World's Funnest: Silver Age Sequence Script/Notes (Pgs 1-18)

Hey, folks. 

Attached is a PDF of the script for the initial 18 pages of the World's Funnest one-shot from 2000. This opening section is what we referred to as the "Silver Age Sequence", it was penciled and inked, beautifully, by Dave Gibbons. I've posted the opening splash/title page, which is one of my favorite images from the book, between Dave Gibbons' artwork and the wonderful lettering by Tom Orzechowski. 

It's also one of the pages I enjoyed writing the most, using the well-worn but always fun device of emulating/parodying the captioning and cadence of the old classic 50's-60's DC Comics. The splash pretty much captures the concept of the project, a doomed plea to the industry and fandom to embrace -- without embarrassment -- the classic superhero genre's inherent all-ages goofiness. It was also a gentle knock against then-modern DC superhero comics (and the superhero business in general) for being so serious, uptight, "adult" and stuffed full with it's own inherent goofiness. I wasn't expecting any kind of discussion to emerge from the book, I was just hoping to get a few laughs. It was  great way to earn some money, write some in-joke-filled nonsense and work with a murderer's row of comic book creators across two or three generations. So, yeah. Win, win, win, even if the books didn't do all that well. 

Does that still bother me. Yeah, it does. There has to be some sort of award for not making bank on a superhero comic book from DC in 2000 featuring new art by Dave Gibbons, David Mazzucchelli, Alex Ross, Jaime Hernandez, Frank Miller, Bruce Timm, Jim Woodring, Mike Allred, Stuart Immonen, Ty Templeton, Sheldon Moldoff, Jat Stephens, Phil Jiminez, Doug Mahnke, Frank Cho, Glen Murakami, Joe Giella, Scott Shaw!, Stephen DeStefano, blah blah blah, etc. I thought it would be embraced by mainstream and alt/indy comic book fans, out of curiosity, if nothing else. As a unique experience, never to be duplicated. As a nostalgia piece. A cheap portfolio. A sideshow oddity! Mazzucchelli not only doing a short return trip to mainstream comics, but channeling Kirby! Miller returning to that DK universe! Ross returning to Kingdom Come! Jaime echoing C.C. Beck's Captain Marvel Family! Moldoff returning to DC! Jiminez channeling George Perez' Crisis on Infinite Earths! Immonen channeling Sekowsky, inked by Giella! Glen Murikami and Bruce Timm drawing DCAU storyboards! Jesus crust, it still sounds good to me, two decades later. 

Of course, I had rose-tinted Bat-Goggles on most of the time. As well as an upset stomach, because despite what I've written here, I never thought we had a guaranteed grand slam. As a former retailer and eventual professional, I was always aware of the peculiar habits of superhero readers, fans and acolytes. Even so, the biggest blow to the book was underestimating how uptight superhero comic book fans are about humor in their superhero comic books. Humor, parody, satire, cartooniness, gentle ribbing, in the DCU or MCU you're on dicey ground, pretty much. There's much noise made of trying "classic" comics, "classic" comic art, etc. Unless you're a top-tier creator that's also done the "straight" mainstream stuff, humor is rejected. Some things fall through the cracks, Matt Fraction-scripted goofball books, Chip Zdarsky, Batman punching Guy Gardner in the face and the Blue Beetle laughing "Bwa-ha-ha!". But not too many titles or too much humor at any one time. They keep trying with Howard the Duck and there's Deadpool's shtick and maybe Ambush Bug was dragged out, and there's those Hanna-Barbera crossovers. But always in it's place. It is what it is, and it's practically a mug's game to make a serious attempt to pierce that veil. 

Basically, because it was an Elseworlds book, and a humorous Elseworlds book, to boot, World's Funnest was seen as a book that "didn't matter". It was not in continuity, no one really died, it was a joke book. Even so, we had names back then, on the book. And even I could still sell some comic books in 2000, at the end of my "good" decade, mainly because of Milk & Cheese. 

What we didn't expect was for DC and Wizard Magazine to get into a behind-the-scenes pissing match that affected Wizard's coverage of DC for a while. When World's Funnest was first announced, Wizard ran a hot plug in the front section of the magazine featuring Alex Ross sketches of Mxy and Bat-Mite that were done on the back of a plain piece of paper. They were all in, grasping at material, because Alex Ross was one of their wonder boys. If he wiped a brush on a napkin, Wizard would have run it and hyped it in their price guide. You know what I mean, if you were there at the time. And at the time, Wizard could still make stuff happen.  Wizard could have pushed against the idea that it didn't matter because it was Elseworlds gag book, plugging it as a special event book fans needed to pick up. I had some fans at Wizard, I did artwork and comics for them, and we got comps and exclusive figures from Toyfare every month for free. But they weren't the ultimate decision-makers, and WF was only pushed to the back pages, barely mentioned the one time. DC could have pushed the book harder, as well. But, y'know. Comics. I guess it was assumed it would pull it's weight because of the heavyweight creators.

Also, I mean, there's another thing that factors in. Bat-Mite. There's a Bat-Mite cult out there, but when it comes to success, you want a religion, not a cult. I've been a cult figure making cult comic book stuff my entire life. It's better than having no impact at all, but it ain't exactly success. And in 2000, the Bat-Mite cult was even smaller than it is now, not yet being fueled by Lego, The Brave and the Bold animated series (I have a WB staff ceramic mug of our boy, gifted by a very kind artist who was on the show, and was a fan of WF. I love that mug!) of Funko Pops.  

By the time World's Funnest was due to come out, the coverage of the "prestige" book was relegated to a few sentences in the back of the magazine announcing new releases coming up. No art, no mention of the promotional buttons, the wide bench, or much of anything. I learned about the rift months later from some folks at DC. It was a weird, dumb situation to have happen in a small industry perpetually trying to stay afloat, occurring at the worst time for the project. And most likely other DC comics were affected by their spat. WF was an expensive gambit, I'm pretty sure many of those artist's rates were pretty damned decent. 

I was up at the DC offices a week after the book debuted, to very little noise. I was pretty depressed about it. I forget who it was, but a staffer told me WF was the most re-ordered book DC had the following week. That was nice to hear, but, that was about the only thing said and done. We did win a Harvey Award for the one-shot, which was nifty. I will admit that I was kind of surprised that it wasn't nominated for Best Humor Book in the Eisner Awards, if for no other reason than the comic's star-power in a niche category (that I'd been nominated in more times than I feel comfortable with). 

I'm not losing sleep over World's Funnest not being a hit. Great, if anxiety-ridden experience. I really like the comic. I get to sign copies pretty often at conventions. Well, when conventions were a regular thing. I got to work with friends, peers, and heroes. I got to pitch Brian Bolland my idea for a cover, which he accepted and used. I got to come home with Sarah one night and listen to a brief message Alex Ross left on our answering machine, "HOW THE FUCK DID YOU GET MAZZUCCHELLI?!?". I got David Mazzucchelli (!).  I got Frank Miller to change his mind after he turned us down.  We had Dick Sprang on board, but unfortunately the great cartoonist passed away. I had Sheldon Moldoff to give me career advice at a con, never realizing I wrote the book he just worked on. It's been reprinted overseas, and collected twice, with "World's Funnest' as the banner title and cover. I have an original page of art by Jaime Hernandez and Stuart Immonen/Joe Giella. I got to design two promotional pins, and design the back cover of the book. Later on I got to design a Mxy statue for DC Direct (which I sold some time ago, along with the Bat-Mite statue given to me, during a career period that was "worse than cult", money-wise). I got to write a nostalgia project for myself and others like me out there, that both celebrated and attacked DC comics history. I put together a dream project, which was also a sort of a hoax , and definitely an imaginary tale. It was a friggin' hoot.

I've also had fun taking a copy of the original comic to conventions and getting it signed by folks who contributed to it. I have most of the names scribbled inside my copy, and another copy that a reader was kind enough to send me after he got Sheldon Moldoff to sign it. When I approached Brian Bolland to get it signed at NYCC one year, his line was just getting finished up, and his handler shooed me away. I was really nervous but I spoke up and Bolland recognized my name and he was very nice and he signed my Bat-Mite comic book for me. 

I'm such a nerd!

(I was invited to dinner that evening by David Mazzucchelli, who was heading out with a group of people including Bolland. I forget why I couldn't make it, I had another commitment -- I think I just had to go home for some reason.  Oh, did I wish I could have gone.) 

(I'm such a sad nerd!)

Anyway. I knew this was going to be a real rambler post, because I'm sleep-deprived and feeling the effects of the Covid booster shot I got yesterday at Costco. I hope it isn't too dopey. I'm too tired to edit the damned thing, at least not right now. And I should eat something.

Regarding the script:

I've left in my script notes that address editor Joey Cavalieri and Dave Gibbons. You can tell I was nervous and super deferential in my notes, basically nervous I was going to drive Gibbon's off the project if I asked for too much. Dave not only stuck with us, he delivered 21 wonderful, funny and dead on-appropriate pages (including the wrap-up sequence). Dave and the Silver Age was the heart and spine of the book. I would kill to have a page of his from the comic! We were in touch about it at one point a long time ago -- there were two pages I whittled things down to, first choice and an alternate, one being the splash -- but Dave was very busy, and after a while, those pages became too expensive for me to buy, so that solved that. I saw the alternate page on someone's comic art site, iirc, I think it was someone I might have known through the internet --? It was great to see but I was super-jealous. We should all have such problems. 

The script was cleaned of typos, hopefully I caught them all. Also, I added the number of panels on each page next to the script page numbers. I always do that now, but obviously didn't back then. You'll notice I also emphasized bold lettering with capital letters, instead of underlining the words that were to be punched up. I didn't remember working that way. Underlining is better.  

Oh, shit. Just realized it's garbage night, tonight. Ugh. 

More soon later. I'm making this PDF post open to all backers as a thank you to you folks. I plan to post more scripts and art from World's Funnest this month, but scanning the inks and whatever pencils I have will take some time. I'll break things down to chapters, and most of them will be available before too long, I hope. A few might be exclusive to certain tiers, at least at first. I've been doing this for two years and am still figuring things out. Without Sarah's help these months I'm fumbling around a bit more than usual. Sort of learning some things. Sort of.  

Okay, hope this is fun stuff to look over. More soon later on World's Funnest and other things.