THE 1970 COMIC ART CONVENTION: Bill Everett and Joe Kubert interviewed by Gil Kane and Neal Adams
People who attended the 1970
Comic Art Convention Luncheon received a definite treat when Bill Everett and
Joe Kubert, who were the guests of honour, were interviewed, on stage, by Gil
Kane and Neal Adams respectively. The
use of Gil Kane as an interviewer was an inspired one, and, to be frank, Kane
should have done far more interviews than he really did. He made a good subject for an interview, but,
upon reading, he made for an excellent interviewer, with the ability and
knowledge to draw the best out of his subject.
Certainly his admiration for Bill Everett is clear to be seen in his
exchanges with the man and there’s more than a passing influence in Kane’s
stylised art and the early 1940s art of Everett.
As for Joe Kubert, well
there’s not much that anyone can say about the man that hasn’t already been
said. He began to influence others when
he started in the comic book industry, and is still cited as an influence
today. Always one to give back to the
community, Joe established the Kubert Art School in the late 1970s and has been
giving advice and assistance to artists wanting to further their crafts and
careers ever since. It’s hard to find
anyone who is as giving as Joe, or who is in such demand – still – and whose
art shows no sign of a lack in quality for over five decades. Joe is a true icon in the comic book world,
and, even back then, he was able to turn the likes of Neal Adams, who was the
artist if the late ‘60s and early ‘70s, into a gushing fanboy on stage. As with Kane, Adams,
with his insider knowledge and a healthy appreciation of his subject, is a more
than apt and adept interviewer, free flowing and genuine with his praise for
his subject. It’s hard to think of
anyone who could have done a better job.
Unlike a few well known interviewers of today, both Kane and Adams
generally refrain from pumping themselves up, but instead allow Everett and
Kubert to do all of the talking. This is
a lesson in interviewing your peers that a few people could do worse than to
adopt.
Bill
Everett and Joe Kubert interviewed by Gil Kane and Neal Adams
THE 1970 COMIC ART
CONVENTION
July, 1970 Luncheon
GIL
KANE:
It's my privilege to introduce Bill Everett.
Bill was one of my original
inspirations; and the thing that I always thought of in connection with Bill
was, he was an artist of great facility, but more than that he was an
unparalleled storyteller. I think that, for instance in A-Man, the Amazing Man,
he did one of the most remarkable jobs of telling a story; you could follow the
action so perfectly from panel to panel. The dynamic storytelling, the tension
build-up, the action, the continuity of movement; all of these things were done
so beautifully that you didn't realize you were looking at single frames. There
was just this feeling of continuity all the way through. And of course, when he
started to do Sub-Mariner, why, he was virtually at the peak of his capacity as
a storyteller, and he did absolutely brilliant stuff. Regrettably, he hasn't
done much work on Sub-Mariner since that time. Bill was the best artist on
Sub-Mariner because he had the best feeling for the character, and the
character had a life and personality all its own that it never had for anyone
else. And it was in that storytelling quality and that special characterization
that Bill really rose above most of the other artists in comics.
Bill, what is your
background; what sort of an art education did you have?
BILL
EVERETT: First, I want to thank everybody here for the honor of sitting at
this table. Without you people I don't think we'd amount to too much today;
certainly not what we are.
To answer Gil's question, my
formal art training was never complete. I have to first state that I was born
with this talent and can take no credit for it. If I take any credit at all,
it's in having been able to do something with it. I've had a pencil in my hand
almost all my life. I actually had only two years of art training, and I didn't
really have that. I was credited with two years of training because I got
through three years in about a year and a half, and this was due only to an
inborn talent and drive. I had to get somewhere fast. That's about the size of
my formal training. I think that anything else was just an innate talent and a
desire to put things on paper.
KANE:
You were always, in my estimation, one of the best writers that comics ever
produced. The writing on the Amazing Man was just superb. And I thought
Sub-Mariner was one of the great character creations in comics. It was the
first time someone attempted to do a leading character who was a villain, but
still attractive, you know; he created the tension in the feud with the Human
Torch. Were you interested in pulps? Were you interested in movies? What shaped
your taste in stories?
EVERETT: I
knew Gil was going to ask me some tough ones, and this is a tough one to
answer. I came into the comic business almost by accident, by necessity. I had
done some writing; but as far as my inspiration, if I were to use that term, is
concerned, I don't know that I really had any. I was sort of led into
cartooning by my father's wish. He always wanted me to be a cartoonist, and he
died, unfortunately, before he saw that come true. But that probably was in
back of the whole thing.
As far as storytelling is
concerned, I read a great deal when I was very young, through junior high
school and high school. I read what was then considered the deeper novels, the
high class literature. I didn't go much for pulp material. I didn't even read
the daily comics.
My education was very
limited. I dropped out of high school; I dropped out of art school as well. I
had to make up for this in reading, and I wanted to be a writer. But if I had
any idol at all, it would have been Jack London. I liked the way he told a
story. And I figured that rather than try to be the greatest novelist of all
time, I would attempt merely to tell a story in the simplest terms that I could
summon, that I could utilize. And I think that this showed up in the early
writing, as Gil mentioned, in the Amazing Man series (which is a little
amusing; I think a lot of you people remember a lot more about it than I do).
Unfortunately, I didn't stay with the strip long enough to get very deeply
involved. I was permitted, however, almost complete leeway on what I did with
it, and it was a chance to express myself by using Amazing Man as, if Roy
Thomas will forgive the expression, my alter ego . . . a chance to just put
down on paper and write about myself, had I been able to be what I'd like to
have been. And this again evolved into the Sub-Mariner.
I am only recently beginning
to learn that there was more to my writing of the Sub-Mariner than I actually
thought at the time. He was an angry character, and I probably expressed some
of my own personality. But, again, at least in the origin of the Sub-Mariner,
in the beginning of it, I was allowed full expression. There were no
limitations set by editors, no limitations set by publishers, no limitations
set by anyone, art directors or others. And this was a case where an artist or
an artist-writer could freely express himself. And if you had something to tell
which was worthwhile, this was an outlet for it. Unfortunately, business was
very good at the time, and we didn't realize what it would eventually lead to.
A great many of us could have done more with it had we had the foresight—we
didn't.
KANE:
During the thirties most comics were not sold directly to publishers, but
through agents. Will Eisner was an agent. In fact, that's one of the ways
comics started; they ran out of syndicate material to reprint. A lot of the
syndicates had their own comic books so that peripheral publishers who would
like to get into it were desperate for material. So they would get somebody
like Will Eisner who said that he would produce it for the same rate that they
were buying reprint material. And of course they thought that they were getting
watered-down stuff, and they didn't realize that they would simply pass the
reprint material by in no time at all.
And it was at that time that
Bill, along with Carl Burgos and several other artists, formed an organization
called Funnies Incorporated, which was one of the early agencies. It was
through Funnies Incorporated that a lot of the characters like Sub-Mariner, the
Human Torch and so forth were created. Bill was one of the prime movers, one of
the creative forces in that agency.
Would you like to tell a
little about how those agencies worked, how this particular agency got
together, and what was the role of Jacquet in that agency?
EVERETT: To
begin with, I had been at Centaur Publications (John Harley), and Lloyd Jacquet
at that time was their editor, or managing editor, and he felt the need to
break loose and form his own company of some sort. So a few of us banded
together: Lloyd Jacquet, Carl Burgos, myself, Paul Gustayson, Ben Thompson, a
few other people, and we decided that we would sort of go on our own and form
our service to supply a package deal to the publisher. In other words, we would
provide the story, the complete art work as an entire 32 or 48 page book (I think
we were doing 32 pages then). We started out as a very small nucleus, which
rapidly built. And one of our first customers was Martin Goodman, who at the
time published Timely Comics, which eventually became Marvel as you know. And
we had a salesman—you can put that in quotes, we had a 'contact man'—who went
out and contacted other publishers such as Curtis Publishing Company, and
negotiated other contracts to produce work for them. And this is the way
Funnies was started; just a handful of guys who wanted to get out from under
the publisher and to concentrate on story material and art material with
absolutely no restrictions; and the publisher would buy it just the way it was,
and what he did with it after we sold it we didn't much care.
However, this couldn't work
very long, because we represented a middle-man, which meant that the publisher
had to pay extra to get what he wanted. He soon discovered this, and the
agencies were eliminated because it was an additional cost to the publisher. In
a way it was unfortunate, because it was a wonderful means of expression for
the individual artist. We had quite a staff at Funnies. The office staff was
small, but we had a great many free lance writers and free lance artists
contributing to us. And the writers did some pretty sensational stuff. Because
it was new, it was original, and it was different.
KANE:
One thing that becomes apparent as you look back over the earlier stuff was
that different organizations started to develop their own personalities almost
immediately. For instance, almost from the beginning, National Comics was more
reserved in their characters. Their characters weren't as flamboyant, and they
had a variety of characters who were more like duplications of syndicate strip
characters. And even with the arrival of Superman and Batman they didn't
proliferate super characters the way you might have thought they would.
On the other hand, Will
Eisner had an entirely different quality of material; it was a recognizable
style. Even if you didn't recognize the artist, you could tell that it was
published by this particular company. Well, of course the same thing was true
about Funnies Incorporated. The great thing about Funnies was that when they
found the superhero they just didn't stop; they just kept on going as though
they had found a downhill course and it was just no pedalling all the way home.
They did some remarkable things. And Bill himself, after the Sub-Mariner, did
the Fin and several other characters which had some of the same pitch, the same
excitement and glamor of the Torch and the Sub-Mariner, which are really
classic creations.
And all the artists, like
Paul Gustayson, they all had this feeling of movement and excitement. They had
a kind of pulp feel which was quite special and quite different from the
illustrative quality of Eisner and the rather stately quality of National.
Funnies had an excitement which to some extent is still the standard. I can't
believe that Stan Lee could have been unaffected by all of this material, and
to some extent he still carries through all of this quality, a sense of
headlong excitement.
How did you develop the feud
between the Sub-Mariner and the Human Torch? It seems like a natural thing now,
but it was the first time that I remember characters overlapping their strips
in adventure comics and doing their thing together.
EVERETT: I
don't know if you want to get too deeply into this; it's a long story. There
are a few articles coming out which will discuss it in detail. Actually, the
idea of combining two major characters under one story was not original. I
really don't remember, exactly, how it actually did come about. We were faced
with the project of a commission to do a semi-annual book of 64 pages and the
big question, editorially, was, "What will we put in this type of
book?" And going through the various characters that we had established,
the Angel, the Torch, Sub-Mariner and all the rest of them, the only two things
that made any sense, the two most powerful characters were the Human Torch and
the Sub-Mariner. And since one represented water and the other represented
fire, it was a natural thing to have combat between the elements.
If I'm making it sound
simple, it wasn't. It was very complicated—how to introduce the characters to
one another; how to get them involved in a situation which would create a
`historical' battle. It was rather intricate. We had a lot of fun doing it; it
was a sort of party time. But it was a heck of a lot of work, and a lot of
people were involved. The story of its actual writing is an episode in itself
and it had its amusing moments. But it was a tremendous amount of work which we
accomplished in a very few days—literally, the whole book was produced in a
matter of about five days, but it took a lot of people to do it. It was successful,
and I think that just because of the nature of the characters themselves
representing the two opposing elements, it just had to be successful.
KANE: I
always thought that Amazing Man was so well supported that in many ways it
could measure up against some of the things that Philip Wylie did. And
Sub-Mariner, too, was an unusual character. If you had, at this point, the
freedom and the resources to do whatever it was that you wanted to do, which
direction would you go and how would you approach your work?
EVERETT: Oh
boy. I'll go back to a short conversation I had with Al Williamson yesterday
about this. We were talking about Amazing Man; and I would love to see
something like that done again. I would like to see it done in the same simple
style that it was done originally, instead of going into all kinds of semantics
and use of quotations and, oh I don't know, trying to 'classify', what's the
word I want, trying to 'elevate' the writing.
To try to get down to basic
human writing; if I were given the opportunity to reinstate some of my original
ideas that I had back in the forties, I would do it with this in mind. I would
appeal to any person, any person, any reader. I would try to create my writing
and my storytelling, structure .it so that anyone at any level of intelligence
could enjoy it.
I consider comics part of
the entertainment field, and I think that people need to be entertained
regardless of whether they're looking for a message, something deep, or not.
And I think the best way to entertain someone is to present your creation in a
way that someone can readily and easily understand, without being too
complicated. I think, if anything, in the beginning of the comic book business
this was what the writers did and what the artists interpreted—a basic story, a
plot, a simple storytelling, and all of them I think without exception used
this format. And it was successful. Oh, we never got wealthy on it, but it was
the nucleus of a booming business, and I think that if I had to do it again I'd
do it exactly the way I did it in the first place, which is simply to tell a
story, but to do it as well as I possibly could, as simply as I possibly could.
I think really (if you want
to get into it, and I don't want to get into it too deeply), I think that what
has been happening lately is we're getting too deeply involved in some of the
stories being put out by all the publishers. We've gotten ourselves so involved
that we feel we have to carry a message of some sort; and I don't think this is
true, necessarily true. In writing to entertain people, I think we ought to
give them what they want, because it is a business. I think that the writer as
a creative person should be allowed to express himself, but to do it in a way
that everyone can understand.
KANE:
During these recent years when fandom has developed so vociferously, I'm sure
you've been asked—if you were to advise those budding artists in the audience
who want to find the secret of cartooning, the new route to the Indies; if
they're going to achieve success, or even acceptance, in this business, what
would you advise?
EVERETT:
The basic thing is to have the talent to begin with, and to read as
prolifically as possible. Read as much of the material that is being produced
today so that you have a basic foundation in it. And then if you still have the
desire to do it, you also must have a desire to work and work hard. It's like
anything else; you're not going to make a go of it unless you are willing to
put an awful lot of time, with very little money to begin with. You have to
have a drive, an impetus, some sort of incentive to get into this business,
because it's not an easy business to break into. And unless you have the
willingness to sacrifice a little bit. . . and I'm not preaching, but to me it's
a must. You've got to be able to fight all kinds of odds and be persevering and
really express yourself and not try to imitate.
This was a beautiful part of
the beginning of this field, too; we had nobody to imitate. All of us had idols
in the daily comics, our Alex Raymonds, Milton Caniffs and so forth, but we
couldn't very well imitate them because our field was another expression of
what they were doing.
Now, you've got to have the
same feeling for adapting yourself to the methods of our field today, but doing
it in your own way. If you have a belief in what you're doing and the
willingness to work for it, you can make it, whether you write, whether you
illustrate, or whether you're just a mechanical artist, such as an inker, who
does no creative work. It's still a good business to be in. So I would suggest
first that you discover whether or not you have the talent, whether or not you
have the desire. And with the talent and the desire there, if you're willing to
work, then find someone to guide you in the right direction and just work like
heck at it and you can make it. Thank you very much. [applause]
PHIL
SEULING: It gives me very great personal satisfaction to present
this award, which reads, "1970 Comic Art Convention, to Bill Everett, for
a career-long dedication to superior quality and imagination in the field of
comic art." [applause] .
EVERETT: I
just want to say in appreciation to everyone: it's taken me approximately
thirty-three years to get this and I'm awfully awfully grateful. Thanks very much.
NEAL
ADAMS: It's my privilege today to introduce Joe Kubert. I'm
going to give you a few personal experiences of mine that I've had in
association with Joe Kubert without his knowledge, and some with his knowledge.
When I started reading comic books, I became almost an immediate fantastic
dedicated fan of Joe's. I'm younger than he is, obviously, [laughter] but I
really wouldn't have to be, because he started at twelve-and-a-half, and he got
his first feature at fourteen, which kind of shakes me up.
I was a semi-dedicated fan
of Joe's until I reached the age of eleven, when I read my first Tor comic
book. That was one of the times in the history of this industry when writing
and art came together to form an almost perfect piece of material. I look at it
now, and it seems better today than most of the stuff that's happening today. I
was an Army brat; I was in Germany.
And when we were coming back, I stopped at a newsstand in Ireland and
picked up a 3-D comic book with Tor in it. It blew my mind. I don't even
remember the trip back; I just remember that book. Ever since then, I felt that
if I could do anything anywhere near to what Joe has done, to me that would
possibly be one of the greatest things that could ever happen to me.
I had very few opportunities
to meet Joe, because I really didn't get into the field early. I had a
syndicated strip before I got into comics. But I was given an opportunity to
get in touch with Joe because somebody asked me who would be best for a
particular job, and I suggested Joe, and I met him that way. I felt at that
time, 'what a way to meet a guy; he's bound to be nice to me because I helped
him get a job.' And he was. But I learned later that Joe was the kind of guy
that you didn't have to do a favor for, for him to be nice to you. He's the
nicest guy in the world. There are an awful lot of nice people in comics, but
Joe is just about the best.
I soon started working for
National, and I possibly got the greatest compliment I've ever received from
anybody, because I respect Joe more than just about anybody. I handed a job in
to him one time—it was an Enemy Ace. He took about ten pages home on a weekend.
I could see him doing ten pages in a weekend, but he came in on Monday and said
to me, "It's as if somebody had crawled into my mind." Well, I was on
air for a week. I didn't show it in my face, and I suppose I said, "Thank
you," but nobody in this field could have said anything better to me,
ever, than that, and nobody will ever be able to say anything like that to me
that will make be feel like that again. I have pages at home that I did when I
was learning to be a cartoonist, about this cave man who was advanced for his
time and who wanders around killing dinosaurs and pterodactyls, which looks
amazingly like bad Joe Kubert, and I won't ever let anybody see it, I suppose.
But this is how much I appreciated this guy.
Joe, I think that just about
everybody would like to know how the Tor thing came about, how it developed,
and what happened to it.
JOE
KUBERT: Thank you very much, Neal. Before I answer that,
though, I'd like to explain the kind of off-hand remark that Neal had made
about setting me up for a job; it was the presentation of my work to someone
whereby the Green Berets strip was given to me. It was something of a very high
compliment. I'm rather floored by Neal's presentation. I don't know what the
heck to say, but I'm very much flattered.
Tor was an idea that came to
mind, kind of patterned after the Tarzan strip. I felt that the formula was a
good one. I was in Germany
at the time; I was in the Army. I was heading home, and I had made some
preliminary sketches of a character that I felt might be applicable to things
that were happening today; morality, ideas, ethics, and so on, and could be put
down to its basics in a milieu of a stone age type strip.
I have gotten many letters
to the effect that man did not exist during the age of the dinosaur. As a
matter of fact, it's a point that Neal has brought up, much to my chagrin, many
times. However, I had done a certain amount of research on it, and no one can
prove to me beyond any shadow of a doubt that there might not have been an
overlapping of man existing in some form during the time of the dying out of
the dinosaurs. That's my cop out, anyhow. But basically, that's about how the
strip started. I wrote the Tor strip. I did the original ideas and stories and
so on.
ADAMS:
What impressed me so much about Tor was that all the analogies that Joe had
made were in kind of a simplified form. They're little human lessons in story
form and they set me thinking about what could be done in this field. When Joe
got into the war books, it kind of surprised me. And then I noticed that just
about the time Joe got into the war books, they started to change. Now, whether
this was due to the fact that Joe got into it, I don't know; but it took them
out of people shooting other people down and being kissed by the pretty girl
into real life stories about what war seemed to be all about. Now times have
changed. War is a whole different type of thing. But at that time I felt that
an awful lot of advances were made in that particular field, and I credit a
great deal of it to Joe, in spite of the fact that his editor Bob Kanigher had
a lot to do with them. I'd like to know something about your association with
Bob Kanigher on that material.
KUBERT:
Well, I would say about 95% of the direction and motivation of the stories that
took on some sort of an anti-war tinge was really all of Bob Kanigher's doing.
He was the editor and he was the prime writer, I think, on most of the material
that I had done. Within the last two or three years the things that you see in
the war magazines more or less reflect my own personal feelings. But back ten
years ago and further back than that when, as Neal describes it, the war
stories took on more of a personal emotional feeling rather than
kill-kill-bang-bang, this was Bob Kanigher's doing, and I think that any kudos
that would come should come directly to him.
Incidentally, before we go
any further; apropos of Bill Everett here, I recall very distinctly when I was
about twelve or thirteen years old, when I was going to the High School of
Music and Art (as a matter of fact, I had just started), one of the excursions
with a guy by the name of Norman Maurer, who was my partner when I was putting
out the Tor magazines and who was going to school with me at the time, one of
the many excursions we'd go on would be to drop in to see any one of the 25
different comic book publishing houses that were strewn all through New York,
in addition to the places that Bill has described who were putting together
material for publishers—Harry Chester, Jerry Iger, and so forth. And there were
these two kids, Norman and myself, and one of the guys that we would go up to
religiously, to see and kind of pester, was Lloyd Jacquet. We never got as far
as seeing Bill; we couldn't get in to see the hoi polloi. But we did get to see
Lloyd and our experience was.. . I think the experience of almost everybody who has been in the
business is that when you've brought a piece of work to show any pro,
invariably the guy would take, no matter how pressing a deadline he might be
working on, he'd take all kinds of time out to sit and talk to you and
explain... My experience has been that in this field there are the nicest bunch
of guys that I have ever met.
ADAMS:
Since Tor, Joe hasn't had much opportunity to write much of anything. Now he's
getting the opportunity as his own editor. I would like to ask Joe to tell us
how it feels to write his own stuff, and what, as an editor, he thinks the
field is going to look like in the seventies. We've heard a lot of noise from a
lot of artists, but Joe's in a position of editor now; he's in a position to
make suggestions and make definite programs. So I'd like to hear what he thinks
the 1970's are going to be like.
KUBERT: As
Neal suggests, I have been fortunate in that I have seated myself on every side
of this field; I have published, drawn for editors, edited, written, lettered,
colored, put the stuff up before the engravers' cameras to have it shot, and so
forth. I think it's a very enviable position, the one I find myself in now, in
that my relationship with Carmine has been a very close one through the years.
Carmine, now being the directorial head of National Publications, has given
not, only me but all the editors who work more with him than for him, almost
carte blanche to do anything, to go in any direction that we may think
feasible, that in the long run we feel will be also fiscally successful. I find
now, that I can inject and do almost anything that I want in the strips. I feel
no inhibition.
As Bill mentioned before, he
was working at a time of hands-off; there was no suggestion until the work was
completed, then the publisher did what he wanted with it. I don't think we have
that complete a freedom because we are inhibited by the fact that we feel that
there's a certain market, and we feel that we have to hit this market
regardless of anything else. Above and beyond what we think we'd like to do, we
have to do something that we feel is going to sell. Regardless of how nice or
how beautiful or how good a particular thing might be, if it doesn't sell
that's down and it's out. So we are inhibited by that. But outside that, up at
National anyhow, I find that I have as much freedom, and I like also to pass
that freedom over to anybody who is working for me, to allow him the freedom to
do anything that he'd like to do. Because I have found myself in the position
of the fellows who are writing for me, the fellows who are drawing for me, I
feel that I do know what their problems are, and I do like to give them as free
a rein as possible, and I think I do.
As far as what I project for
the coming seventies, it's my own personal projection based on what I see and
what I've been told is and will be going on up at National. I think that the
magazines are going to take a turn much for the better. I think that Carmine
has done yeoman service in trying to pull up National specifically and the
business in general to a point where it's going to reflect a lot of the
original initiative and a lot of the originality that has for a long time not
been seen in comics. It's going to extend itself into areas where the comic
book as we know it now, the small size, will be extended and stretched and
perhaps reduced in all different sorts of directions. What is going to happen
is, where a fellow trying to get into this business before felt limited perhaps
in that he had to produce for this one particular type of magazine, may now
find that he's doing half-tone work; he's doing illustration more than he's
doing comic book text type material. He may find that he's doing things that
are very reminiscent of the pulps years and years ago. He may find that he's
doing full color. There's going to be a widening, a tremendous widening of
range, and a tremendous demand for new talent that will be coming into this
field. I see a great future ahead for this business.
SEULING: I
have a double page of Joe Kubert's work on my wall at home, and it tells a
story so beautifully I don't think a film could do it better. And that's why
this plaque says, "To Joe Kubert, for the cinematic story telling
techniques and the exciting and dramatic style he has brought to the field of
comic art." [applause] If you'd like to ask some questions, maybe Bill or
Joe would be able to answer now.
QUESTION
ONE:
Mr. Kubert, you have probably one of the most dramatic presentations,
stylistically, in comic art, and I was wondering: is this something that just
developed from childhood, or do you have any outside influences, any particular
movie directors, or writers or dramatists that influenced you towards this
style?
KUBERT: I
think I've been influenced by every darn thing around me. The original movie
KING KONG drove me up a wall, it was that exciting to me. Hal Foster's Tarzan
was to me as exciting as reading Kipling's Jungle Books, which in word form
brought forth the type of images that a man like Foster was able to put down in
pictures. My own style and what I do is probably a compilation of all the
things that I've been able to gather from everything I've seen.
BYRON
PREISS: Joe, I had the pleasure of working with you these last
few months in a program called Edugraphics. For the last decade I've heard talk
of comic books in schools. It's not talk any longer, and I think this is due
largely to you and your efforts to guide the program into a major company. I'd
like to hear your feelings about comics in education.
KUBERT:
Well, as Byron has suggested, we have started up at National trying to utilize
comic books where we feel they can be extremely potent. And that is, using them
as a stimulant to kids who are the age of eight, nine and ten who have not
really been able to pick up on reading. Now, I'm not a devotee of "Read
comics in lieu of anything," but I do feel very strongly that comic books
can and should be used as a lever to get a kid started into reading. And this
is one of the big things that is going on now up at National. Byron has been
working very hard since the beginning of this summer up at National setting up
a program whereby specific lessons can be set forth to these high school and
pre-high school kids, utilizing, not any special magazine, but the comic books
that are produced and sold on the stands today. When these comic books are
shown with a specific program that Byron has devised, then the idea is put
across very strongly so that the student looking at it can pick up words that
up to that point had been almost impossible for him to comprehend.
Apparently the picture-word
combination is such a meaningful thing to a child who cannot verbalize to that
extent, that if the picture is exciting enough he will be motivated to want to
read the words that go along with that illustration. And using this technique
so far has turned out to be very successful.
QUESTION
THREE: I've lived in New Mexico for four years, and your
Bullseye Bill for Target amazed me because I assumed then that you lived in New
York and I thought, how can a guy that's seen steel and concrete all his life
know what a ravine looks like, and your rocks and yucca plants and so on. This
surprised me until someone mentioned you'd lived in Arizona.
EVERETT:
Well, I spent my early childhood in Arizona
and in Montana.
And so it was just natural to me; when I had to do a western it came quite
easily.
QUESTION
FOUR:
Can you tell us where you came up with the name Sub-Mariner?
EVERETT:
One of my favorite classical poems was "The Rhyme of the Ancient
Mariner" by Coleridge. It wasn't an easy name to come by; I don't remember
precisely how I arrived at it. I wanted to use something which was significant
of the sea, which would be 'marine'. And the word 'mariner' came quite easily
enough. But the Sub-Mariner; I think that somewhere in the writings of the Antarctic
they talked about the sub-polar zones, and, 'sub' meaning beneath, and this
character was living beneath the water, so it just seemed to tie in naturally.
But it took some time to evolve it.
And please don't ask me
where I got the name Namor. [laughter] It's Roman spelled backwards, but I have
long since forgotten why I decided that I wanted the name Roman. I did it for
some reason, but I've forgotten what the reason was.
QUESTION
FIVE:
It seems that recently the Sub-Mariner has 'regressed' somewhat to the way it
was in the forties. I was wondering if you had anything to do with this, and
will you have anything to do with the book in the future?
EVERETT: No,
that was editorially done. Then in the forties, when I was in the service, the
Sub-Mariner also underwent quite a change in character and also of environment
and I had nothing to do with it. Whether or not I'll have anything to do with
it in the future is quite questionable. I doubt it. I would like to, but if I
did I would probably bring it back to his initial origin, the Antarctic, and
take it from there. Yes, Roy?
ROY
THOMAS: I can probably answer that better than Bill. Three or
four years ago for a period of about three years, Bill shared an apartment with
me, first in the Village and then later on East Eleventh Street, and we talked an
awful lot about the Sub-Mariner. So the recent return, with Sal Buscema
penciling, to the shape of the head and some other features of the forties'
Sub-Mariner, were all indirectly influenced by Bill through a conscious desire
of mine to undo what has been done with the character for the last four or five
years, albeit by very talented people. Probably I may never be able to
implement this completely, but I guarantee that the first time I feel that I
have a total carte blanche (I have about 50-50 now), the Sub-Mariner will,
within a period of a few issues—you can't do it just overnight—probably regress
to the point of using the same kind of slang; I don't know about
"Galloping guppies", but. . . [laughter] . Even if he stays a prince,
I would find ways to get back to something more of my idea of a human being.
And I can practically guarantee that one would never again read in a Marvel
comic book the expression "Imperious Rex". [applause]
QUESTION
SIX:
Recently, characters such as Green Lantern and the Sub-Mariner have been active
in some of the social issues of the day, such as ecology and the race problem.
I'd like to ask Mr. Everett if he is in agreement on how the Sub-Mariner is
being handled in this matter. And I'd like to ask Mr. Kubert, is this going to
be a major part in the future of comics, with heroes combating social problems?
EVERETT:
Again, let me affirm that I have absolutely no editorial say-so now in the
writing of the Sub-Mariner. Roy
can answer that better than I. I think it's being handled OK as far as today's
standards are concerned; I don't see any great objection to it. But what the
future will be, we don't know; no one can tell about that. I see no damage
being done by it. When we're struggling for anything that can reach the reader,
if that's the trick that does it, then it's OK for now. But tomorrow may be
something else.
KUBERT: I
agree with what Bill said earlier this evening in that we are primarily an
entertainment medium. I think that within the scope of entertainment, though,
we could touch an awful lot of areas that are perhaps a little more serious and
very much cogent, and of our times. However, I agree again With Bill when he
says that once we become a preaching media, we kind of toll our own death
knell. Primarily and foremost I think the stories have to be exciting, have to
be entertaining, have to be something that one wants to read. If we're going to
try to jam lessons down people's throats, I think we'd be making a terrible terrible
mistake. However, that's not to negate the fact that certain important issues
can, should and will be incorporated in most of the material that will be
coming out of National.
SEULING:
I'd like to ask you all to join me in thanking all of these people up here.
[applause]
This text was taken from the
1971 Art Convention programme. According
to that book, amongst those who attended the 1971 Convention were people who
would become household names in the comic book industry. Artists Rich Buckler, Mike Zeck, Joe
Rubenstein, Robert Griffin, Nic Cuti and a young Dave Simons mixed with writers
such as Tony Isabella, Scott Edelman, Paul Kupperberg and Paul Levitz (both of
whom handled the fanzine side of things), Mike Nolan (who would later be known
as Michelle Nolan), Marty Pasko, Alan Brennert, Neal Pozner, Gary Dolgoff,
Steven Grant, Ken Barr, Don Rosa, Mike Barr, Ken Bruzenak, Bill Black, Duffy
Vohland, Bhob Stewart and many more.
There was, of course, those who straddled many fences and would go on to
become dealers and publishers in comics and/or art, such as Larry Shell, Bob
Beerbohm, Howard Rogofsky, Bud Plant, Denis Kitchen, Alan Light, Gary Groth and
Sal Quartuccio. Naturally this is just a
small sampling of those who really attended, and if you were there, and
remember the events then do share – what were the conventions really like, over
forty years ago, and how do they compare to the multi-media events of today?
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