Stroud: You’ve been called the “Father of the Filipino Invasion” for introducing the leadership at DC like Carmine Infantino to the talent in the Philippines. Were your fellow artists anxious to break into the American comic book industry?

Tony DeZuniga: There’s a story there. They weren’t really looking for talent abroad like in the Philippines or anywhere else. When they started reprinting old material I asked them, “Why do you do that? People already read that.” I don’t know if they’re still doing that today, but they told me, “Well, we have no budget. That’s why we can’t use new art.” Then I was talking to Joe Orlando. He was a very nice guy. He was the one who gave me the break at DC. Carmine was busy at the time. He was president of DC at the time.

So anyway, with the small budget I was trying to help out so I suggested, “Maybe you don’t need to reprint old material. Maybe you can buy new art.” “Oh, I don’t know.” So finally, Joe Orlando did a little research and he found out that the best they could offer was something like 12 dollars a page. So, I said, “For that kind of money you can get new material, but you’ve got to go outside the country.” You see back when we were starting we were getting fifty cents a page. We were making crummy rates. That’s why we were trained to do really fast work. The publishers were picky, too. You didn’t just do wishy-washy work. If it was like that they’d complain and they wouldn’t pay you.

So, we learned to do good work and fast. So, I told Joe about it. They had a meeting and finally asked me if I could write to those guys and get a few samples of what they can do. So, I did that and when the work came in they were very impressed by the detail of the work they can do. So finally, they decided, “We’ve got to go down there and have a big meeting and talk to the artists themselves.” I said, “Fine.” If they do that they’ll see even better work, because the guys will try to impress them. And sure enough when we went down there; I went with them. They said, “Tony, you’ve got to go. You’re our personal ambassador to the islands.” (Laughter.) “Well, sure,” I said. “No problem.”

So, I went and sure enough we had a big meeting. Oh, my God, every artist showed up. It was wonderful. They showed more work. The only problem they noticed was that they were showing beautiful drawings, but they still didn’t know quite how to tell a very clear story. But that’s a minimal problem. That’s easy to disguise. They speak English, all of them, because thank God, we were all taught English as young kids. The schooling system in the islands is set up like that because we had an American Governor just like Puerto Rico does today. In the old days in the ‘20s and ‘30s we had a Commonwealth Government which was run by Americans. We had an American Governor running the islands and the military was there, of course. Everybody knows MacArthur was running the military down there. We were in a way very lucky because everybody spoke English. Today, I heard they only teach English in the islands in college now. We were on the lucky side. Everything was taught in English, from grade school to high school to college. A lot of people don’t know that.

So, when they left, that was the start of everything. They met everybody and they got work. They agreed to page rates up to ten dollars. Carmine explained that they needed somebody to get all the work and mail to us and all that and clean it up and so the other two dollars goes to those people for coordinating it. (Chuckle.) They don’t get the whole 12 dollars. And that was still very good money for those guys. They were so eager to start and sure enough they showed what they can do and it was the start of the “invasion.” (Chuckle.) I really hate that word, but it happened that way, really.

Little stories like how Murphy Anderson's preferred original art size forced the industry into a new standard, or how Kirby's disagreement with Jack Schiff over SKY MASTERS money eventually led to him being blacklisted from DC...

The Assembly Line: Part 2

Most comic books are illustrated in a three-stage process: The pages are completely drawn out in pencil…then the lettering is inscribed in ink…then the art is finished in ink. One, two, three. Lately, computer lettering has slightly amended the routine on some books but it still remains a procedure of three separate, distinct phases, usually involving three separate craftspersons.

A few columns back, we discussed the fact that comic book companies often supply drawing paper to their artists. This, we noted, is less due to generosity than to a desire not to have quarrels. The general rule of thumb is as follows…

If the penciller picks out the paper, the inker won't like it and if the inker picks out the paper, the penciller won't like it, and even if the penciller and inker agree on a stock, the letterer won't like it.

I mentioned here weeks ago that, when I worked for Jack Kirby, it took us a while to find a paper stock on which he could draw. The pencils he liked to use did not like the paper that DC supplied…but when we bought a kind that worked for Jack, it presented problems galore for Mike Royer, who inked n' lettered the books. Well, I'd forgotten (but Mike has since reminded me) that even the paper stock we ultimately selected wasn't ideal and, in order to do his best work, Mike found it necessary to iron the pages before inking them.

You read that right: Iron them. As in, he took a plain, old-fashioned iron — the same kind your momma used to press your dungarees — and ran it back and forth over all those Kamandi pages.

No, they weren't wrinkled. You don't have to be Bill Nye the Science Guy to figure out the heat did something to the graphite and/or paper, making it more conducive to ink. Mike wore out three or four General Electric irons in the service of the King of the Comics.

To ward off squabbles, many companies buy a ton-weight of one kind of paper, imprint it with blue lines to denote the margins, and make everyone draw on it. Yes, it can be more convenient for some artists — the ones who like the paper — but it also makes it easier for an editor to hand a pencil job to any inker. For the same reason, they usually insist that everyone draw their artwork the same size. As we will be noting here ad nauseum, artists are all different. Some like to work smaller…some, larger.

Some even like to work as small as possible. Alex Toth drew some of his stories for Warren the same size they were printed. Dick Briefer is said to have drawn his classic Frankenstein series close to the published size. John Severin, who now prefers to work as large as possible, did a few of his EC stories only slightly larger than they'd appear in the comics. Pat Boyette has done some of his comics close to printed size, as has R. Crumb.

A few artists have also worked smaller for a different reason: Back in the mid-to-late sixties, Dell Comics was paying next-to-zip for art in books like Ghost Stories and Outer Limits. Some of their illustrators. including Frank Springer and Jack Sparling, didn't figure they should be putting a lot of drawing on pages that paid so poorly. To cut down on the space they had to fill, they adopted a smaller-than-usual size. Not every artist lessens his drawing time working smaller — it takes some longer — but it apparently allowed these guys to give Dell their money's worth, and no more.

But these are all special cases. Most original art is drawn notably larger than the size it is printed. Oddly enough, the artist is usually given little or no say as to just how much larger. Some guy with a title like Production Manager decides what size everyone will work and that, usually, is that.

Over the years, the size of the original art has often impacted the design of what was drawn on it. Back in the forties and fifties, many of Western Publishing's funny animal comics (Disney, Looney Tunes, etc.) were drawn so large that most artists couldn't fit an entire page on their drawing tables. Carl Barks, among others, cut the pages in half and would work on one piece, then the other.

This, of course, made it impossible to do a full-page panel or to have a panel cross the center of the page. Later on, Western went down to a more functional size, with an image area around 12 1/2" by 18 1/2". (The paper itself was larger, to allow for margins. But the art itself was to those dimensions.)

Up until 1967, DC and Marvel artists worked at that size. That was the year one of our great artists, Murphy Anderson, drew a few stories for The Spectre and pestered DC into letting him work smaller. He selected 10" by 15" as a comfortable size. Since Murphy was doing both pencils and inks, DC Production Manager Sol Harrison acquiesced and okayed the smaller size, probably after being assured by letterer Gaspar Saladino that he could handle the different scale.

When Anderson's pages were going through the engraving process, someone at the color separator's plant called up DC and said, "You know, we could save you some money if you drew all your comics this size." With the smaller size, it was possible to fit four pages under the camera at once, as opposed to two of the old size. It also saved the strippers lots of work.

(Strippers are not what you think. In a printing operation, stripping is the handling of the negatives and the work necessary to get them prepped and positioned to make printing plates.)

So the smaller size saved film and manpower, which meant that it saved money. For the first forty years of its existence, the comic book business never passed up an opportunity to save money on printing, no matter how it cheapened the product or inconvenienced the artists.

And many artists were inconvenienced. Over the next year or two, the 10" by 15" art size became the industry standard. While some artists (Gene Colan, Neal Adams, Joe Kubert) liked it or came to like it, many (Jack Kirby, Steve Ditko, Don Heck) did not. Kirby really disliked the change, especially at first. He said, "The first time I finished a page, I picked it up and half the art was on my drawing table."

Most of the Marvels changed within a month or two of the issues dated November, 1967. Jack's first work on the small size was the Captain America story in that month's Tales of Suspense (#95) and you can see everyone experimenting: The lettering is too big, the inking is too bold, and Jack's panels are filled with head shots and sparse backgrounds. Within a few months, everyone had learned how to accommodate the page proportions, but Jack still longed for the larger canvas.

Many artists did. A couple of guys who retired at about that time (especially inkers) blamed the smaller size for harming their work. One of them told me that he complained to his editor that a page now took him twice as long, and that the results weren't nearly as good. The editor's response, he claimed, was: "Yeah, but the pages are easier to mail now."

Still, most got used to it. Interestingly, throughout the seventies, Gold Key Comics and Charlton both gave their illustrators the choice of which size to draw, and most picked the larger. Most of their artists inked their own work, so this caused less ruckus than it might have at DC or Marvel, where most work was then by penciller-inker combos.

It changed comics. Whether it was for better or worse is arguable but it certainly changed the manner in which most artists would approach the composition of their pages.

Comic books, as we all know (and will discuss more, next week) started by reprinting newspaper comic strips. The syndicates furnished stats (or in some cases, the originals) of old strips to the funnybook companies. There, some lowly-paid assistant would chop the stats — or originals — up and repaste them into the then-new comic book page format.

Syndicated strips are all drawn to the same height: Every panel of Dick Tracy had the same vertical measurement, so when someone had to jigsaw Dick Tracy into page layouts, there weren't a lot of decisions to make. They could paste them up in three-tier format (three rows of panels across the page) or four-tier format (four rows). Three-tier made the panels larger and made the supply of reprints last longer…so most pages were divvied up that way.

Soon, the then-new comic book publishers began commissioning new material instead of buying stats from syndicates. There were a couple of reasons for this, probably all of which had to do with money. The syndicates wanted more, wanted to be paid promptly, and were even considering publishing their own comic books. For a publisher like Malcolm Wheeler-Nicholson, who sired the company we now know as DC, it was simpler to hire kids to draw original comics.

Most of the first materials created expressly for comic books aped the newspaper material, often to the nth degree. That included the same page layouts for comics.

Comic book artists in the forties and fifties didn't deviate much from the basic three-tier format — or four, in some funny animal comics. The opening (or "splash" panel) would be larger, of course, and if the scene involved some vertical action or object, they might make one panel span two tiers. Innovative artists — most notably Simon and Kirby — might dare a full-page panel or even a double-spread, but it was always as a deviation from the three-tier grid.

In the sixties, more and more, they started to break away from a simple "grid" of panels and to work for more unusual page layouts. I believe that the smaller page size encouraged this.

If you sit down at a drawing board with a page that size, you can see why this was. If you are close enough to a 12 1/2" by 18 1/2" piece of illustration board to be able to draw on it, you are too close to be able to view the page as a whole. There is therefore the tendency to look at one part of the page at a time — to rule the page off into panels and then to design things, panel by panel. You cannot get a good view of the page as a whole.

My friend/collaborator Dan Spiegle came up with a novel way of dealing with this problem, and he's the only artist I've ever heard of doing this. He worked standing up. He would pin the page on an easel and do his inking in a standing position. Thus, he only had to step back to view the page as a whole. And that's how he worked…how he was able to so expertly design a page when he worked on the larger size. He would ink a little, then step back and look at the entire page. Then he'd ink a little more and step back. If he'd been sitting down, he wouldn't have been able to easily view the page in its totality.

Today, when he draws comics, it's on the smaller size so he can sit down. With the smaller size, you can easily see the entire page without having to move back from it. So you naturally tend to design the entire page at once, instead of focussing on panel one, then moving on to panel two. Most artists today design pages broken up into individual panels, rather than to design individual panels that happen to form a page. (Also, of course, drawing on smaller paper encourages the division of a page into fewer panels.)

There were other reasons for the increase in free-form page layouts, most notably the influence of a number of artists like Neal Adams, Jim Steranko and Carmine Infantino. But I believe that the mere change in the original art size was highly conducive to getting away from the standard six-square-panels-per-page format. It surely helped nudge a lot of artists to follow the lead of the layout innovators.

It also changed things for inkers. With the smaller size, their linework wasn't being reduced as much for reproduction; therefore, inking had to be a bit more precise, a bit cleaner, and a bit subtler. A rough ink line looks rougher on the smaller size.

Also, the tendency to look at the entire page, rather than individual panels, has caused inkers to spot their black areas more to balance the design of the entire page. It also became easier to apply zip-a-tone — or other "screened" black line patterns — to the pages, and many inkers added these tools to their repertoire.

Today, few artists work larger than 10" by 15". (Those who draw comics where the image bleeds off the page have to work on larger paper so they can draw into the margins…but the reduction is essentially the same.)

And today, few artists divide their pages into simple rows of same-height panels. You can decide for yourself if there's a connection.

While you're mulling that one over, I'll return to my central thesis, which is that the comic book industry has too many arbitrary, treat-everyone-the-same ideas about how comics have to be created. Having everyone draw the same size and on the same paper are but two of them. The only advantage to it is that it makes things modular for the editor: He can have one guy pencil a story and then he can give it to any other guy to ink.

I think that's also a very bad idea. Which means it's a very good topic for next week's column.

I love these stories!

Me too, it really makes the industry and the people seem much more human. The idea of hiring Filipino creators could be seen as a cynical move by the bean-counters to get cheap labor overseas and squeeze out American creators or drive down their wages -- but in reality, it was just a guy trying to help out his company, the readers, and some buddies back home. Cool stuff.

I just read that George Perez avoided working at Marvel for years because Jim Shooter screwed up the first Avengers vs JLA crossover.

Here is a positive view of Jim Shooter,

http://rsmwriter.blogspot.com/2016/06/j ... inion.html

Wow, that’s really in depth. I suspect he was largely good and very successful, but the success might have gone to his head leading him to make a few poor decisions deeper into his run as EIC.

But that’s all speculation.

Wow, that’s really in depth. I suspect he was largely good and very successful, but the success might have gone to his head leading him to make a few poor decisions deeper into his run as EIC.

But that’s all speculation.

The Jim Shooter "Victim" Files: Introduction

The essay is an introduction to an ongoing series, "The Jim Shooter 'Victim' Files." It outlines the point-of-view that will guide the series' posts.

The series will cover Shooter's real and alleged conflicts with Marvel's creative and editorial personnel. Each post will discuss the circumstances surrounding a particular creator or staffer. A list of links to those posts will be appearing at the bottom of this introduction as the posts are completed.

If one feels compelled to comment on the post here, I ask that one restrict remarks to the general issues covered. I will deal with the specifics of a given creator's or staffer's circumstances in its own post. Comments on particular situations or personnel should wait until then. If one wishes to discuss, for example, Gene Colan's 1981 parting of ways with Marvel, those comments belong on the forthcoming Gene Colan post. They do not belong here. The comments are moderated, and I will not approve publication of any comment on the present post that deals with specific personnel.

My essay "Jim Shooter: A Second Opinion" (click here) discussed the one-time Marvel editor-in-chief's tenure in terms of its publishing history. It also covered the general business policies regarding the creative personnel. I would hope it was a resounding rebuttal to the characterization of Shooter’s Marvel as “a wasteland of formulaic self-imitation” (Tom Spurgeon and Jordan Raphael, Stan Lee and the Rise and Fall of the American Comic Book, p. 204). I would also hope that it largely refuted the characterization of Shooter as “the enemy of creators” (Gary Groth, The Comics Journal #174, p. 17).

Groth’s characterization, which many have echoed, has nothing to do with Shooter’s extraordinarily progressive strides with regard to publishing opportunities and compensation practices at Marvel. It primarily has to do with anecdotal issues Shooter or Marvel had with individual creators and staffers.

The reason I state “or Marvel” is to highlight that in some instances the conflicts were not with Shooter himself. Many were with company policies that would have existed no matter who was editor-in-chief. These policies include the mandatory signing of a blanket work-made-for-hire contract in order to work on company-owned properties. Other conflicts were the result of decisions made by Marvel executives such as president James Galton. An example of that is the company’s dealings with Jack Kirby during the controversy over the return of Kirby’s 1960s original art. But since Shooter was the face of the company to the comics community, he ended up shouldering the responsibility for these conflicts in the community’s eyes.

There are also the several creators and staffers who left Marvel without conflict during Shooter’s tenure. However, by accident or design, commentators have included their departures in discussions of the people who actually did leave because of problems with Shooter. In these instances, Shooter has been made the villain in situations where there was no villain to be had.

Additionally, certain individuals left Marvel because of conflicts with editorial staffers other than Shooter, but these conflicts were erroneously attributed to Shooter later on.

With the people who did leave because of conflicts with Shooter, they tend to fall into three categories. The biggest group is made up of creators who resented editorial supervision of their work on company-owned properties. The second group is staffers who resented policy changes that accompanied Shooter’s restructuring of the editorial department’s operations. This was mostly during his first three years as company editor-in-chief. And, of course, there are others who left for reasons that were unique to their personal circumstances. Shooter ran Marvel’s editorial operations for over nine years, and was an editor there for two years before that. In his last year at the company, the office staff numbered over 60, and the freelancer pool included over 300. It’s inconceivable that any supervisor wouldn’t have had at least some conflicts given the amount of time and number of people involved.

One should also consider the emotional maturity of many of the staffers and freelancers. The late Kim Thompson, who actively covered the business during the period as an editor and reporter for The Comics Journal and Amazing Heroes, once characterized the professional comics community of the time as “shambolic and inbred and full of resentments and unprofessionalism of every stripe.” (Click here.) Gerry Conway, one of Shooter’s predecessors as Marvel editor-in-chief, has described the company environment as “a cesspool of politics and personality issues” (Sean Howe, Marvel Comics: The Untold Story, p. 185), and “like the worst high school dysfunctional mishegoss” (Untold Story, p. 187). Shooter, in a comment on his website, wrote, “The comics business in general, and especially Marvel, was Romper Room on crystal meth.” It’s hard to imagine how an editor-in-chief at Marvel could be an effective administrator without having occasional conflicts.

For my part, I generally don’t have much sympathy for creators who resent or otherwise disregard editorial supervision on company-owned material. With an author-owned project, the creator should of course be the final arbiter of what’s appropriate for it. All the editor and publisher have are the rights to offer input, and then to publish or not publish. But with company-owned projects, the company and its editorial representatives have every right to order changes or demand that material be produced within specified content and style parameters. A creator in that instance is hired to do a job. There is an obligation to accept and adhere to supervisory direction as a condition of the assignment. This is perhaps the first rule of professional conduct. If the creator on a company-owned project does not follow such direction, the creator is in the wrong. As much as it may rankle the creator’s fans, this is true regardless of any assessment of the aesthetic strength of the creator’s efforts. It's a matter of ethics.

When it comes to the staffers who resented the policy changes that accompanied Shooter’s editorial reorganization, some hostile reaction is to be expected in any such situation. I’ve been through workplace restructurings a few times myself. There were always people who were comfortable under the previous set-up and objected to the changes. Some objected so much that they ended up leaving. They also insisted on demonizing those responsible for the changes afterward. The changes at Marvel editorial in the late 1970s were Shooter’s prerogative, done with the support of the company's executives, and there was nothing unusual about the reaction from some of the staff. Incidentally, Marvel has more or less maintained the structure he put in place ever since.

Apart from an obtuse claim from Gerry Conway, and a highly dubious one from John Byrne, I have not been able to find a single instance of a creator who has ever accused Jim Shooter of cheating him or her monetarily or otherwise ripping them off in business dealings. The problems all appear to be over editorial disputes, disagreements with policy, and personality conflicts.

-- Tony Isabella
-- Steve Englehart
-- Gerry Conway
-- Mary Skrenes
-- Len Wein
-- All Quacked Up: Steve Gerber, Marvel Comics, and Howard the Duck