AMA: Legacy strips

Q.: Are there any legacy newspaper comics that, if you were offered to become artist on, like Randy Milholland and Popeye, you would accept?

A.: Newspapers are dead, and there’s no future in newspaper comics. And, sadly, it's been that way for nearly twenty years.

But that’s kind of a drab answer, so let’s take economic realities off the table. Let’s say that I was guaranteed a favorable contract into perpetuity to take over a legacy strip. Which one would I choose? Li’l Abner? Bloom County? Ziggy??

None.

I’ll go one further. I would find the prospect of trying to work on someone else’s strip to be … depressing.

I’m certainly not throwing stones at Randy — or anyone else who has stepped in to continue someone else’s creative legacy. I’m just saying that it’s really not a good fit for me. I kinda expressed how I felt about it in a very, very early Greystone storyline.

What about corporate comics?

The other question I usually get asked is about working on a Marvel or DC title. After all, I've expressed my affection for Plastic Man. Would I like to step in on that title for a while? 

And, again, the honest answer is boring as hell because it's and in-the-weeds answer. I'd never get paid enough by DC to make that worth my while. (If they paid me at all.) In addition, getting royalties for the work as it gets reprinted an rolled into other products is notoriously difficult. And heaven help me if I'm dumb enough to create a character that gets popular later!

But — OK — let's leave reality aside once again and address the creative aspects. Would I like to work on Plastic Man? Or the Fantastic Four? Or Spider-Man? Or even the Great Lakes Avengers?

Nah.

It's just not my thing. I like reading those stories, but when I write, I prefer to use my own characters — my own world. For better or for worse, that's where I think I do my best stuff.

"God-Damned Independent"

CW: self-harm.

At Alma College, Greek life was the center of the campus' social life. It was also the edges, the circumference and the adjoining real estate. Nearly everyone pledged to a fraternity or sorority. We're talking 90% or more. I wasn't a ΣΑΕ or a ΘΧ. I was a GDI — a "god-damned independent." I didn't have a problem with fraternities per se. It just wasn't a good fit for me.

I looked at the hazing my friends were going through during their pledging process, and I couldn't see the point. I got invited to all of the parties. I went wherever I wanted to go. And I wasn't getting put through what seemed to be endless torture sessions to earn... friendship?

My relationship with corporate comics is pretty much the same. To bring this into sharp focus, take a look at what my friend (and fellow GDI) Dave Kellett texted me just last night.

(SOURCE: Wally's World: The Brilliant Life and Tragic Death of Wally Wood, the World's 2nd Best Comic Book Artist )

Wally Wood worked in the 60s, 70s and early 80s. He was one of the very best (and one of my personal heroes). He committed suicide in 1981. According to one biography, he said: "If I had it all to do over again, I'd cut off my hands."

My friends, corporate comics hasn't improved since then. Page rates haven't budged, and the economic forces against working-class people have only gotten worse.

He was 54 when he died. I'll be 54 in April. The parallels are pretty bracing. We both did NSFW comics. We both had a love for Plastic Man. And Power Girl. Hell... the guy once made a bet that he could make Power Girl's breasts bigger in each issue without editorial at DC Comics noticing. I'm not saying it was in good taste. I'm just saying I get it. There's only one difference.

And I couldn't be happier with my life.

I can't lie. When I see some of my contemporaries working on projects like Not Brand Echh and Strange Tales there's a slight pang of "why not me?" But then I remind myself the strings that those jobs come with — what I'd have to give up to even get on the radar of the right editors. Again... I'm not casting aspersions at anyone who chooses that life. It's just not for me.

GDI

FTW