Category: Tom Skulan

Where were we? oh, yes- I’d started doing character sketches for “THE PROJECT” of which I’d spent the better part of an afternoon talking about with Tom Skulan and Roger Green in a most productive, informative, contentious first meeting that left me feeling confident and rarin’ to go as I left the store/office, yet completely bewildered as I sat down at my drawing board to begin doodling. I was supposed to come up with character sketches for: two muppetesque teenagers, a hamster and turtle who are actually 2 kids who were to just basically look like animals and the infamous empty comic book rack. The beasties weren’t that difficult as I always had encyclopedias and biology books around in addition to a well stocked public library just a few blocks away – oh, that the internet existed then, with its wellspring of potential for reference, news, and porn! – but that damned comic book rack! Geez what an awful thing to draw with its more or less cylindrical shape, countless wire racks and numerous vanishing points and negative spaces!

I looked and looked for reference on one everywhere, I’d already amassed a pretty darned good “photo morgue” or “swipe file” but had nothing even remotely similar to a comic book “spinner rack” in it. What was I to do? Well, after trying to “fake it’ and failing miserably, then whining to the FantaCo guys, they allowed me to take my camera into the store, dump all of the books off one of the racks and… take pictures! What a concept; then again, most of the grin boys in the biz these days probably wouldn’t have a clue where to get a reference photo of something like that if their computer was down and/or there was no Jim Lee or Adam Hughes comic nearby to copy from, let alone the drive to follow up on it.

Anyway, the turtle and hamster were a little nod to the Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles that started the whole ridiculously long titled black and white independent craze and to the Adolescent, Radioactive Black Belt hamsters who continued it and they were the first designs that were immediately accepted (y’can never go wrong with REAL people, buildings,cars, animals, etc. in illustration), but the screaming kid in front of that selfsame empty comic rack was going to need a bit of tweaking. I’d gone “realistic” with him as well, thinking of, even though not directly lifting the image of a mutant kid that Mike Zeck had drawn in a then recent issue of Peter Parker The Spectacular Spider-Man, but Tom wanted something arch, extreme. He suggested I look at some Harvey Kurtzman, and damn, he was right. Even with all of these years and miles past, I look at that cover and it’s stark, alarming and sticks in one’s mind- Tom knew what he was doing. But there would still be times when each and every one of the brave little crew that was to assemble in that dismal little office would offer some last minute, out of the box idea that would save the proverbial day (even me!)

After a couple of way too quickly passing weeks, we had the basic look of the characters, and a rough cover drawing to start sending around the horn with press releases, etc. but it was time to actually get the script together and start telling the story. At some point, I finally said to Tom and Roger, “So, am I officially ON the book or what?” and Tom simply said, matter-of-factly, “You’re the artist.” which felt very, very good, until we had to come to terms on the money situation and decide who was going to ink and letter the book. Ooops, I hadn’t thought of that- the penciling, inking and lettering duties were all to come out of the money set aside for “art” so, being a real go-getter (and so cheap I squeak), I decided to ink it myself and subcontract the lettering out to a party to be named later.

I’ll never forget being handed the first few pages of the script of which I still probably have sealed in a barrel in my heavily fortified basement. That “script’ was unlike any I’d seen before or since – it was a couple of lined 5 x 8 notepad pages written out in ballpoint pen, some actual script format with dialogue, sometimes reverting to “plot form” and in fact, sometimes merely being quickly lashed together sketches (better drawn than many Liefeld books) with hints of dialogue (even later on with comments such as “John, go nuts here”). Wow, this was going to be a real taskmaster, but I liked it from the get-go and really felt good about the project.

Probably one of the pages where Tom said to John to go nuts. -ROG

The book began with a newscaster yammering on about the black-and-white comic phenomenon, then segueing into flashbacks of the history of comics. This opened up infinite possibilities for coolness, I loved throwing in “period clothing” and sight gags on the comic racks in the backgrounds- mercilessly lampooning anything and everything and the guys let me ratchet it up further and further, using almost every twisted, borderline offensive suggestion with two exceptions. First, they decided to put the kibosh on a cover I had blatantly nailing DC’s then current “Man of Steel” as “Bland Of Steel” complete with the famous Superman chest emblem changed to snoring zzzz’s (although they finally acquiesced and allowed me a tamer version that did appear alongside “Lack of Action Comics” and “Defective Comics”. Secondly (and looking back now, I’m glad) they nixed a sight gag liquor bottle labeled “Wood alcohol” with the word “Wood” in the stylized “wood cut” typeface of the signature of the late, great Wally Wood. I had been too high on creative cooties to self edit on that one.

Late one hot June night when the house was quiet, I sat down at the drawing board in my secret crimb lab with only a boombox, the script, a piece of 2 ply kid finish bristol board and a few pencils for company and started actually drawing my first comic book.

The backroom was kind of dismal and gloomy. Not only was it the office but a storeroom stacked with overstocks of various books, magazines, horror posters and borderline porn and it was definitely un-insulated (more on that later), but in the leftmost corner sat Tom Skulan and his desk from which the empire called FantaCo was run. I’d met Tom several times over the years as a customer but it felt different to be actually “peddling my wares” to him as he had a reputation for being able to draw out the best in his creative people. He stood and offered his hand as Roger re-introduced me to him and gave him an abbreviated version of my life’s story, then gestured for me to lay my portfolio out on the desk. I did as directed while proudly repeating the story of my recent completion of art school and coaching by the Zeck-man as Tom flipped through the acetate covered pages, occasionally nodding and mm-hmming approvingly in the quiet but deep Eric Boghosianesque voice that I would come to know well over the next few months (there’s a casting suggestion for Mr. S’s biopic if ever, right down to the curly black hair). Finally, after what seemed like and eternity of my babbling and Raj and Tom’s exchanging of knowing glances not unlike Joe Friday and Bill Gannon, Tom shut the ‘port, looked up at me and said, “Okay, here’s what we’re looking at…” and life was never to be the same again.

The guys broke down the basic plot of what was to become “SOLD OUT”, and I loved it from the moment I heard it, even more so than most of the pitches I’ve gotten over the years from M*rV*l or whomever, this was to be “AN EVENT”, and one helluva satirical one at that. The project was to be a 2 issue spoof/indictment/tell all of all that was bad, hypocritical, phony, and just plain screwed up in comics(I figured that would guarantee some 500 or so pages worth of work right off the top) springing from the then overblown independent, black and white(or as we came to say WAAAAYYYY too many times “poorly drawn black and white”) comic craze. The book would begin with a 3/4 issue or so retelling of the actual history of the comic book marketplace, mercilessly skewering many a comics personality and practice along the way, then spinning out into what may have come to pass if the black-n-white phenomenon was allowed to continue as it had, eventually pushing the comics market into a world of rampant speculation, greed, corruption and eventually decimation due to a lack of that old adage “Those who do not acknowledge the past are condemned to repeat it.”

Before we go any further, let me be the first to say that without reservation, APPROXIMATELY 90% OF WHAT WE EVENTUALLY HAD TO SAY IN THAT LITTLE POORLY DRAWN BLACK AND WHITE COMIC ACTUALLY DID COME TO BE AND WAS EERILY CLOSE TO THE WAY THAT COMICS TOOK A SWAN DIVE IN THE MID-90’s, ALTHOUGH WE “PREDICTED IT” IN 1986!!!!!!!!!! You heard it here, folks, go dig up a back issue and give it a read, it’s more interesting to read now, some 20 plus years later, but, I digress, we’ll come to this later so for now, back to our tale already in progress….

Over the next 45 minutes or so, the 3 or us bounced a lot of ideas off of each other as the project was already obviously writing itself as we went along a la “Casablanca” and the last half of the tale was purposely left to only a brief outline so that we might adapt to the events as they transpired. By the end of our meeting, we’d cited such diverse influences or possible influences as: “Mickey Mouse and The Air Pirates”, “Citizen Kane”, the graphic novel adaptation of “1941” and The Bible. I was sent off to begin sketches of, of all things, a hamster, a turtle, and a stunned kid in front of an empty comic book rack, and, let me tell you, of all the years I was an illustrator and of all the weird stuff I had to reference and sometimes out and out fake, fudge or swipe to tell a story, there weren’t many things tougher to draw than a simple,…… empty,…….. comic book rack…..