So here we are on the verge of spring again and it is time for Will Eisner Week, our annual recognition of comic book excellence, one I’m always happy to participate in. Anyone unfamiliar with Will’s stuff should remedy that post haste, either at your local comics shop or – I’m afraid this is virtually unavoidable – by aiming your computer at the, yes, folks at Amazon.
My personal, and much valued, acquaintance with Will began when friends stopped by my SoHo pig sty of a bachelor pad – the styness was my fault, not the apartment’s – on the way to hear him lecture in nearby TriBeCa. I knew who he was, of course: it would have been hard to be in the comic book biz back then, in, I’m guessing, the 80s, and not be aware of Will’s signature creation, The Spirit.
I first met The Spirit – and isn’t that a splendid first name? – when I was much, much younger, living with my parents in St. Louis, and, during summer afternoons with other future bibliophiles, trading comics. I probably remember The Spirit mostly because I didn’t quite get him, not the way I got Superman, Batman, Green Lantern and the legion of costumed good guys in the comics before educators and editorialists and just possibly the odd psychiatrist or two convinced large portions of the citizenry that these colorful vilenesses were shoveling our innocent youth into hell.
That unhappy time was still in the future. My problems with The Spirit were of a different nature. They had to do with Denny Colt himself. He bopped around a city fighting crime, but he wasn’t a policeman and he wasn’t exactly anything else. He didn’t have a costume (which was somehow, in comics, a license to engage evil) like Batman and others; he had a mask, sure, and gloves, but the rest of his clothing? A suit, a hat and – this galls me – a tie. His garb was a lot like that of – this galls me more – our current president. And he had no special powers like Superman (though I wouldn’t have wanted to be on the receiving end of a Denny Colt punch.) So what was with him? Didn’t know. Back to Batman – him I got, at least kind of.
Flash forward to 1966, and join me in a gungy tenement on Manhattan’s Lower East Side reading the Sunday Herald Tribune. What I’m looking at is something special – a new Spirit story, the first in 14 years, written and illustrated for the Trib by Will Eisner. I am being knocked out and when I drop the paper I am a Spirit fan, thereafter on the lookout for any Spirit reprints I’m lucky enough to find. (There began to be a lot of them about then.
Jump ahead another few years and I’m doing a cabe tv show with Eisner, who I now know… a little. While I’m blathering, Marifran is standing off-camera with Will, whom she is meeting for the first time. When I join them, my gracious wife tells me that Mr. Eisner is coming to dinner. He does and Will and I spend an evening talking and Mari’s cooking convinces our guest that vegetarian food can be pretty tasty, When, at evening’s end Will gets into a cab and we have a new friend.
Today is A Day Without A Woman, a demonstration of solidarity to show the need for human rights for all. Throughout the country (and perhaps the world), you will see women wearing red, not spending money, and not working to protest gender inequality. I admit I was torn about having a column posted today. I respect today’s protest, and I am taking part in the ways that I can. Still, I wrote this column before today, and I felt very strongly about marking the 20th anniversary of a strong woman who inspired me, Buffy the Vampire Slayer.
Back in 1996, I remember the excitement when I saw the commercial for the new show, Buffy the Vampire Slayer. My sister and I loved the original movie, in part for the camp, in part for the wit, and in part for the female hero in the title. The next time she called home from college, I remember grabbing the phone to tell her that Buffy was back. Little did I know that the Buffy and the WB were about to shape my entire generation.
When Buffy helped really launch that channel on March 10, 1997, it was the beginning of an era. When I was in high school, everyone watched the WB. That singing frog was on everyone’s TV, we all knew about the love triangle of Percy, Joey, and Dawson, and Buffy was an icon; at least, she was to me. I did have a single friend tease me about watching Buffy; by season 3 I had him hooked. I still don’t let him live that one down.
The best part of Buffy for me growing up was that she was a year older than me, in a critical time of my life: high school. She was getting ready for prom when I was just a junior. Buffy and her scoobies survived high school when I questioned if I could make it through junior year. Her first year of college coincided with me applying for schools. When she entered the working world, I was at the point of college to start thinking about my future employment. Buffy got through those hurdles and set the example that I could as well.
It never mattered that Buffy was the creation of Joss Whedon. He wrote a strong female role model when others only wrote set pieces that had lines. He was able to channel a teenage girl surprisingly well, and 20 years later, he is still celebrated for it. Whedon continues to fight for women’s rights through Equality Now.
I owe more to Buffy and Joss Whedon than most people even know. Truth is, without Buffy I wouldn’t be here on ComicMix. I was a casual comics reader as a kid (I would refuse to get on an airplane without an Archie digest in hand) but it was never a serious passion. When Buffy came to comics with Season 8, that was my true gateway into this world. Dark Horse made comics so inviting, that I simply stayed. I delved in with two hands and never looked back. In fact, the reason my site [insertgeekhere] was started was so my writing partner and I could defend Dawn, Buffy’s little sister, after we heard some truly horrible things shouted at her during a sing-a-long event. And writing about geek culture has helped me express myself in ways I never thought possible.
So on today, a Day Without a Woman, I can only reflect on the women that gave me some of the best pieces of who I am. A day without these women means a day without myself. In real life, my mother gave me my love of books; my grandmother gave me my snarky attitude. My rabbi showed me that striving to answer a question is its own reward. And in fiction, Captain Janeway gave me a role model of strength and grace (plus my love of coffee). And finally, Buffy gave me the very reason and drive to write and express myself.
So all I can do today is quote Buffy herself. As the slayer said, “Make your choice. Are you ready to be strong?”
Every town must have a place / Where phony hippies meet / Psychedelic dungeons / Popping up on every street • Frank Zappa, “Who Needs The Peace Corps?”
The late Sixties really did live up to its reputation. In my home town of Chicago hippie central was the Lincoln Park neighborhood around the iconic Biograph Theater, where, 34 years earlier, the FBI allegedly shot John Dillinger to death. Today, hippies can’t even afford to drive down Lincoln Avenue.
The area sported many blues and folk bars, giving such local talent as Steve Goodman, John Prine, Hound Dog Taylor and Harvey Mandel a place to strut their stuff. It was Mecca to the storefront theater movement, creating world-renown companies such as the Steppenwolf and the Organic Theater a home for newcomer writers and actors like David Mamet, Joe Mantegna, Laurie Metcalf, John Malkovich, and John Ostrander. A mile down the street was The Second City, then-home to John Belushi, Bill Murray, Harold Ramis and dozens of other people who would draw a multicolored mustache on the face of comedy.
A mile further south found you at the office of the underground newspaper the Chicago Seed, a paper so underground it sported a circulation as high as 48,000 copies. I was fortunate to be part of that outfit, initially working under the brilliant editor Abe Peck, who taught me more than any credentialed teacher ever could. Wonderfully, The Seed was across the street from the gargantuan Moody Bible Institute, although I spent more time at the Saucy Weenie scarfing down some great Italian beef and hot dogs.
Creativity flowed down Lincoln Avenue and if you weren’t swimming with that flow you were bathed in amazement. This, in January 1969, is where I first met a one-time Second City employee named Jay Lynch.
Most certainly, cartoonists benefited from the freedom and opportunity that brazenly replaced oxygen. The Chicago Mirror, a black-and-white “counter-culture” magazine that debuted in 1967 and was mostly sold at “head shops” (Google it) such as the Mole Hole. Less than a year later, editor/publisher Lynch turned it into an all-comix publication called Bijou Funnies. It featured the work of Robert Crumb, Art Spiegelman, Gilbert Shelton, Jay Kinney, Justin Green, Kim Deitch, Ralph Reese, Denis Kitchen and his forever pal, Skip Williamson… it, like Zap Comix that premiered shortly before Bijou, was a who’s who of the comix movement.
As the hippie crusade started to age out, Jay – often known as Jayzey – expanded his horizons. He did color separations and 3-D adaptations for Fred Eychaner, then a printer, a major hippie employer and a contributor to The Seed. Jay was among the many underground artists recruited to write and draw for Topps Inc., contributing to the iconic Bazooka Joe and engaging in a life-long relationship with Wacky Packs and Garbage Pail Kids. In 1976 he created Phoebe and the Pigeon People with Gary Whitney for the Chicago Reader and syndicated to alt-weeklies all over. Several reprint books were published by Kitchen Sink Press; the feature ran for the better part of two decades.
I worked with Jayzey and his BFF Skip Williamson off and on for years, and we saw each other at comics conventions, stockholders’ meetings (that one’s a long and litigious story), and, well, memorials to fallen friends. When FM rock radio and poetry slam pioneer Bob Rudnick died in 1995, a wake was held at Mike James’ famed Heartland Café. It was a wonderful reunion of long-haired gray hairs, and, sadly, was the last time I saw such wonderful people as Marshall Rosenthal and Eliot Wald. Jay was still living in Chicago but I had moved to the New York area nearly ten years previous; we talked for more than an hour catching up and pontificating on the status of the comic art medium and what we should be doing about it. We continued that conversation for 20 years, mostly in bits and pieces at conventions but also through the modern miracle of the Internet.
Jay Lynch died of cancer last Sunday at the age of 72. These days, that’s young enough to be thought of as dying too young. Of course, for vital creators such as Jayzey no age could be too old. Unlike many of us hippies Jayzey eschewed drugs – Denis Kitchen pointed out that was true only if you didn’t count nicotine – but he got chopped down early nonetheless.
Jay Lynch was a quite pioneer. His work speaks for itself; his work screams for itself. A much-loved man, he leaves friends stunned and saddened all over the world.
Eras end all the time. Jay Lynch’s work will endure.
It’s kind of funny that the inferiority complex that has plagued comic books for decades has migrated on to comic book movies. Every time you read an article with the headline “Bam! Pow! Comics aren’t just for kids anymore” you get this kind of desperate need for some of the less secure in the industry to justify their life’s work when they really don’t need to. Good work is good work regardless of who reads it, and most importantly regardless what people who don’t read it think of it. Comic book movies are getting to the same place with this death spiral race to the bottom to make the movies more and more gritty to prove that they’re more and more adult. It made me nervous when I heard the final Wolverine movie was going to be rated R; that we would get a joyless slog of a movie more focused with blood and body counts than with making a good movie. Logan is a great movie, a violent movie to be sure but also a thoughtful one, it’s a movie that gives you time to think— and while it is bleak, it has joy and it has hope.
Logan has a thin story, but I mean that in the most flattering way. The whole movie is essentially a road trip where Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) takes an aging Professor Xavier (Patrick Stewart) and a young clone (Dafne Keen) , that the film only refers to as X-23 once but we all know is X-23, looking for a mutant sanctuary in the North Dakota wilderness. The good guys are being chased by some awfully nebulous bad guys who never get much more motivation than wanting to mess with the heroes. I’m also not 100% sure that the emotional center of the entire X-Men franchise has been the relationship between Wolverine and Professor X, but it doesn’t matter. Jackman and Stewart have the chemistry and the sheer magnetism to drive the whole movie as long as you don’t stop and fixate on what happened in any of the previous films. Keen is a star in the making, she has a quiet intensity and seems great at ripping bad guys to shreds.
I’m thrilled that Logan is a superhero movie that doesn’t feel compelled to tell me that the world is ending or a city is in peril. The central conflict of the film is one with a very small footprint. That’s not to suggest I’m somehow okay with the corporate exploitation and then extermination of children— but there’s no ticking time bomb, no cosmic threat. I’m honestly not sure the wider world would have noticed if the good guys had failed in this one; everyone who seemed to know what was going on was either directly involved or dead by the end. This is just a character arc for Wolverine (and to a lesser extent X-23) and everything in the movie is just in service to that. It shouldn’t be every superhero movie (or even most; I bet this would get old very quickly) but it’s refreshing to see a movie that could be wall-to-wall action stop for a second and appreciate the quiet moments.
I know I literally just finished praising Logan for being willing to linger on quiet moments, but this movie is also just too damn long. I want small character moments, but I don’t need quite so many of them to be just another way of reinforcing the notion that Logan drinks too much, I got that pretty quickly. I also think a harsher editing eye could have been taken to some of the action sequences. I know the rule is an action beat every ten pages, but so much of the middle of the movie is different variations on Wolverine with or without X-23 just crazy murdering a bunch of evil redshirts, and what does that really accomplish the fifth time that we didn’t get on the third? There is nothing like seeing Wolverine go nuts on people, even more so now that we got an R-rated version of it, and the first few times seeing X-23 go at it is a delight— but at a point it’s just blood and falling bodies and isn’t revealing anything about character or pushing the story forward, it just seems to be there because that’s what a studio executive thinks good pacing is.
Logan is the end of an era— it’s supposedly the last time we’ll see Jackman play Wolverine or Stewart play Professor X. Stewart was the best casting decision in the 2000 X-Men film, and while they’ve been transitioning to James McAvoy for a while now it’s sad to see the actual curtain call. Jackman has been the bedrock for the entire X-Men franchise up until this point, and while it’s sad to see him go I’m sure he’ll appreciate being able to gain 15 pounds without it being a complete life-altering disaster. I firmly believe at some point someone will wonder why they’re giving up all the money they could be making by having Wolverine in movies and the part will be recast… and I’m both scared and excited by that prospect. Scared because Jackman leaves huge shoes to fill, but excited because I want to see more of these roles turn over as a matter of course. Actors should be able to leave these roles without needing giant continuity resets that tire out the audience. We should accept a new Wolverine or Iron Man the same way we accept a new James Bond or a new John Connor. The actors are important but the roles need to be timeless. There’s an exciting opportunity here, and I hope Fox does as good a job with it as they did in making a movie as brave as Logan.
Last week I talked with Vito Delsante about his new Kickstarter campaign, and this week I got the chance to talk with Matthew Harding, a comics creator who has a Kickstarter campaign with Einar Masson ending this week for an anthology titled Not Forgotten featuring public domain superheroes from the Golden Age of comics.
JC: For people who may be unfamiliar with your and Einar Masson’s work, can you tell me about your comics experience and what made you decide to work on an anthology with Einar Masson?
MH: Einar and I both went to college together where I had run the comics club for about five years. Since then I’ve been working freelance doing odd jobs from production work at Black Mask Studios to animation at Madefire motion comics. I’ve self-published Popapocalypse through Kickstarter campaigns, colored a couple of Bloodworth issues, and written comics for creator owned projects that are going to be announced soon, as well as for clients like Apple. My latest project was illustrating one of the seven motion comic stories for Stan Lee’s Lucky Man, which was really cool because Stan Lee himself did the voice acting work for the character that I designed and drew, which was pretty much the top of my bucket list! I imagine my career is all downhill from here, after that.
JC: I imagine you both have an interest in the Golden Age of comics. What about that age stands out to you? Why do you feel it’s a time in comics we should be revisiting now?
MH: My love affair with the golden age didn’t actually begin until I started to dig through the archives and realized what it was that we were actually doing with this project, and the relevance it held with today’s industry. The golden age was literally the birth of superheroes and a construction of a brand-new medium that could tell their stories. Comics today are built upon almost a century of foundation, and even though we live in a time where creators are breaking rules and defying expectations, those aspects of the comics industry are still there to break.
In the 1930s there were no preconceptions or expectations. There were no rules or guidelines. All the stories were brand new, and creators were coming up with anything that creativity could discover, leading to stories that had a very sincere and exploratory nature to them. My love for the golden age really developed when I discovered just how important the time was for our industry, and why it needed to be remembered during our time now when things are so quickly evolving and changing in the way we tell stories.
JC: Who are some of your favorite heroes from that era?
MH: My personal favorite is the hero known as “13,” who we have two excellent stories featuring him in our anthology. 13 was a guy who was incredibly unlucky whenever the number 13 showed up. For instance, on the 13th day in a month, his fiancé died, and a month later he was fired. The month after that, his house caught on fire. You see my point. So, rather than just succumb to this horrible fate, he used it to his advantage by making a superhero suit with the number 13 plastered on the front of it and went out to fight crime. The idea was that he would get so unlucky that criminals that just so happened to be in his general vicinity would be affected by this bad luck, and while they were distracted he would punch them in the face. I mean, isn’t that the coolest superhero you ever heard of?
JC: Why public domain superheroes as opposed to new characters? Were you fans of some of these characters before coming up with the idea for this anthology?
MH: After going through the archives, we felt that it’s important work to not only bring these heroes back into the public eye, but their creators as well. With every story that’s in the book, we will have a segment that tells the history of the character and the people we created him/her. One of the main features I really pushed to have happen for the anthology was the inclusion of the curator of the Cartoon Art Museum in San Francisco, Andrew Farago with an essay talking about the golden age of comics and the creators who helped jump start the century long superhero industry. Their work deserves to not be forgotten, and we feel like our book is helping make that happen.
JC: How did you find contributors for this anthology? Were you at all surprised by the passion other creators have for some of these characters?
MH: We started off by just getting a group of friends together and talking about making an anthology at a small scale. We put out word out online about a submission process, and it was the response that we got that surprised me completely. There were over 75 fully composed submissions from people who were new to the industry to veterans who’ve had works put out through IDW, DC comics, and Image. It was amazing the amount of love that creators have for these characters, and I believe that they had found inspiration the same way that I did when they started to search through the archives.
JC: Can you talk a bit about what kind of stories we’ll be seeing in Not Forgotten? Will we see period piece stories as well as stories taking place in our present day and beyond?
MH: Absolutely. You’ll be getting stories that took place in alternate history WW2, so the 80’s to present to the future. We wanted to vary the stories that are in the anthology so that there’s a little bit of something for everybody, and that includes where and when the stories take place.
JC: One problem I’ve noticed with bringing back characters from that long ago is how they are often cishet white men and don’t necessarily reflect the comics readership of today. Were some of these characters updated by the creators involved to make them and/or their supporting casts more diverse?
MH: We noticed the same thing when we went through the old stories, and we decided early on that one of the main purposes for the book was to modernize the characters to reflect our modern day, with more voices and diversity present. We have creators working on this from all over the world, and the stories that are being told are very diverse in subject matter, and we’re very happy with the result.
JC: What about Kickstarter made it the best place to bring this particular project? Have either of you launched or participated in a comic that went through Kickstarter before?
MH: I’ve funded two of my personal projects through Kickstarter and they were both successful, and I think it’s a great place for indie comics to be born for a few different reasons. For one, it’s a great way to get your project in front of people and to test the market to see if they’re interested in what you’re producing. Just like the golden age of comics, it has created a marketplace where there are no rules or expectations, and you can bring any idea you want to the table and see if people want to see it.
JC: There have been a few instances in the past with comics on Kickstarter not seeing the light of day despite being funded, and those few instances have made some people more cautious of who they back. While Kickstarter does protect those that back campaigns now more than ever, can you talk about what you have in place that will make sure this book gets to its backers?
MH: The main thing we have going is that since it’s an anthology that has many creators who are all very eager to get the book out, it’s a team of people making sure this happens instead of just one or two people. Most of the book is already created, so it’s just a matter of getting it to the printer and then gathering all the local people together to mail everything out. Most of us have experience with Kickstarter and distribution, so it will be a quick and painless operation.
JC: The campaign wraps up in about a day, and as of this conversation you’ve very close to crossing that finish line and getting fully funded, so before we wrap this up I’d love to give you the opportunity to tell everyone reading this why they should support Not Forgotten.
MH: Our book is full of interesting and new takes on characters that haven’t seen the light of day for decades, and the artwork is diverse and amazing. We have sci fi stories, horror stories, superhero stories, and comedies. Our creators for this book range from writers that have created Overwatch to artists who revived Toejam and Earl. Not only are the stories amazing, but the history of the superhero genre presented in an entertaining way. Our book is something that I feel is really important and relevant, and I’m absolutely sure that anyone who owns it will cherish it.
JC: Thank you so much for taking the time to chat with me about Not Forgotten. For those of you reading this, the campaign ends this Wednesday, March 8, at Midnight PST. Click here to check it out and please consider supporting and sharing!
It used to be that the death of a superhero was an “Imaginary Story” or a What If…? tale. Then, with the death of Superman in 1992, it became all about the publicity, the sales boost, the net dollars.
But a funny thing happened on the way to the accountants. The impermanence, the easy reversibility of death trampled on the audience’s feelings; we felt disrespected and we fought back in the only way we could – with our wallets. And the companies answered with more stunts and more exploitative stories in which heroes like Captain America and Spider-Man died and were brought back, or supporting characters like Aunt May and Jason Todd died and were brought back, and when that stopped working, they revived long-dead characters like Bucky Barnes.
Sometimes it works out. The morphing of Bucky into the Winter Soldier was and continues to be a brilliant piece of storytelling.
And sometimes people who are dead stay dead. Gwen Stacy. Uncle Ben. Karen Page. Thomas and Martha Wayne. Jor-El and Lara. Their deaths are constant echoes in the lives of Spider-Man and Daredevil and Batman and Superman. Their lives continue to reverberate in the hearts of those who loved them.
My father died a week ago today. His death will be a constant echo in my life. His life will always reverberate in my heart.
We live in a time when each day we are both blessed and cursed by instant feedback and judgment on everything we do. We’re hammered by harsh evaluations of our work and even our future-plans. Professional sports are dissected during postgame broadcasts and call-in shows. Feedback based on casting details or plot rumors now begins long before any creative project is released. In the comic industry, fans render judgments based on teased details long before anyone reads a single page.
Businesses are encouraged to hear and respond to every complaint and critique from customers. Hey, even I have led a seminar at ComicsPRO where the central theme was that retailers should “Grow Big Ears.”
But there are times when you have to ignore the voices. Sometimes you just know what has to be done and have to do it.
Exhibit #A is Joey Gates. Joey is a local Finger Lakes NY area guy who loves comics and has been to numerous comics conventions, as both as a fan and a dealer.
Joey had a dream of starting a new comic convention. Oh, there were about a zillion reasons why he shouldn’t have launched the Finger Lakes Comic-Con in Auburn last month. Seasoned pros would tell him why the timing was off and why it would never work.
But he did it. And now he will have always done it. And yes, there’s plenty of learning for Joey. I’m excited that he’s already incorporating this learning into his 2018 plans. The point is: if he had listened to the naysayers his dream of launching a comic convention would have never happened and he would never have had gotten to the point where he could learn – ostensibly ‘the hard way’ – and improved the next year. A tip of the Captain’s hat to Joey.
Exhibit #B comes right out of Joey’s Finger Lakes Comic-Con. One of the guests was comics artist Bob McLeod. He’s the type of guy who’s created and illustrated so many things I love – the Dark Knight Over Metropolis story and subsequent Superman adventures, the franchise expanding X-Men spinoff, New Mutants, with the wonderful Louise Simonson and Rough Stuff magazine – a fantastic comics magazine for artists and for everyone who loves comic art.
I conspired with my lovely wife Kathe and longtime Action-team member John Cresco to kidnap Bob after the first night of the show. We took him to Auburn’s award-winning craft brewery, Prison City Pub. (C’mon and visit, I’ll take you there too!).
The whole night was a lot of fun, but upon reflection, the best part was when Bob told us his own Secret Origin story.
Bob was one of those kids who always loved art and got really good really quickly. As a MAD Magazine fan, his plan was to follow in the footsteps of Mort Drucker and Jack Davis, but thought that working in traditional comics would be just fine too.
So after art school, Bob sold his car, went to NYC and started to make the rounds at the various comics publishers.
At DC Comics he met Joe Orlando. Now, among the giants in the industry, Joe Orlando was a giant among giants. Not only was a Joe a phenomenal artist, but also he had a strong understanding of the business side and knew how it all worked. If Joe told you something about the industry, you would know it to be true.
He told Bob, “You put a lot of work into these samples, but you need to go back to school and learn how to draw.” Most comic fans would have been devastated with feedback like that
Instead of sinking into a depression, Bob took the time to learn. He was broke and could only afford to buy a couple of comics. He looked to compare what he was doing and what they were doing. He copied and dissected the panels. He took the time to understand Joe’s POV and how he could fulfill the need so he’d be ready the next time he got up to bat.
Neal Adams is a guy I’ll be talking about more soon, but he figures into this story as well. The comics world knows about Neal’s great art skill and about Neal’s efforts on behalf of creator’s rights. Sometimes, however, the small things reveal our character too.
While this was all going on, Bob had met with Neal Adams. The legendary comics artist called John Verpoorten, Marvel’s head of production, and asked if they needed another staffer. Voila – a career was born.
Had Bob McLeod listened to Joe Orlando that day, he wouldn’t have persevered and become a rock-solid comic artist.
There was an inspirational Internet meme floating around that said something to the effect of, “Sometimes a dream is something that only you can hear.” I respect those dreams. I get inspired by people who chase those dreams, and –sometimes – don’t listen.
Jay Lynch, one of the fathers of underground comix and creator/writer and/or artist of such treasures as Bijou Comix, Phoebe and the Pigeon People, Nard n Pat, and Garbage Pail Kids, died of cancer this afternoon at age 72. His most recent work was providing the cover art for Fantagraphics’ new book, The Realist Cartoons. He will be missed by his many, many friends and fans.
I’d known Jay for almost a half-century, and I’ll be taking the liberty of commenting on a man I regard as one of the most important cartoonists of the post WWII period in my usual space here Wednesday.
It was a lifetime ago. It was just moments gone by.
Tuesday will mark twenty years since my wife, Kimberly Ann Yale, died.
I’ve been working on a column discussing the passage for some days but haven’t been satisfied with it. Sometimes you try to say something and can’t find the right things to say. I’ve come across an old column I wrote ten years ago. Just about everything I wanted to say I said back then so, if y’all don’t mind, I’ll just reprint it here.
Today is Thanksgiving and a hearty Happy Thanksgiving to you all. As it turns out, it’s also the birthday of my late wife, Kimberly Ann Yale, who would have been 54 today. This is a day for stopping and giving thanks for the good things in your life and so I’ll ask your indulgence while I remember one of the best things in mine, which was Kim.
For those who don’t know her, never met her, how do I describe her to you? My god, where do I begin? Physically – heart shaped face, megawatt smile, big blue eyes. Champagne blonde hair which, in her later years, she decided should be red. That decision was pure Kimmie. She looked good, too, but she also looked good bald. More on that in a few moments.
She was buxom and damn proud of it. Referred to her breasts as “the girls” and was fond of showing them off. She was about 5’8” so that when she was in heels we were about the same height. Basically had an hourglass figure although sometimes there were a few more seconds packed into that hourglass than maybe there should have been. We both fought weight problems and I still do.
All that, however, is merely a physical description. Photographs could tell you as much and more and still tell you so little about Kim. Not who she was. Kim was an extrovert to the point of being an exhibitionist. She was sometimes flamboyant; I have described her as the world’s most innocent narcissist. She loved the spotlight but with the delight of a child. Yet, she also loved nothing better than to be in the corner of a tea shoppe or coffee house, drinking her cuppa, writing in her journal, totally absorbed into herself and the moment.
She also genuinely loved people. Loved being around them, hearing their stories, telling her own. She had one of the world’s great infectious laughs. If you were in a comedy on stage, you wanted Kim in your audience. She got the jokes, too, including some the rest of the audience missed.
She loved music, all kinds of music, and could talk knowledgeably about it for hours. Hell, Kim could hold forth on almost anything for hours. She loved classical, the blues, rock and roll, soundtracks to movies – everything. She loved movies, she loved books, she loved TV. She adored Doctor Who; we, in fact, met at a Doctor Who Convention.
She loved comics and she loved the idea of women in comics. At many different Cons, she would chair the Women in Comics panel and, in Chicago especially where she did it for several years, people learned to come because it would often be one of the most interesting, thought-provoking panels at the Con. She was part of the early organizational meetings that resulted in Friends of Lulu and their annual award for the best new female comics creator is named for Kim. She would have been very proud of that.
How do I describe our relationship – what we gave to each other? One example – she brought cats into my life, I brought dogs back into hers. She made me more of a cat person; I brought out the dog lover in her.
Other things she brought to me – her love of Westerns and of the Civil War. I had dismissed Westerns as “oaters” and “horse opera” but Kim patiently took me through the best ones, showed me the difference from a John Ford western and a Budd Boetticher one. Without Kim, there never would have been The Kents or my Marvel westerns, Blaze of Glory and Apache Skies.
On our honeymoon, Kim wanted to go to Fredericksburg, Virginia, so we could walk some of the Civil War battlefields in the area. I was a little dubious at first but went along because it was important to her. My god, I learned so much walking those battlefields. I don’t know if you can understand those battles or the War without doing that. We would later add others like Shiloh and Gettysburg to the list. Amazing, bonding, illuminating moments.
Kim and I worked together as co-writers on several projects, notably Suicide Squad, some Munden’s Bar stories, and a tale of Young John Gaunt that ran in the back of GrimJack during its final year at First Comics. I think Kim was a finer writer than I am. I’m at heart a storyteller and I’m mostly about what happens next; I turn a good phrase and I know plot, character, theme and so on but Kim was also into the composition and the polish on the story. She would go over and over things while I’d push on. I wish she had written more on her own; at the end of her life, so did she.
Kim also introduced me to the fabled “Bucket of Suds,” a wonderful bar in Chicago that was the nearest earthly equivalent I know to Munden’s Bar and to which we, in turn, introduced many folks from the comic book community, especially during the Chicago Comiccon. The owner, Joe Danno, was a mixologist and could invent a new drink on the spot in addition to creating his own cordials. The Bucket not only served drinks but, for many years, served home made pizza, burgers, breadsticks.
Joe also created his own catsup, mustard, bar-b-que sauce, and hot sauce. Want to see our esteemed editor, Mike Gold, both drool and cry at the same time? Get him talking about the hot sauce and the bar-b-que sauce, neither of which is available any more. (Oh, the humanity!) I set a scene in an issue of Hawkworld at the Bucket and got photo reference for our penciler, Graham Nolan, which he used wonderfully well. I later obtained the pages and gave them to Joe who proudly had them framed up over the bar.
Joe got older and the bar’s opening hours became more erratic. Kim by that point, was also sick with the breast cancer that would kill her. Joe finally announced that the Bar was closing and said there would be a party the closing night. Kim desperately wanted to be there – it was right around her birthday, as I recall – but she was too sick by that point to make the trip. The bar closed and Kim herself died the following March.
Kimberly wore her heart on her sleeve, both politically and personally, and it was an open and generous heart. She identified so much with underdogs. She was a PK – a Preacher’s Kid – and her father was an Episcopal chaplain in the Navy as well, so she was also a “Navy Brat.” She would move every few years to another base somewhere else in the country. Sometimes it would be a great place and sometimes it was one where she was treated horribly but one thing she learned was not to form really close friends because, in a few years, she or they would move on to another base and would be gone.
Yet despite all that, her heart was not bitter or closed. She loved meeting people and she did make friends even though her heart did get hurt time and again. What people thought of her mattered to her and sometimes that could hurt. I tried to explain to her that, in fact, while everyone had a right to their own opinion, not everyone’s opinion mattered. Some people were just assholes. Some were nasty assholes. Some had agendas. Some were misinformed. Kim understood all that or at least her head did but it hurt nevertheless. It’s hard when you lead with your heart.
Kim died of breast cancer more than ten years ago. I won’t go through all the particulars of that time, other than to note that it was mercifully swift and that she fought with her customary determination, élan and brio which she documented in a brave series of columns that she wrote for the Comic Buyers Guide.
There are a few grace notes to tell in the space we have. As a result of her bouts with chemo, Kim’s hair did fall out so eventually she shaved her head. She considered using a wig but eventually opted for temporary tattoos at her temples. I remember the butterflies.
In her final weeks, she let go of more and more things that simply no longer mattered. She let go of old angers, she forgave, she reconciled. As her body failed, ultimately her spirit became more clear. I’ll not say she went quietly into that good night; she was very clear about wanting to die in her own home and when circumstances forced us to bring her back to the hospital for pain management, she rebelled. Drugged up, she still tried to take the tubes out of her arms. She wanted to go home and, finally, we brought her home.
Yet, all of these are also simply random facts about Kim and cannot capture her. There is only one way that I know to do that – through story. We had three memorial services for Kim after she died – one at our church, one in New York for those who knew her from the comics industry, one back in Chicago for family and friends there. Stories were told at all three and, for me, they were the centerpieces of the memorials. Mary and I still tell them, recalling Kim’s foibles as well as her virtues for, as I have said before, I prefer Kim’s foibles to many other people’s virtues. They make her human. They make her alive.
I think that’s important for anyone who has lost someone who was loved. Don’t just remember – tell the stories. So that’s what I’d like to do with the comments sections this week, if you have time – tell stories about the lives of people we are thankful we have known, those who are no longer here. If you have a Kim story to tell, that would be great – I’d love to read it. If it’s about someone else, that’s okay, too – Kim would have loved to hear it.
That’s who Kim was – a person of story.
Happy Thanksgiving, everyone.
A few additional thoughts.
Kim was a geek back when it was not cool to be a geek and the triumph of geek culture would have floored her. The Star Wars prequels and now the new sequels and stand alone stories; the whole Lord of the Rings and Hobbit trilogies; the return of Doctor Who and the dawn of the superhero movie. She would have been in NYC with me for the premiere of the Suicide Squad movie; Kim would have seen the three-story tall Squad ad in Times Square, screamed and swooned and then laughed with utter delight. I can hear it in my mind’s ear.
She’s missed a lot. She is missed a lot.
I have a new life and a partner that I love and treasure – Mary Mitchell. Twenty years is a lifetime; twenty years was just a moment ago. Kim is still a part of my life and will be for the rest of my life and that’s as it should be.
