Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel Characters, Inc. All Rights Reserved. No.118 February 2020 $9.95 1 82658 00387 6 ALEX ROSS’ DC: TheLost1970s•FRANK THORNE’sRedSonjaprelims•LARRYHAMA’sFury Force• MIKE GRELL’sBatman/Jon Sable•CLAREMONT&SIM’sX-Men/CerebusCURT SWAN’s Mad Hatter• AUGUSTYN&PAROBECK’s Target•theill-fatedImpact rebootbyPAUL lost pagesfor EDHANNIGAN’sSkulland Bones•ENGLEHART&VON EEDEN’sBatman/ GREATEST STORIESNEVERTOLDISSUE! KUPPERBERG •with unpublished artbyCALNAN, COCKRUM, HA,NETZER &more! Fantastic Four Four Fantastic unrealized reboot! ™ Volume 1, Number 118 February 2020 EDITOR-IN-CHIEF Michael Eury Comics’ Bronze Age and Beyond! PUBLISHER John Morrow DESIGNER Rich Fowlks COVER ARTIST Alex Ross COVER DESIGNER Michael Kronenberg PROOFREADER Rob Smentek SPECIAL THANKS Brian Augustyn Alex Ross Mike W. Barr Jim Shooter Dewey Cassell Dave Sim Ed Catto Jim Simon GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Alex Ross and the Fantastic Four That Wasn’t . 2 Chris Claremont Anthony Snyder An exclusive interview with the comics visionary about his pop art Kirby homage Comic Book Artist Bryan Stroud Steve Englehart Roy Thomas ART GALLERY: Marvel Goes Day-Glo. 12 Tim Finn Frank Thorne Inspired by our cover feature, a collection of posters from the House of Psychedelic Ideas Paul Fricke J. C. Vaughn Mike Gold Trevor Von Eeden GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The “Lost” DC Stories of the 1970s . 15 Grand Comics John Wells From All-Out War to Zany, DC’s line was in a state of flux throughout the decade Database Mike Grell ROUGH STUFF: Unseen Sonja . 31 Larry Hama The Red Sonja prelims of Frank Thorne Ed Hannigan Jack C. Harris GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Cancelled Crossover Cavalcade . 35 Heritage Comics Remember the Cerebus/X-Men and Batman/Jon Sable crossovers that weren’t? Auctions Paul Kupperberg GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Larry Hama’s Fury Force. 39 Paul Levitz The journey from Nick Fury, Jr. to a Real American Hero Ed Lute Marvel Comics GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The Target . 43 Michael Netzer Guest columnist Brian Augustyn recalls his unpublished project with the late, great Mike Parobeck Joe Norton Luigi Novi OFF MY CHEST: Steve Englehart and the Batman Movie . 49 Mike Parobeck The superstar writer reveals his involvement with THE movie of 1989 in a guest editorial Appreciation Society GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: Impact Comics: The Little Imprint That Was Left Out in the Cold . 53 Guest writer Paul Kupperberg’s behind-the-scenes exploration of DC’s attempts to revitalize the Don’t STEAL our Archie Comics superheroes Digital Editions! GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: The Lost Curt Swan Pages of Skull & Bones . 66 C’mon citizen, Behold, unpublished art by the Superman artist supreme for Ed Hannigan’s Cold War series DO THE RIGHT THING! A Mom GREATEST STORIES NEVER TOLD: ‘Top Hat and Nails’: An Untold Story of the Batman. 73 & Pop publisher like us needs Steve Englehart and Trevor Von Eeden’s unpublished Mad Hatter tale every sale just to survive! DON’T BACK TALK . 79 DOWNLOAD Reader reactions OR READ ILLEGAL COPIES ONLINE! PLEASE NOTE: Due to ongoing international trade issues, to remain economically viable, we were forced to raise the cover price Buy affordable, legal downloads only at of Back Issue. Thanks for your understanding, and continued support of this magazine! www.twomorrows.com or through our Apple and Google Apps! BACK ISSUE™ is published 8 times a year by TwoMorrows Publishing, 10407 Bedfordtown Drive, Raleigh, NC 27614. Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief. John Morrow, Publisher. Editorial Office: BACK ISSUE, c/o Michael Eury, Editor-in-Chief, 112 Fairmount Way, New Bern, NC 28562. Email: [email protected]. Eight-issue subscriptions: $89 Economy US, $135 International, $36 Digital. Please send subscription orders and funds to TwoMorrows, & DON’T SHARE THEM WITH FRIENDS NOT to the editorial office. Cover art by Alex Ross. Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel. All Rights Reserved. OR POST THEM ONLINE. Help us keep producing great publications like this one! All characters are © their respective companies. All material © their creators unless otherwise noted. All editorial matter © 2020 Michael Eury and TwoMorrows. ISSN 1932-6904. Printed in China. FIRST PRINTING. Greatest Stories N ever Told Issue • BACK ISSUE • 1 interview by Michael Eury conducted by phone on April 25, 2019, and transcribed by Rose Rummel-Eury Fantastic Four TM & © Marvel. Art © Alex Ross. 2 • BACK ISSUE • Greatest Stories N ever Told Issue “The World’s Greatest Comic Magazine.” For most BACK ISSUE readers, I was picturing the best way to depict the FF for a modern generation Fantastic Four was just that, one of the first Marvel superhero titles we was to translate Kirby’s work into a ’60s pop-art graphic, combined with read during our youth and one we followed loyally for years, even decades. my realistic rendering, thinking that it’s impossible to fully de-code Yet in the mid-2010s, what was once the flagship title of the Kirby, especially with my style, but you could apply abstract elements Marvel Universe fell out of favor with many readers, and after a like the coloring being flat and vibrant like black-light posters with an conga line of creative teams paraded through the book and its reboots, interpretation of his faces that matches. With that, you could hopefully Fantastic Four was cancelled. find the spirit of Jack’s FF in there. Enter Alex Ross. EURY: I think you can. Yours is certainly an out-of-the-ordinary The superstar creator known for Marvels, Kingdom Come, Earth X, perspective, but it circles back to the era in which Jack and Stan and photorealistic cover art had an idea of how to move the co-created these characters. It certainly has that “retro” feel to it. FF forward by looking backward, to the explosive artwork ROSS: The thing is, “retro” can feel like a negative unless you of the World’s Greatest Comic Magazine’s original artist come up with a way to make it fresh and new to modern and co-creator, Jack “King” Kirby. eyes so it’s not just about an aesthetic of clothing and retro Yet Alex Ross’ imaginative version of Fantastic Four styles. It’s about something intellectually from that ’60s era was not meant to be. Why? Alex—one of BI’s most that you can identify and sort of pull out and getting to dedicated readers, we’re proud to say—sits down with the soul of what was the ’60s, what was there, going on. ye ed to share the details behind this colorful, heartfelt EURY: Things that come to mind that were going on “Greatest Story Never Told.” in the ’60s were the Cold War and the Space Race— – Michael Eury at least when I think of the Fantastic Four. ROSS: Right, in terms of the topics of the stories and MICHAEL EURY: Where did your FF concept start? narratives. The key thing is, what will work for people ALEX ROSS: For me, it started in early 2017, and I today that will hold on to an almost subliminal had two key influences from where I was drawing alex ross aspect of the ’60s that people will be entranced with? this Fantastic Four pitch. It wasn’t called a “pitch,” That’s where I felt this artist Aco had really connected because it didn’t have a storyline attached to it. If [the Courtesy of Alex Ross. that successfully, which, by the way, is about the Sam FF] were coming back in the near future, in what way could I represent Jackson version of Nick Fury, not the old one we grew up with. it graphically that would be kind of a bold new take or something that EURY: Let’s talk about the casting of your Fantastic Four… would link back to this original type of comic? ROSS: Basically, it’s one of the biggest influences on the whole idea in So, two people have credits I’d like to give here: a friend of mine, getting it going. The original way I did it for several years was to use the Ron Murphy, had sent me a Fantastic Four full-color comic album, likeness of Russell Johnson from Gilligan’s Island as Reed Richards. Certainly printed in England, which was made in the late ’60s. It was recolored as a child, I thought the Professor on Gilligan’s Island reminded me of Mister with these bizarre Day-Glo colors and it created a whole impression in Fantastic. And now that I was an adult, nobody was telling me “no” when my mind of how you could sort of break up the pop iconography of I was doing it in Marvel Comics, probably because he also wasn’t having the ’60s comic with this incredibly weird representation. his face plastered on covers. I got to do it within the issues of Marvels. Then there was an artist named Aco, who was doing a pop-art But, some years ago, a fellow TwoMorrows’ contributor, George retro-’60s Nick Fury series. This series, which came out in 2017, was a Khoury, had given me a book on science-fiction television where I first prototype for the way I thought you could do the FF. saw a picture of Gary Conway, from the Land of the Giants TV series. Color Me Spy One of Ross’ influences for his Fantastic Four palette was Marvel’s 2017 Nick Fury: Deep-Cover Capers six-issue limited series, written by James Robinson, illustrated by Aco and Hugo Petrus, and colored by Rachelle Robinson. TM & © Marvel. Greatest Stories N ever Told Issue • BACK ISSUE • 3 Giant-Size EURY: …Which was one of my favorite TV shows when I into playing Captain America after playing the Human Reed and Sue was a kid! When I saw your drawings, it was clear to me Torch in separate films… that your Reed Richards was based upon Gary Conway.