MOENCH & SIENKIEWICZ Moon Knight Pro2Pro Interview! April 2017 No.95 ™ $8.95 CREATURES OF THE NIGHT! Ghost Rider • Night Nurse Eclipso in the Bronze Age • I…Vampire Mike W. Barr Batman Interview • featuring Budiansky, DeMatteis, Pasko, Ploog, Sutton, Thomas & Marvel’s Nightcat, Jacqueline Tavarez Moon Knight TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Volume 1, Number 95 April 2017 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond! DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTISTS Bill Sienkiewicz and Klaus Janson (Originally the splash page to Moon Knight #6, Apr. 1981. Original art scan courtesy of Heritage Comics Auctions.) COVER COLORIST Glenn Whitmore COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Mike W. Barr Don Kessler Andrew Bennett Paul Kupperberg Jerry Boyd Christopher PRO2PRO: Moon Knight: The Doug Moench/Bill Sienkiewicz Era ................2 Michael Browning Larochelle An intimate dialogue with the superstar creative team that put Marvel’s midnight man on the map Bob Budiansky Marvel Comics Dewey Cassell Dan Mishkin Gary Cohn Doug Moench FLASHBACK: The Ghost Rider’s First Ride ...................................13 Gerry Conway Luigi Novi A super-charged history of Johnny Blaze’s Bronze Age adventures Denys Cowan Adam Palance Paris Cullins Maritn Pasko BEYOND CAPES: Enter the World of Danger, Drama, and Death… Night Nurse! ....31 J. M. DeMatteis Shannon E. Riley Oh, nurse! This obscure 1970s book helped populate Marvel’s current cinematic universe Barry Dutter Bill Sienkiewicz Fayetteville Anthony Snyder BRING ON THE BAD GUYS: Devil Inside: Eclipso ..............................36 Comic-Con Jacqueline Tavarez The Bronze Age battles between Bruce Gordon and his sinister alter ego Linda Fite Jean Thomas Peter B. Gillis Roy Thomas Grand Comics Steven Thompson BEYOND CAPES: A Different Kind of Bat Man: I… Vampire .....................45 Database David Torsiello This bloodsucking protagonist took a bite out of 1980s’ issues of House of Mystery Steven Grant Don Vaughan Nikki Gregoroff Len Wein INTERVIEW: The Mike W. Barr/Batman Interview .............................55 Larry Hama Steven Wilber One of our favorite writers chats about the controversial birth of Damian Wayne, Batman: Year Karl Heitmueller, Jr. Marv Wolfman Two, Jim Aparo, and other topics Heritage Comics Michael Zeno Auctions PRINCE STREET NEWS: “Of Cape and Cowl” .................................66 Tony Isabella Karl Heitmueller, Jr.’s latest toon takes on Batman’s wardrobe If you’re viewing a Digital ROUGH STUFF .........................................................68 Edition of this publication, A pencil-art showcase starring THE creature of the night, Batman PLEASE READ THIS: ONE-HIT WONDERS: Nightcat: She Sings, She Fights, She’s Dynamite! ............73 This is copyrighted material, NOT intended Nightcat herself, Jacqueline Tavarez, and a star-studded lineup of creative folk relive the tale of for downloading anywhere except our Marvel’s musical crimefighter 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 ...........................................................77 THE RIGHT THING and buy a legal down- Reader reactions 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 BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC enough to download them, please pay for 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, them so we can keep producing ones like Editor-in-Chief, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: [email protected]. Eight-issue this. Our digital editions should ONLY be downloaded within our Apps and at subscriptions: $73 Economy US, $88 Expedited US, $116 International. Please send subscription orders and www.twomorrows.com funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Bill Sienkiewicz and Klaus Janson. Moon Knight TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. 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 except Prince Street News, © 2017 Karl Heitmueller, Jr. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. Creatures of the Night Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1 In 1975, a mysterious new character started to find his way into the pages of several Marvel Comics titles. Moon Knight was a villain, then a hero, and often a character TM who was never expected to be seen again… but eventually a steady home in the back pages of the Hulk black-and- white magazine brought together two creators who had a lengthy run that remains the definitive take on the character, writer Doug Moench and artist Bill Sienkiewicz. – Christopher Larochelle CHRISTOPHER LAROCHELLE: While the intention here is to discuss Moon Knight by Doug Moench and Bill Sienkiewicz, I want to ask you, Doug, to explain a little bit about your work on the character before Bill came on board. How did Moon Knight get started as a character at Marvel Comics? DOUG MOENCH: Well, I had needed to do the next plot for Werewolf by Night, and I decided to create a new villain. But when the protagonist is a werewolf, the character fighting the werewolf is kind of a hero, so I decided that he would be some kind of anti-hero. This character became a mercenary, and an organization called the Committee had hired him to go after the Werewolf. I came up with a character whose every design and gimmick was related to the Werewolf. The first thing that I thought of was the Moon, because after all, the Moon triggers the transformation into a werewolf. So this new character would be themed around the Moon. That made me think of the black-and-white costume… when it’s a crescent moon, most of it is black but by part of it is white, and so on. I thought that Christopher Larochelle would be cool, and it was the first time that conducted July 2016 I had ever heard of in which there would be a costume with no color on it… and man, that was a hard time, getting colorists to not put color on that! He also had a glove with silver spikes, called a cestus, which is something that gladiators had in Ancient Rome. And silver hurts werewolves, right? So this character had crescent- shaped darts, and the darts were made out of silver. Everything about him was designed to go up against the Werewolf. LAROCHELLE: Makes sense. MOENCH: I came up with a list of something like 15 different names, and Moon Knight was just one of them. Len Wein, who was the editor at the time, called me and asked what I had coming up in Werewolf by Night. I told him that I was creating this new villain who was also a hero, and I had a bunch of possible names. “Read them to me!” Len said. So I read him all the names and I think that Moon Knight was maybe TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. Characters, Marvel © & TM the fourth name, and he © Luigi Novi / Wikimedia Commons. stopped me. He said, “Oh, I really like Moon Knight! Moon Knight… that’s a good one.” 2 • BACK ISSUE • Creatures of the Night Issue LAROCHELLE: Near the end of the time that you spent part of the reason why he was so hands-off. I would with Moon Knight in the Hulk magazine, some layers of sometimes do some things just to see if I could get a the character’s history finally get peeled back. I’m talking response of some kind from Denny. I came to realize that Killer Covers specifically about a story in which Marc Spector’s brother with him, a non-response was probably the best thing. While Doug’s Randall appears. Because when there was a problem, Denny certainly let MOENCH: Yeah. I thought those were pretty good. me know it. He did tell me, “You know, Bill, don’t have dramas kept MK’s I liked those. Moon Knight being beaten up on every cover. Have him readers turning LAROCHELLE: Did you know that Marc had a brother win some. It has to look like it’s a fair fight.” I always had for a while? Moon Knight on the losing side of the fight in the covers, pages, Bill’s skills MOENCH: Oh, no. I never knew it until I came up with and I really think that it works because then somebody evolved to his that story. It suddenly hit me… wow, this whole thing looking at the book at the store just has to wonder about with a serial killer, it would be even better with a brother! how he’s going to make it out of the situation. I think that ascendency as one LAROCHELLE: When the time came for Moon Knight Denny wanted Moon Knight to be a little more formidable of comics’ master to get promoted to being an ongoing solo series, was it on the covers. So I had Moon Knight going crazy on the something of a happy surprise for you guys or was it covers, or ripping up the costume. cover (and interior) something that you almost expected, given the response But there is one cover, for issue #19, that I have to illustrators. Covers that you were getting? really go on the record for. It’s a cover with Moon MOENCH: No, I didn’t expect it at all. Every time they Knight holding his shoulder and there is this big poster to issues #2, 5 asked me to do more of Moon Knight it was a surprise. behind him. I vehemently say that I had nothing to (background), and 7.