“HE STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS“ THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, PART 4

If you look at the starting point and career trajectory of the most prolific or the most influential writers among the first generations of comic book creators, you’ll notice that none of them considered working in this industry as something they’d be doing as a full-fledged job. Some didn’t even want to be writing comics long term, most certainly, they did not start out as writers of funny books. This is understandable when you look at how the comic industry came to be. Before there were comics, there were two strands of printed, disposable mass entertainment, newspaper strips and pulp magazines. Pulps, apart from the painted covers and a handful of rushed interior illustrations, were a writers medium. If a writer worked for the pulps, to earn a living, the word count mattered. Publishers paid their writers per word, thus, to put food on the table, speed over quality was of paramount importance. If you were fast, you could pay for a house and live a financially comfortable life. It was a grind, though. However, as a cartoonist who had his or her own syndicated newspaper strip, not only did you stand to earn a nice bundle, but with the art as the main selling point, highly sophisticated work was not only possible, it was expected. This meant that only the best artists could ever dream of landing such a job, still the rewards went beyond the considerable monetary benefits. Newspaper cartoonists were revered individuals, and readers had a very good idea who they were. Not only did their names appear on each page, popular artists would be featured in newspaper or magazine articles, and once they’d achieved superstar statues, it was their name that sold the strip and they stood to earn a nice tidy sum for their efforts. These artists were often classically trained, and the art was accomplished and, in most cases, highly polished once a finished job reached millions of households. Though men like Alex Raymond and Hal Foster (or Tarp Mills, who hid the fact that she was a woman in a male dominated field) hired an assistant now and then, for the most part they were an industry onto themselves. Newspaper strips followed a singular vision. Artists didn’t just provide the art, which was more often than not breathtakingly detailed, they also wrote their own material. Comic books originally started as a by-product of newspaper strips. Born out of the idea that repackaged collections of newspaper cartoons could be sold separately as over-sized pamphlets, comic books began to transform into a new medium once publishers hired creators to come up with original material that hadn’t been presented in syndicated newspaper strips. As with the cartoons, this content was created by artists who also wrote the scenarios for these books that were shrunken in size. Comics, like the newspaper strips, are a visual medium, and it was and is the art that attracts the readers. Given the economics of an industry that was just starting up with a handful of publishers at first, and still low circulation numbers, editors had to make due with hungry but inexperienced talent, or on the flip side, creators who couldn’t land much more prestigious assignments as newspaper illustrators, they had to settle for less well-paying gigs at one of these companies. Even an artist as groundbreaking as Jack Kirby, viewed by many comic book fans as one if not the greatest talent to have ever worked in comics, could not get work outside some black and white interior illustrations for the pulps, thus comic books became his chosen field. His contemporary Will Eisner also entered this new industry when he was fresh out of high school, though once he met his future business partner Jerry Iger, the artist hit on a scheme which would set him above his peers. Sensing that publishers would be willing to buy complete issues of any given comic book instead of hiring their own staff of editors and freelancers, Eisner and Iger soon began to package material from their own studio, taking care of the entire production process. Instead of only getting paid for his own artwork, at a meager page rate at that, Eisner (and Iger) stood to earn from the work their artists created, a business model which, according to Eisner, made him rather wealthy before he was twenty-two. But the deals the Eisner & Iger Studio made with publishers came with an additional reward. When one of his clients told him that one of the Sunday papers was looking for talent for a new syndicated newspaper strip, the artist jumped at the opportunity. This led to the creation of his most famous character, The Spirit, a strip that would run for twelve years initially. The name recognition and cachet this gave Eisner, was exactly what Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster were dreaming of when they put together their proposal for a new type of hero, the superhero. Though they were a writer-artist duo, it was the furthest thing from their mind to give away their character Superman to a low-paying publisher in the untested comic book industry. They wanted to be superstars like Hal Foster or Milton Caniff who saw their strips read by millions of children and adults alike. Unfortunately for the two teenagers from Cleveland, the comic book industry was exactly where they would end up, not as top creators and, thus captains of their own destiny, but as hired hands. When Siegel returned to work on their creation in the 1950s, a decade during which he lovingly expanded the mythos of the Superman of the Silver Age, Jerry Siegel was left with little choice. He needed the money, and so did Shuster who was sadly relegated to secretly drawing hardcore porn comics. However, writer-artist teams remained the exception, at least in the early days of comic books and as far as the optics were concerned. When Timely Comics jumped with both feet into creating superhero books, the most popular genre in the wake of Supermans arrival, every character in their first superhero title, Marvel Comics No. 1 (1939), was created by a writer-artist respectively. The Human Torch was solely dreamt up by Carl Burgos while the blazing heros antithesis, the amphibian ruler The Sub-Mariner, came from the mind of artist Bill Everett. Even the lesser known, or less enduring, The Angel had one sole creator. This was of course the image artist Bob Kane wanted to project when he cut the co-creator of Batman, writer Bill Finger, out of the picture. However, that a reader would only see one name on the splash page of any given comic yarn, if there was a name at all, quickly became the new normal. Credits were usually not printed, and either the artists signed the first panel with their name or a name was entirely made up, often to obfuscate the fact that several creators were working on the title. The idea that one singular, reliable visionary was responsible for the content was not only a holdover from the newspaper strips but from the pulp magazines as well, where a house name was used to hide the fact that a merry-go-round of authors was working on a series. This was also a warning from publishers at the same time. A popular character would endure even once its originator wanted to move on, and unknown writers were easily replaceable should payment disputes ever arise.

 

Given this environment, its entirely unsurprising that Stan Lee, the man who would shape Timelys and Marvel Comics future, never even considered working in the comic book industry, let alone as a writer. In 1939, at the cusp of the first mega-boom of this still young industry, he was simply known by his real name Stanley Martin Lieber, and he was a directionless seventeen-year-old. As fate were to will it, Stan happened to be related to Martin Goodman, an erstwhile, semi-successful publisher of pulp mags who was getting in on the comic book trend right around that time, mostly since suddenly there was money to be made with these funny books and the pulp magazines were on the decline. Goodman was married to Lees cousin Jean Solomon, and when her father Robbie Solomon suggested that his nephew had to find some steady work eventually, Goodman, to impress his father-in-law, suggested that the boy might be suitable as an editorial assistant for his new line of comic books. However, when Lee showed up at Goodmans shingle Timely Comics, his editor for their superhero titles used him as an errand boy. There wasn’t much else this kid could do other than to fetch supplies, coffee and kosher sandwiches for their artists. In order not to appear completely useless and to garner some respect, Lee eventually petitioned for the writing gigs nobody wanted, certainly not the overworked artists who were not paid for scripting but their finished artwork. Due to the mailing classification, comic books had to contain several pages of written text, and Lee asked his editor Joe Simon if he could give him a hand with those. Even though he hadn’t produced much in the way of any actual writing in his young life, Stan Lee not only dreamt of himself as a writer, he was certain that one day he’d write the next great American Novel. He wouldn’t want to be wasting his real name on something as trivial as penning a simple text feature, even though this constituted his first published writing sample, or in an industry he viewed as stop gap at best, until his writing career as a serious novelist took off. The thing was it never did. What he initially considered a pen name that could be easily discarded, became the name hed be known for in a business he didnt much care for, and eventually far beyond its borders, something even a man with his ego couldnt have imagined in his wildest dreams. For the time being, the name Stan Lee stuck, and since Simon seemed fine with the work hed rendered, Lee angled for additional writing assignments. With his artists getting drafted left and right, Simon let him write comic book scenarios as well, even when Lee joined the Army. After his discharge, once Lee returned to the Timely offices, he found that Simon had left. So had many of the artists. Joe Simon and his new business partner Jack Kirby would bounce from one publisher to the next in what suddenly seemed like a dying industry. With the end of the war, superheroes became outmoded, and while some kids were still reading comics, with new readers coming in, the boom cycle had ended, leaving many creators stranded in the wake of the sudden decline. Simon and Kirby, artists who also wrote their own stories, would eventually kick off a new genre, Romance Comics, but overall sales were down. Still, a greater threat loomed on the horizon. As Crime Comics and Romance Comics found their way into the hands of millions of children, not unlike the newspaper strips, self-appointed guardians sounded the alarm. The economic upswing of the post-war years had created a middle class which moved into new model homes in the suburbs. With consumer spending at an all-time high, many parents had little time for their children. Kids in the new suburbia, like their poorer counterparts in the depressing inner cities, were running wild, or so it seemed. Soon a single culprit for this antisocial, if not downright criminal behavior in these wayward youngsters was identified. Naturally, comic books were to blame. With this noise going on which would quickly give way to the first public comic book burnings, Lee had his hands full with keeping Timelys dwindling comic book line afloat. Meanwhile, editor Vince Fago had also left the company. Vince had overseen Goodmans line of funny animal comics, but when Simon opted out, he was made editor-in-chief of Timelys entire comic book output, a title Lee inherited with a caveat. Lee would remain interim editor until a suitable replacement was found. Eager to please his relative by marriage, the man who thought himself above those pamphlets for children, kept writing more and more books to make it this much harder to replace him when the time came. Lee now had a family to support and he needed the steady paycheck, and jobs in the field of writing were scarce. This approach paid huge dividends when in January 1947, Goodman made him Managing Editor, Director of Art, a job that at one point in time had been split between Simon and Kirby. To underline the higher quality of their product, arguably, he had re-branded the entire line as Marvel Magazines with a little logo on the covers to differentiate their titles from those of the competition. Additionally, he promoted Marvel books in the co-op columns he wrote and placed in each issue. Frantically, he took it on himself to defend comics, their comics, from the critical voices that scapegoated comics for the spike in juvenile delinquency. Those were valiant efforts on his part, but the new logo wouldn’t last long, nor would he be able to save comics from the incessant moralistic outcry or from themselves for that matter. Though a cursory glance at his output as a writer of comic book stories alone might suggest that he was not just one of the most productive creators in the entire industry, especially once Goodman turned to a model of self-distribution in 1951, with his line tripled almost overnight, this was far from the truth. He wasn’t even the best paid comic book professional. Otto Binder, eleven years Lees senior, entered the comic book industry in the same year Lee did, the difference being that by that point in time, Binder had been writing prose science fiction stories for nearly a decade. At the age of just nineteen, Binder had sold his first story to one of the then highly popular pulp magazines. Otto was one part of a writing team. Otto and his older brother Earl adopted the moniker Eando Binder, and the duo would soon dominate much of the market for science fiction related material since the younger sibling was an incredible workhorse. Eventually, Earl dropped out. He had a family now and writing for the pulps was a risky proposition, and there was still time for him to pick up a new trade. Otto kept writing under their pseudonym though he discovered that Earls fears hadn’t been unfounded. As comic books saw their first meteoric rise, Otto’s job opportunities began to dry up. Though there was certainly some crossover of readers, with soldiers now also reading these cheap, four-colored pamphlets that more often than not came with illustrations of sexy, poorly attired women in provocative poses, the reason why the pulps were losing readers and withered before Otto’s own eyes was far simpler. In 1936, local lawmakers had begun to introduce new laws that made the sale of what often amounted to lewd if not downright semi-pornographic material this much harder, especially to an underage buyer. As a direct response, publishers were forced to clean up their act but fast. But with one of the main ingredients taken out of the magazines, one of the things that had made them irresistible to young male readers especially, sales quickly suffered. With his tales of spaceships, alien worlds and brave explorers of the final frontier, Binder had never been overtly sexy, still his peers even in the science fiction genre hadn’t shown this much restrained. Across the board, his beloved pulps were suddenly a lot blander, and they were selling less units from month to month. Thus, not unlike Stan Lee, Binder made use of a little nepotism. His other brother Jack had entered the comic book industry as a competent artist, but he quickly took a page from Eisner and Igers playbook, a team that had long since dissolved their partnership when Eisner entered the field of newspaper cartooning. Jack Binder had set up his own studio, or shop as these were known, to package comic books for a who is who of the top publishers who didn’t want to hire their own staff, or if, only with limited capacity. As well-known as Jack was among his clients, he was able to broker a deal between his brother and Fawcett Comics, the publisher of the second if not the most successful superhero, Captain Marvel. After a year during which Otto had proven his mettle under tough deadlines, editor Ed Herron gave him the keys to Fawcetts most valuable property. Over the next twelve years, Binder, still in his prime and steeped in the understanding that every word counted if you wanted a fat paycheck, wrote nearly one thousand stories involving Captain Marvel and his extended family, of which some members were his co-creation. Without fail, on seven days a week, he wrote ten thousand words a day, a volume that garnered Otto a six-figure annual income, making Binder effectively the highest paid creator in the entire industry. But it wouldnt last, of course. For one, DC Comics was eventually successful in their lawsuits that had been alleging that their hero was a carbon copy of Superman, forcing Fawcett to cease publication of Captain Marvel and all his ancillary characters, effectively putting Fawcett and Otto out of business. Still, even without the long-running legal feud finally seeing its resolution, the writing was on the wall. By the early 1950s, superheroes had dropped to the bottom of the pole. Readers had discovered something entirely new and exciting, horror comics. Thus, ironically, before settling in for career at DC Comics, the shingle that had managed the impossible when they killed Captain Marvel, Otto darkened the door of the little company that had driven the final nail into the coffin that contained the remains of the once all-mighty superheroes, EC Comics, the one publisher who had single-handedly made horror comics a new trend.

 

Whereas Lee had started in the comic book industry as an assistant editor and he had turned to writing to prove that he wasn’t the dead weight he was viewed as by Simon, or the artists around him, and the downfall of the pulps had driven Otto Binder to scripting scenarios for the funny books, Al Feldstein did enter the world of comics and eventually comic book writing not unlike Eisner and Simon and Kirby had, or earlier still, the likes of Foster and Raymond. Feldstein was an illustrator first and foremost. That he was pretty good at drawing amply endowed, impossibly long-legged women put him on the radar of a number of publishers who were in the market for that type of material, albeit with a funny bent to take these overtly sexualized depictions of teen girls to the next level without attracting unwanted attention from easily offended puritans. As long as this material came packaged as teen humor, risque’ drawings of young women could still be sold over the counter. The biggest purveyor of this mix of innocence and sleaze was Victor Fox, the sweaty, cigar smoking, obese and balding owner of a shingle hed unironically named Fox Feature Syndicate, but which didn’t consist of much more than a tiny office with a desk and a telephone. Still, he knew how to ensnare a promising young talent like Feldstein who’d been working all over the industry and who at a young age had a wife and two baby daughters to support. Fox wanted Feldstein to package several teen romance comic books for him, with an emphasize on the sex appeal, and with Feldstein doing the artwork and the writing as well. The latter was a new challenge for Al who didn’t have much experience with doing any scripting work, but he was good at sequential storytelling, and he had an uncanny sense for humorous scenarios that could be milked in the way Fox had in mind. Though Sunny, Americas Sweetheart No. 11, which hit newsstands at the end of 1947, just offered nine pages by Feldstein, with a script he penned under the pen name Jed Duncan, it had a highly memorable cover by Fox’s new most valuable player that made it fly off the spinner racks. All in all, Feldstein clocked in four issues which were released over the course of the next few months, four issues less than Junior, a title Feldstein had created a few months prior to the other series. Junior was Feldstein unabashedly ripping-off M.L.J. Magazines popular Archie Andrews character, but it was Sunny that had easily caught the attention of another player in the industry. After the sudden death of his abusive father M.C. Gaines in boating accident, his son Bill stood to inherit the company the elder Gaines had started a few years earlier, Educational Comics. M.C., or Max, as he was called by his few friends, was one of the pioneers of comic book industry, and at one point in time hed co-founded All-American Publications, the home of Golden Age heroes like the original Green Lantern, The Flash, and perhaps most importantly, Wonder Woman. After he’d sold his stake in the company in 1944, Gaines got it in his head that Pictures Stories from the Bible, starring none other than God, and its sequel series, Pictures Stories from the Bible: The New Testament, consequently featuring tales about Jesus, would be the next big things among the kids who were still reading comic books. They weren’t, forcing him to reverse his course. Not to see EC go under, he started an imprint using the same initials, only that now they stood for Entertaining Comics, which sounded much more promising, especially with these stories banking on the Crime Comics trend that made a lot of cash for publishers like Lev Gleason Publications. The latter publisher was selling one million units of their incredibly successful title Crime Doesn’t Pay every month. With Max dead, it was the state hed left EC in, a few offices in a foreboding looking, gray stone building on Lafayette Street in Manhattan, and a handful of creators who were half out of the door, and who were putting out a mish-mash of Crime, Romance and Western titles. But then there was this new trend, Teen Romance Comics. To hit it out of the park and to stabilize his late fathers outfit, a job he’d only taken on after his mothers incessant pleading, Bill Gaines knew he needed to add top talent to ECs roster and for this type of tales, this talent had to be Al Feldstein. As luck would have it, his letterer Jim Wroten knew Feldstein from a previous assignment. This gave Gaines an in, especially after he’d instructed Wroten to let the new star of Fox’s little empire know that the publisher was having serious money issues. With Victor Fox having to file for bankruptcy protection several times over the course of illustrious career, it wasn’t necessary a lie by any stretch of the imagination, and if it was a well-founded rumor or not at this moment in time, Gaines achieved his goal. Upon Wrotens suggestion, Feldstein came knocking, and since he didn’t have the funds, real or imagined, to match what Fox was promising the young artist, Gaines instead proposed a type of deal that was virtually unheard of in the industry. For a funny romance comic title built around a sexy, headstrong teen girl called Peggy, a series that the writer-artist was to package for the publisher, Bill offered him a huge profit participation. Feldstein couldnt say no to such a deal. Still, no sooner had the ink of their signatures on the contract dried, some bad news dropped right into Gaines lap. He got word that Teen Romance titles werent selling any longer. With comics one hundred percent returnable back in those days, his competitors were getting swamped with all the excess inventory that was being sent back to them by about every retailer, well just the stripped covers in such cases which nevertheless represented full credit for any upcoming order. A panicked Gaines convinced Feldstein to tear up their agreement, and he sweetened the deal by hiring Al as a full-time editor, a first in his tenure which had barely just begun. This was in February 1948. With only a few hands still on deck, Feldstein and Johnny Craig, the other writer-artist of the company, had their work cut out for themselves. Feldstein was now a full-time writer of crime and romance stories, on top of being the main cover illustrator, together with Craig, as well as being responsible for the artwork for the lead-in stories and handling the editorial side of ECs still anemic output. Things were alleviated tremendously when in the next year another writer-artist joined the team, a fellow with a creative vision that paralleled Feldstein’s instincts as a storyteller in a visual medium. With Harvey Kurtzman bringing his considerable talents to bear, EC now had three artists who were writers as well as a growing bullpen of highly competent draftsmen who would see a lot of growth over the next years at the company. Kurtzman quickly established a new genre, the War Comics which in time would be joined by two science fiction themed series that Feldstein set up in close collaboration with Gaines who often provided story ideas since his diet pills kept him awake at night. It would be a different genre altogether though that was destined to turn around the fortunes of this tiny, fledgling enterprise, so much so that the unlikely event happened. EC Comics was to become the drum every other publisher marched to in order to either sell unprecedented numbers of units, or on a more visceral level, to simply survive. At the end of that year, Al Feldstein snuck two horror stories into what ultimately was a failing line of copycat and directionless Crime Comics, books that would be cancelled only for the crime genre to see new prominence once Johnny Craig was given rein. While the concept of doing horror stories was not completely new, not even to EC, in fact, artist Sheldon Moldoff had set out to create the first horror comic for the publisher, an idea that Gaines had ultimately nixed, what Al Feldstein did arrived at the right moment in time. The remaining readers, who’d soon be joined by the first children of the baby boomer generation, and thus see their ranks swell to a number that was legion, were hungry for something new. The horror genre became the new engine for growth of the struggling industry, with many outfits following ECs lead, so much so that at Timely, which was now known under its new moniker Atlas Comics, Stan Lee was asked by his publisher Martin Goodman to put out as many new books as possible, which Lee, always eager to please, very much did quantity over quality. But as Gaines and Feldstein and their much-increased bullpen of artists brought their tales to ever loftier levels of sophistication, Feldstein did another thing that was new to the industry. He began to publish profiles of EC Comics illustrators on the inside covers in artist of the month features. This not only created a sense of family, but a magical bond between creatives and readers. Kids knew who the creatives were.

 

What is interesting about Feldstein’s approach, while the editor highlighted the careers of their artists, not much mentioned was made of the writers who penned the stories, other than Ray Bradbury whose prose short stories Feldstein adapted, initially without the popular authors consent. Casual readers had to come to the conclusion that ECs artists were also responsible for the content of their work, including the words in the captions and balloons. Though this couldnt have been further from the truth, both he and Kurtzman even defined the panel grids to be used by their illustrators, neither Al Feldstein nor his fellow writer-artist-editors seemed to mind that he created this impression. As with the comic strips in the newspaper, and during the first formative years of the industry, the idea that comic stories weren’t the result of collaborative efforts but were rather based on a singular vision, did prevail. This very much set the tone for any discussion comic book readers who became fans might have. If they thought of the people who actually created these works, they knew the names and the styles of these artists. Johnny Craigs drawings looked nothing like the work Al Feldstein produced, or that of Wally Wood, Jack Kamen or Al Williamson for that matter. The first two actually wrote their own scrips, why not the other two? As a reader, you simply wouldn’t know it, or you might not even care. After all, this was a visual medium. With the artists receiving the spotlight and the name recognition, deservingly so, was it surprising that fans were led to think that to succeed in comics, that in order to become a professional in this industry, you had to be an outstanding artist first and foremost? Boosted by the massive uplift the horror boom provided, sales numbers for comics saw an all-time high in 1952, the year when one billion copies were sold to kids who hunted for these intoxicating four-colored pamphlets in droves. This was the year when the first children of the post-war years discovered comics, and incidentally, when they read these horror books which seemed shocking and forbidden, and much more attractive for these reasons. Comic books taught these kids things about their world, especially if they picked up a comic title from EC. And as any fan could have told them, these were not only the best comic books on the stands, there was something subversive about them, though kids might not have used this word. But it was a word the adults thought about, some adults, and they saw the need to act. Once again, the old argument that tied comics books to any form of violent or otherwise deviant behavior in children, was dusted off and paraded around as if this was something that had just occurred to these parties. Only this time, as with the over-sexualized pulp magazines, the forebearers of the comic book, this caught the attention of politicians who needed a platform to run on, and better yet, attacking these cheap pamphlets with their depiction of gore and men and women in all kinds of indecent situations, provided an easy solution to a very real problem. It was no coincidence that the Senate hearings on juvenile delinquency that actually did take place early in 1954, were broadcast on live television, giving bored parents in their semi-affluent homes in the new suburbs something exciting to watch for a change. And really, was there anything more riveting than to see a fat, sweaty comic book publisher, EC Comics Bill Gaines in this case, whod foolishly volunteered to offer his expert testimony on the matter, vigorously, albeit nervously defending one of his companys covers that depicted a man holding a bloody axe and the decapitated head of a blonde woman as being in good taste? Though unbeknownst to whoever tuned in and to the U.S. Senators who questioned him, Gaines had told his artist Johnny Craig to tone down his proposed cover design considerably. In the first version you actually saw the victims severed neck, only that Bill Gaines didnt reveal this macabre tidbit. Still, the damage was done, and with the media having a field day with what had transpired during the hearing, and a book on the stands that warned parents about the ill effects of comics, Seduction of the Innocent by renowned child psychiatrist Dr. Fredric Wertham, the comic industry faced its extinction. Surely, no retailer could sell such books in good conscience, especially not to children. To survive, there was only one solution, one that in fact had been proposed by a handful of publishers, including EC, even before the hearings took place. The proposal for a self-regulatory body had failed back then, but forced to act, now most publishers sat down to hammer out a set of guidelines that henceforth were to govern what content and elements could be shown in books that were intended for a young audience. With its own seal and a reputable judge as its chief censor, the Comics Code Authority was set up to placate the enraged media pundits and child experts and their moralistic outcry that could be heard coast to coast. With its stringent rules, the Comics Code effectively put EC Comics out of business, that was except for a comic book turned magazine that came with humorous, satirical bent, a magazine called MAD. As for Feldstein and the artists who’d worked on those horror, crime and science fiction books, they were out of their jobs naturally, but the entire industry suffered. Without the envelope-pushing, taboo breaking horror books, readers were losing interest fast. There was television for one thing, and once they were old enough, movie theaters and drive-ins provided all the horror thrills they might crave with the cheap black and white giant monster features and the much more adult leaning films of Hammer Productions. Feldstein wouldn’t be out of the industry for long. In 1956, Gaines asked him to head MAD after he had to fire Kurtzman, the man who’d started MAD and who now wanted a controlling stake. Feldstein made the magazine into a top seller with his uncanny sense for social and political satire that fit right in with the sentiment of these kids who had outgrown comics and who were looking for something provocative and fun. Meanwhile, at DC Comics under the leadership of editor Julius Schwartz, a talent agent during the heyday of the pulps, the superheroes returned, only that they were the clean-cut young man of the jet age, and science, and soon the space age. These were nice Kennedy men who had wholesome ideas and a friendly, socially minded attitude, and their girlfriends were career girls intended to serve as role models for lapsed girl readers. These were very mild science fiction yarns that came with the sheen and high gloss of a Hollywood production thanks to accomplished artists like Carmine Infantino and Gil Kane, with former pulp writers chronicling their adventures, some of which had been in the industry since the 1940s. At what was left of Timely and Atlas however, Stan Lee had a different pitch for those kids who were discovering comic books for the first time. Sensing that there were children who couldn’t identify with a dashing police scientist who had a glamorous reporter fiance, or a handsome test pilot with the looks of actor Paul Newman, he thought about the monster books he’d been peddling for half a decade. What if the monsters, the outsiders became the heroes, reluctant heroes at that, who had many lessons to learn? And if there had to be scientists and captains of industry, why they needed to have a flaw that kept them from interacting with others as more confident, complete men could. Best of all, what if one of these teenage outsiders of the baby boomer generation was turned into a superhero? What a novel concept that was. Marvel Comics, as the company was finally known, slowly took off. Lee wasnt done yet. Stan was the first to introduce a credit box for every issue of a Marvel title, his way of telling readers who did what, and of course giving himself a prominent role as writer and editor, even though ironically, credits are contested to this day by fans and comic book historians, especially once Lee instigated what became known as the Marvel Method, i.e., just providing artists with the briefest of outlines, and later putting in the captions and the dialogue once the books were penciled. Though his illustrators did most of the heavy lifting, Lee was reluctant to give them any story credit which was an antithesis to what the fans of these books had always believe was true, that the artists were indeed the creators. But Lee, who was well adept at using the credits on the splash page as a way to engage the readers (hed assign funky sounding nicknames to the creators, making them more personable), he also had mean streak if he felt he got crossed. When a collaboration with Wally Wood, with the artist drawing and scripting Daredevil, turned sour behind the scenes, which led to the departure of Wood in the middle of the ongoing story, here was Lee with the next issue, claiming in the credit box that Wood had literally lost the plot, and it was up to sly Stan now to make sense of the mess the artist had left behind. But despite the bitterness, or in spite of it, this feeling of resentment for an industry hed now spent more than two decades in, as he was still writing funny books for children, he made it all sound like a lot of fun. Lee took the rapport Feldstein and Gaines had been building with the readers of their comics, to the next logical level, and if you werent already a fan of comics, Stan certainly made you one. Roy Thomas was exactly that and he felt lonely and misunderstood just like Lees teenage outsider Peter Parker, a character that truly took shape once artist Steve Ditko turned Lees loose concept of a Spider-Man into viable origin story. Born in 1940, Thomas came from a middle generation. He was old enough to have witnessed the landscape before EC made it big. In fact, his parents forced him to partake in one of the first comic book burnings. That was early in 1949, later that year, Feldstein and Gaines transformed storytelling in the medium of comics into something else entirely, as they would also provide the springboard for highly talented and incredibly innovative individuals to join them and to give some of their best work to the industry. Even though reading comic books beyond the introduction of the Code made you look uncool, Thomas stayed a fan, but he also remained isolated in the town of Jackson, Missouri where he was born. In fact, when learned that there were other adolescents in the country who cherished these four-colored books, and the thrills they provided, he never would have thought that anyone over the age of twelve would care about comics. But they did, and one of them was Jerry Bails, a super fan like Thomas, with whom hed exchange hundreds of letters, and that was before Bails started the fanzine Alter Ego. Like with the pulp magazines in the 1930s, fans began to socialize, discuss comics and contribute to fan magazines, and in a short while, they met their idols either for an interview or during a small fan convention. Any die-hard fan knew of course who the creators of these cheaply produced masterpieces were, and they were well aware that it often took a whole team, a penciler, an inker and a writer, to put together a comic story.

 

In fact, in the early 1970s, three teenage comic fans tracked down writer Otto Binder only to get roped into an actual sance since the long-time scripter of Captain Marvel and his Marvel family had become heavily involved with alien conspiracy theories and the occult. That was after Binder had tragically lost his daughter at a young age. The author whod done so much for the comic book industry, not only in its earliest years, but later during his brief tenure with EC Comics and his time at DC Comics, where hed co-created Supergirl with artist Al Plastino, was sadly reduced to writing books about aliens visiting our planet in the past, a sub-genre that was all the rage after Erich von Däniken hit it big with Chariots of the Gods? (1969), a pseudo-scientific book whose premise felt breathtakingly bold and original to any adult reader, though Binder could have told them that it was something in the vein of one of the many science fiction stories he and his brother Earl had written for the pulps in the 1930s. Still, Otto wanted to believe that there had to be higher purpose and a grand design of the cosmos. However, like nobody can, he couldnt see the future that was right in front of him. One of those fans who darkened his door on this afternoon, to hear Otto talk about Captain Marvel and the Monster Society of Evil, an adventure so vast it had taken Binder and his collaborators nearly two years to tell it, in a story arc that was totally unprecedented in any form of media, would soon become one of those legendary writer-artists himself, like Al Feldstein, only that when everything was said and done, this teenage fan, Frank Miller, would be viewed as the only legitimate heir to Will Eisner, who together with Bernie Krigstein served as a major inspiration to the aspiring creator. But Binder also didnt know that right around the same time he met these youngsters, another comic fan was milking the core concept of Chariots of the Gods? for a long-running storyline in a comic series called The Avengers, a title created by Lee and Jack Kirby, though he made good use of the premise of a science fiction novel called This Island Earth (1952), a book written by another forgotten author named Raymond F. Jones. But that was after Roy Thomas had gotten into writing comics, something hed never considered as a career option, not in his wildest dreams even. He had graduated from college in 1961 with a BS in Education, and hed been working as an English teacher at a high school since. Thomas had remained an avid reader of comic books and his fan letters had made it into the letters columns of Green Lantern No. 1 (cover-dated August 1960) and Fantastic Four No. 5 (July 1962) among other publications. In 1964, he took over as editor of Alter Ego when Bails left. It was the next year that put him at the crossroads people have to face in their lives. He got a fellowship from George Washington University to study foreign relations when right around the same time, he received a phone call from Mort Weisinger, the powerful editor of the Superman line of comics at DC, the former boss of Jerry Siegel and Otto Binder. Weisinger, with whom Thomas had been corresponding for some time, was looking for a new assistant. Compelled to give working in the comic industry a shot, the super fan and teacher packed his bags to decamp for New York City. The pay was bad really but working for Weisinger turned out to be untenable. After a few days a dejected Thomas sad down in his hotel room to write a letter to Stan Lee, the man whod always seemed so much fun and so gracious in his columns. Ever since Goodman had been able to cut a deal with his distributor which allowed Marvel to put out a total of 11 monthly books instead of 16 bi-monthly titles as of 1963, Lee felt overworked. Hed been on the lookout for a while now for an editorial assistant who could also write. Thomas was invited, and he soon landed his first writing assignments. Though he wasnt able to draw, hed become one of the most important voices in comics, however it was a distinction hed have to share with another writer, Denny ONeil who was a year younger than Thomas and who also hailed from the middle generation. In many ways, these two were direct opposites of one another. Thomas was fan first and foremost. He liked the fantastical aspect of comics. As far as conflicts were concerned, his head was in the same space as Lees. Thomas liked the interpersonal drama between the characters but instead of Lees soap opera elements with a heavy helping of melodrama, Thomas gave his superheroes a mod sheen and motivations which were based in pop psychology. Needless to say, that readers, fans like Thomas himself, went nuts when he hit the ground running. ONeil on the other hand had a hard time at Marvel. Lee let him write a few Western titles which felt outdated even back then. This was clearly not in his wheelhouse nor was this something the writer wanted to do. ONeil had graduated from Saint Louis University in 1960 where he had studied English literature, creative writing and philosophy. He then joined the U.S. Navy just in time to experience the political turmoil that was the Cuban Missile Crisis. This put him on a career path that felt interesting to him. Once he received his discharge, he began writing for a newspaper in Missouri as a cub reporter. Social issues were quickly on ONeils mind and he wrote several human-interest pieces. Taking the initiative, during the slow months in summer he looked into the revival of the comic industry in the wake of the return of the superheroes, which he turned into a series of columns. ONeils articles attracted Thomas attention and he offered the reporter a writers test. But as it turned out, penning a bunch of columns about the medium and its history was one thing, working on comics was the furthest thing from what ONeil was interested in. He didnt take Thomas offer seriously as he would later claim: I had a couple of hours on a Tuesday”¦ so instead of doing crossword puzzles, I did the writers test. Thomas liked what ONeil eventually did submit and here was Lee whod gotten tired of writing Doctor Strange, a character who appeared in a series called Strange Tales, a holdover from the days before the Comics Code. For some time, the series had been the home of the Human Torch, not the hero from the Golden Age but his human doppelganger, the teenage member of The Fantastic Four. These tales were nothing to write home about and his adventures were dropped when Steve Ditko created The Master of the Mystic Arts, not really a superhero but close enough. Though Lee credited himself as a co-writer in the credit boxes of each issue, like on Spider-Man, it was Ditko who did all the work. But when Ditko suddenly left Marvel, here was Lee left with holding the bag. Lees scripts, which he wrote for Bill Everett first and then for Marie Severin, the former colorist of EC Comics, were god awful, and once ONeil took over, more as a joke, only that he didnt tell anybody that, things didnt improve much. He and Marvel soon parted ways, but hed attracted the attention of an editor at Charlton Comics, Dick Giordano who was another artist who occasionally wrote his own material and who knew how to edit comics. He also had a keen eye for talent, and he wanted ONeil on his team. Since the Charlton editor gave him pretty much free rein, Dick even allowed him to use a pseudonym, Sergius OShaugnessy, a name hed picked from a Norman Mailer novel, lest his comic scripting work interfered with his serious journalistic work, ONeil agreed. It was easy work for some additional cash, the thing every young man wants. But there was something else that made ONeil want to write comic book stories in earnest. On January 6, 1967, Time Magazine published its Man of the Year issue for the previous year. However, the magazine did not name a single individual who had impacted society and the world at large, but an entire generation. The illustration on the cover depicted four young people, a Caucasian girl and boy, an African American, and a young man of Asian descent. These kids represented the baby boomers who, according to Time, were shaping a world they had never made with their deeply altruistic mindset. These kids had heeded President Kennedys call, they were politically minded, they wanted to promote awareness and change. In short, they were ready to stand up for what is right. They were willing to make a difference, to create a better world for everybody. But what about those kids who were too young to have heard JFK speak, what about the many social ills that plagued the American society? Whereas Lee used some of the tired tropes of the Cold War for his earlier superhero stories and Thomas was mostly apolitical or didnt want to get too involved in reality, this was something ONeil would not only embrace, he suddenly realized that writing comic book stories provided him with a platform to promote a political agenda, and in that he was the first to do so since the days of EC Comics. As his scenarios began to change, so did the writer. Dressed like the wannabe hippie he was turning into; he wore black turtleneck sweaters combined with a Nehru jacket long before a rube like Thomas even knew what that was. Still, it took a year and a half before ONeil was given a bigger megaphone to shout his ideas from the rooftops. When Giordano was made an offer to move to DC Comics, it came with the understanding that hell bring his top talent over as well, and this included ONeil. Ironically, his first work was on a character Steve Ditko had left vacant. From there he moved to Challengers of the Unknown, an all-male team of explorers that Jack Kirby had created in the 1950s and which had served as a loose inspiration for the Fantastic Four. ONeil removed the older white mentor figure from the group in favor of a young, strong-minded woman who also took over the role of team leader. This was the equivalent of Mister Fantastic getting booted from Marvels First Family, only to see The Invisible Girl moved into his place, only that nobody was reading this series. The same was true for Wonder Woman. When editor Jack Miller asked ONeil to shake things up to help with lagging sales, the scripter took this as a full-fledged mandate to bring down the house. With artist Mike Sekowsky, ONeil stripped her of her powers, her costume, her mother and Amazon sisters on the magical, hidden island of Themyscira, heck the whole island, and her love interest. Wonder Woman, or Diana Prince as shed only be known during this time, became a globe-trotting adventurer clad in a mod white catsuit. This didnt sit well with feminists whod grown up with the character, but ONeil wouldnt know it. Instead, he moved on to DCs biggest team book, Justice League of America, where he had the heroes go up against villains like over-population and pollution. This was Kill Your Darlings, only that he had no love for these characters, at least not yet. It wasnt until he turned his attention to the topics that played out on a private stage between just two or three characters, the interpersonal interactions which were sometimes quiet and then again ear shattering loud, that he hit his stride. ONeil combined the character work Thomas did, with themes like racism, bigotry or intolerance, exactly the same topics Feldstein had tackled two decades earlier, to show readers that the way folks interacted towards each other had big implications in a societal context, in their world and ours. Against this background, as he progressed as a writer, its no coincidence that when he was asked by Thomas if he wanted to provide a story for Marvels first black and white magazine Savage Tales, ONeil took it as an opportunity to use this storytelling real estate for story about race relations that was reminiscent of EC Comics preachies, the socially conscious stories that Al Feldstein and Carl Wessler had been telling in Shock SuspenStories.

 

Thomas had witnessed one of the comic book burnings of the 1940s firsthand, but his stories were set in the fantasy sandbox other writers and artists had created, he even liked using quotes from literature for the titles of his tales. ONeil, who had seen political consequences in action and who wanted to be a part of a generation he was a few years too old for, he went all in on politics and ideologies feet first. What united them, though, was an unspoken understanding that they were responsible for bringing on the next wave of creators, only that ONeil went the whole nine yards with actually mentoring promising talent once he became an editor. By the same token, Thomas, as editor-in-chief of Marvels entire line, was simply too busy or perhaps this wasnt in his wheelhouse. When for example Steve Gerber, a copy writer at an advertising agency, asked him about job opportunities at the company, Thomas simple sent the man Marvels standard writers test, then he made him an assistant editor, a job an excellent writer like Gerber was ill-suited for. Thomas treated Gerber the same way hed been treated, and had he not realized his mistake in time before the frustrated aspiring writer called it quits, Thomas and Marvel may have missed one of the most original and exciting new voices in the industry in the 1970s, at fate Steve Gerber and many readers who quickly fell in love with the writers quirky, idiosyncratic style were luckily spared. Still, Gerber had to prove himself as he was improving his craft by trial and error and, given the brutal deadlines that came with monthly comics, by combat and fire. ONeil on the other hand, a writer who was never a huge fan of comic books during his childhood, he did much more. When he was made the editor of Marvels Daredevil in 1980, Frank Miller was the new regular artist of the series. With just a handful of issues, Miller had returned an urgency to the world of the character that had been absent since Gene Colan had departed the title some seven years earlier. Now Miller, a relatively new addition to Marvels talent roster, told him that he wanted to try his hand at scripting. For one, the artist wasnt happy with the plots writer Roger McKenzie provided, but more importantly, Miller understood comics as a medium that was best served if the stories were based on the artistic vision of one auteur, and the story he had in mind for Daredevil came from exactly this place, since his idol was one of the first true visionaries comic books had seen, namely Will Eisner. Miller had an uncanny sense for visual storytelling even this early into his career, but he wasnt a writer by a long shot. ONeil, who believed in his idea for where to take Daredevil story-wise, nurtured Miller on narrative structure, character motivations and basic technical storytelling aspects like plotting and pacing. He also recommended a long list of books on these subjects for Miller to read, and by elevating him to the position of co-plotter, he gave the artist the opportunity for some on-the-job training. For McKenzie this meant that the writing was on the wall, though the decision to remove him from the series in favor of Miller was a decision then editor-in-chief Jim Shooter would have to make. Again, ONeil petitioned for the artist and aspiring writer, and Miller got his wish, while ONeil continued to work with him on his scripts. In a way, this was a reversal of the time Wally Wood had left Daredevil in a huff and Lee had figuratively thrown him under the bus in front of any reader who bothered with reading the credit boxes. But in a way, history had completed its cycle. Eisner, based on his strengths as a visual storyteller, had successfully made the leap from being a creator of comics into the world of newspaper strip cartooning, hed use the same packaging technique in this arena as well, Miller was about to give comics the sophistication and wide-spread acclaim Feldstein and Lee had always fought for. Miller eventually went to work for DC Comics where he (and his inker Klaus Janson and colorist Lynn Varley) created the mini-series that would change the comic industry forever, and when he did, the editors who supported him on The Dark Knight Returns were Giordano and ONeil. Still, Miller was just six years old when he put some crude pencil drawings onto several sheets of paper he then stapled together and held up to his surprised mother, proclaiming that this was going to be his chosen career. Miller was fifteen when he and his pals figured out where Otto Binder lived. They knew who Otto Binder was, and they rung his doorbell to say thank you to this legend, and to discuss comics. But what about a kid from the baby boomer generation who had dropped out of comics once the Code was established like many of his peers and who didnt have any love for the new superheroes? What if the only point of reference he ever knew, as far as comic stories were concerned, were the stories that Al Feldstein and his collaborators had created, but which were a decade and a half in the past when he put in his first work in sequential storytelling? Ironically, or perhaps consequently, Bruce Jones started his career in comics at the same point the industry had once started before it became an industry, with the newspaper strips and the pulps. But then, after what perhaps was a promising start, Jones ran into several walls that seemed immovable, and for good reason. These were the same walls the comic book industry had come to rely on for support in the meantime. Born in Kansas City, Missouri on Halloween of 1946, Bruce Eliot Jones was one of the first children of the baby boomer generation. This meant that he was one of the kids who helped with making 1952 the biggest year in sales the comic industry would ever experience. He was six years old then, and like many of his friends from school, boys and girls alike, he was into reading comic books, best of all horror comics. And if you liked horror comics, even a small child knew that those books from EC Comics were the best. EC stories were to leave a huge impression young Bruces mind, not only the words, but the art that was created by the exceptional talents Gaines and Feldstein had managed to enlist. In fact, the impact of the comics he was reading between the age of six to eight was so strong, that for a long time anything that came after felt bland. As he himself said in an interview with Richard J. Arndt: To me, most comics after 1955 felt colorless and apologetic”¦ I dont think anyone who didnt live during the advent of the Comics Code can understand it. You had to be there. Anyway, at the age of eight or nine it was time to get out of comic books. He enjoyed doing sports, and there was television, and if he wanted to read something like a book, hed pick up a sampler of stories by Ray Bradbury, Charles Beaumont, Theodore Sturgeon or Richard Matheson. Later when he was a bit older, and since he felt less like a nerd and more like a badass, he gravitated to MAD magazine and Playboy. Every kids dad and uncle had a stack somewhere in the house. You just had to wait for the proper moment. Of course, Jones read Hugh Hefners publication for the articles. Well, not exactly: Playboy in particular was a great source of beautifully illustrated science fiction”¦ The truth was many of us really did savor the fiction and cartoons as much as the pulchritude. Playboy was a kind of badge”¦ At fourteen or fifteen when he became interested in girls, comic books were the furthest thing from his mind. Jones was too old to be impressed by the shiny new superheroes, not even those that came from Marvel and who were decidedly less shiny: Whats widely regarded as the ”˜Stan Lee era of the 1960s felt like a watered-down period to kids raised on pre-code horror comics, film noir”¦ and post war guilt. Still inspired by those science fiction illustrations he saw in Playboy, and earlier still in those EC Comics, especially with Al Williamson and Roy Krenkel, Jones tried his hand at drawing and he soon discovered that he could draw, or at least, he thought that hed discovered that he could draw. As luck would have it, at the end of the decade he became acquainted with Vern Corriel who was the Kansas City publisher of the Burroughs Bibliophiles. During the early days of the pulps, Edgar Rice Burroughs had been all the rage and his characters even made it into the Sunday papers. Jones would sometimes simply visit Vern to stare at the original J. Allen St. John paintings or drawings by Frank Frazetta hed been lying around. After hed looked at some of Jones fan art, Corriel did let him write and draw his own Tarzan strip which actually got published. By then, Jones had finished college and he was married. Brimming with too much confidence, that sort of thing youll have when everything in life comes easy to you and nobody said no to you, he and his lovely wife Yvonne packed their few belongings, and they left their families to move to New York City where Bruce would be working as comic book artist. That was the obvious choice since there were only a few syndicated newspaper strips left and landing such a job, youd have to beat more than one hundred applicants with decades of experience. Getting into comics was easy by comparison, or so he imagined. Naturally, he went to the two major publishers to show them the portfolio hed put together over the course of two or three years. At Marvel Jones was told: Well, thats some pretty nice line work but can you draw more like Jack Kirby? When hed walked a few blocks in Manhattan and he actually managed to get a portfolio review with DCs head honcho Carmine Infantino, the man who had co-created the Silver Age Flash simply said: Huh. You draw like Frank Frazetta. Infantinos comment wasnt meant as a compliment. For the first time in his life, Bruce Jones was told that he wasnt wanted.

 

But there was something else. Other than the nerds and outsiders whod taken solace in reading comic books and who still hid their pimples and acne scars behind their beards and long hair, or the guys from the older generation who were going bald like Carmine Infantino and Julius Schwartz, Bruce Jones was a reasonably handsome guy, a jock who seemed like he was more comfortable on a tennis court than in a basement behind a drawing table. And he didnt look like he lit up while listening psychedelic rock, instead he had all the hallmarks of a winner who went home and fucked the prom queen. Worst of all, he had the visage of those bullies at school whod laughed at you for reading your comics and who gave you a wedgie or worse. Yes, some of the illustrators werent bad looking in an artsy sort of way, but not the writers. A writer was an introvert by design, even a shut-in, not an outgoing, tanned individual who didnt need to put on hair piece, an expensive watch and a pair of Gucci shoes to garner much attention and to telegraph to the ladies that he was a success story. To an editor like Schwartz who was only ever able to interact with the secretaries by making crude jokes and forcing himself on them, Jones was the equivalent of Robert Redford having just walked through your office door. Still, he had a dark intensity that made every nerd slightly nervous, like he was privy to some sexual goings-on that unattractive riff raff would never have access to. But being attractive, and perhaps even interesting to talk to, gave him the confidence to make friends. Once he had to settle for the lowest of the lowest among the publishers who were willing to take a brief look at his work, a fly by night outfit which called itself Major Magazines Inc., and which, despite its bold, boastful moniker, was pretty much the industrys equivalent of one of the studios on poverty row of the old Hollywood system, he still got to meet one of the men who would change his fortunes, at least to some degree, and his name obviously wasnt Terry Bisson, the editor of Majors only publication Web of Horror, which was on its last leg anyway. Bisson commissioned a little 6-pager, which Jones was to write and draw. This was indeed major good news, only that Web of Horror was a poor mans clone of the type of black and white comic magazines Jim Warren was publishing who had found a workaround for the Comics Code. You could do horror tales in the vein of EC as long as you didnt put them in an actual comic book, but a magazine intended for adult readers. The thing was that Warren, who had just launched his third horror magazine a year earlier, and his editor Archie Goodwin, knew how to attract top creators who wanted to work outside the strict restrictions of the Comics Code, even some of Gaines former superstars like Reed Crandall, Wally Wood or Johnny Craig. Web of Horror on the other hand, was in the market for cheap novices, that would be Jones, and has-beens like former Supergirl writer Otto Binder, only that Jones wouldnt have known who that was. Still, he met a serious and somewhat odd-looking artist named Bernie Wrightson who invited Jones and Yvonne to a party at a friends house, charming as Jones was. As it turned out, Bernies friend was another artist, Jeff Jones, no relations to Bruce, who had a fascinating wife named Louise. Bruce was immediately smitten, in fact all the guys were, but none of them had his boyish good looks or his people skills. This being the times when the free love movement was slowly getting translated into key parties, and they were artists, and Bruce knew how to talk a big game. But nothing happened. He still managed to make an impression, if only he had some work to show for. As for his story, his first published work since the Tarzan story hed done for his friend Corriel, it was nothing to write home about. Point of View looked like a story from an issue of EC Comics Weird Science, because essentially that was what it was. The plot was very basic. A space jockey crash landed his rocket ship on an alien world. Confident that hed soon get rescued, he started to explore this world and its fantastic flora, that is until he comes across some wild beast which looked like a primitive man only with fungus growing all over him. When he discovers that his raygun is out of juice, our protagonist beats a panicked retreat into the lush jungle. With virtually no food except for plenty of mushrooms within his reach, this vegetarian meal proves excellent. After a nap, the space jockey senses the presence of other people, and indeed, the two women and the man he sees are very gorgeous humans, or at least human looking individuals, and they are very naked. The trio leads him to a clearing where he spots an incredible golden city in the distance. Still, something seems amiss as our guy senses that none of this feels real. He figures he must be hallucinating, and the fungi are most likely to blame. But lo, this becomes a moot point when he sees that theres a spaceship from his organization about to touch down. He even knows the three men who emerge from the silver rocket ship, but as he runs towards them, surprisingly, one of them pulls his raygun and strikes him down with a fatal energy beam. As the men gather around the body of the fallen space jockey, the last panel showed the readers what they saw, and it wasnt pretty. Somehow those alien mushrooms had turned our protagonist into one of those primitive, fungus covered beasts. Though his tale seems open for interpretations, drug use and drug culture come to mind, it actually isnt. The plot is very reminiscent of Twos Company”¦, a story by Feldstein, Al Williamson and Frank Frazetta which was first published in Weird Science No. 21 (September-October 1953). In the EC story we encounter a marooned space explorer as well, a dashing hero in the romantic ideal the likes Williamson loved to depict, and he too meets a beautiful young girl, clad only in a bikini made from fur, and when he is about to get rescued by the crew of another vessel, theres a shootout that resolves the plot. Only that it is the protagonist who does the killing, thats after his would-be rescuers point out that hes alone on this planet. Indeed, this girl, Velda, she vanishes at this very moment. Finding this reality impossible to accept, our man Forbes opted to kill the three men, even going to the length of completely obliterating their rocket ship. This act prompted the immediate return of Forbes love, only the Velda who did come back was an improved version of herself, she could speak. This was a great script by Feldstein and the art by Williamson and Frazetta is outstanding. Jones did actually reference the story when he uses a flying dinosaur that looks like his version of the creature Forbes saved Velda from during an earlier flashback sequence, their version of a meet cute. Bruce Jones was obviously paying homage to his darlings with his story, and his artwork was the best approximation of Williamsons style he could manage to squeeze into the 6-pager he created, only that his work wasnt in the same ballpark. Not only is his tale highly derivative, it isnt very good either, and it certainly wasnt the door opener hed hoped it would be. Major was out of business with issue No.3 of Web of Horror, the issue Jones tale appeared in. In the next months, all hed be able to sell were some illustrations for Galaxy and some other science fiction digests. With their funds running perilously low only months after he and Yvonne had come to New York, something had to give. The couple moved to New Jersey. Once theyd settled in, Bruce began to work on a fallback plan. Hed been writing short stories since he was eight, stories he put together for his own amusement, and perhaps this was something he could make money with. While he was still looking for jobs in comic magazines, Jones started work on his first novel. He aimed low this time. The Contestants was a quick cash grab intended for a release as a paperback.

 

For a time at least, Jim Warren was too successful with his horror magazines not to attract the envy of men who felt they could do what he and his editors had achieved. Soon, Sol Brodsky took a hiatus from his job as production manager at Marvel, and with the backing of a shady business partner, he founded Skywald Publications at the end of 1970. Once Lee and Thomas got word of this, they couldnt let this stand. They also rushed out their own black and white magazine, Savage Tales, which came on the heels of Skywalds first periodical, Nightmare. But Skywald got lucky. Their boss Martin Goodman wasnt into this idea, and as long as he was around, Marvel wouldnt be in this market. Savage Tales was cancelled after its debut issue, while to Brodskys delight, Nightmare took really off. Hed hit on something. Now he needed talent. As with Major Magazines, Brodsky could only pay for the veterans and the beginners, the latter category fit the untested Jones to a t. A year after Point of View saw print and with just one subsequent story which he did for a self-published one-shot his friends Bernie Wrightson and Jeff Jones had put together, he finally managed to sell his next story as writer-artist, though again, he went to the same well. As a creator, Jones was a boy who lived in a bubble that said 1950. A Rottin Deal, published in Nightmare No. 3 (April 1971), took readers back to the earliest days of ECs horror stories when shock value and a gruesome twist far outweighed in-story logic. This was the tale of wealthy adventurer Felix Townsend and his young nephew Peter who hunted for a hidden treasure in some desert wasteland. It was also a tale for which Jones used Feldsteins method to hook readers in from the get-go. The splash page, which served as a cold opening and usually showed a horrific image to whet the readers appetite, already told the kids that this story, like many others, would end badly. Jones used a double page spread with two insert panels on the second page, his way of introducing the antagonistic relationship of Felix and Peter which would develop throughout the story, only that Felix was a walking dead now, whereas his young, handsome nephew was on the run from a man who obviously refused to die. But Peter was no good guy as we learn from the second insert panel. While Uncle Felix is flush with excitement as he puts on his boots, obviously eager to get cracking to find the treasure with the map hed just purchased from one of the locals, Peter deeply detests his older relative. He is wealthy enough in Peters book and this hunt for a hidden mine full of gold is a hunt for fools gold. But theres something that interests the bored youngster. His uncle has promised to remember him favorably in his will, a reward for being such a loyal companion. Peter is anything but, still he knows better than not to keep up appearances. It wont be easy this time. As they venture into the brutally blazing desert heat, as per Felixs edict, each man is only allowed one canteen. With the way Felix has mapped out their route and several water holes along their path, if they conserve the water carefully, itll all work out fine. Only that young Peter doesnt have the much older mans resolve or his physical constitution. Alas, after seemingly endless, torturous hours of being exposed to the uncaring desert sun, thankfully they arrive at the first water hole, then the next, and a third. But now a thought occurs to Peter. Why wait till Uncle Felix shuffled off this mortal coil on his own accord? If he died out here in this wasteland, Peter could make it look like an accident, without anybody being any the wiser. With Felix drinking from the pool of the life-preserving clear liquid, Peter, like some predatory beast, sneaks up on him from behind to bash his head in with a heavy rock. Before he leaves him for dead, he mustnt forget the mans canteen. As he heads back to the camp, his canteen runs empty quickly, but theres the first the water hole with its cool salvation. Before he takes a sip, his eyes catch a most surprising sight. His uncles severely decomposing corpse lies in the transparent pool at the tip of his boots. Peter figures that animals must have dragged the body to this spot, but as he can tell from the stench that he suddenly perceives in the air around him, the water has been polluted. He can still use his uncles canteen, and if he travels by night, the heat wont tire him out just as quickly as before. Shockingly, as he gets to the next stop, theres Felix corpse again, and his face is a grisly skull by now. Once more the old mans rotting remains pollute the resource, he needs to survive what feels like a death march. Whats even worse, Peters used up the water from his uncles canteen. Convinced that this is more than happenstance, and that his dead uncle is out to get him for what he did, like a headless chicken and deeply terrified, Peter rushes from the water hole and into the unforgiving desert without much sense of where hes going, that is until the instincts of his lizard brain put him on track to the last water hole. He knows he must reach his destination before Uncle Felix does if he wants to put any water down his dry gullet and into his wanting, aching stomach. As he tracks across the desert, the increasingly desperate man has to face an additional obstacle. A sudden sandstorm nearly blinds him, still Peter can tell that he isnt alone. In the storm, he makes out the figure of another traveler. As he gets closer, the man who murdered Uncle Felix in cold blood realizes that its the rotting corpse of his relative who had trusted him and who hed killed. The dead man is walking in the same direction. He knows that he must outdistance him, or hell die, buried underneath whirling, stinging sand. When the storm finally abates, Peter finds that hes by himself. Was it a hallucination?, he wonders, but then he discovers footprints in the sand that lead to the oasis he must reach. Old Felix, or what is left of him, has nearly made it. In a last-ditch effort, Peter mobilizes his final reserves as he commands his legs to propel him ahead, ahead of that ghastly apparition that once was a living, breathing man of flesh and blood, reduced to foul flesh and brittle bones that still walk, only that the dead man hasnt reached the pool of water yet. Gathering all his remaining strength, Peter lunges his dehydrated body forward as he stumbles with shaking knees into the cool pond before the putrid lumps of dead skin that hang from Felixs skeletal frame can soil it. Hes done it, hes beaten Uncle Felix. Splashing his face with water, drinking hastily, the elated nephew allows himself to lean back and to behold his grim, silent tormentor whom he curses out and mocks as he enjoys his victory. With a triumphant smirk on his handsome visage, Peter makes it back to the tent theyd left earlier. Eager to find his uncles will that will see him independently wealthy, Peter frantically rummages through the dead mans papers, that is until the young man learns the truth. Hes murdered a man who was already dying. His hands were now trembling far beyond his control as they gripped the thin sheet of paper a little tighter, and his eyes were staring down at the words his brain was still trying to process, to even comprehend. But eventually, his brain did understand. What he was reading was a telegram from Felixs doctor, and the dire message it brought, confirmation of a terrifying diagnosis, it did the trick. His expression of triumph gave way to one of slack-jawed dumbfoundedness which quickly changed into a mask of unbridled terror, quite literally. You see, dear uncle was suffering from leprosy, and Peter, hed been drinking from the old mans canteen out in the desert. One glance into the mirror the men had been using to shave in the mornings, it revealed the horrific consequences. The once tight skin of Peters face was rotting away, and the grin his nearly exposed teeth showed, it was a grimace of a death foretold. The end. Jones story was clearly a marked improvement over his attempt from a year earlier. While still shaky, and an apparent lack of skill and confidence notwithstanding, his artwork was more in line with what readers had come to expect from a lower-tier publisher like Skywald, and if this sounds like a backhanded compliment, its because that is what it is. His page layouts, which are looser than in his prior work, show promise. In a few panels, Jones genuinely evokes a sense of creeping dread as he slowly builds the tension from page to page. However, with Jones riffing this heavily on EC Comics, even down to a twist that didnt make much sense (Peters face went from pretty to badly decomposed in the span of one page) fairly or unfairly, he invited comparisons that werent flattering. Though this is a nice little story when taken out of context, Jones clearly betrayed his influences when he even swiped the story title, and it didnt end there. In A Rottin Trick, Tales from the Crypt No. 29 (April-May 1952), Al Feldstein used a very similar twist ending, but not only was his script much tighter, and it had a tragic angle, Joe Orlando had illustrated it. And looking at Jones pages, one thing was obvious. He was no Joe Orlando. Still, on a narrative level, Jones took something else from Feldstein. Like many characters that populated the worlds Feldstein had created in his stories, Peter was an unlikable protagonist, and what is remarkable, Jones based his look on himself. As far as the concept of morally reprehensible characters went, characters that would get their comeuppance in the end, Jones carried this aspect forward to his next stories which he did for Skywald, still as a writer-artist. Plague of Jewels, which was published in Psycho No. 4 (September 1971), starts like a movie serial about adventurers seeking hidden treasures, only that Jones quickly deconstructs the romantic ideal his two protagonists display on a surface level. The two handsome adventurers who are clad in what are the signifiers of a 1930s danger seeker, aviator jacket, t-shirt, jodhpurs and leather boots, and who we find in the jungles of Peru, theyre anything but.

 

Though Jones once again tries his darndest to evoke Al Williamsons style, and the artists romantic idea of heroic men valiantly facing impossible odds, the artist was steeped in the culture of machismo since spending his childhood in Colombia, he has the instincts how to make these characters more intriguing. His adventurers are in fact lowly grifters. Brown, a tall fellow with a slender, athletic build and hair like the sun, who looks like the prototypical Williamson protagonist, he has conned a rich woman out of her jewels. Once he and his comrade Wayne have made it out of the jungle, theyll be set for life. But Jones still adds some psychological layering. His hero, a word one wants to use with air quotes, is hounded by terrifying nightmares that may very well stem from his amoral interior which his attractive exterior does camouflage well enough, dreams thatll be proven true. Jones artwork is nice, and it complements the tale he is telling well, while hes staggering headfirst towards using his new shtick of characterization in a competent way, not unlike his con men who stumble right onto a treasure thats hidden underground. The men cant believe their luck, but naturally, the bad apples come to blows over the treasure theyve found, not because of any skills as explorers, but by chance. When all is said and done, Wayne lies dead at Browns shiny boots. This is when the story takes a supernatural turn, as Jones presents a disturbing twist on how fairy tales go, with Brown cast as Prince Charming. In the end, his eyes will be gouged out by a group of mystical warriors, lest hed be offended by the hideous visage of their princess. But Jones has another inversion for us. His handsome hero-adventurer is wed to the proverbial ugly duckling, with a body to die for, only he no longer has eyes to see. All things considered, once Jones began to shift the EC Comics template hed been using, here was progress at last. While he continued working for Brodsky, as he garnered a couple of follow-up assignments from Skywald, he set his sights on the prey which had eluded him thus far, except for a 2-page text story hed been able to sell to Warren Publishing after Jim said: Id like to see how you draw porn! As if he were Joe Shuster! When it came to comic magazines, Warren was the biggest game in town, until Marvel flooded the market with a slew of similar periodicals once Goodman was cut out of the picture, after the sale of his outfit and the expiration of his contract. With the muscle of Curtis Circulation, the distribution shingle their corporate overlords would soon buy, taking down Skywald would be something they did before lunch. When Jim Warren kicked the hornets nest in 1964 by entering the world of comic publishing while staying clear of the Codes reach by simply putting out comic magazines, not comic books, Jims world would have been ready for the taking if your name was Bruce Jones. Creepy No. 1 featured a rogues gallery of many of EC Comics finest artists like Reed Crandall, Jack Davis, Joe Orlando and even Jones hero Al Williamson, and under the stewardship of editor Russ Jones and later Archie Goodwin, in many ways this was a re-birth of Gaines shingle, sans the social criticism. Noticeably absent from the team roster was of course Al Feldstein who had become the highest paid magazine editor in America thanks to the sweetheart deal he and Gaines had made as remuneration for Feldsteins services on MAD. With the satire magazine selling millions of copies every month and meanwhile, as a subsidiary of Warner Communications, with its own distribution outlet, not even Warners maverick CEO Steve Ross messed with MAD or Feldstein. Still, like Jones, Warren riffed on what Gaines and Feldstein had done in comics, and it paid handsomely. So much in fact, that Creepy was soon followed by Eerie and Vampirella and a handful of other titles. That was until readers started to grow tired of the same old tales that felt out of touch and out of time. With funds running dry, Archie Goodwin soon embarked to Marvel, leaving his former boss high and dry. To survive, his monster mags needed fresh blood, and in 1970, no blood was fresher than the blood that pumped through the arteries and veins of a baby boomer, and not any kid of that generation, but that of the man who ironically was destined to represent the biggest roadblock Bruce Jones would have to overcome, except for the fact that in a case of life imitating art, or in a resolution worthy of an EC story written by Feldstein, hed fail. When this kid, who was two years younger than Jones but still had his first comic book story published at the tender age of eighteen, darkened the door of Jim Warrens office, the publisher almost laughed him out of the room. Warren told him that he couldnt take anyone seriously who looked like he neednt to shave yet, but that was before he read any of his stories. During his childhood days, Roy Thomas was one of the first super-fanboys of comics, but without any doubt, Bill DuBay was his better. Being a nerd, DuBay wasnt a popular kid at school. Like the much older Thomas, he didnt leave comics behind once he hit puberty, quite the contrary. He soaked up Stans new superheroes who didnt excite Jones at all, and when he was fourteen, DuBay was awarded the first Marvel No-Prize for owning the largest comic collection among all of Marvels readers. Like Thomas, DuBay paid his dues by working on fanzines for which he drew and wrote stories, and in 1969, he and Thomas collaborated on a story for Marvel. And not only would he go on to marry the sister of comic book artist Rich Buckler, the couple would name their first child Crystal, after the character from The Fantastic Four, a book Buckler worked on. To a man like Warren, DuBay couldnt have come looking for gigs at a more opportune time. His magazines were badly in need of a massive overhaul, and Jim knew that a kid this talented wouldnt be long for his world if he didnt extend an offer to him that made DuBay want to stay at Warren. If he played his cards right, it was like killing two birds with one stone. Thus, like Bill Gaines vis-à-vis Al Feldstein twenty years prior, he made DuBay an offer he couldnt refuse by making him managing editor of Warren Publishing. Since the junior writer and newly appointed editor had his work cut out for himself, DuBay immediately got cracking. He cleaned out the cobwebs of gothic horror that had accumulated around everything during Goodwins tenure, most noticeable in the pages of the Vampirella series, a strip DuBay personally took on. With Warren running low on funds and many artists from the early days having departed, he hand-picked extremely talented illustrators from Spain who not only were cheaper but added a fashionable European flair to the mix. Warren Publishing of 1971 and going forward had little in common with what readers saw in 1964 when they picked up the first issue of Creepy. When Bruce Jones started knocking on their door, his art and his stories were all wrong for what DuBay had in mind. But that wasnt all. He immediately took a dislike to the good-looking, somewhat smarmy Jones whod weaseled himself into a friendship with Jeff Jones and even Bernie Wrightson who was on the cusp of making the big leagues. It’s easy to cast DuBay in the role of a super-villain, a bookish comic book nerd turned professional who had no respect for an upstart like Jones and who saw the need to act as a gatekeeper of the comic book industry that owed him for his many years of being a super-fan. But that is ignoring that time and time again Jones proved that he lived in a snow globe of a past that Goodwin liked and DuBay rejected since their current crop of readers either never knew that this time had ever existed, or they just didnt care for what felt like their fathers old comic books. Despite its psychological angle, Plague of Jewels was painfully old-fashioned, and if you told a casual comic fan that A Rottin Deal was a reprint of a 1950s story, they had no reason to doubt you. Still, like a master chess player, the young managing editor was savvy enough to now and then throw Jones a bone that had already been picked clean, like when he let him pencil a story Steve Skeates had penned for Eerie No. 36 in November 1971. And when Wrightson suggested that Jones work didnt need any inking, DuBay let that slide. If this was all it took to keep his star artist happy. But since DuBay knew a pretentious bullshitter when he saw one, there wouldnt be any gigs for Jones at Warren for the next three years. As Jones hit the pavement, looking for work while he clung to any assignment he would get from Skywald, a publisher soon thereafter pushed out of the market by Marvels new black and white offerings and their sister companys distribution network, and with his confidence hitting its lowest point, he seriously contemplated moving back to Kansas City. But like with many of the yarns hed been swiping as was his wont, thered be a twist to his story as well. In Amazing Fantasy No. 15, readers saw a rejected and dejected kid with slumped shoulders and glasses like Coca Cola bottles whimpering to himself that hell show them all, hell show the whole world. Peter Parker was a high school student, a science geek. He wasnt attractive by any stretch of the imagination or athletic. He didnt go home to fuck the prom queen, at least not for now, not with the way Ditko had conceived the character, instead even the girls at his school who came from the wrong side of the tracks and thus were on the rough and tumble side, laughed in his face, and the bullies, they beat him up. Still, as fate willed it, Peter Parker became a superhero, and hed become a better person for it. Bruce Jones was nothing like this lonely outsider, but in a weird way, his arc was that of Peters in reverse. To survive in this world the nerds had built, a world in which he was the rejected freak sans super-powers or clout, to make the accident happen that was to bestow him with a set of fantastic abilities, he needed to say fuck it, and let go of his ego and his darlings. This was when he decided to leave it all on the dance floor.

 

Shortly after hed submitted his latest script to Warren, certain that it would be rejected like the other tales hed sent their way during the last three years, his friends Bernie and Jeff came to New Jersey to tell him that DuBay had read ”˜Jenifer and gone ape. Bernie wanted to draw it. I was in shock. But his and Yvonnes bags were packed, and they had given notice on their tiny apartment. Not only was Jones not getting anywhere, which put a serious strain on his financial situation and his marriage, hed noticed that the center wouldnt hold. It seemed that things around him became unglued. His wifes folks were fighting bitterly which was the main reason why the young couple wanted to move back to Missouri, to act as a buffer, at least that was the lie he and Yvonne told each other not to cause further injury to his badly bruised ego. But that was a really bad idea since their relationship wasnt doing so hot either. He and Yvonne would eventually divorce. Then there were his friends Jeff and Louise. The cute Louise had modeled for Bernie for the cover of one of DCs horror anthology comics, only that he and the scripter of the cover story, Len Wein, had turned their character Swamp Thing into the star of his own series, a move that laid the groundwork for Bernie to gain a huge following. He was now a fan favorite, as Louise, whod worked at magazine publisher McFadden-Bartell, made a couple of decisions that shocked Jones. Louise and Jeff had called it splits after theyd been constantly together since their college days in 1964, and she was currently dating a fellow artist named Walt Simonson. This state of flux unmoored Julianna, her and Jeffs daughter who was seven at that time. This situation also caused a sense of abandonment by proxy in Bruce Jones whod grown up with his brother in the suburbia of the Eisenhower years when divorcing your spouse was a big taboo. The writer-artist, who was quite conscious about his good looks, had to wonder what this did to a child when the parents relationship hit the rocks and hit rock bottom. Maybe this left the child bitter and resentful, ugly even, or perhaps he was simply projecting, since what Louise also did, it affected him on a personal level. She told him that she got hired by Warren Publishing as an assistant editor, and that she worked for Bill DuBay who wouldnt look twice at [his] stuff. It felt like a kind of betrayal in so many ways even though he didnt tell her that. But in his mind, these events had brought some deep-seated insecurities to the fore, and somehow his thoughts and fears percolated into the words he put into his latest script. Maybe Tim Seeley, a horror comic writer from a generation once removed, said it best when he called Jones story one of the most unsettling and perfectly done horror shorts of all time. Seeley offered an explanation why he thought this: The story relies on tone and ideas to frighten you, which is something I think comics can to better than other mediums. But if you consider the space Jones head was in around the time, he typed a manuscript which unbeknownst to him then, his friend Bernie would illustrate, you get a better understanding why the story stands out among his oeuvre. The bulk of the narrative of this 10-pager is related through an extensive flashback sequence from the perspective of a man who happens upon a clearing in the woods as hes on a hunting trip with his rifle, perhaps on a day on the weekend. He seems like a regular guy, a mild-mannered, mid-level manager at an insurance company with an office, or maybe he runs his own business. Except that this wasnt how Wrightson portrayed him in the second panel. The mans visage is marred by the cross-hatched pattern the shadows of the leaf-less tress tattooed on his face as he sports a sinister smirk that is akin to the bizarre, unsettling grin Jack Nicholsons character in Stanley Kubrick The Shining (1980) flashes early on during his job interview. Right out of the gate, Wrightson tells us that theres something off with this deceivingly normal-looking fellow. But this is quickly forgotten when we follow his point of view now as he has become aware of a sobbing sound, and consequently, he pushes into the open spot among the bare trees. He spies a bearded man with a big axe who has a bound girl over a tree trunk on the ground, and it stands to reason that his intentions towards the girl, whose face is hidden from view, are rather grim and violent. Our protagonist brandishes his firearm while he shouts a warning. Another warning follows but the bearded guy wont yield. Seconds later our man fires, killing him with one shot. He rushes towards the fatally injured man whom he subsequently cradles in his arms with pangs of guilt brushing against his waking mind that slowly grasps the gravity of what hes done. The nearly dead man still utters one word: Jenifer. With that, our protagonist concludes that it wasnt the girls whimpering hed heard. Making sure that readers had to turn the page, it wasnt until the third page and the second panel that Wrightson revealed Jenifers face, and by God, she was the most hideous individual they had ever seen in a comic book magazine or otherwise. In his own way, Bernie Wrightson carried the legend of EC Comics forward by absorbing the essence of what Graham Ingels had put on paper in the 1950s, arguably the most seminal horror illustrator. He didnt shy away from making her appearance repulsive, in fact, Jones plot revolved around the girls hideousness. Beneath the girls shaggy, blonde hair she had eyes that were shiny and black like those of a teddy bear, only that her eyes were big and soulless. Her teeth, that stuck out from her mouth, were long, pointy and sharp like those of an animal of prey, and her cheeks looked hollow, the opposite of what one might consider attractive, with a big ward drawing even more morbid if not downright macabre attention to her visage. It was a grimace from a nightmare, a face you didnt want to behold, yet like with a brutal car crash on the road ahead, you simply couldnt look away either. Fearing a scandal that might ruin him financially, our protagonist decides to leave the man where he lay dead, though hed later squarely put the blame for his ill-thought-out act with Jenifer, as he says in the captions, which you can hear as voice over narration in your head if youre reimagining this tale as a movie, that he should have known better, that something should have told me. But I was too naïve”¦ far too sane. But was he now? Anyway, he manages to convince the authorities that hed found the strange girl in the woods, yet after hes related his convenient half-truth, half-lie, he suddenly comes to realize that without any known family or other relatives, Jenifer will be placed in an institution. It doesnt take much for him to intervene, or as he himself explains it with the benefit of hindsight: I first felt her eyes upon me”¦ those black, hideously compelling eyes”¦ This was the moment when any astute reader noticed that a script by Jones had a pulse. He, or his protagonist, didnt describe the girls eyes as black and hideous but rather he says, hideously compelling, thereby giving us another clue, one that was bit more obvious but still hidden in the script, that something was amiss and that this was a story about a strange infatuation. Perhaps, it was even an addiction with the way our man was asking the court to grant him the right to adopt this girl. Naturally, this doesnt sit well with our protagonists family who almost gasp once they lay eyes on Jenifers revulsive visage, but he tells his wife and his two little children that it will be fine. But of course, it wasnt. They came to loathe the girl, and his kids didnt bother to hide their utter disgust. Finally, the wife tells him that Jenifer had to leave, that shes tearing apart the family, a poignant claim if there ever was one to Jones, given the circle of failing and changing relationships that surrounded him, and the pain, the frustrations and anger he experienced firsthand. In his story, his lead character was still in the first stage of grief that comes with separation and loss. He was in shock and denial. What was he supposed to do? He couldnt possibly send Jenifer away, it would kill her, he says. When Jenifer bit his wife, this led to pain and guilt, and anger and bargaining followed. Either Jenifer was sent away or his wife would leave him, taking the children with her. He bargained as well. He told his wife, the place he wanted to bring Jenifer to was over-crowded, that hell try tomorrow. He also struck a deal with himself: If I just had the strength”¦ if I could get rid of her without looking at her”¦ This was when Jenifer drowned the familys cat, and his wife left him, and she took away his kids. This was when depression finally set in, this was when the horror got real. Despite giving her this face, Wrightson made sure that her body looked sensual, even statuesque, a body that had wants and needs and was craving attention. Attired in one of his wife Madges nightgowns, she walked into his bedroom as it was time for Jenifer to make demands, to claim the other half of the bed that Madge had given up, which she had left vacant. The upward turn came when he finally found the strength to seek out a guy who operated a carnival sideshow, a man with a freak show whom he convinced to abduct Jenifer from his house. When he came home, his residence was oh so quiet and he allowed himself to breathe a sigh of relief. Then he opened the refrigerator and inside he found the sideshow manager dead and gutted.

 

By now he was at the sixth stage of grief which is called reconstruction and working through, only that it got a whole new meaning. He sold his house and his business, and he and Jenifer hit the road, moving from one dilapidated house to the next. It didnt matter. At night, she came to him with her urges. Then he learned from a newspaper that a little child was missing, and as he rushed home and found the door to the basement of whatever place they were staying at, ajar and he pushed it open and he saw Jenifer as she was feeding, finally hed reached the last stage, acceptance and hope. He could get rid of her, he had to get rid of her, and this meant that he had to kill her. This realization brought the story almost to the point in time from which he related his plight, the moment after hed smashed the display window of a hardware store to grab an axe. But it was all a blur, like he was under water or in a dream. He found himself in the woods, tying her arms behind her back. Then, while he caressed the big axe, he sat there quietly. Nothing stirred. I stared at Jenifer and she stared back. For hours until I heard footsteps. It was then I realized her full power, her full devastating potential. As he rose to his feet and he lifted the axe and he looked into her black, hideously compelling eyes, in his mind he begged, and he pleaded with Jenifer. The man who happened upon the clearing in the woods, he was on a hunting trip with his rifle. He only saw a man who was about to decapitate a girl whose arms were tied. He asked him to wait, to stop, then he dropped him. As he reached for the man who was seconds away from dying, all he could make out was a single word. A name. Jenifer. He had no way of knowing that it was meant as a warning. Arguably, it stands to reason that without Bernie Wrightsons art, Jenifer would never have received the cult status the story enjoys to this day. As good as Jones script is, and it is very good, if one imagines Jones pencils and inks instead Wrightsons giving his words visual representation, not only would much have been lost in translation but Jones limitations as both an illustrator and a writer back in 1974 would have stood out painfully obvious. Creating a specific mood with a sense of foreboding was not in Jones wheelhouse as much as these were the elements that made Wrightsons art stand out. But even though he didnt write this script with the artist in mind, the sensibilities of the two creators meshed perfectly. On the surface, Jones had gone back to Point of View which could be read as a parable that dealt with drug addiction, how drugs drastically changed you until not even friends recognized you any longer. On the surface, Wrightson had illustrated his script as a gothic horror story which fit the theme. But beyond the effective, moody drawings there was something darker still. Pretty boy Jones had fallen into a trap, hed been seduced by the comic book industry which had become a harsh, ugly mistress with him taking the abuse from those whod never called the shots at high school, guys who hated his guts. He had also fallen into a marriage at a young age, and like with the relationships around him, history got a re-write. And as far as his story was concerned, what could have been a turning point, this was when he decided to get off the train, to kill his last darling, and as he left New Jersey for Kansas City, he left comics behind. In a way, Bill DuBay forced Jones to choose. Did he want to be a fairly mediocre writer-artist with much time spent and wasted on honing artistic skills and instincts which were decent but would never be top drawer? Or would the correct path not rather lead him to developing his considerable talent as a writer, a storyteller who used words only but who fully grasped the underlying mechanics of what made a good story click? Surely, Jones could continue with doing both, yet his craft wouldnt be better for it. But then again, the editor might have missed what Jenifer was about. He didnt know, and didnt want to know in how much pain Jones was when he wrote this story. He didnt care one way or another. DuBay would only ever accept one more tale penned by Jones, again drawn by Wrightson. Jenifer was published in Creepy No. 63 (July 1974), his next story for DuBay and Warren saw print in Creepy No. 77, an issue that was put out with the cover date of February 1976. During the second half of 1974, after Jenifer, Jones only sold one more story which appeared in a comic book of all places. Archie Comics wanted in on the horror trend. He managed to get his tale Demon Kiss into the November 1974 edition of the recently re-titled Mad House, No. 96 in fact. It was a rather simplistic story about a vapid, shallow young woman he cleverly named Valarie Lewton who was willing to sell her soul to a demon in exchange for stardom. Only of course, Valarie never intended to go through with her end of the bargain. That the beautiful girl used a hapless, ugly nerd, a virgin no less, as her intended patsy, was Jones sticking it to DuBay and his ilk and the entire comic book industry that had treated him poorly and had almost cost him his marriage. But there was something else. Looking at his artwork for this story, clearly the art of some of the Spanish illustrators DuBay had hired for Warren was rubbing off on him. His linework had become looser and it had stylish flourishes that were distinctly European. But Jones was done. Like Spider-Man had once put his costume into the trash, the writer was putting his toys in the box. But then Jones got pulled back in. Whereas Warrens editor DuBay and ultimately Warren himself remained unimpressed by the scripter, especially when it came to his pencils, Jenifer did manage to attract the attention of Roy Thomas who had resigned from his position as editor-in-chief, but he was still working at Marvel as writer and editor, specifically he was training a bunch of young editors on the black and white magazines, men who would ultimately replace him. But for the time being, he was looking for material to fill all those pages. Jones had left comics as it turned out, and he was now working for an advertising company in Kansas City that gave him a steady paycheck, something that did wonders for his self-esteem, and might even save his marriage. But as fate willed it, for a second time, after hed done the same for Steve Gerber, the editor rescued a talented scripter from writing ad copy to help sell kitchen appliances. If anybody was destined to get Jenifer, it had to be Thomas, who on his wedding day wrote a psychologically layered tale about the anxieties that were born out of a deep-seated fear of commitment. Only that Roy told his story with superhero characters when he and artist John Buscema introduced readers to Yellowjacket who asked The Wasp to marry him, only that he was her long-time boyfriend who suffered from a split personality. Thomas offered Jones a regular spot in their new science fiction comic magazine, and Jones could write and draw the type of stories he liked. His first tale for Thomas, Specimen, which appeared in Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction No. 2 (March 1975), was one more EC pastiche, with Jones blending the styles of Williamson, Wood and Orlando into a clever, sexed-up sci-fi horror hybrid that looked like Playboys version of the movie Alien that was yet to come, a film that also owed a huge debt to EC Comics. The issue also featured an article about the Hugo Award. And while a picture of artist Frank Kelly Freas came with a caption that poked fun at the mans look, and at MAD Magazine, he did bear a somewhat striking resemblance to Alfred E. Neuman, MADs mascot, Jones noticed the portrait shot of another creator as well. It was a picture of Harlan Ellison, a science fiction author who as immensely popular in those days and who wore dark shades with his black hair and who looked like a rock star. There werent only nerds in genre fiction apparently. Nevertheless, for his immediate follow-up, Gestation, Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction No. 3 (May 1975), Jones took several elements from his earlier stories and put them into a blender. Surprisingly, the result was pretty amazing. It was his second-best story after Jenifer, and his best as an artist by a long shot. Told entirely through captions, diary entries of the protagonist, beautifully lettered, this was another story about the crew of a rocket ship that explored an alien world. The team was made up of a hot shot, but pretty bland space jockey, a bunch of science geeks including one woman who wore glasses but who got pretty once she discovered her sexuality, and the narrator who was stricken with polio and whod only been allowed on the mission since he was buddies with the overly confident pilot of the ship. Jones again used the theme of addiction as his characters discovered a type of lettuce which soon, they feel compelled to eat constantly. They become vegetarians first, then something else entirely. With their diet clouding the crews rational thoughts, some men die in a spider-web or due to other dangers that lurked on this world, but the fortunate ones, they begin to go through a Kafka style metamorphosis, only that it transformed them into beautiful butterfly people. Except for the lead character. He was only slowly losing his mind, yet he didnt transform. In his last lucid moments, he finally understood why that was. His illness neutralized some the toxins contained in the vegetables. It was a bad trade-off, as his feverish mind came to the realization that he wouldnt become a butterfly-human, ever. In a way, this was Jones turning the origin story of Spider-Man on its head. His protagonist was nerdy loser like Peter Parker, only in Jones world a loser would stay a loser. This was a potent tale, and Jones art had never looked better. And for his next story, he learned a new trick as a writer which would teach him an important lesson about storytelling. Characters needed a proper motivation to feel real, and to carry an emotional heft. And with this story, he finally moved well beyond the EC template.

 

Though Kick the Can from Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction No. 4 (July 1975) again looked a lot like a story that could have appeared in Weird Science or Weird Fantasy in the 1950s, this time, Jones art was much sleeker as he brought a distinctly 1970s sensibility to the visuals, which didnt keep him from swiping not one but two EC stories, one of which was based on a short story by Ray Bradbury. In Jones story, we found ourselves on an alien world with a mountainous, rocky desert environment that looked like Arizona, certainly a most appropriate setting since we encountered two men who were facing each other in the timeworn ritual of male domination, of man v man in a duel to the death, only that instead of archaic six-shooters, they were using blasters. In keeping with the Western theme, we gathered from the thoughts of the handsome man who was ostensibly our hero among these men that were locked in a deadly game of hide and seek, another visual stand-in for Jones, that the futuristic weapons only had a limited number of rounds, thus triggering the old guessing game how many shots has he left? Grant, our protagonist, and his yet to be spotted opponent Rhetic, wore breathing masks, and the containers these were hooked up to, they were running out of breathable air. As Grant told it, they faced a problem other than the others firearm. Surrounded by an atmosphere that didnt sustain human life, each man had about half an hour of breathing air before he needed to make it back to their rocket ship. However, this theme of a ticking clock that immediately made his story that much more engaging, wasnt the only danger this harsh mistress of a planet held for the men who assaulted one another with deadly intent. As Grant huddled in one of the trench-like ravines of the rough terrain to avoid the laser blasts from his merciless opponent, he caught the attention of a synth that roamed this world. That this creature came with the appearance of a giant, hairy spider was the writer cluing you in that this story didnt only have a pulse, it had deep, psychological layers. Clearly, these men were fighting over a woman, only that she was a complicated prize and shed cause Grant many emotional scars since their childhood days. Jones used A Sound of Thunder, Weird Science-Fantasy No. 25 (September 1954), and The Space Suitors, Shock SuspenStories No. 11 (October-November 1953), as his starting point. From the former, the Ray Bradbury based story, he took the idea of a futuristic big game hunter who worked as a tour guide for one percenters seeking the thrill of the hunt which was part and parcel of his job. Suitors had the love triangle, with the wife scheming with her lover to get rid of her husband during an excursion to a foreign world, one of Feldsteins re-workings of the cynical James M. Cain template. This formed the backbone of his story, but with a contemporary twist that was rooted in his experience with failing relationships, something which had already inspired Jenifer. But this time, instead of simply imitating what Feldstein had done to perfection, he introduced something new. Though Feldstein often worked with flashbacks, these usually caught up with the scene that started the story with a cold opening, he almost never had his characters travel back in time in their minds much further than a few days, weeks or months, not to their childhood, nor did he attempt to tell the characters life story. One notable exception is The Lake from The Vault of Horror No. 31 (June-July 1953), a tale that introduced readers to the narrator and his friend Tally when they were children, but this was another adaption based on a short story by Bradbury, with Joe Orlando on art, and as was the authors wont, he described the days of growing-up as a magical and whimsical period, that was until disaster struck. However, Jones had his protagonist Grant go back in time to when he and his rival Rhetic were just kids, and from there, in several other flashback scenes, to their adolescence and adulthood, only that the events that Grant related from his memory, and from his point of view, were anything but whimsical. As children, the men would play kick the can, and the girl they both adored, the blonde Veronica, she was part of the game as well as the trophy that waited for the winner. At first, in the most innocent way: The reward was Ronnie herself; a date to the movies, an invitation to dinner, or”¦ best of all”¦ a kiss in a deserted lot. Being more athletic, Grant always won. This should have sealed the deal, only somehow Rhetic was getting kisses even when he didnt win the game. Then, when they were teenagers and theyd long since quit playing their games, if you followed the narrators perspective, there was a stalemate with Ronnie caught in the middle, but who was telling this story anyway, was it Grant or an omniscient narrator, and were we to trust those words? With the next panel, there was so much bitterness that one had to wonder if the method by which the story was told was not Grants way to separate himself from bad past experiences while trying to present his tale as fact. Maybe this was what Jones did with his memories, creating distance: You were eaten up inside, remember? Youd given her everything: all your love, your time, your money”¦ Rhetic gave her nothing but abuse and heartbreak, and still she continued seeing him. Then she married him. That was the last time Grant saw her until, when he was an adult, she phoned him. Of course, he went to see her. Shed run away with him, after what Rhetic had done to her, only that she didnt. Then they showed up at the agency he worked for, a bored, rich couple who wanted to experience the thrill of hunting alien species. They were as surprised as Grant to find him at that place, Grant who couldnt refuse to guide them, not if he could be with her. But when he had a moment alone with her, Ronnie showed him the whip marks on her back. Rhetics behavior had only gotten worse, he was a sexual sadist now, maybe that was who hed always been. Grant had a plan, Rhetic needed to go away and he knew how, but shockingly Ronnie, she didnt want him to go through with it: I know its wrong, even sick, but I love him! Id die without him. Grant still went ahead. He set an explosive charge outside their craft, It would look like a hunting accident. This was when the scripter tried another new thing, only that it didnt originate with him like his clever idea to use extensive flashback sequences to give his character not only a proper motivation but the emotional heft they needed. His art on Kick the Can already betrayed the influence of another artist who was also a writer and who was hitting the scene in spectacular fashion. Howard Chaykin was four years younger than Jones, and even at that time, at the start of a decades long career thats lasted until today, he was already a brilliant, highly accomplished visual storyteller, but hed only just begun. Chaykin was about to revolutionize the notion of what you could do in comic book storytelling in a way that brought the type of innovation to the medium that hadnt been seen since Bernie Krigstein worked for EC. Like Krigstein, he worked best without interference. His dashing leading men and his exotic, very scantily attired women came from the same source Jones himself had tapped into numerous times, the romantic ideal and outstanding craftsmanship of Al Williamson, only that Chaykin cranked the sexuality of his drawings to eleven with a mixture of high-class fashion and unapologetic liberal sensuality but he was quick to guide the readers eyes to what lay beneath this sexy and glorious glam. Chaykin told you the complete story without a word if this was what he wanted to do at this moment. Jones, who wasnt as good an artist by a long shot, but a talented writer who was constantly improving his narrative chops, was not only influenced by Chaykins style, but he latched on to a theme that Chaykin and other writer-artists and scripters had been using for a while now. Their heroes, Chaykins protagonists in particular, they were dirty and corrupt. In Plague of Jewels, Jones had made his adventurers Brown and Wayne two rotten apples, in keeping with the popular anti-hero trope, Chaykins Scorpion and Dominic Fortune went the whole nine yards, only that Chaykin did his peers one better. If you were a dopehead and you lit up to prog rock, sampling the mans artwork, it put you on a trip to a land of sexy people where the man held no sway. If you were an embittered, right-leaning mammas boy who hated liberalism, who wanted to mess up some of those long-haired freaks, Chaykins men told you that punching somebody in the face, well, sometimes it was par for the course, too. Chaykin offered something for everyone, no small feat, and his characters dared to do the impossible, dared to be the impossible. They were black, and they were white, good and bad. It was here where Jones got the inspiration, where he got the guts to make Grant noble in his endeavor to rescue Veronica from her brutal husband and her own obsession that was caused by her lack of self-esteem, of being trained to be an object at an early age, to be a prize and highly sexualized one at that, and a pathetic loser and a coward as well. Grant, the jock who always won at kick the can, he cant admit that even with Rhetic out of the way, Ronnie will never love him. And he isnt man enough to confront his rival openly to get the situation resolved one way or the other, perhaps by getting Rhetic treatment, and Veronica, too. Instead, he sneaks about and springs a hidden trap, only that Veronica has warned his intended victim. Its Rhetic who challenges him, who has literally the high ground because Grant is weak and stuck in a past where his ideal image of Rennie lives. Again, the man who Jones gave his face to, tries a sneaky maneuver, only for Veronica to run directly into his line of fire intended for the man she couldnt bear to be without. Grant leaves her on the spot, and then he does what he did best when he was the boy who always beat Rhetic. He runs. Grant makes it to their ship before Rhetic, and once inside, he took great pleasure in observing how the man suffocated as he stood at the vessels round panoramic window. With his longtime rival dead, Grant walked outside, and he picked up Rennies body. Hell take her home, and there was much comfort in this, for him. At long last, hed achieved his goal: Its a long way back to home”¦ this time”¦ youll make it together. As the writer let his story fall shut with these words, hed completed his best and most potent story as a writer-artist. Kick the Can is a sad, powerful tale that works on many levels, and in some respects, it is better than Jenifer, chief among them the fact that the storys potency wasnt derived from any supernatural elements. The horror came from the characters themselves who were all too human. Unfortunately, it would once again present the exception and not the rule. After another tale which was less impressive, he played it safe with Old Soldier which appeared in the November 1975 edition of Unknown Worlds of Science Fiction. Jones borrowed the premise from Richard Mathesons seminal novel The Incredible Shrinking Man (1956) that came with a plot that has been coopted for many genre B-movies in some shape or form since. In Jones story the main character didnt shrink, but was turned from a virile, strong manly man, an exterminator who traveled from one alien planet to the next, into an old geezer by virtue of an untested hyper-drive. There was some strong character interaction, hed become obsolete in his profession and in his family life, and Jones even presented a shocking suicide attempt, but overall, both the story and the art felt lackluster, perhaps because other than in Mathesons book, we dont see him go through a process of losing his stature and self-worth, instead the man was suddenly old, and he had to deal with that. There was no fear of transformation, no creeping terror, no slow realization. The tale appeared in the final issue of the magazine that had become obsolete itself as the market for black and white magazines was contracting. It dawned on Jones that he be might out of a job soon, left with doing work in the corporate rat-race of advertising. He had gotten better as a writer and as an artist, still there wasnt any consistency of quality to his work, at least not yet. But Thomas liked it and that was enough.

 

In 1973, Roy Thomas and artist Barry Windsor-Smith had co-created the character Red Sonja who was loosely based on two older characters that had appeared in the pulp stories of Robert E. Howard. With Windsor-Smith having reached new heights with his most impressive artwork, when she was introduced in an issue of Conan the Barbarian, she was enthusiastically welcomed by male fans. Given her growing popularity, Sonja was made the star of a new series, Marvel Feature, at the end of 1975. The first issue, with two scripts by Thomas and great art by Dick Giordano and Esteban Maroto (the latter tale a colored reprint of a back-up that had seen print in Savage Sword of Conan in the previous year), wasnt anything special, but Thomas had lined up an interesting new artist as series regular as of the next issue, all that was needed was a writer. Jones, whod already worked on the Conan magazine, fit the bill. However, if asked today, comic fans will recall the outstanding artwork by Frank Thorne, who quickly became a fan favorite as he made Red Sonja his marquee character, but many of the same fans wont be able to name the writer of the series. With most of Marvels magazines folding fast, Bruce Jones got a steady follow-up gig writing an ongoing comic, however hed be massively overshadowed by his collaborator. But as he was typing up his third story for the sexy she-devil with a sword, he got a phone call that would soon put his writing career on a whole new track. This was in early 1976, and not only did Jones find out that his nemesis Bill DuBay had departed from Warren, Louise Jones had succeeded him as the editor for all of Jim Warrens magazines. Louise had been following his career and she wondered if he was interested in doing some scripting for Warren. She didnt mention any penciling. Boy, was he ever ready to do this! With two years having gone by since hed hit it out of the park with Jenifer, and the big nothing that came after, things started reasonably well when Jones returned to Warren, his 5-pager with Wrightson from earlier in the year notwithstanding. Louise had picked two artists to illustrate his first two stories under her reign, but these tales didnt set the world on fire exactly. But when she put him with another artist, all of that changed. Richard Corben, who was six years older than the writer was literally born on a farm, yet his style was light years away from his rural upbringing, which also held true for most of the work his peers did. Hed started as an animator, but once Corben turned his attention to comics, well, underground comix, his artwork was unlike anything comic books fans (and dopeheads for that matter) had ever seen. In 1975, when he got word that legendary creator Moebius and two of his colleges were putting together a new comic magazine in France, he sent one of his previously published stories across the Atlantic, which made the French guys say ooh la la! With this story hed drawn, colored as well as written, making it into the first issue, he became the first American to be published in Mtal Hurlant. It wouldnt be his last. With every of its glossy, mostly fully colored pages handled by a whos who of top illustrators from Europe, Mtal Hurlant made Warrens mags look dodgy and quaint by comparison. It was the Pepsi to their Coca Cola, or rather absinthe since many of the pictures you saw were borderline pornographic and as illegal in the United States as the drink was in France. But this was exactly what Corben craved. Literally translated the magazines name meant Howling Metal, but its art was singing, vibrating with energy, and there was Corben in the mix, who, like early fans of comic books had always believed creators would, did it all by himself. Two years before the French publication got an American edition, called Heavy Metal, Corben helped making Mtal Hurlant a sensation, and in turn, his work for the magazine, with artwork that was unique and fully liberated, it made him a superstar. However, back when he was just starting out, editor Bill DuBay had welcomed him with open arms, and rather quickly, hed let him write his own scenarios. This had led to a fruitful collaboration, and as luck would have it, he hadnt forgotten his old stomping grounds. When Louise asked Corben if he was interested in doing the artwork for a story by Bruce, who wasnt related to her, he trusted her, especially since Corben and the writer were living in the same town, Kansas City. Jones had actually conceived his tale as a two-part affair, which readers saw was a return to some of his favorite topics. Within You”¦ Without You, Eerie No. 77 (September 1976), introduced a character who was a brother to Rhetic, a cold, unfeeling bastard. He was also an impotent, scheming science geek. Like Rhetic, he was married to a hot wife, who, unlike Ronnie towards Grant, was still interested in her former boyfriend, a swinging hippie anarchist. A very fun mix that was right in Corbens wheelhouse, and Jones script gave him a showcase to draw the stuff, he liked best: hot, naked people having outdoor sex, cool tech gadgets, and a tyrannosaurus rex thrown in there, too, since why not? It was after all a yarn about time travelers. The clever tale ended with the hippie getting torn to pieces. But he got decidedly better once the sequel rolled in with Time and Time Again, Eerie No. 79 (November 1976). These were tales about time travelers, remember? But now the twist worked the other way. Jones hippie character got to stick it to the man, when bizarrely, to save his skin, Jeff, who was a long-haired radical and a mustachioed macho, ended up in Karens body. That was a turn of events Corben could get behind. Jeff, who kicked science geek Pete right in the gut since he was trying to plant a kiss on his wifes cheek, before the reveal mind you, he even got the chance to spout a cool one-liner to comment on the body swap as Jones let his tale fall shut: You know what they say”¦ any port in a storm… Cold, calculating science geek Pete had sent Jeff on a mission to return his wife from the past to him, and Jeff had found a way to do just that. Again, there were call-backs to Kick the Can with the way Grant and Rhetic had objectified Veronica. Pete got his wifes body back. Corben, on the other hand, he delivered the whole package (so to speak) twice and then something. His art had a rough underground feel to it that chaffed against the science fiction set pieces with their technocratic coldness as he injected a healthy dose of unfiltered sexuality into the proceedings, Playboy reader Jones surely must have enjoyed. Sex, the one topic that was strictly verboten in American comic books, began to take hold in his writing, and this development didnt come soon enough since Bruce Jones was about to write his most thought-provoking script since Jenifer. Meanwhile, Louise gave him the keys to the kingdom that was Warrens magazines when she let him have nearly an entire issue to himself, except that Gary Bates got one story in. DuBay, who was working as a freelancer again, he even had two. Still, after hed been kept away from Warren for lack of talent or otherwise, the pauper had become a prince. It stands to reason that as an editor, Louise Jones knew how to balance out every issue. Since his first and his third story were especially bleak, there had to be a bit of counterprogramming. His second tale in Creepy No. 83 (October 1976), Country Pie, felt very much like a story Stephen King, horror fictions new rock star, might have written earlier in his career, the type of tale that made it into Playboy. It was a typical bait and switch. A slightly shady-looking, smarmy motorist offers the underage girl he spies on a country road a lift, and since she is accompanied by her kid brother, hes in for the ride, too. Obviously, the middle-age driver, who has a major 70s ”˜stache, and whos donned the funkiest shades, has designs on blonde, sixteen-year-old girl, and he cannot wait until he gets the opportunity to be alone with her. But there was more. Via a second plot thread we learn that with people gone missing, obviously theres a serial killer in this neck of the woods whos been active for some time now. Clearly, were to take this information in one way only. The sleazy, ”˜stache-wearing motorist must be the psycho killer, and when he comes up with an excuse to get the girl out of his vehicle and into the woods, this confirmed it. Only, of course, there had to be a twist. Its the girl and her little brother whove been doing all these killings, and they simply tie up their victims and drop them into a nearby body of water. And as revealed by one panel, there are plenty of stiffs. With the sheriff arriving in the nick of time, justice prevails, and the guy is saved. But by now, and thanks to his artist, Jones managed to put a little extra under the storys hood.

 

It wouldnt be the last time during her tenure at Warren that Louise would give Bruce Jones this many pages in a single issue of a Warren magazine, thirty-four in fact, divided into four tales. That she did this had a lot to with the fact that Jones was finally writing every story like hed never get the chance to pen another one. Country Pie is the second weakest story of the bunch, its also the shortest, but still, he and his artist have an interesting subtext to offer. And what an artist it was. One of the powerful figures of the industry who had rejected his work when Jones was at the start of his rocky career, artist Carmine Infantino had long since been let go from his lofty position as publisher of DC Comics. The top brass at DCs corporate overlord Warner werent convinced any longer that Infantino could hack it with the likes of Stan Lee and Marvel, the bright-eyed, bushy-tailed upstart that was now the market leader. Still, the artist had to make ends meet, and he had an axe to grind. Years ago, when Infantino still held sway, he had brought Kirby back to DC, the man whod co-created (or, depending on your point of view, created) the Marvel Universe. No sooner was the King of Comics working on new material did he lampoon Stan The Man Lee in an issue of Mister Miracle, so successfully in fact, that Lee shaved off his beard when he saw Kirbys parody of himself. Jacks joke was a bit on the mean side, admittedly the treatment hed received from his former collaborator Lee, and Marvels steadfast refusal to return his original artwork to him, had made bitter, but still, this didnt keep Infantino from taking a page from his playbook. Seizing the opportunity Jones script provided him with, he made the sleazeball of this story, this motorist who lusted after a teen girl and who wanted into her pants, suspiciously look a lot like a certain comic book publisher who was in his mid-fifties, and who thought of himself as a fly guy, with his hair piece and his hipster beard, only that by now he got steamrolled by a generation he didnt understand. Like the girl and her brother, or that little girl who ate her mother in George A. Romeros Night of the Living Dead (1968), the baby boomers were killing their darlings and they scoffed that their parents achievements. And Jones was a perfect example of this, as his story Now You See It”¦ illustrated perfectly. The last of his tales in Creepy No. 83, it was also the weakest. Jones once again set out to deconstruct the trope of the romanticized hero who was idolized by the likes of Al Williamson, by showing that in a world that was populated by modern, complacent people who relied heavily on all kinds of technical amenities for their comfort, heroes had become obsolete. These people, they didnt want adventures, but the illusion of adventures that their television sets and their console games provided. Like how Feldstein had done this many times before, this was his critique of consumerist culture of the suburbs, only that there were winks at the readers as Jones played his satire and his two protagonists for laughs, that was until Jones rolled it all back in the end. Perhaps since this was the first time he actually worked with Al Williamson, who delivered in spades. Still, this story is best forgotten, not only since it fails at its theme, but mainly since it featured a scene of spousal rape, he glossed over quickly without acknowledging what had just happened in their story. Jones and Al Williamson would collaborate on much better material very soon, for example, when one of their projects saw the creative duo adapt the 1980s Flash Gordon film into a comic book. But when the writer and Richard Corben re-teamed for Creepy No. 83, this was when he and the Heavy Metal superstar artist hit the ball into the stratosphere. In Deep, the rare exception of tales in a Warren publication that were presented in color, colored by Corben himself, of course, is one of only a handful of stories that are so visceral in their presentation that one doesnt so much read but experiences it. This story about survival and survivors guilt was bookended by an intro and an epilogue which Corben kept in black and white. It is during this framing device that we encounter a man who lay in a hospital bed in a state of shock and who clutches his arms and hands firmly against his chest. While the attending physician consults a psychiatrist, he is about to try as muscle relaxant as well, we learn a little about the mans fate. Swimming alone in the gulf next to a single life buoy, the crew of a freighter had picked him up this morning. As the hospital employees discuss his case over his bed, his mind goes back in time. This was when we go to the storys main narrative, which was not only perfectly illustrated, but hand-colored by Corben with the most vibrant hues in a baroque style. It was in these eight colored pages that the bad stuff happened. The first image already told you that things would be bad, one panel with which Corben conveyed a feeling of despair, this sense of crushing, heartbreaking hopelessness. A young couple, who clung to one little life buoy with one paddle between them, watched in terror as the small sailboat theyd been on, sank into the massive blue sea that was huge whereas they were tiny. All they had managed to salvage before they had to abandon their small craft were the items you saw plus a thin rope, a bottle of ginger ale, a length of cord, all in all, poor mans items against an uncaring nature that was oblivious to their plight. Whats worse, Peggy, the wife, she couldnt swim. Her husband used the cord to lash her to the buoy. Her wet skirt, torn into pieces, held over their heads, it would protect them from the burning sun, a little. But how cold would the night be? He projected confidence, like one of those heroes from fiction, at least he tried to. Theyd be found and rescued, very soon, he told her with his brave face and so many words. Neither he nor she believed this, really. After a while, instead, they were telling each other jokes and half-forgotten stories about this, that and the other thing, simply to distract them, then, to stay awake. He untied her frequently to keep her circulation going as the sun vanished and the water grew cold. He dozed off, and when he came to, his heart sank when he realized that Peggys head was under water. She was dead, shed drowned during the night. He lifted her head out of the blue sea so he could look at her, but this was when the seagull came. He was too weak, too impotent, he was dead inside from mourning his loss, to prevent the bird from hacking into one of her eyes, its crooked beak darkly stained with Peggys blood. Then the first shark arrived. Driving it away, it cost him the lower half of the paddle. The shark had taken something, too. Half of his wifes left leg was missing, her spilled blood liable to attract many more predators. He recalled Peggy when she was alive, his beautiful wife, and the promise she made him give her. That was when theyd still been on the boat: She looked up at him with her little girls eyes and placed his hand against her breast and said, feel my heart?… Its beating just for you”¦ whatever happens, dont let anybody or anything take it from you”¦ But they were no longer on the sailboat. It was gone, and Peggy was dead. But still he intended to keep the promise she had asked him to make. Even when the seagulls came that tore the flesh from her face, or when the sharks came to eat what was left of her body, the sharks that butchered her and ignored that he stabbed at them with his broken paddle, this signifier of his sad failure as a man, as a protector. But through all of this, hed keep her heart and never let go. Then everything culminated into a blinding technicolor nightmare not even Douglas Sirk could have envisioned, a psychedelic fever dream without acid in a blue sea that was red with Peggys blood and rife with the stench of his defeat. Only not quite. When he fell asleep from exhaustion and dehydration, the vessel that would spell salvation, it was but a tiny dot on the horizon. When he woke up, the world was in black and white, and when the drug made him unfold his arms and open his hands, the two men at his bedside saw what lay in his palms. A heart. To say that this story represented a perfect marriage of words and images, and that Corbens art is out of this world, would be a correct assessment, and to this day it is one of the finest achievements in the medium of comics. But then, Jones topped himself, at least as far as his script was concerned, but again hed be paired with an artist who was a master in his own right. However, this is not in reference to his sequel to his masterpiece with Corben. The least said about In Deep II, which saw print in Creepy No. 101 (September 1978), with art by Leo Duranona, an artist poorly chosen for the task at hand if there ever was one, the better. Perhaps the fact that DuBay had snuck in through the backdoor like a thief at night, he was now a consulting editor, jinxed him, but then, maybe it was a script he wrote on a Monday. Still, if his collaboration with Corben had led him to new heights, the artist with whom he kicked off his run of stories in Creepy No. 83, hed illustrate three of Jones best scripts, and he was a veteran as much as a legend of the industry, which made sense since Russ Heath was twenty years older than the writer.

 

Almost since the day the comic book industry got its start, Heath had constantly been working in comics, mostly on war comics because he was well-adapt at delineating fighting men and machinery. But Heath was also a powerful cartoonist who could draw anything from Batman to sexy Playboy cartoons. Whats perhaps most astonishing, given his long career during a time which saw many trends come and go, is how of that period the artwork looks he created to illustrate Jones stories. Heath displayed an uncanny sense for 70s fashion and for the superficial, greedy, excessive possessiveness for all things materialistic that dominated the American society once again after the 60s. The pristine, documentary style visuals he came up with when he adapted Jones tales into sequential art, these feel like the work of a younger man whos finely attuned to the current day lifestyle, but then again, not many young men possess the assured hand of a master. As if to prove this point, the first page of Process of Elimination, incidentally the first page in this cycle of stories by Jones in Creepy No. 83, already gave readers a strong indication that in Heath you had an artist who didnt mess around. Told from the first-person perspective, you got all the trappings of a man who was a success story in the mid-1970s. A ranch-style bungalow surrounded by palm trees, a sleek, expensive looking sports car parked in front of the garage, a strikingly handsome, yet masculine driver behind the wheel. By contrast, the words seem to refer to a different guy, a slightly nervous, anxious wreck, a man whod be sweating through the fashionable white suit we saw him wear. But then, when the man behind the wheel opens the glove compartment, his thoughts become calmer, there is control and steely determination. This is when the words and the images blend together as one and without contradictions, this is when the driver, Chris, pulls a revolver with a silencer attached to its short barrel from the darkness. We understand that hes going to kill somebody and that he is not used to be doing this, at least not in this setting. And as he walks to the door through the garden, theres the tricycle of a small child with which he nearly collides and which he simply places on the lawn, without a hint of anger, but instead with care, and lovingly. We understand that this toy belongs to his own son. As he opens the door to the affluent residence with a key, this is his house, and we meet his wife Gwyn, whom he keeps at arms length lest she feels the gun under his jacket, we learn many things. One look at the prim and proper Gwyn tells us that hes married beneath his station. With a guy like Chris, youd expect somebody younger, more model-like, not a housewife who chats about the dinner and cake she has ready for him. Gwyn isnt happy when Chris talks about his job or he thinks too much about it. She feels that some topics are best ignored. He works for the government, and lately theres something that troubles him. As she walks back into the kitchen, she explains that their son Richard is staying with one of his pals overnight. This going to cause a problem, Chris contemplates, but hes calm as he enters the room where his daughter sleeps. He looks at his child for a while, then he stares at himself in the mirror as we get an outside shot of the stylish, modern house with its illuminated windows. Theres a lake next to the residence, and a boat, like his car a signifier that he wants more from life than a dull conversation with a woman who is kind of cute and who loves to talk about the food shes prepared for him. Theres a moment of anxiety when he thinks that Gwyn might know what she isnt supposed to know, but that moment passes quickly. She doesnt, and hes ready to do what he believes he must do. After the main course, as this soccer mom of a wife cleans the table and gets the cake ready, while she prates for hours on end, it would seem, about their wonderful life together and how happy she is, and she brings up the bad stuff from his workplace, blood bursts from her open chest. Seconds later she drops to the kitchen floor. Chris has shot her from behind, and there were no parting words, just a brief, muffled sound. But then, completely unexpected, his son wanders in through the backdoor. His friend Jerry got sick, and as Richard spies the body on the floor, he wonders if his mom was sick, too. Mommys just resting. Chris tells the boy to go brush his teeth while he anxiously glances at his wristwatch and he thinks by himself: Madge will be waiting for me. Heath made it all work. As Chris goes to his son, the artist gives the kid the perfect look of trusting innocence, but as the door closes, theres that sound again. When the dad emerges from the bathroom, his shoulders are slumped as his whole body posture betrays that he is all too human. But he steels himself once more and as he enters the other room, with his gun raised above his baby girls crib, the look Russ gives him, is that of a mob enforcer or that of an anti-hero private eye. This was a true crime drama, but while his methods seem unsound, there is a pattern that now emerges. Chris has his work cut out for himself as he erases his past life. His new life, it would seem, was waiting for him in a parking lot in town. Madge, his secretary, was the type of woman you envisioned a guy like Chris to be with, a woman he was supposed to be dating. She was young and pretty, and she had a body to die for, and her head was full of hopes and dreams, this optimism that is very infectious. But she was aware of what hed done, what hed told her hed do. She was a bit worried, still she was glad that Chris had gone through with it as she knew he would. They spend the night together in a motel room where they make love, with Madge actually thanking him afterwards for the pleasures hed introduced her to. As the next day breaks, they are anxious. It would seem that Chris and Madge are ready to say goodbye to their past lives in this small town. Chris drives with her to a hillside, to take in the first light of a brand-new day, but this is when Madge cant hold it together any longer. Again, she thanks him for introducing her to physical love, then she asks him to end her. He honors her request, like he had honored her plea to take her virginity. There was that muffled sound again. With the dead woman next to him, he faces front. He surely had the best seat in town”¦ to watch the radiant light of the new day rise. Then there was light of a thousand suns as a giant mushroom cloud filled the sky and everything else. And another one, and another. It is a testament to Jones development as a writer that for the first time his twist did not feel like a gimmick, instead it made the preceding pages much more powerful. Everything Chris had had done, it led to this one point. Though Jones soon re-teamed with Bernie Wrightson, the artist whose evocative illustrations for Jenifer had helped to put him on the map, when they created the haunting story The Laughing Man for Creepy No. 95 (February 1978) which had a nice Lovecraftian vibe to it, it was his next collaboration with Heath that pushed Jones growth as a writer even further. On its surface, Hell Hound, Creepy No. 100 (August 1978), plays like a ghost tale of the romantic period, only that in the 18th century, contemporary writers like Horace Walpole would have re-cast the animal familiar our narrator Hamlin discovers he has, with his doppelganger, a prevalent motif of that literary movement. That the story was told by Hamlin to an unknown person directly, with all the events taking place within a long flashback sequence with hindsight commentary by the protagonist, this was another storytelling device of that era. Only that the story didnt look anything like one of those gothic horror stories Archie Goodwin had favored in start-up days of Creepy. Again, Heath gave every panel the sheen of an affluent consumerist society with its excess and over-appreciation of material possessions, a style that was well suited for the story Jones was telling. Looking at the outside, everything seems perfect. Another house that was stylish and expensive. No sooner are we invited in, we find Hamlin whos passed out on a sofa, with a bottle next to him. When we learn that he was still working through his recent divorce, that hed been a nobody once whod struck gold with a rich spouse and his subsequent divorce settlement, this was Jones telling us that the center wouldnt hold. Hamlin had the house, but hed lost his wife, and all of it had left him worse for wear and feeling empty inside. In the most poignant manner, this was Jones own story, who was divorced from Yvonne by now and whose financial livelihood was wholly dependent on the continued the goodwill of another woman, his benefactor Louise Jones, though he still accepted work from Roy Thomas, a man whod gone through a messy divorce as well, and who had another one looming on the horizon. Within the next two years hed be gone from Marvel. As for Hamlin, hed soon be able to turn his life around. During storm at night, he hears a chilling noise. He investigates and finds a dog that looks more like a she-wolf than a canine. Nevertheless, he rescues the wounded animal from the outdoors thatre violently raging with rain, thunder and lightning. He nurses the large creature back to health and to full strength. Simultaneously, Hamlin receives a disturbing phone call from his ex-wifes mother. She tells him that Edies been attacked by what surely must have been a roaming beast which mauled Edie and tore her to shreds. As the dog is now out and about, he has named her Gina, Hamlins getting the house back in order, Edies house. He stops with the drinking, and he stops feeling sorry for himself. Instead, he and Gina go for walks on the beach like lovers. She refuses the milk he puts out for her, and he suspects that she must be hunting whenever Gina slips out of sight. Still, Hamlin is content.

 

Things take a decidedly darker turn when people around him start to drop like flies, or more specifically, they get torn to pieces by a wild animal. His worst fears are proven true when he discovers that these killings are perpetrated by his companion Gina, but there was more it. A pattern begins to emerge. The dead people are all connected to him one way or another, these are the men and women whove given him grief in his life, whove held him back. He has long since hit the road with Gina who leads him on a journey back through time. There is Tommy Baxter, my old football rival from high school”¦ Baxter had not only won a football trophy I had deserved but had stolen my girl as well”¦ Then Gina got to Bobbie Colten who had beat me up in grade school”¦ As he crossed the country and time, more people ended up dead, not always in the right sequence, but without fail old acquaintances and even strangers whod done him dirty, in his mind at least. By now, hed accepted that this was the way it had to be. He knew that he wanted these murders to happen, that the men and women had it long coming, that in fact this was the comeuppance they all deserved as if this were an old EC Comics story, or as Jones had Hamlin word it as he recounts these events to the unknown listener from the first page: They would die, all of them”¦ no more would they haunt my mind like mocking phantoms”¦ no more would my tortured brain replay their acts of hostility and aggression, they were all on the list, an execution list I was carrying out with deliberate abandon, and there was nothing I could do, nothing I wanted to do, to alter the course of their fate”¦ He was on a street that was leading him straight to hell, only of course, he couldnt have known it yet. This was when he came to Stacy, the man he was telling his story to, a handsome, middle-aged businessman whom he blamed for his financial downfall, his dependency on his late wife and her money. Gina was ready to pounce, but Stacy, he was cool as a cucumber, not only while he was listening to Hamlins account, but even when the she-wolf sauntered in through the open door to the garden of his fancy house. Stacy, you see, he had his own familiar, and Brutus, he was literally a hound from hell. The investments he had put into Jenifer or Kick the Can, they paid handsome dividends as he rapidly matured as a writer. With Hell Hound, Jones operated on so many levels that this story is wide open for many interesting reads. There was his divorce, his business relationship with Louise Jones, a woman who signed his checks and who was dating an artist who was immensely popular or was getting there. Then there was his rivalry with DuBay, a man who was still haunting him. Small wonder that Jones was ready to meet some ghosts from the past, and with his next collaboration with Heath he was doing just that. The Haunted, Vampirella No. 76 (March 1979), a tale expertly crafted by Jones and Heath, starts well enough like any story about a haunted house and an individual who wants to brave a ghost whos allegedly haunting the premise. As his driver Henry drops Ronald off at the Blochman House, the place he dares to spend the night at, we see that our protagonist is Bruce Wayne if he wasnt Batman, though visually he is once again a stand-in character for the writer. Ronald is one of the lucky few, an idle, bored individual who comes across like he was born with a silver spoon in his mouth, someone who grew up and still lives in a sheltering bubble, only that his jet-set lifestyle is never explained. When we meet his parents in flashbacks, they come across as fairly naïve, salt of the earth folks from the Midwest, Kansas or Missouri natives maybe, like Bruce Jones or his parents, or better yet his grandparents. Though Heath gives the story once again a contemporary 70s look and feel, a glamorous one at that, this doesnt add up if taken literally. Roland, and especially his young, blonde model girlfriend, do not only not look like characters from the post-war era, by about ten, perhaps fifteen years, they dont behave like it either. Still, the plot is contingent on this specific time frame, putting in doubt how much of this tale is actually meant to be believed. This is actually what Rolands girlfriend does, who questions his motives. You see, this isnt the first stunt hes pulled to prove his bravery, and to re-assert his manliness, and Glenda, she knows it all too well. Roland it seems, is obsessed with performing daring tests of courage. While Roland explores the empty house, the scene of a grisly mass-murder, with a mentally unstable husband killing his wife and all of his children, his mind travels back to his conversations with his girlfriend. As they are seen doing jet-setting activities like horseback riding and skiing, and of course, having sex, this magazine was intended for 1970s audiences, Glenda must know, prompting him to go back in time in his flashback of them talking to each other. It all began in his childhood, with the other kids challenging him to some of the most dangerous stunts as they told him that his twin brother Michael had been there, done that and bought the t-shirt. In one situation, Roland nearly drowns, a scene Jones might have actually lifted from the biography of actor James Dean, who was asked to perform a similar challenge when he was a pledge of a fraternity in college, only that he was a young adult. As Roland got older, there was a lot he had to prove to his old men. Michael had enlisted, and his letters spoke of his acts of bravery in Europe where he helped with liberating France from the Nazis. As his twin was awarded a purple heart, a silver star and a medal honor, all Roland was left with, was to climb the rusty metal ladder of the water tower on their farm with the wind howling around him and his increasingly worried father shouting at him to come down. Only he couldnt, he could never come done. That was why Ronald nearly killed himself as well as his then girlfriend when he played chicken in his car with a speeding train, that was why he had to climb to the top of the Golden Gate Bridge. And that was why he was in the Blockman House where eleven people had died from heart attacks induced by severe fright. He was the twelfth thrill seeker, but hed make it out alive. He didnt even scare one bit when he discovered the graveyard on the estate. Blockman had slain his wife and his three little children with an axe before hed taken his own life. They were all buried behind the house, even Blockman. It was he, or most likely Blockmans ghost, who came to him during his night in the haunted house. Whoever it was, whatever it was, there was a bloody axe. Roland came to Glendas luxurious apartment right the next day to invite her on a trip. He steered his car to a building complex that was familiar to the blonde model, and as they walked down long corridors that gave off an antiseptic smell, Glendas impressive chest tightened, and her heart sank. Behind a big metal door which had a small porthole for a window, there was Roland, strapped into a straitjacket and with a vacant look in his eyes and spittle dripping from his trembling lips. Glenda realized then that the man with Rolands face standing next to her, he had to be Michael, his twin, who, as it turned out, had a few skeletons of his own that lay buried behind the house. You see, Michael had actually never been to Europe, hed never been awarded those medals he told his parents and his twin brother about in his many letters. To avoid getting drafted, hed hid out in Mexico like the coward he was, not knowing that the letters of his fake exploits of bravery only further doomed his competitive sibling to life of obsession, of compulsion. He dared now, he dared to ask a stranger for forgiveness. Glenda, she simply ran away. Contrary to rich a jetsetter like Roland, Jones didnt sit idly by, nor was he sitting on his hands. He began experimenting with a new gimmick. What if he used photographers instead of artists to bring his stories to life? Jones decided to put together a photo comic, or fumetti as they are referred to in America, and since Star Wars was all the rage, it better be a science fiction comic. He shot a bunch of photos himself, but in black and white. The book, to have wide appeal, it needed to be in color, though, but he wanted them to be interesting colors. Luckily, Corben lived only a few blocks away, only that the artist was busy with many other projects, like designing the artwork for album covers. He had his assistants do it. Jones was a bit disheartened by the results that had gotten pretty muddy in places, instead of the vibrant hues Corben got into his line work, the thing hed hope for while he was away hitting the pavement of New York City once more to line up a publisher like so many years earlier. Warner Books took the bait and Amberstar: An Illustrated Cosmic Odyssey was published on January 1, 1980. Meanwhile Jones had also started his own imprint BJA, which stood for Bruce Jones Associates, only that he didnt have any associates, not just yet. Around this time Louise Jones phoned him, only that she was Louise Simonson now, to let him know that Jim Warren had instructed her not to accept any new material until they had burned through the inventory. It was a major red flag, of course. Only a few weeks thereafter, Simonson decamped for Marvel and she asked Jones if he wanted to write the Ka-Zar reboot they were preparing. With his Warren work out of the picture, Marvel had stopped calling after Thomas had left, though he did get some assignments from DC Comics, he jumped at the chance. Ka-Zar the Savage was launched in April 1981. His work on the series put Jones into contact with an interesting new artist whod started at Marvel less than a year earlier and who was nine years his junior. Jones and Brent Anderson created some memorable stories for Ka-Zar and his jungle girlfriend Shanna, and it wouldnt be their only work as a team. As far as girlfriends were concerned, Jones wasnt a single any longer either. Taking another stab at the fumetti format, hed decided to hire some actors and models. This was how Jones met April Campbell, a young local model who checked all the right boxes for him: April was very bright, looked terrific, had a Playmate figure and ”“ most importantly ”“ had acting experience. Jones was so enthralled by the beautiful redhead that he immediately created two photo novels with Campbell cast as the lead in both. Soon, as hed hoped she would, she fell in love with him, and they would eventually get married.

 

The comic book market was drastically changing during the first years of the 1980s. Comic shops which had sprung up in the previous decade to sell used comic books and to support underground comix, they were now a viable alternative to distributing comic books to the supermarkets chains that had put many drugstores and mom and pop stores out of business. But the so-called direct market also opened many doors to smaller publishers who would either sell directly to stores or who had a distribution system in place that allowed for smaller print-runs to get shipped to retail outlets that were dedicated to comics. This model was still in its infancy, but the number of shops was growing quickly. Neal Adams, one of, if not the most popular artist in the genre of superheroes, had transformed his Continuity Studios into a fledgling imprint, and hed been impressed by what Jones and Wrightson had done for Warren. Adams hired the duo to create an original graphic novel, Freak Show, something that was definitely in Bernies wheelhouse, though it would become a four-way deal. Campbell worked with Bruce on the script and Bernie asked his wife Michelle to color his linework. According to the artist, she did this very carefully with watercolor, brushwork and all”¦ Adams, who was financing the project was the fifth wheel. Since the book was slow in coming, due to the highly meticulous work done by the Wrightsons, Neal sold the publication rights for the first chunk of completed pages to Toutain Editor of all places, a Spanish outfit that reprinted Warrens Creepy in a re-packaged format for their local market. Toutain, they didnt get Michelles coloring. Predictably, when Wrightson saw what had been done to his wifes gorgeous, highly disciplined work, he was furious: It looks like they didnt photograph it right”¦ because it photographed pale”¦ they came and did the retouching with what looks like magic marker, solid colors, whacking away at it. Really looks bad. Still, wanting to recoup some of the funds hed advanced to a creative duo that had turned into a kooky quartet, Adams didnt hesitate to ship the same pages to the American edition of Heavy Metal later that year when they asked for them. Eventually, to the foursomes great relief, he had a disagreement over the rate with Toutain and HM Communications Inc., Heavy Metals publisher in the States, and he withdrew his offer for further chapters. It would take years for the project to finish. But 1982 was also the year he got his best offer yet, or more correctly put, he and Campbell re-worked it into a great offer. Not being massive comic fans themselves, still brothers Bill and Steve Schanes had lucked into acquiring a huge stack of old comics on the cheap when they were children. When the kids in their neighborhood spied this impressive haul of valuable collectors issues and this resulted in an all-out slaughter of many piggy banks, the Schanes figured they were on to something. From their parents house they built mini-distribution business that grew exponentially when they not only set up a couple of comic retail shops, but they eventually talked Marvel and DC into selling to them directly. That they managed this when they were still in their late teens is even more astonishingly. In 1979, the brothers dipped a few toes into publishing new material, and just two years later they signed Jack Kirby and Mike Grell to create original comic books for them. A year later they asked Jones if he wanted to write some stories for their company Pacific Comics. The type of creator-owned deal they had given Kirby and Grell, which was mostly unheard of in the industry, was already attractive, but Jones and Campbell sent back a counteroffer. What if they packaged several anthology titles for them instead, with the duo delivering complete issues like Eisner and Iger had done it? With the ink on their contract not even fully dried, the writer and his muse/editor began to create their own line-up for a 1980s revival of EC Comics, but with no restrictions whatsoever. Twisted Tales No. 1, their first book for the Schanes, hit the shelves of local comic shops later that year. And it did it ever hit. The cover alone, which was sexy and misogynistic, felt like a Molotov cocktail and then some. Jones had managed to get his neighbor to create it, and Corben came through for him. He even brought the vibrant hues that had made In Deep such a standout and which the writer had sorely missed on Amberstar. His friend also provided the artwork for the first tale in the issue, though he didnt color his linework and inks. Still, it was a great story, but everything looked great and all in all, this was a comic unlike anything comic readers had ever seen. With Jones writing all stories in the entire run, something he also did for the science fiction anthology series Alien Worlds that premiered a month later, these books combined the sensibilities of underground comix with the slick production values of major comic book publishers, only that PC beat them at their own game. PC titles had better paper, a better coloring and printing process, and apart from Kirby and Grell, Jones and April Campbell lined-up some of the hottest artists. These books were defiantly not your regular old Marvel and DC books. They werent your grandfathers EC Comics, either. Though it had taken him a long time, by now, he was a different writer, a writer who no longer relied on the template Feldstein had created. For the most part, though Jones didnt mind stealing some of Al Feldsteins story resolutions and twists, like with the final panel for his and artist John Boltons The Well, Twisted Tales No. 4 (August 1983), a panel that was virtually ripped from Feldsteins and Woods tale Spawn of Mars, Weird Fantasy No. 9 (September-October 1951). However, Jones and the British illustrator would produce a second, much better tale together. You, Illusion, Twisted Tales No. 6 (January 1984) was his first stab at meta-fiction, and it was actually pretty great, with John Bolton doing a lot of the heavy lifting. Still, thered be failure along the way, sometimes unnecessary failure, as with his ill-advised attempt to re-create a story in the vein of Feldsteins preachies, ECs most poignant morality stories. Jones even hired Rand Holmes whod managed to make a career for himself in underground comix by virtue of imitation. His art style was the closest approximation of Wally Woods work he was able to get on paper or get away with. Both Jones and Campbell had to defend this poorly conceived tale about racism when it was published, and theyre still defending it today. Be that as it may, it stands to reason that Jones did his best work whenever he stopped playing an imitation game he could never win at. Case in point, the fantastic mini-series he and Brent Anderson created, with Campbell editing as well as serving as an inspiration/model for the artist for some of the scenarios. Also, most importantly, the look of their lead character, incidentally a woman who was suffering from amnesia and who eventually assumed what became the name of the title which ran for six issues (the last two published by another small shingle once PC Comics ran into difficulties). Somerset Holmes No. 1 (September 1983) showed comic fans whod been following the writer-artists career over a period of fourteen years, that Jones was still willing to choose the less well-travelled path. Somerset Holmes is best described as a Hitchcock film mixed with the 1980s style sensibilities of a Brian De Palma thriller. Obviously, many of De Palmas films are exactly that, with the director replacing the cold, understated sensuality and the upper-class glamour of Hitchocks films with in-your-face sexuality, but this was not what it was. Maybe the closest reference is De Palmas most original movie, The Fury (1978), which itself is based on John Farris seminal novel. What is striking about the mini-series is how cinematic it feels, something that hadnt been done to death in comics back in the 1980s, even though we have Anderson trying his hand at a very Krigstein influenced layout with nineteen panels on a single page, Krigsteins art being the antithesis of cinematic of course, but it was just this page and it did serve a purpose. Here was this woman, who looked like Campbell (after all the men whod looked like Jones), who was trying to figure out who she was, and there were yet so many pieces to this puzzle that had to be arranged in the right order. Then, in the panel that concluded the first issue, after having been asked by a friendly stranger what her name was, our heroine picked a name from a billboard for a developing project: Somerset Homes, Better Living for a Brighter Future. It looked like an ad for one of Feldsteins suburbs, the setting of many of his best stories, stories that had served as an inspiration for Bruce Jones. As Somerset was driven away, Jones was leaving this world, too. His next stop, it would be Hollywood.

Author Profile

Chris Buse (RIP)

A comic book reader since 1972. When he is not reading or writing about the books he loves or is listening to The Twilight Sad, you can find Chris at his consulting company in Germany... drinking damn good coffee. Also a proud member of the ICC (International Comics Collective) Podcast with Al Mega and Dave Elliott.

Latest entries

• ColumnsDecember 30, 2020“FORGET THE NIGHT AHEAD” – WITHOUT FEAR, PART 1
• ColumnsDecember 16, 2020“I WANT TO BELIEVE” – THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, PART 5
• ColumnsNovember 25, 2020“HE STILL INSISTS HE SEES THE GHOSTS“ THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, PART 4
• ColumnsNovember 11, 2020“WHATEVER WALKED THERE, WALKED ALONE” THE CHILDREN OF THE NIGHT, PART 3