M O D E R N M A S T E R S V O L U M E E I G H T :

SIMONSON

By Eric Nolen-Weathington

& Roger Ash

By Eric Nolen-Weathington

& Roger Ash

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Table of Contents

Introduction by Michael Moorcock . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4

Part One: “Well, This is Nice. What Else Can You Do?” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6

Interlude One: Archie Goodwin . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 14

Part Two: Enter Manhunter... and DC Comics. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 16

Interlude Two: John Workman. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 29

Part Three: In Space, No One Can Hear You Draw . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 32

Part Four: “It’s Nice to Be Best Known for Something” . . . . . . . . . . . . . 45

Part Five: “X” Marks the Spot . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 59

Part Six: Let’s Do the Time Warp Again . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 65

Interlude Three: Star Slammers Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 76

Part Seven: Gods and Champions . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 81

Part Eight: Storytelling and the Creative Process . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 94

Art Gallery . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99

Modern Masters Volume Eight:

WALTER SIMONSON

4

Walter Simonson is the nicest guy in comics. Itwouldn’t matter if he was the meanest man incomics. He is one of the masters of this

genre, both as a writer and, of course, as an artist. Onlyhis old friend and colleague Howard Chaykin is his liv-ing equal in original story-telling powers. They havequite a lot in common and I have had the pleasure ofworking with both of them. What we all three have incommon is that if you want our best work delivered ontime, you had better lie about the deadline. In factWalter, like me, assumes you are lying about the deadlineand once told me, in an aggrieved tone, to explain hislateness, “Hey, they gave me the right deadline... whodoes that ?”

Like me, he is used to using adrenaline not merely toget his work to thepublisher, but also tosolve narrative prob-lems. My scripts tendto require a lot of nar-rative solutions andnot only has he neverlet me down, he hasalways improved onthe story, the characteror the image. He isnot only the nicestguy in comics, he isprobably the mostconscientious guy incomics, as far as inter-preting another’s storyis concerned. Manytimes he has called meand said modestly,“Tell me I’m an idiotfor suggesting it, but how about if we—?” And I don’tremember ever turning a suggestion down. He is, inother words, an absolute joy to collaborate with.

Although I first met Walter in 1979, when HowardChaykin introduced us at their old Upstart office, wedidn’t start working together until the ’90s, when DCwas doing a twelve-issue series, Michael Moorcock’sMultiverse, which still exists in collected form and whichI’d recommend to anyone who wants to marvel at somesuperb artwork, even if they don’t think much of thewriting or ideas. We became natural collaborators. I tendto demand a lot of work from the artists with whom Iwork, packing a lot of narratives into a very small space.I get grumpy about artists who simplify or do what I

regard as a skimped job. I want depth and texture and adozen narratives working at once. Walter’s own modelsare some of the finest daily comic strip artists ever to bereproduced on cheap newsprint. In his own introductionto the On Stage strips of Leonard Starr, Walter shows howhe understands both the problems and the solutions ofkeeping a narrative going not only on a day-to-day basisbut also of incorporating a Sunday page which might ormight not be seen by the same reader and had to be pro-duced so that it could exist as a narrative of its own.

I have written and edited all kinds of comics sincethe age of 16, from 64-pagers to serial strips and havehad the privilege of working with some of the greatestartists in the business, including Frank Bellamy, theEmbleton brothers, Don Lawrence, Jim Cawthorn, Mal

Dean, and HowardChaykin, all of whomwere also admiredmasters of their craft.All of them taught mesomething. It was ajoy to work with themand until I startedworking with Walter Ihad already enjoyedsome great highpoints. With Walter ithas all been highpoints. He is a great-hearted man bynature, constantlyentertaining at thehouse he shares withhis wonderful wifeLouise and their twodogs (and their vast

library), and is notoriously generous with his time as heis with his hospitality. He has a tremendous work ethicbut at root will always put human relationships first. Hiswide circle of friends and relations will confirm that.

I am always in awe of someone with a talent fordraughtsmanship, something I value enormously in anartist. In fact I hate artists who, in fantastic art especially,hide their weaknesses with a lot of baroque flourishes ordistorted perspective. I don’t know an incident whereWalter has “faked it”... that is, obscured a panel’s weaknessin some way. I don’t know a time when he has “lifted”...that is, copying another artist’s work because he is unableto draw what is demanded of him. I know, for instance,that if you want crows in a story, then by God Simonson

Introduction

MODERN MASTERS: You were born in Tennessee?

WALTER SIMONSON: That’s right.

MM: When was that?

WALTER: September 2, 1946, in Knoxville.

MM: Then you moved to Maryland?

WALTER: Mydad worked forthe Departmentof Agriculture inSoil Classification& Correlation. Hewas promoted andwe moved toWashington, DC. Myparents took a home inthe Maryland suburbs. I reallygrew up in College Park. I wasjust a little over two-and-a-halfwhen my parents moved. My onlymemory of Tennessee is I canremember being in the back seat of acar on my knees and watching awhite house disappear around a cor-ner. I know, for whatever reason, that’sthe house I lived in the day we moved.

MM: Any siblings?

WALTER: I have one younger brothernamed Bruce. He’s three-and-a-half yearsyounger than I am. He’s a professor ofGeology at Oberlin College in Ohio.

MM: Were you always into artwhen you were growing up?

WALTER: As far as I can remember. Whatmy mom told me is that apparently Ibegan drawing younger than I can remember.And then I quit. My mom was very sad becauseit’s always nice to have artistic children. But when Iwas four years old, I had a barely diagnosable case ofmono. Mostly mono just wipes you out and you’re in bedfor several weeks while you’re recovering. Of course,

you’re just bored stiff and we didn’t have a television then,but we had a radio. My mom brought me pencil and paperto while away the time in hopes that I’d begin to drawagain, which I did. After that, as far as I know, I neverstopped. I really don’t remember not drawing.

MM: When did you start readingcomics?

WALTER: I read them from as youngas I can remember. My parents wantedto encourage both me and my brotherto read. They thought comics were finefor that purpose, so they bought somecomics for us and we bought some withour allowances. In the dining room therewas a toy shelf that my father had builtfor all the different toys we had, and onecorner of that was reserved for all ourcomics. We had a pile of comics about a

foot or a foot-and-a-half high.This was the ’50s, and in the ’50s

there were comics about every-thing. Dell and DC were theones primarily distributedwhere we lived. There wereWestern comics based on tel-evision shows like Cheyenneand Sugarfoot; Little Ida Iodineand Little Lulu; the Duckstuff—Carl Barks’ Ducks—all the Disney comics. Webought Classics Illustratedcomics. We read super-heroesas well. Later on, some of the

Mystery in Space. I was inhigh school by thattime. I really readcomics a lot when I wasa kid. We had subscrip-

tions to Walt Disney’s Comics and Storieswhen I was young. Then, when I was

maybe a sophomore in high school, Ihad a subscription for a while to Turok, Son of Stone. Hey,

Indians and dinosaurs, it couldn’t be better.

MM: Did you have any favorites?

Part 1: “Well, This is Nice.

What Else Can You Do?”

6

7

WALTER: I liked them all. I didn’t havefavorites in that sense, but I clearly likedTurok because I got a subscription to it.That was the work of Alberto Giolitti. Hedid a lot of comics for Dell. Incrediblysolid drawing. Nice blacks, nice design,good storytelling. He was really a goodcomic book artist.

I was a big fan, without knowing whothey were, of Carl Barks and JohnStanley. I loved the Duck stories, boththe Donald Ducks and the Uncle Scrooges.And I love the Little Lulus. I think Iparticularly loved the Witch Hazelstories in Little Lulu, but I liked themall. Including her bouts with Tubby.

MM: Hearing you talk at con-ventions, you seem very mucha storyteller. Is that somethingyou’ve always wanted to do?

WALTER: I saw the movieFantasia when I was in thirdgrade. My dad took me to seeit. I was entranced by thedinosaurs in Stravinsky’s

“Rite of Spring” adaptation.From that point on, I wantedto be a paleontologist andstudy dinosaurs. My dad is ascientist, and although he’syounger than I am, mybrother became a scientist aswell. I didn’t know anybodywho did art for a living. Ihad no idea how that couldbe done. I don’t think I everthought about doing art ordoing storytelling and such.I was certainly chatty andtold enough stories ofmy own when I wasyounger. I drew littlespacemen climbingacross my schoolnotes, stuff like that.

It wasn’t really until theend of my senior year in col-lege when I was a geology majorthat I decided that paleontologywas not really what I wanted topursue professionally. At thetime, I had no other ideas. Itwasn’t like I put it aside in order

to do comics. I put it aside because I couldtell it was not where I wanted to go.Although I still liked dinosaurs, the outdoorlife of the paleontologist I learned fromexperience just was not gonna be the kindof life I wanted to live. So I took some timeoff. I re-applied to college. I went back toschool. I went to art school this time, again

as an undergraduate—I was treated as atransfer student. I went to the RhodeIsland School of Design [RISD]. Iwas an Illustration major there.When I was in college the first

time, that was the mid-’60s whenMarvel was doing its “Golden Age”work. That was when Stan and Jack

and Ditko and Don Heck and GeorgeTuska and all these guys were doing justgreat work. I had kinda quit readingcomics by the end of high school. Atthe end of my freshman year/beginningof my sophomore year I discoveredMarvel Comics. In particular I discov-

ered Thor. I had been a Norse mythologyfan from when I was a small boy. My par-

ents had, and I still have, a book fromabout 1893 about Norse myths.

Previous Page: Back

cover art for the Star

Slammers: Chapter IV

mini-comic, which was

published as part of an

effort to bring the World

Science Fiction

Convention to

Washington, DC.

Above: Before he

turned pro, Walter often

contributed artwork to

various fanzines, such as

this cover to Gore

Creatures #18 and this

illustration of the coolest

creature of them all,

Frankenstein’s monster.

Left: Walter shows he’s

a bit of a “duck man”

himself.

Star Slammers ™ and ©2006

Walter Simonson. Uncle

Scrooge ™ and ©2006 Walt

Disney. Gore Creatures ™ and

©2006 respective owner.

So when I discovered the Thor comic, I was quitetaken with it. Very quickly, I began reading all theMarvel Comics, which back in those days cost about15¢. There were like eleven of them so you could liter-ally buy all the comics and get everything. I beganbranching out; I read more DCs. By the time I went toart school I had begun to become interested in comicbooks and in trying to draw comic books. Ihadn’t really quite thought of comics as aprofession, but I began doing little bits ofmy own continuity—four pages of this, fivepages of that. That was really my firstcrack at trying to do continu-ity and telling a story. Ifound I enjoyed it.

Once as a child, I had tried to do a comic. I couldn’tletter very well. My pages were the same size as comicbook pages because who knew that comic book pageswere drawn big? So I drew them small on manilla paperand I colored them with crayons. I put them in my dad’stypewriter and typed in the captions so the printingwould look good. I made it through about a page-and-a-half before I burned out on it. The comic was modestlyentitled The Origin of Life [laughter], because I had readsome stuff about the origins of life that I thought wasreally cool so I wanted to do a comic book of it.

MM: A noticeable element of your art is your signature.How did you develop that?

WALTER: Pretty simply, really. Somewhere in the sum-mer of my junior year in high school I had been drawinga lot of pictures. I drew tons of dinosaurs. Tanks. Bigthings that broke stuff. And it occurred to me that really

cool artists have signatures that are reallynifty. I decided that I needed a better signa-ture. At the time, I was block printing theword Simonson with a dash at either end.Just not very cool. I think I thought aboutmaybe trying to fit it inside the silhouette

of an animal somehow. My mom suggested adinosaur since I was a big dinosaur fan. I drew some

outlines of dinosaurs and tried to fit the word Simonsoninside them. As you can imagine, it didn’t fit too wellinside lots of them. But the first one I tried was whatwas then called a Brontosaurus—now it’s called anApatosaurus. That worked okay. My early signatureswere much more in proportion with the actualdinosaurs. Of course the signature drags its tail on theground and we now think the Apatosaurus didn’t. Whatthat really means is that my signature is the onlyremaining Brontosaurus in captivity. [laughter]

MM: You did a whole “Thor Annual” at one point.8

9

WALTER:I didn’t dothe entirecomic. I did 30-some pages. Then Idecided I didn’t likemy inking. I was goingto quit drawing it until I got my inkingbetter, then I would go back and finish thecomic.

MM: How old were you when you weredoing that?

WALTER: I was a sophomore in art schoolso I was 22, 23 probably. Fourteen yearslater, I got the gig to do Thor at MarvelComics—to write and draw it—and I toldthat story. That was the story I had done inthe “Annual.” My inking was better. [laughter]

MM: Who are some of your artistic influ-ences?

WALTER: Oh, man. Kind of the usual sus-pects for reading American comics. Kirby andDitko clearly. Not so much artistically exact-ly, but Archie Goodwin was really a mentorfor me when I first got started in comics. Ilearned a great deal working with Archie; Itook a lot from him. Jim Holdaway, who wasthe original artist on Modesty Blaise—anEnglish newspaper strip—was a giganticinfluence. It isn’t so obvious in my stuff insome ways, but there’s a lot of Holdaway,especially his approach to pen work that real-ly is in my stuff. Moebius and Mezieres fromFrance, Palacios from Spain. Many others.

Beyond that, American illustrators, espe-cially out of the Howard Pyle school—theN.C. Wyeths and Pyle himself. They didwork where you see the picture at two levels.You see the picture both as depth—the actu-al picture you’re being shown—and you’realso aware simultaneously of the picture assurface because they use bold brush strokes.The work of Van Gogh is a good example ofthat. If you’ve ever seen any of Van Gogh’s

drawings, if you get close tothem, they’re full of dots and

dashes and just slashes with thepencil. Yet when you back upfrom them, they coalesceand become a picture.

MM: How did yougo from the RhodeIsland School ofDesign into comics?

WALTER: I was atRISD for three years.My senior year we were

required to do a degree project ofsome kind. As a junior I had a teacher

named Tom Sgouros. Tom was the head ofthe Illustration department and taught thejuniors. He had his students do a series ofindividual assignments over a week or twoweeks, one right after the other. But Tomalso had students do an over-arching projectthat you worked on over the two semesters.

I had spent the year between collegeand RISD living at home, working in abookstore right across from the Universityof Maryland in College Park. While I wasat the Maryland Book Exchange, I tookcare of all the science fiction. My ambitionat the time—the field was smaller then—was to try and have at least one copy ofevery science-fiction paperback that wasthen in print in thestore. I ended upmeeting a few guyswho came by tobrowse the collec-tion who belongedto the WashingtonScience FictionAssociation—WSFA for short.Eventually I wentto some meetings,I joined up andbecame a mem-ber. I knew a lotof the guys.

About thetime I was a jun-ior at RISD,about 1970,WSFA wasgearing up to

Previous Page: Pages

24 and 25 from Walter’s

“Thor Annual,” much of

which was later used—

though redrawn—when

he took over Thor.

Left: Panel detail from

Walter’s “Thor Annual.”

Below: The cover to the

Star Slammers: Chapter IV

mini-comic.

Surtur, Thor ™ and ©2006

Marvel Characters, Inc. Star

Slammers ™ and ©2006 Walter

Simonson .

MM: How did you move from Archie being your editorto working with him on “Manhunter”?

WALTER: Archie, as I said, kept feeding me little stories.Then I got a couple other gigs. I helped Howard Chaykinon Sword of Sorcery. He was penciling Sword of Sorcery, whichwas the Fafhrd and Grey Mouser stuff of Fritz Leiber. Rightafter I got here, he was working on issue #3. I went out tohis house in Queens and ghosted some panels for him. Soprobably the first stuff I ever had in print were three panelsof ghost work that were in Sword of Sorcery #3. Eventually Idid some other work for Denny O’Neil on Sword of Sorcerymyself—I penciled and inked one issue. So I had otherthings I was doing in the middle of all this.

Finally, Archie gave me a little three-page job on theAlamo. A friend of mine named Don Krarr hadwritten it. The Mexican army hadcome to the Alamo,but they hadn’tcompletely closedaround them, and aguy named James ButlerBonham volunteered to leavethe Alamo and find reinforcements.Bonham wentout andlearned thatthere were norelief troopscoming.Instead of say-ing adios, hebroke throughMexican linesand rode backinto theAlamo to tellthem thatthere was nohelp coming.On the lastday, he waskilled alongwith the oth-ers. Twothings cameout of that

job. One was that Don got an invitation to the ButlerBonham family reunion in Texas. The other was that—Archie told me this many years later; I didn’t realize it atthe time—that job is what persuaded him that I coulddraw stuff besides science fiction.

He had had an idea for doing a back-up story forDetective Comics, which he was editing. He was going todo a lead Batman story and then have an eight-pageshort story in the back. He thought he would try toinvent a character and do him in a way that contrastedwith Batman. While Batman was dark and grim and

very urban, this would be a guy inbrighter colors and the whole worldwould be his stage. Where Batman wasmore or less an empty hand combatant, thisguy would carry weaponry. He asked me ifI’d be interested in drawing it. I liked Archie’sstuff. I was interested. I thought, “Cool!” I hadgotten along with Archie really well, and wehad become pretty good friends by that time. I

was a big admirer of his work.We spent some time working

Manhunter out. It was a character DCowned. DC had published the

Simon/Kirby “Manhunter”stories back in the ’40s, so

they had a trademarkon the name. Archieessentially came upwith a new characterwith a healing factor,clones, and a lot ofplot ideas. He showedme a long list of possi-ble names he’d writtenout for the character.Eventually, we settledon Paul Kirk becausethat was the name ofthe Simon/KirbyManhunter in the ’40s.We didn’t really do itat the time becausewe had planned tolink the characterstogether. We did link

Part 2: Enter Manhunter...

and DC Comics

16

them together later, but in the beginning wejust thought one name is as good as another,and why the heck not?

The clone idea was Archie’s. I had noideas as far as what the character wasabout or how he worked or any of thatstuff. My input was in design; I designedthe character. His face was a combinationof Charles Bronson and Bela Lugosi. I usedBronson’s eyes, which are slightly turneddown at the outside. I used the very strongnose, thin lips, and chin of Lugosi. That’swhere the face came from.

Initially, “Manhunter” was full script, buteventually we were working Marvel style.Somewhere around the third issue wethought it would be kinda fun to actuallymake it the same guy from the old Kirby“Manhunter,” because we only had eightpages. We were doing 20-page stories ineight pages. I was doing a lot of panels onthe page. We thought making him the othercharacter would open up his backstory,

given our limited space.Eventually, Archie was

going to leave DC. He got ajob at Warren, where he hadbeen before, and Julie[Schwartz] was taking overDetective. He was going tomaybe run “Elongated Man” asa back-up feature.“Manhunter” was coming toan end whether Archie wasthere or not, and I didn’t wantto do the character withoutArchie because the two of usworked so closely together onthat character. We knew fromabout the fifth chapter on thatthe series was ending. We hadalready talked about doing aBatman crossover with“Manhunter” because he wasin Detective Comics. “Let’s go outin a blaze of glory. We’ll putBatman in the story, we’ll usethe whole 20-page story, andwe’ll wrap up our series.”

MM: Could you talk alittle bit moreabout designingManhunter?

WALTER: Some of the ele-ments I can remember, some Ihave no idea where they camefrom. I have no idea where theboots came from. I don’t knowwhat the hell I was thinking. It’scomics, you don’t really have torun in them. You try to run inthose in real life, you’d killyourself in five seconds, Idon’t care how much practiceyou’ve had. [laughter]

The flared shoulder thinghe wore came from the movieYojimbo by [Akira] Kurosawa. Ihad a little black-&-white TVback then, and during the time Iwas working on the Manhunterdesigns, Yojimbo was on. Right in thebeginning of the film there’s a kind oftown crier who walks through the town.He’s wearing a shoulder thing like that. Ithink it drops off as a cape in the back. I

Previous Page: Cover

art for Sword of Sorcery

#5, featuring Fritz

Leiber’s Fafhrd and the

Grey Mouser.

Left: Page 3 of

“Decision,” a tale of The

Alamo in Star Spangled

War Stories #172.

Below: Preliminary head

sketches of Paul Kirk, the

Manhunter.

Fafhrd & the Grey Mouser ™

and ©2006 Fritz Leiber.

Manhunter, Star Spangled War

Stories ™ and ©2006 DC

Comics.

17

have an old drawing of Manhunter where I thought about giving him a shortcape, but in the end it seemed a little too awkward. So I just made the thingsymmetrical front and back.

Because we were giving him Eastern martialarts fighting skills, we gave him throwing stars.Initially I drew him with nine throwing stars,because nine is a mystic number in the East.He had three on each shoulder, he had oneon his belt, and one on the back of each ofhis gauntlets. Somewhere along the way Irealized that drawing nine of these every time Idrew the character was just going to be a night-mare. [laughter] I quickly abandoned that for twothrowing stars, one on each shoulder.

Archie had a book called Asian Fighting Arts,or something of that sort, with all kinds of stufffrom China, Okinawa, and Japan. You name it, itwas in there. They had weapons from India and theyshowed the Bundi dagger. That’s how Manhunter got that.The idea was he might have different weapons at differenttimes. The strip didn’t run long enough for that to really develop.

The Broomhandle Mauser came about because I had a friend,Steve Mitchell, who had a replica Broomhandle Mauser, and I think

he mayhave sug-gested it. Itlooked great.They even had astockyoucouldclickinto it to make it a shoulder fire if youneeded to.

MM: Something that I think really worked for the storyis that things got unveiled as you went along. Did thathave to do with the way you were working together onthe story?

WALTER: It was really Archie’s doing. The idea of creat-ing a puzzle at the beginning and then gradually solvingit, I think that was probably Archie’s initial idea for thestory structure. It wasn’t created originally to be a limitedseries. Archie did not know when we started that he’d beleaving DC. I’m not sure how it would have played outif we’d done 25 episodes instead of seven. My work getsa lot better from the first episode to the last episode. Igot control of the figure work and my inking in a waythat’s clearly visible by about the middle of the thirdepisode. The difference in the inking between the firstand last episode is quite strong.

MM: Did you ever hear any reaction to killing PaulKirk?

18

WALTER: Not from fans. I think wemight have gotten some letters, but Iwouldn’t have seen them. Most of thereaction I got from that strip was profes-sional. We got a lot of professional recog-nition out of the strip. That’s what mademy professional reputation. When I startedthat strip I was just one more new guydoing comics. When it was over, peopleknew who I was professionally. I didn’thave any problem finding work after that.

MM: And you won a few awards for that,too.

WALTER: The Academy of Comic BookArts (ACBA) was awarding the ShazamAward. It was a block of lucite with a littleShazam arrow inside. In ’73 and ’74,between us Archie and I won six awards, allreally because of “Manhunter.” Archie won“Best Writer” two years in a row. We won

“Best Short Story” twoyears in a row. We won “Best Long Story”for the final story with Batman. Jim Starlinand I shared “Outstanding New Talent.”

MM: You did eventually return toManhunter for the Special Edition. Thatseems like it would have been a toughstory for a couple reasons: You were tellingit wordlessly, and you were working on itafter Archie passed away.

WALTER: Those are good reasons why itwas tough. It was difficult. DC had askedArchie when he went back to work for themin ’89 or so if we would do a newManhunter story together. They couldreprint the original series and put a newstory in for the new packaging. That seemedokay except that we couldn’t think of a newstory that we wanted to do. The problem isthat the original series ends in a rather finalnote. Neither one of us wanted to undo that

19

Previous Page: Early

Manhunter design sketch

featuring a short cape

and nine strategically

placed shuriken, and the

death knell for Paul Kirk

in Detective Comics #443.

Above: By the time

Detective Comics #440 hit

the stands, Walter’s art

had improved by leaps

and bounds. The first

two pages of that issue’s

chapter of “Manhunter.”

Manhunter ™ and ©2006 DC

Comics.

32

MM: You worked on a couple of movie adaptationswith Archie, Close Encounters and Alien. You’ve said thatClose Encounters was a tough experience. How so?

WALTER: It was the worst experience of my comicscareer. However, if that’s the worst experience, I’m in fine,fine shape. In my humble opinion, I think Columbia wasreally, really concerned about doing everything that StevenSpielberg wanted done. And because there was a lot ofsecrecy around the film, there was a berserko concernabout keeping everything under wraps. What it amountedto was I was drawing Close Encounterswith no reference.

The film compa-ny allowed us to seea couple minutes offootage of the scenewere Richard Dreyfussand Melinda Dillonsee the UFOs on thecountry roads zoomingaround. We saw somestills of the actors intheir costumes. And wesaw some really, reallyblurry 8" x 10"s ofpieces of the mothership. That was it. And Iwasn’t given any of thereference. I could see it,then go home and workon the comic the nextmonth-and-a-half remem-bering clearly what I hadseen. Also, Marvel didn’thave likeness rights, so wecouldn’t use Dreyfuss orTeri Garr or anybody elsein the comic. We just hadto work from nothing. Wehad a script and that was it.Even the script we had was-n’t the final script. It made itvery difficult to do. On thebalance it worked out pretty well, all things considered.

MM: How did that compare with your experience on Alien?

WALTER: Alien was one of the best experiences I everhad in comics doing a movie adaptation. CharlieLippincott was our liaison with 20th Century Fox andCharlie was a comics fan. What that meant was he kindaknew what we needed to do a good comic book. Theydidn’t want a lot of stuff out there, but Archie and I hadthree different script revisions a couple months apart each.We ended up with some photographs. Early on, 20thCentury flew me over to England to see a rough cut of thefilm. I saw a two-hour version of the film in December of

’78. That was all principlephotography—they werestill doing the specialeffects. We got a tour ofthe model shop. We couldhave taken pictures, but Ididn’t have a camera. I waskicking myself later forthat, because they gotkind of stroppy aboutsending us reference. Wehad reference on theactors. Honestly, as far asI’m concerned, it madeall the difference in theway the stuff looked.

The other thing thatwas very cool wasnobody had likenessapprovals back then ornobody exercisedthem. Now, that’s oneof the difficult thingsin doing movie adap-tations because every-body has likenessapprovals and a lot ofyour creative energygoes into makingthese guys look likethey think theylook. I want to tell

the story. I think the important part ofthis is the story, but I’m an old retro guy. [laughter] In Alien Iwas able to draw these characters as comic characters thatlooked kind of like the actors and actresses without going

Part 3: In Space, No One

Can Hear You Draw

berserk trying to make the likenesses workas rendered versions of these people.

20th Century wasn’t really nuts aboutwhether the comic was exactly like themovie. What that meant was we were ableto take bits from different treatments andput them together in what we thought wasthe best story. In the end, I thought we gota comic that was a really good adaptationof the film, both in spirit and of most ofthe stuff that was in it. But it was nuts atthe end. We did the last 20 pages in aweek. It had to come out when the moviecame out. It’s something I’m really proudof. And even better, it’s the first comic everon the New York Times Best-Seller List. I’mnot claiming any credit—it was Alien.Anybody could have done it and gotten upthere. It was still kinda cool to do.

MM: Alien was also important to yourcareer in that it was the first big projectyou worked on with John Workman.

WALTER: That’s right. I really did Alienbecause of John. He was the art director andletterer at Heavy Metal at that time. John got

a hold of me about doing Alien, and I believehis original idea was to have CarmineInfantino, who was no longer at DC, drawthe book and have me ink it. For some rea-son I don’t remember now, I did two samplepages from one of the Alien scripts—two dif-ferent scenes, a page each. I had no refer-ence so it’s not drawn as if it’s any of thecharacters. Somewhere along the way I wasgiven the job of penciling as well inking.

John was the letterer on that and that wasthe first time we’d worked together. I still didsome of the sound effects. Right in thebeginning there’s some stuff where you’regetting this binary code. In the movie it’s onthe helmet visors. I did that. The othersound effect is the weird screaming beaconwhen they get the signal from the planet. Itook some press type and cut a bunch of itup and rearranged it and made it red on blueto get as much vibration out of it as I could.

MM: Around this time—late ’78, early’79—you helped found Upstart Studios.

WALTER: Several of us were looking for aplace to work that wouldn’t be in the middle

Previous Page: Before

Walter was hired as the

penciler for Alien, he

drew up two sample

pages. He had no photo

reference at this point,

only a script, and drew

the Alien with long

tentacles.

Next Page: On the left

is Walter’s pre-reference

sample page, and on the

right is the same scene

as drawn for publication.

Alien ™ and ©2006 20th

Century Fox Film Corp.

33

34

of our own apartments. We thought we could split the coston something. The initial members were HowardChaykin, me, Val Mayerick, and Jim Starlin. I’m not sure,it’s possible that Howard’s wife at the time was the onewho came up with the name Upstart. Maybe Starlin.

We looked around for a while and found a place onWest 29th Street. We had about 1000 square feet. Itwas on the front of the building, and it had these big,old windows and a big, clunky tile balcony out frontwith a giant wall you could kind of peek over and seedown to 29th Street. You got a lot of views of the roofsof New York. It was very cool. It was a nice place to work. The membership rotated some over the years. Within

a year of our being there, Val Mayerick decided to moveback to Ohio. Jim Sherman came in. We knew Jim from

Continuity. Not long after that, Starlin moved upstate andFrank Miller took that spot. That was the stable for a while.

Frank was doing his Daredevil work at that time, Howard wasdoing American Flagg, I was doing Thor—it was a cool place to be.

We were all somewhat competitive. Somewhere around the time Ronin started, Frank left and Gary Hallgren

moved in. He was a good guy. Howard moved out to the West Coast about ’85. Wejust kept the three of us, then I moved in ’87. Ultimately, I think Gary moved out to Long

Island and Jim Sherman stayed and took it over as his apartment. He may still be in thebuilding. That’s a short history of Upstart. Some cool work came out of there.

MM: What were the advantages ordisadvantages of working with all theother guys around?

WALTER: Mostly it was the advantageof the location. And it was mostly fun, atleast for me. It was inspiring to seeDaredevil coming along. It was inspiringto see American Flagg getting done. It wasannoying on both those counts as well.[laughter] Mainly it was getting to seeother guys at work. If you had problems,you could talk ’em over with them.When you’re a freelancer, if you’re work-ing at home it’s kind of a lonely life.You’re used to your own company, it’snot lonely in that sense, but you spend alot of time with yourself and your wifeand your dogs. Being part of a studiomeans that you get out and you get tointeract with other creative people. Thatcan fire your own juices up.

MM: You did a few issues of Detectivearound this time with Steve Englehart,where you introduced Dr. Phosphorus.

WALTER: In two chapters, yes. I thinkit was done as layouts rather than tightpencils. Allen Milgrom inked it. I don’t

Above: This 1975

Batman illustration was

done for a Street

Enterprises portfolio.

Right: A page from

Batman #300. Inks by

Dick Giordano.

Next Page Top: Upstart

Studio compadres

Howard Chaykin and

Walter (with an assist by

Frank Miller) came up

with some very funny

one-pagers for Heavy

Metal.

Next Page Bottom:Walter enters the world

of Battlestar Galactica.

Opening splash of

Battlestar Galactica #4.

Inks by Klaus Janson.

Batman ™ and ©2006 DC

Comics. Battlestar Galactica ™

and ©2006 Universal City

Studios.

45

MM: You werekind of offered Thorout of the blue?

WALTER: More orless. MarkGruenwald offeredit to me. Mark andI had talked about aThor idea that I hadhad back when Iwas in college. Iwas a big Thor fanback then—thiswas the mid-’60s. Icame up with anidea for a big Thorstory. I combinedNorse mythologywith “Marvel Norsemythology” with“Walter mythology”and put together astoryline.

The idea wasthat in the summerwhen the annualswere available, onemonth the story would start in Thor. Therest of the story would come out the samemonth in all the other Marvel Comics,which at the time was about ten or eleventitles. A month after these eleven issuescame out, the Thor Annual would come outwith the climax of the story.

The basis of the idea was that Stan andJack had in the Thor mythology in thecomics the Odinsword. It was a big, honk-ing sword that sat in the middle of Asgard.Their story was that if it were ever with-drawn from its scabbard, the universe wouldend. My story was that the nature of theOdinsword had moved into folk legendamong the gods. Only Odin really knewwhat the sword was at that point. The otherthing that Jack and Stan had done was cre-ate an Eternal Flame burning in Asgard. The

gist ofmy ideawas thatthe Odinsword, in actual fact,was the blade that Surtur would use todestroy the Nine Worlds when the timecame.

The general idea for my original storywas that Asgard wakes up one morning andthe Odinsword is gone. Odin had guardedthe sword, had kept it from Surtur all thesemillennia. It was not just a sword, but insome way part of Surtur’s essence. Surtur, inthe meantime, lusted for the sword and builtup spell after spell in Muspelheim, where helived, until eventually the sword winks outof existence in Asgard and into Surtur’shand. But the Eternal Flame with which hehas to light the sword is not part of Surtur,

Part 4: “It’s Nice to Be Best

Known for Something”

Previous Page: Page

from the Star Slammers

graphic novel.

Above: Promotional art

from Thor #336 heralding

Walter’s new direction.

Star Slammers ™ and ©2006

Walter Simonson. Thor ™ and

©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

so he now has to go to Asgardto light the sword.

Surtur finally reaches Asgard,breaks the rainbow bridge. Muchof what’s actually in the con-frontation with Surtur, Thor,Odin, and Heimdall in the comicis right from the “Annual” I drewas a student. I was delighted to dothe book. I thought I would do mySurtur story. I had to make someadjustments because theOdinsword had been destroyed inThor #300. I knew more about writ-ing by then, so I didn’t try to writeone 13- or 14-episode story. I triedto write shorter chapters that werecomplete stories, and they wouldadvance the overall plot towardSurtur, which I did with Beta Ray Bill,Malekith the Accursed, and othersthat I did over that batch of issues.

When Mark gave me the book hereally gave me carte blanche.I think what was going onis the book wasn’t selling sowell. How much in danger

of cancellation it was, Idon’t know. It was-n’t a bad place tobe. It’s the kind thing where if the book had not sold and gonenowhere, nobody would have said, “Simonson, what a terrible guy.”They would have said, “The book was tanking anyway. Nobody couldhave saved it.” As the book did better, they go, “Wow. Simonson. Whata brilliant talent!” [laughter] It was a no lose situation in that regard.

Mark emphasized that he didn’t care what I did with the book.He thought it should be shaken up. He gave me a piece of paperthat had about five or six of his ideas for Thor. I remember none ofthem now except in one of them Thor died and somebody else found

the hammer and became the new Thor. I don’t think I swiped thatfor Beta Ray Bill literally, but it’s similar in some ways.

The other basic idea was that when I get on books, I try todo some story that’s about the book’s core concerns. Mostcomics have thematic material that runs through them. I’mprobably most familiar with Thor. In Thor, for example,almost anybody who stayed on Thor for any length of time

did a Ragnarok story. It’s bound up in Norse mythology. I didit myself twice in the time I was doing the book. I did “Ragnarok

and Roll,” a title Howard Chaykin provided me with, which was theSurtur story, and I did “The Midgard Serpent,” which was partof the Ragnarok story. Those are the great themes and theyneed to be re-done from time to time. They need to berethought. In a way, I think super-hero comics tell a fewsimple truths. There’s evil in the world that needs to befought. Sometimes you win, sometimes you don’t. I think

46

Right: Surtur plans come

together. Page 29 of Thor

#345.

Below: Pencils for

Surtur’s entry in the

Marvel Universe series.

Next Page: There’s a

new sheriff in town! Page

25 of Thor #339.

Beta Ray Bill, Surtur ™ and

©2006 Marvel Characters, Inc.

those themes are bound up in the comic through themythology. I think that’s why the story eventually comesback. Each book has its own themes and its own identity.

When I did Thor, I thought about what I wanted to do,and I also prefer to do some story that hasn’t been donebefore if that’s possible. In Thor, I thought it would be funto do a story in which somebody else picked up the ham-mer. The very first issue of Thor shows an inscription onThor’s hammer suggesting that anybody who was worthycould possess the power of Thor. The idea is the inscrip-tion on the hammer suggests that somebody besides Thorand Odin could pick it up. Stan and Jack once had Lokipick it up. He had some extra juice from the Norn Queen.Apparently that just nullified the inscription and hewalked around carrying the hammer. At the time I wasgoing “Wait a minute. Does this actually work like that?” Ijust ignored that. [laughter] My own feeling was that thereweren’t any characters in the Marvel Universe who couldpick it up or they would have by that time. I thought Ineeded to invent somebody new to pick up thehammer. That’s where Beta Ray Bill came from. Iknow existing characters have picked up the ham-mer since I wrote my story. I knew that writing mystory would be letting the genie out of the bottle.Once you do a story and people like it, somebodywill go back and do their own version.

I chose an alien because that seems further awayfrom humanity. He’s got a little humanity in him,but that seems more exotic. I made him look like amonster because in short form comics, symbols arevery important. You use symbols to get at meaning.One of the ways that manifests itself in simple formis that, mostly, bad guys are ugly and good guys arehandsome. Except, of course, if they’re bad girls, inwhich case they’re beautiful but don’t wear a lot ofclothes. [laughter] I drew Bill as a monster, becausereaders would think he was evil. In fact, that waspretty much what happened. When Beta Ray Billappeared and picked up the hammer, I got a lot ofcrabby letters. Fans knew the inscription. Theyknew that only the worthy could pick up the ham-mer. I didn’t get any letters from people saying,“You’re toying with us. This guy must be worthy.”Nobody. There may be 85,000 guys out there nowwho say, “I knew that,” but really, nobody got it.

It turns out Beta Ray Bill really was a noble guywho had gone through hell to become what hewas. He served a noble purpose and was a beingfor whom the hammer was going to be incrediblyuseful in the defense of his people. I designed himas a monster to mislead the reader. What you wantto do many times is play fair with the reader butmislead them at the same time, so when you getwhere you actually want to go, they’ll be surprisedby it, but it won’t seem like a deus ex machina.

I’ve said elsewhere that I used a horse’s skull for thebasis of Bill’s facial design. That’s because I wanted tocombine the aspects of death that a skull representswith the beauty of the living horse. When Bill’s ownhammer was forged I used a more Norse motif, a warhammer motif, for the design. When Bill and Thor wentout to fight their duel without hammers, Odin slightlystacked the deck in Bill’s favor by putting them in a fieryworld. Thor’s a Norse god. He’s from the land of ice andsnow. He would have been more comfortable in an icy,snowy realm. Bill comes from a fiery place. What Odin’sreally doing is hazarding the life of his son to try to findanother warrior to stand by him at Ragnarok. I thoughtthat’s the kind of guy Odin was. He was very powerful,but he thought long term. He was always planning. Hewas really trying, even knowing they were doomed inthe long run, to set the odds more in his favor when theTwilight came. He’s willing to gamble in the face offate. He’s willing to gamble his son’s life.

47

MM: Where did Beta Ray Bill’s namecome from?

WALTER: A lot of old science fiction.When aliens and humans meet, every-body can talk because everybody’s carry-ing universal translators which somehowseem to be able to work under any con-ditions, which I thought was great. Iloved that stuff. But I think there aresome words that just wouldn’t translate.I didn’t know what the machine woulddo. Would it give you gobbledygook?

I wanted a couple different thingsfor a name for Bill. One is I wanted acommon name even though Bill is, asa representative of his own people,not a common guy. He went throughhell to become chosen as a gladiatorfor his people, but he was kind of aneveryman. In that regard, I wanted aneveryman kind of name. My originalidea was to call him Beta Ray Jones. Ipicked Beta Ray because it has a sci-ence-fictiony sound to it. I didn’t go

with Jones,because atthat time therewere too many Joneses in the MarvelUniverse. There was Rick Jones, Marvelwas doing Indiana Jones, they had Louise Jones as an editor. I don’tknow if Bruce Jones was writing for them at that time, but thereseemed like a lot of Joneses floating around. I thought one moreJones was one Jones too many. [laughter] I thought Bill was a verycommon name. Also, it had the advantage of having that Marvelalliteration that so many names had. I just liked Beta Ray Bill.

I figure that whatever Beta Ray Bill’s real name is, it doesn’tcome out of the translator in any kind of comprehensible form. It

comes out as Beta Ray Bill. Whatever his real name is, that’s notit. It’s something that human vocal chords can’t pronounce.

MM: The cover to Thor #337 has become one ofyour most recognizable pieces.

WALTER: [laughs] And it’s so simple, too!

MM: What do you think there is about it thatcaught people’s attention?

WALTER: Maybe I hit on all the right symbols atthe right moment. I’m not sure. It’s a very simple cover.

It says in one gesture exactly what the book was about. At the time I was doing it, I remember being told that

Thor had the only logo that Marvel had left from the ’60s thatwas unchanged. I knew a guy named Alex Jay who was a graphicdesigner. I talked to him about doing a new logo for Thor. He

Right: One of the most

memorable covers of all

time—Thor #337.

Below: Pencils for the

Beta Ray Bill entry in

Marvel Universe.

Next Page: Bill gets a

hammer of his own in

Thor #339.

Beta Ray Bill, Thor and all relat-

ed characters ™ and ©2006

Marvel Characters, Inc.

48

MM: During your run on Thor you also drew one of themost reprinted issues of X-Men, issue #17, where Roguejoined. How did that happen?

WALTER: Pretty simply, actually. It was a completecoincidence that was the issue I did. Weezie was editingthe X-Men back then. Paul Smith had gotten on thebook. As I remember it, Paul could do one issue a month.Somewhere in there they decided to do a doubleissue. The problem with that was that was almosttwo books. I guess the expectation was that Paulwould not be able to do that much work in asingle month, so they were instantly a monthbehind and needed a fill-in. Weezie called meto see if I would draw an issue of the X-Men. Itwas a fill-in in terms of the art. It was not a fill-in in terms of the writing. Chris just wrotewhat would have been the next issue. I did thepencils and Bob Wiacek inked it. That’s exactlywhat happened. It was just the luck of thedraw it happened to be the issue where Roguequit being a bad girl and became a good girl.

MM: Also during your run on Thor, youstarted your run on X-Factor. Did that hap-pen because Weezie was writing it?

WALTER: Yeah, I think so. She was writingit and Jackson Guice had gotten off thebook. I don’t think there was a regular pen-ciler after Jackson, so the book was open. Idon’t know if Weezie asked me or if the edi-tor asked me. In any case, I got tipped asthe regular penciler from issue #10 on.

One of the reasons I did it was becauseWeezie was writing it. I’d worked with heras an editor on Galactica. I watched herwrite other stuff and watched her as aneditor. I really liked what she did and X-Factor allowed me to have a chance towork with her as a writer.

MM: How did you two work togetheron the book?

WALTER: Very easily. We probablytalked over plots, but Weezie was thewriter and I was the artist. We worked

together really easily. That would turn out to be truewhether we were writing the same comic, as in the caseof Meltdown, whether I was drawing and she was writing,or whether I was writing and she was editing. Workingwith her was just a breeze. It was really such a pleasure.I’d love to do it again sometime.

MM: Could you tell me some about creating theDeath/Archangel character?

59

Part 5: “X” Marks

the Spot

WALTER: When we were doing X-Factor, one of the thingsthat we thought about pretty early on after I’d got on as thepenciler—and maybe Weezie’d thought about this before—wasthat the original X-Men who became X-Factor were very muchlike the guys they’d been back in the early ’60s. The Beast was aguy who could leap 15 feet into the air and grab hold of a bar.Angel’s a guy who could fly for an hour at 60 miles an hour.Iceman could do ice. Jean Grey was telepathic, and Cyclopshad his beams. What they seemed to us at that time was some-what underpowered for where comics had gone. They reallyseemed out of sync in some ways with where the bad guyswere by the mid- to late ’80s. One of the projects we under-took was kind of a reclamation project where we decided tojuice up the characters in a way that would make them morepowerful on their own terms and therefore more in sync withhow we viewed the Marvel Universe at the time.

Some of the characters like Cyclops and Jean Grey, youdidn’t have to do anything. In the old days, Cyclops couldknock over a toothpick, these days he could knock over abuilding. In other words, since his was a visual power of thatsort, you didn’t actually have to stick his finger in an electricsocket and juice him up any more. You could do whateveryou wanted to do and that would work. With telepathy andtelekinetic powers, Jean Grey was the same way. But weneeded something else for the other characters. Archangel’sstory was our Angel story where we cut off his wings. Wedid horrible things to him. He got kidnapped byApocalypse and came back as this new guy with these tech-no wings and a new outfit and was much more powerful.We did that with Iceman. His was in a crossover with Thor.

We did the same sort of thing with the Beast where we turned him backinto the furry Beast and he could then be more powerful and faster.The Angel/Archangel storyline was neat, but it wasn’t isolated in thecontext of what we were doing with X-Factor in general. It was part of thisretraining program, if you will, to getthese characters upgraded to new levels.

MM: One thing I found interesting forthe time—it’s more common now—wasyou had this huge battle withApocalypse in issue #25, lots ofdestruction. Then in #26 you actual-ly had the clean-up.

WALTER: [laughs] You’d have toask my wife. She was the writer.It just seemed reasonable. Idon’t know what else to sayabout it, but it seemed like itwas a nice follow-up.

Something I will sayabout those issues is ifyou go back and lookat issues #24, #25 and

60

MM: Also in ’89 you began working on Fantastic Four.You started out only writing that. Had you alwaysintended to draw that as well?

WALTER: Yes. What happened was I had been the writerof The Avengers. I wrote eleven issues of The Avengers, but Ihad a problem. The problem was Marvel had reached aneditorial position where if characters were in other books,you had to take into account what was happening in theother books. From my days on Thor, I kinda like having along-range story idea. I write shorter sto-ries but I’ll be heading for some goal.What happened with The Avengerswas I found very quickly that Ikept having to alter my sto-ries in the midst of writingthem. I’d have an issueout, be writing a newplot, and they’dsay, “Oh, bythe way, nextissue Thor’sout in space.You can’t usehim.”

The break-ing point camebecause I put Reedand Sue in TheAvengers. SteveEnglehart had beenwriting the FF forsome time. He wroteReed and Sue out ofthe FF. I thought,“Wouldn’t it be inter-esting to have theseguys in the Avengers?”You’ve got CaptainAmerica and Reed,both accustomed tothe habit of com-mand. You’ve gotsome interestingcharacter interactions.I got permission to dothis six months in

advance. I got to issue #300, where I was going to do anew team, and I was told right about then, “Oh, by theway, we’re putting Reed and Sue back in the FF. You canuse them for an issue, and that’s it.” End of story.

I was pretty annoyed. I’d been working up storylineswith permission for months, and watched it be eviscerat-ed. So I thought, “This just isn’t working out. Whateveryou have to have to write this book, I don’t have it. I don’tknow if I’m not flexible enough or if the conditions havechanged, but I simply can’t write stories like this.” So I got

off The Avengers with issue #300 havingjust put a new team together. I had awhole bunch of stories lined up todo. About five seconds after I quit, Iwas offered Fantastic Four, becauseSteve had left the title. The editorial

powers that be haddecided that theFantastic Fourshould be Reed,Sue, Johnny andBen. I think it wasRalph Macchiowho offered methe FF.Ironically, I hadall these storieslined up forAvengers. Theywere stories that,among otherthings, involvedReed and Sue. Ijust pulled the

stories over to the FantasticFour. For the first story arc,a lot of which would havebeen in The Avengers, Iborrowed Thor and IronMan. Because it was a

guest-star situation,unlike The Avengers, Igot to use some ofthe original Avengers

in this story the way I couldn’t haveused them in The Avengers itself. I did

Part 6: Let’s Do the

Time Warp Again

65

my initial story withGalactus and theDreaming Celestial. ThenI just blew Thor and IronMan off the time sled.They presumably wentright back to Earth,because they were in theirown books the nextmonth. Then I was offand running with theFantastic Four.

MM: You talked beforeabout not wanting tobring back Galactus forthe 43rd time unless youcould do something differ-ent withhim. Youdid defi-nitely dosomethingdifferentwith himby havinghim eatthe uni-verse.

WALTER: He was doingwhat he was built todo—eat everything.[laughter] It gave me ashot at that. It also gaveme a shot to do some-thing that hadn’t beendone before, which wasuse the UltimateNullifier. It was adevice from the origi-nal Galactus story. Ithink it had been men-tioned a couple oftimes, but I don’tthink it had ever beenused before.

The FF are in analternate universewhere Galactus isdevouring the entireuniverse and it turnsout that the UltimateNullifier is Galactus’last failsafe against

destroying everything. He sends them backto get it. They get it from his headquarters,bring it back to him, and he uses it anddestroys everything in that universe, butnot every universe everywhere else. Reedand the crew get out just in time.

When they use the Nullifier, stuff justgets white. I have a big circle expandingwith nothing in it until finally a doublepage spread of nothing except down in thecorner is the time sled racing away tryingto get out of the boundary of the universebefore it all disappears. Two things aboutthat. One is that on the back of one ofthose pages was an ad for the Dick Tracymovie with Warren Beatty which was allblack, so it shows through this blank pagebeautifully. It’s like, “Hi! We’re racing away

from a giant

66

Above: Iron Man and

Thor drop in to say hi.

Panel from Fantastic Four

#337.

Right: Not long before

he took over Fantastic

Four, Walter was able to

warm up on Galactus in

this cover to Silver Surfer

#10.

Next Page: The Thing

kicks some Jurassic in FF

#345.

Fantastic Four, Eternity,

Galactus, Iron Man, Silver

Surfer, Thor ™ and ©2006

Marvel Characters, Inc.

picture of Dick Tracy.” [laughter] The other thing is thatMarvel reprinted the story a few years ago in somepaperback and they dropped the extra page, which Ihave to say I was very annoyed about. It’s a double-page spread. I know there’s nothing there. That’s thestorytelling decision to make that sequence more pow-erful. Half a space of nothing is not as effective.

MM: You had a lot of fun playing with time in yourrun on Fantastic Four. Are time travel stories thingsyou’re interested in?

WALTER: I always loved time travel stories. I love TheTime Machine, by H.G. Wells. When I was a kid I read abook called Twists in Time, by Murray Leinster. It’s sixshort stories that are probably the first time stories Iever read. The year-and-a-half I was on the FantasticFour I was able to do a lot of time fiddling. The entirerun turns out to be one giant time fiddle in order to getback to where they started.

MM: One of my favorite parts in the time travel storywas the dinosaur island with the FF and soldiers.

WALTER: It was great. I’m known for being a dinosaur

fan, but in fact I’ve very rarely drawn dinosaurs in thecomics I’ve done. What that story was, aside from being atreat to draw dinosaurs, is that when I was a kid Ibelonged to the Weekly Reader Book Club. One of thebooks I read back then was called Dangerous Island.Essentially, three little kids on a raft get washed out to seaby accident. After drifting for a time, they end up on alittle island. One morning they wake up and they discov-er the island is sinking back into the ocean. It was veryscary. I loved the book and when I did the FF I thoughtof that book and the sinking island, or in this case thetime-displaced island. That’s what that was inspired by.

MM: And you got to draw the Thing fighting a T-rex.

WALTER: What could be better, honestly? [laughter]

MM: One of your better known Fantastic Four storieswas the one drawn by Arthur Adams.

WALTER: That was fun. We did a three-issue arc thatwas supposed to buy me some time. In actual fact, I didother stuff and didn’t end up getting any time out of it.[laughter] I talked to Arthur about doing it. We were oldpals. He was game to do it.

67

MM: The next series you worked on was MichaelMoorcock’s Multiverse. Did Michael contact you about thator did DC?

WALTER: I think probably Stuart Moore at DC called upout of the blue and asked if I’d be interested in doing it. Iknew Michael’s work and I’d read his books back in the’60s and ’70s. I’m a big Elric fan, and I’d met him atUpstart some years earlier. I jumped at the chanceto work with him and do some new material ratherthan doing an adaptation of existing work.

MM: Did you work Marvel style on this?

WALTER: That was full script. The way weended up working, I pretty much had completefreedom to break the stuff down as I saw fit. Ihad the script so I could make sure that all thewords were there and everything read properly.

MM: You did some rather interesting pagedesigns in that book. For example, you had Rosewalking down a road and the road became apanel border.

WALTER: Michael’s stuff is pretty high con-cept and I thought it seemed appropriate. Iworked pretty hard to make the page layoutsunusual, but I thought they fit the story hewas giving me. He was doing three stories atonce with three different artists and the“Moonbeams and Roses” story I was doingwas in some ways the spaciest. I was tryingto reflect that to a certain degree in the waythe book was laid out.

MM: The art itself was very complex. Didit take you longer to do than other projects?

WALTER: It took as long as a regular issueand I was only doing eight to twelve pages amonth. I could never have done the wholecomic in a month with all that stuff in it. Iwas just barely able to keep afloat with theshorter chunks. The last issue I did all butone page because the stories all collapsedinto one thread by the end of it. I did theentire thread where it all came together.

MM: I just have to ask: How did it feel to help save themultiverse?

WALTER: It felt great. Y’know I got a headache whenthat was done. Playing a game with the gods. It wastough. [laughter] It was really fun. That was a riot whenMichael put me in the comic.

Part 7: Gods and

Champions

81

All characters ™ and ©2006 Michael Moorcock.

82

MM: You did nearly all the coversfor Jack Kirby’s Fourth World.

WALTER: Yeah. John Byrneasked me to do the covers for thebook. And I said sure. New Godsstuff? I love it.

MM: When you’re only thecover artist, what kind of direc-tion do you get about what todo with the covers?

WALTER: It varies as the times,places, and circumstances dic-tate. I think on that stuff Johnwas far enough ahead we most-ly knew what the stories weregoing to be. I tried to find agood hook in the story, I prob-ably talked to PaulKupperberg, who was the edi-tor, and I probably talked toJohn. John may have hadsome ideas. I don’t remembernow. I would do up a sketchfrom whatever the ideaswere, show it to Paul and beoff and running.

MM: In Jack Kirby’s FourthWorld you did a “Tales of theNew Gods” back-up. Wasthat something John asked you to do?

WALTER: He did a few back-ups himself and wewere talking on a regular basis because I was doingthe covers. I don’t know now if he asked me to do aKanto story or if I brought Kanto to him. I like thecharacter Kanto. I thought it would be fun to do asemi-origin story about why this New God was walk-ing around in Renaissance clothes and withRenaissance manners. That gave me a chance to do it.

MM: That led into you doing Orion. You went forthe big stuff right away with the Anti-LifeEquation and the battle with Darkseid. Did youjust want to get that out of the way so you couldmove onto something else?

WALTER: That’s exactly right. I picked up fromthe end of John’s run and took care of some storythreads. John had some stuff he suggested. I want-ed to get the Darkseid/Orion fight out, becauseonce that’s done, then you’re not sure what goingto happen next. That’s the condition every comicbook reader should be in. You should not know

Right: Cover art for

Jack Kirby’s Fourth World

#3.

Below: Walter tells the

story of Kanto’s origin.

Next Page: Justeen’s

first appearance—from

Orion #1, and Darkseid

and Orion have at it in a

two-page spread from

Orion #5.

New Gods and all related

characters ™ and ©2006 DC

Comics.

what’s going to happen next.

MM: You added a new character to the NewGods pantheon—Justeen. What can you sayabout her creation?

WALTER: I borrowed the title of one of thereal de Sade’s books. I’ve never read the books,but I used to work in a bookstore in the late’60s when Grove Press was issuing all that stuff.So I knew the titles.

Desaad was a character who had beenaround a long time and I thought Justeen was alittle like doing Lorelei in Thor. She servedsome of the same purposes as Desaad, but yougive her a different spin. She obviously has acrush on Darkseid. She’s ruthless in pursuingwhat she wants, which is to be Darkseid’s right-hand girl. You could have her do stuff thatDesaad would be doing, but when she’s doingit, it’s new and it’s a little different.

The same’s true with Lorelei. I introducedLorelei into Thor because the Enchantress hadbeen around for so long and gone through the

same motions a million times. I thought havingher younger, cuter sister as part of the Thor mixwould give me a bit different quality to thestories when she was involved with themrather than just using the Enchantress.Eventually, when I cleaned Desaad’s clock, thenI had Justeen to step in. [laughter]

MM: Your page layout was a bit more ornatein Orion. Was that a result of doing Multiverse?

WALTER: Some yes, some no. I had some long-range plans for Orion that never came to fruition.We had two years and I’m delighted, but I hadabout a five-year plan. Part of that involvedbringing back the Old Gods. We were going tofind out who the Old Gods were, what they wereabout. So, especially in the early issues of Orion, Ihave all these heads in the corners watching.Those were the Old Gods watching before theywould send one of their representatives back todiscuss things with Orion. That’s what that wasabout. It was ornate but it had some story valuethat was never used in the comic.

83

100

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Modern Masters:WALTER

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