel and in the next panel, it's the other hand. And I've never been able to come up with any reason he would have passed him across like that! It was just a screw up on Adams’ part. And I was always glad to -
David: You don't get that kind of complexity in modern comics.
Gary: - be one of the few people who, you know, would know about that.
You know, modern comics are rough. And, again, I do like a lot of them, but I think that's what it comes down to. I like, you know, I like the Golden Age stuff. I like Silver Age stuff. Crisis was wonderful and, you know, the original Crisis, and Watchmen obviously, and so many things like that. But they, you know, even I mentioned before that, you know, I like Batman so much. Batman has, in many regards, you know, gotten away from me that I can't necessarily follow, I enjoy the ride so much.
David: I think it's a matter not necessarily of, inherent complexity of a presentation. Because like, I don't think there are meaningfully less moving parts in Watchmen than there are right now in X of Swords. But it's presented like much more...conventionally it's not the right word for Watchmen. It certainly wasn't at the time, but like, yes, but you know, when you get...well, y’know, Watchmen, there's a straight line from the backup stuff in Watchmen to like the infographic work that Hickman does now, I think. But, uh, the-the flavor there was much more classical, I think it would be fair to say, even at the time. In presentation, if nothing else. Whereas, uh…and Batman, I'd say right now, a very classically flavored book in a lot of ways compared to some of its contemporaries. Just in terms of, hey, here's Batman, he's gotta fight the Joker. And Joker's blowing up Gotham, but Batman's gonna stop him. You know, there's one hallucination sequence in the middle, but. And even like, Hulk, I'd say, where stuff right now like...like X-Men and a lot of Hickman's work, like what Morrison's doing right now in Green Lantern, those are really trying to, to varying degrees of success…as much as I enjoy Morrison's Lantern, I wouldn't exactly call it successful. Those really want to tell stories very non-conventionally and not just...and sometimes it's a very different hit-miss rate with that sort of thing.
Gary: You mention presentation, the style of presentation, I've often just had the thought about, for instance, you know, Mozart hearing the Beatles. What would he think? You know, that's not an especially deep question, but you know, I mean, it is such a completely different language of music that you have to wonder, would it work for him? For want of a better term. I look at comics now and I just imagine you know, what if Kirby or Lee or any of them working back then saw what's out now, not even for the content but just the way it looks the kinds of stories that are told, and then go back to you know Simon and Kirby, go back to Siegel and Shuster. But don't go back to Bob Kane. And what would they think? I used to wonder when…there was a while there was what was called ground level comics. They weren't underground comics. They were ground level comics. And a lot of them were science fiction-y, but a lot of them weren’t. Harvey Pekar was maybe ground level for instance. I really like Harvey Pekar stuff.[...]Presentation, yeah, yeah. Just the styles, the formats, everything about it. In my Cerebus reread, there was an issue that was, jeez, it was like eight pages long of a scene that took place in complete darkness. I'm remembering now, Cerebus is at the bottom of a tower, he's underground, it's, you know, talking about underground and ground level. He's underground. He's really far underground. And it's this stone spiral staircase to get back up to you know get away. And his foot is broken, and then somebody had turned the lights out, which is a line from an EC comic of much different vintage, but he's in complete darkness, and it's just small panels, he was just telling the story with dialogue balloons and panel shapes and the shapes of the caption boxes and so forth. And it was amazing storytelling, though there was no image what's, and it went on for like eight pages and it didn't repeat or get boring. You know, it was just a virtuoso storytelling, I thought. And sometimes stuff like that, obviously in this case, works for me so well. And sometimes I just say, oh boy, I know there's something really good going on here, buti t's beyond me.
David: Yeah, I mean, I think something like…a real example, it’s the presentation and the stylization, there's something like Department of Truth, another Tynion book, which is very, very highly stylized, but it is told quite conventionally. It's told pretty straightforwardly. And I think that may...and also there's no background. Other than, you know, the huge amounts of real world background that inherently go into that one. Yeah, that thing.
Gary: Yeah, that's something I'm very much enjoying, as you mention it.
David: As opposed to...I keep going back to X of Swords, in part because I think that's one where I'm about as lost as you are for...I don't want to say for a change, but usually, uh...
Gary: No, that's very fair. [laughs]
David: Well, I feel, I think it's fair, because usually like, if I'm lost with a book, I'll generally drop it before too long. So it is sort of a unique circumstance, but that-
Gary: Let me jump in here for just a moment to say, we need to wrap this up, because Saturday Night Live comes out in about 10 minutes.
David: Okay, well, I'd say we're pretty near the end. Yeah, something like that is…X of Swords is not concerned, and really Hickman's career in general, is not exactly concerned with verisimilitude. People in his comics don't talk like people actually talk, and that's not the point. They talk like Jonathan Hickman characters talk. They present information, and with priorities, that are what interests Jonathan Hickman. And I think that's fascinating. I think that usually makes for very interesting comics, even on occasions where it doesn't work out for him, but it's a fundamentally different experience than even really auteurist, creator-driven stuff than stuff like Cerebus, I assume, I haven't read it, or a lot of Moore;s work, where... I mean, Cerebus, like, that I know has extended text pieces, and the guys an aardvark, and so forth. So it's not like a completely rigid format, but it is that sort of like... it's meant to be very intuitive and what you see is what you get. With Hickman, you really gotta sit down with it and process it, with lots of Morrison stuff, but not always Morrison stuff. And I think...that attracts me in a way that hasn't always attracted you. And that's a lot of why, like, I probably write about this stuff a lot because I sit down and process it. It's part of the enjoyment for me. And I'm gonna sit down and process it anyway.
Gary: And you know, I'll say, I don't come to comics because I wanna work.
Gary and David: [laughs]
Gary: I'm retired. I don't need to put in - now sometimes the thing will just grab me and say, yeah, this is engaging enough that you wanna put some energy and focus into it. But if it's just going to be a task, I'm sorry.
David: Whereas me, I want to work in comics one way or another, whether I do get to write comics or if I just continue writing about comics forever. I'm a 21st century boy. Work and play don't get to be separate things anymore.
Gary: There you go. That’s pretty cool.
David: Says you. You go on Twitter, you'll see people weeping and wailing long into the night over that state of affairs. But for me, yeah, it's worked out pretty decently. So, yeah, I feel like that mostly covers it. If you have any last words, I guess, but...
Gary: Thank you. I really enjoyed this. I really want to read it. This was a “This is your life”, you know, through a very narrow prism, which was, which was pretty fun. I enjoyed the heck out of this. Other than that, that's all folks.