INDIE SUPERHEROES! Justice Machine • Mighty Crusaders & T.H.U.N.D.E.R
Total Page:16
File Type:pdf, Size:1020Kb
Exclusive Ms. Mystic interview with NEAL ADAMS! February 2017 No.94 ™ $8.95 INDIE SUPERHEROES! Justice Machine • Mighty Crusaders & T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents in the ’80s Captain Paragon • Whisper Continuity’s Superheroes featuring Black, Breyfogle, Buckler, Grant, Gustovich, Isabella, Reinhold, Ordway & more Ms. Mystic © Neal Adams. All Rights Reserved. 1 82658 00066 0 SAVE The Future of WHEN15 YOU% ORDER Comics ONLINE! TwoMorrows History. TwoMorrows • 10407 Bedfordtown Drive • Raleigh, NC 27614 • 919-449-0344 • E-mail: [email protected] • Web: www.twomorrows.com New book by BACK ISSUE! editor MICHAEL EURY! HERO-A-GO-GO! Welcome to the CAMP AGE, when spies liked their wars cold and their women warm, good guys beat bad guys with a pun and a punch, and Batman shook a mean cape. HERO-A-GO-GO celebrates the camp craze of the Swinging Sixties, when just about everyone—the teens of Riverdale, an ant and a squirrel, even the President of the United States—was a super-hero or a secret agent. BACK ISSUE magazine and former DC Comics editor MICHAEL EURY takes you through that coolest cultural phenomenon with this all-new collection of nostalgic essays, histories, and theme song lyrics of classic 1960s characters like CAPTAIN ACTION, HERBIE THE FAT FURY, CAPTAIN NICE, ATOM ANT, SCOOTER, ACG’s NEMESIS, DELL’S SUPER-FRANKENSTEIN and DRACULA, the “Split!” CAPTAIN MARVEL, and others! Featuring interviews with BILL MUMY (Lost in Space), BOB HOLIDAY (It’s a Bird … It’s a Plane … It’s Superman), RALPH BAKSHI (The Mighty Heroes, Spider- Man), DEAN TORRENCE (Jan and Dean Meet Batman), RAMONA FRADON (Metamorpho), DICK DeBARTOLO (Captain Klutz), TONY TALLARICO (The Great Society Comic Book), VINCE GARGIULO (Palisades Park historian), JOE SINNOTT (The Beatles comic book), JOSE DELBO (The Monkees comic book), and many more! (272-page FULL-COLOR TRADE PAPERBACK) $36.95 • (Digital Edition) $12.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-073-1 • SHIPS APRIL 2017! AND NOW SHIPPING: All characters TM & © their respective owners. MLJ COMPANION COMIC BOOK FEVER AL PLASTINO MONSTER MASH Documents the complete history of Archie Comics’ GEORGE KHOURY's “love letter” to comics of LAST SUPERMAN STANDING Time-trip back to the frightening era of 1957-1972, “Mighty Crusaders” super-hero characters, from the 1976-1986, covering all the top artists, the coolest Biography of the Superman artist who co-created and explore the Creepy, Kooky Monster Craze, when 1940s to today! stories, and even the best ads! Supergirl, Brainiac, and the Legion of Super-Heroes! monsters stomped into the American mainstream! (288-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $34.95 (240-page FULL-COLOR trade paperback) $34.95 (112-page trade paperback) $17.95 (192-page FULL-COLOR HARDCOVER) $39.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 (Digital Edition) $12.95 (Digital Edition) $5.95 (Digital Edition) $13.95 ISBN: 978-1-60549-067-0 ISBN: 978-1-60549-063-2 ISBN: 978-1-60549-066-3 ISBN: 978-1-60549-064-9 SUBSCRIPTIONS ECONOMY US EXPEDITED US PREMIUM US INTERNATIONAL DIGITAL ONLY Alter Ego (Six 100-page issues) $65.00 $83.00 $92.00 $102.00 $29.70 Back Issue (Eight 80-page issues) $73.00 $88.00 $97.00 $116.00 $31.60 BrickJournal (Six 80-page issues) $55.00 $66.00 $73.00 $87.00 $23.70 Comic Book Creator (Four 80-page issues) $40.00 $50.00 $54.00 $60.00 $15.80 2017 RATES 2017 Jack Kirby Collector (Four 100-page issues) $45.00 $58.00 $61.00 $67.00 $19.80 Volume 1, Number 94 February 2017 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond! John Morrow DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Neal Adams (from the collection of Shaun Clancy) COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Jason Adams Doug Murray Neal Adams Michael Netzer Brian Apthorp Luigi Novi Mark Beachum Jerry Ordway Bill Black George Pérez Jerry Boyd Bill Reinhold Norm Breyfogle Luke Ross Rich Buckler Steve Rude Shaun Clancy Walter Simonson Jon B. Cooke Daniel St. John Mike Deodato Peter Stone Mark Ellis Bryan D. Stroud Stephan Friedt Dann Thomas INTERVIEW: The Neal Adams Ms. Mystic Interview .............................2 Grand Comics Roy Thomas The superstar storyteller discusses his cover-featured creation and more Database Steven Thompson Steven Grant Aron Wiesenfeld FLASHBACK: Continuity Comics ............................................9 Martin Greim Steven Wilber An artist-packed profile of Neal Adams’ line of comic books Tom Grindberg Jay Williams Greg Guler Marv Wolfman FLASHBACK: Welcome to the (Justice) Machine ...............................23 Mike Gustovich This early indie super-team has become comics’ comeback crusaders Heritage Comics Auctions INTERVIEW: The Bill Black/Captain Paragon Interview ..........................39 Tony Isabella The esteemed and longtime artist/publisher looks back at his Sentinels of Justice (and DC’s, too) Andy Mangels Lou Manna BACKSTAGE PASS: The Mighty Crusaders ....................................49 Brian Martin Rich Buckler discusses the “Red Circle Comics” era of Archie’s superheroes Will Meugniot FLASHBACK: Lightning Does Strike Twice!: T.H.U.N.D.E.R. Agents .................57 How the super-agents stormed back into comics in the 1980s If you’re viewing a Digital Edition of this publication, ROUGH STUFF ..........................................................69 PLEASE READ THIS: The glorious-graphite return of BACK ISSUE’s pencil art showcase This is copyrighted material, NOT intended PRO2PRO: The Whisper Interview ..........................................74 for downloading anywhere except our Steven Grant and Norm Breyfogle chat about their lady ninja website or Apps. If you downloaded it from another website or torrent, go ahead and read it, and if you decide to keep it, DO BACK TALK ............................................................79 THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal down- Greg Guler and Dan St. John, on their AC Comics days load, or a printed copy. Otherwise, DELETE IT FROM YOUR DEVICE and DO NOT SHARE IT WITH FRIENDS OR POST IT ANYWHERE. If you enjoy our publications enough to download them, please pay for BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, them so we can keep producing ones like Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o this. Our digital editions should ONLY be Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: [email protected]. downloaded within our Apps and at Eight-issue subscriptions: $73 Economy US, $88 Expedited US, $116 International. Please send subscription www.twomorrows.com orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Neal Adams. Ms. Mystic TM & © Neal Adams. All Rights Reserved. All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2017 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. Indie Superheroes Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1 TM SHAUN CLANCY: Was Ms. Mystic a character you were trying to do with any publisher prior to Pacific, or did Pacific approach you? NEAL ADAMS: No, the idea was that I was doing a portfolio of characters for Sal Quartuccio and I was sort of creating characters as I went along. Once a month, Sal would come by Shaun Clancy over to my studio, and one day I basically told him, “I can conducted in July 2015 sit down and create a character a month and he would have a history, he would have a background, he would be a and transcribed by Steven Thompson full-blown-up character.” He said, “Would you do that, and we’ll do a portfolio?” I said, “I can’t dedicate six days in a row to creating a portfolio for you.” So he said, “What if I come by, like, once a month?” And I said, “Sure! Let’s do that.” Now, maybe it wasn’t once a month. Maybe it was every couple of weeks. My memory isn’t that great. But it was something like that. So each time he came, I sat for a few minutes and I created a history, created a concept, created it in my head, and then I started to delineate it on paper so that each time I created a character, I created her background, I created what she or he was and what they were all about. Because that was the idea. The idea was not just to create a character but to give them a history, you know? Ms. Mystic, as it turned out, was a Gaia-type character, a protector of the Earth, and she could be a god… or she could be an alien, from another planet. And I was kind of messing with her history there. Was she Mother Nature? No. There was another Mother Nature that was more part of the Earth. She was more a type of guide, a kind of a god-like creature that perhaps came from another planet and actually, maybe, intended to do wrong by Earth. So there was some ambivalence there. So I thought, “Well… that’s kinda good. I like that. But what about a costume?” And I thought, “Hmmm… You know, nobody’s ever used Zip-A-Tone as a costume… or gray as a costume.” So I thought, “That’s what we’ll do! We’ll just make her a graded gray like with Zip-A-Tone.” But I was doing it in pencil so I graded her in pencil. And she was sort of protector of the Earth. Pacific was approaching me to do a comic book and I said, [laughs] basically, “Look, I really haven’t got time to do this. Maybe I’ll give it a shot.” But in the studio, there was a guy named Mike Netzer who kind of drew like me.