201 1 December .53 No 5 SIMONSON’S THOR $ 8 . 9 BRONZE AGE THOR NEW GODS • ETERNALS “PRO2PRO” interview with DeFALCO & FRENZ HERCULES • MOONDRAGON exclusive MOORCOCK interview! 1 1 1 82658 27762 8 Volume 1, Number 53 December 2011 Celebrating The Retro Comics Experience! the Best Comics of the '70s, '80s, '90s, and Beyond! EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich J. Fowlks . COVER ARTIST c n I , s Walter Simonson r e t c a r a COVER COLORIST h C l Glenn Whitmore e v r a BACK SEAT DRIVER: Editorial by Michael Eury . .2 M COVER DESIGNERS 1 1 0 2 Michael Kronenberg and John Morrow FLASHBACK: The Old Order Changeth! Thor in the Early Bronze Age . .3 © . Stan Lee, Roy Thomas, and Gerry Conway remember their time in Asgard s n o i PROOFREADER t c u OFF MY CHEST: Three Ways to End the New Gods Saga . .11 A Rob Smentek s c The Eternals, Captain Victory, and Hunger Dogs—how Jack Kirby’s gods continued with i m SPECIAL THANKS o C and without the King e g Jack Abramowitz Brian K. Morris a t i r FLASHBACK: Moondragon: Goddess in Her Own Mind . .19 e Matt Adler Luigi Novi H f Getting inside the head of this Avenger/Defender o Roger Ash Alan J. Porter y s e t Bob Budiansky Jason Shayer r FLASHBACK: The Tapestry of Walter Simonson’s Thor . .25 u o C Sal Buscema Walter Simonson Nearly 30 years later, we’re still talking about Simonson’s Thor —and the visionary and . a m Jarrod Buttery Anthony Snyder his collaborators remind us why e c s u B Mike Carlin Roy Thomas FLASHBACK: Hercules—Prince of Power . .45 n h o Bob Chapman Michael Uslan J In the hands of writer/artist Bob Layton, Marvel’s other god gained an ’80s fan following g i B Gerry Conway Fred Van Lante y b TIMELINE: Hercules in Comics . .54 , Tom DeFalco Karen Walker t i a r t Steve Englehart Len Wein From Marvel’s original Hercules to the Radical Comics hit, a survey of the Son of Zeus’ appearances r o p r Josh Flanagan John Workman o INTERVIEW: Talking Comics with Michael Moorcock . .57 l o c r Ron Frenz Gregory Wright e The sci-fi master best known for Elric is no stranger to the comics medium t a w Frost Giants Michael Zeno - d PRO2PRO: Thunderstruck!: An Interview with Tom DeFalco and Ron Frenz . .66 n a Gemstone Publishing - k n They thought they’d be doing Daredevil , but this writer/artist team instead followed Simonson i Peter Gillis d e on Thor with great gusto t a Grand Comic-Book d n u Database BONUS INTERVIEW: Michael Uslan: The Boy Who Loved Batman . .74 n a n i Jackson Guice The man who has driven everything from the DC Comicmobile to Batman movies discusses r o h Jeffrey O. Gustafson his autobiography T y t h P.C. Hamerlinck g BACK TALK . .77 i M David Hamilton e Our readers speak! h Heritage Comics T Auctions BACK ISSUE ™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Stan Lee Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE , Dr. Paul Levesque c/o Michael Eury, Editor, 118 Edgewood Avenue NE, Concord, NC 28025. Email: [email protected]. Six-issue subscriptions: $60 Standard US, $85 Canada, $107 Surface International. Please send Ralph Macchio subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Walter Simonson. Marvel Comics Thor and related characters TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. All characters are Jonathan Miller © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2011 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows Publishing. BACK ISSUE is a TM of TwoMorrows Publishing. Michael Moorcock ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in the USA. FIRST PRINTING. Gods Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1 TM by K a r e n W a l k e r “The Man” No More Gerry Conway took the reins of the chariot of the gods after the departure of writer Stan Lee and made Asgard his own! Detail from the cover to Thor #221 (Mar. 1974), by John Buscema and John Romita, Sr. © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. Gather thee ’round and hear now the tale of how Thor didst travel the title of Scribe of Asgard. Conway would stay on the book for an from the Age of Silver unto the Age of Bronze! Come with us, through the impressive four years, from 1971 to 1975 (issues #193–238). He actually mystic veil of time and space, to that far-off realm known as New York wrote more issues of Thor than of Amazing Spider-Man , the Marvel City, where marvels didst abound… title with which he is most often associated. Conway’s run would form the bridge that would take the son of Odin from one era to the next. The year was 1971, and things were changing at Marvel Comics. Conway describes what he found appealing about the character: Stan Lee had been the head writer at the company for the past decade, “I think the essence of Thor for me was always a contrast between only slowly relinquishing titles to others. Now the time had come to let this character of godlike power that becomes human, whether he go of another book: Thor , home to Marvel’s Norse God of Thunder becomes human in a sense of becoming Don Blake or just becomes and his colorful cast. Lee, along with artist Jack Kirby, had created a empathetic with humans. It’s the same kind of coming down to fully realized universe for Thor. The book was perhaps second only Earth. I was raised Catholic, and am now very much a lapsed to Fantastic Four when it came to grand epics and world-building. Catholic, but the mythology still speaks to me. The idea of the god On writing Thor , Lee says, “The fun thing about Thor was the fact that made flesh, the god within us, that potentially has its moment.” he, and the other main characters, were gods—not the normal type He mentions that many of the Marvel characters have a messianic of comic-book superheroes. The thing I most enjoyed was writing streak; the concept of ‘with great power comes great responsibility’ somewhat archaic dialogue for Odin and his cast of characters.” applies to more than just Spider-Man. “Certainly Thor speaks to that But even though Lee enjoyed writing the title his increased in a sense,” Conway says. “Here’s this enormously powerful being responsibilities at the company required him to let it go. Enter young who sort of has to restrain himself and become human in order to be (he was only 18!) Gerry Conway, who would become Lee’s successor to a part of our world, and take responsibility for our world.” Gods Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3 FOLLOWING THE MAN could. I think the four books he was writing at that Hammer and Board Conway was eager to take on the book. But how did time were Spider-Man , FF , Thor , and I believe Silver Published during Marvel’s the assignment become his? “Marvel was a Surfer , which was probably near the end of its fairly small company when I joined it. It was run by that point. So I think Silver Surfer one-month-only page- publishing about 12–15 titles a month, was canceled, and with Thor , he realized count expansion to 52 and Stan was writing four of them, he couldn’t continue doing [all] three Roy [Thomas] was writing another titles. So I was next in line because Roy pages, writer Gerry three or four of them, and I was really didn’t want to do Thor . I don’t Conway’s first issue of brought in to write three or four of think Roy ever felt any connection them. So that was basically the staff! with that character, because unlike a Thor , #193 (Nov. 1971), There were a couple of people who lot of the Marvel characters, he didn’t featured guest-star Norrin did one title or two titles—I think have a precursor in the Golden Age. Gary Friedrich was writing Sgt. Fury , And Roy’s greatest affinity was for Radd (that’s the Silver and like that. But it was a very small characters that had a precursor in Surfer to you non-cosmic staff, so when Stan became the the comics of the ’40s. Because just publisher, and started having more gerry conway like me, he wanted to write the types) in a 34-page epic responsibilities and at the same time comics that he read when he was a drawn by the Buscema the company was beginning to kid! The comics I read when I was a expand, he wanted to step away from some of the kid were Thor , Spider-Man , and the like.” Bros., John and Sal. writing he’d been doing. But he wanted to hold on to Thomas was asked if this was an accurate assessment © 2011 Marvel Characters, Inc. Spider-Man and Fantastic Four as long as he possibly of the situation. “There may well be something to what Gerry says, despite Thor’s similarity in certain ways to Superman and Captain Marvel, and despite the fact that I very much enjoyed my runs on Thor near the end of my first tenure at Marvel,” Thomas says. Conway was thrilled to get to work on the title.