Author Archives: Mark

Denny O, AKA Sergius O

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FCA Denny O'Neil CoverHere’s a pre­view of anoth­er cov­er I did for FCA, appear­ing in the pages of Roy Thomas’ Alter Ego mag­a­zine. Though the cov­er date is Sep­tem­ber of this year, I believe the mag­a­zine will actu­al­ly be avail­able in August.

For those who don’t know, DC Comics brought back the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Mar­vel in the ear­ly ’70s. The Big Red Cheese had been miss­ing from the spin­ner racks for sev­er­al years by that point, so his reap­pear­ance was great­ly looked for­ward to by a num­ber of fans. Includ­ing some younger fans like myself, who had seen very lit­tle of the char­ac­ter pre­vi­ous­ly, but knew that they real­ly liked what they saw.

Den­ny O’Neil was one of the writ­ers tapped by Edi­tor Julius Schwartz to write this revival. In fact, Mr. O’Neil wrote the sto­ry in Shaz­am! #1 which brought the Mar­vel Fam­i­ly and com­pa­ny back into the mod­ern age. FCA #187 fea­tures an inter­view with O’Neil about his work on the title.

Using what ref­er­ence I could find online, at Edi­tor P.C. Hamer­linck­’s request, this was an attempt at a por­trait of Mr. O’Neil as he might have looked around the time he was writ­ing the com­ic. The back­ground art (I has­ten to add) is not mine! It’s scans of actu­al pan­els from some of the Cap­tain Mar­vel sto­ries Mr. O’Neil wrote, drawn by C.C. Beck him­self. Scanned straight from my own per­son­al copies of those comics, of course. 🙂

Jeff Bonivert’s Atomic Man

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Atomic-Man“And now, for some­thing com­plete­ly different!”

I’m dig­ging deep for this one. The ’80s saw a lot of inter­est­ing, fun, odd, inde­pen­dent comics. Jeff Bonivert’s Atom­ic Man Comics was one of them.

I don’t remem­ber just how I first encoun­tered Jeff Bonivert’s work, but it most def­i­nite­ly caught my eye. It’s unique for the abstract geo­met­ric and graph­ic way he approach­es his draw­ings. I pick up a bit of an art deco or stream­lined feel to it in places. There’s no mis­tak­ing his work for any­one else’s.

I believe that like me, Jeff is from the Bay Area. There was a time in the ’80s when we even worked at the same place, but unfor­tu­nate­ly I nev­er got to meet him and talk comics (it was a pret­ty big place).

I some­how man­aged to get all three issues of Jef­f’s Atom­ic Man Comics back when they came out, and there’s a def­i­nite sense of fun to the pro­ceed­ings. Atom­ic Man is real­ly kind of a clas­sic-style comics hero. He has super-strength and invul­ner­a­bil­i­ty, but does­n’t appear to have any oth­er super­pow­ers beyond that. Jeff added some fresh ideas to the mix, in that Atom­ic Man is hap­pi­ly mar­ried, with two kids, liv­ing in San Fran­cis­co. Being from the Bay Area, that last part sort of mat­tered to me, because it seems like the tra­di­tion­al default for most super­heroes has been to base them in NYC (or some fic­ti­tious NYC surrogate).

For my Atom­ic Man salute, I thought a styl­is­tic exper­i­ment using Adobe Illus­tra­tor might be a good way of attempt­ing some­thing that could evoke the look of Jeff Bonivert’s work.

Atom­ic Man is ™ and © 2014 Jeff Bonivert.

“I’m Not Batman!”

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Golden-Batman-for-Web-by-Mark-LewisI know what you’re think­ing. You’re look­ing at my draw­ing and going, “Hey! He goofed up! He col­ored that draw­ing of Bat­man yel­low!” Nope! It’s because it’s not Batman.

Some­time back, in cruis­ing around the inter­net and fol­low­ing var­i­ous links, I stum­bled across an arti­cle on a pop cul­ture site called Top­less Robot, talk­ing about a num­ber of Kore­an car­toon char­ac­ters who might hit the view­er with a sense of, mmm, déjà vu, shall we say. One that some­how stuck with me was the Gold­en Bat­man (or sim­ply the Gold­en Bat, as he was some­times referred to).

Dif­fer­ences between Bat­man and the Gold­en Bat­man don’t start and end with their cos­tumes. They gave Gold­en Bat­man the pow­er of flight (which sort of makes sense for a char­ac­ter named after a crea­ture who flies), as well as super-strength (shades of the old Bat­man sto­ry “Bat­man– The Super­man of Plan­et X”!). And that’s not all! Gold­en Bat­man can fire laser beams from his fin­gers. What do you think of that, Caped Crusader?

You can actu­al­ly find the Gold­en Bat­man car­toon on YouTube in five parts, if you’re curi­ous enough to see it. Dubbed into Span­ish though, odd­ly enough. Seem­ing­ly not avail­able in Eng­lish, for some reason.

The Captain That Split the Scene

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Captain Marvel Split! by Mark LewisIt won’t come as any sur­prise to long­time vis­i­tors of my site to hear this, but most of my friends know that when you say the words “Cap­tain Mar­vel” to me, my default set­ting is to think of the orig­i­nal Faw­cett char­ac­ter. How­ev­er, this ain’t him!

This Cap­tain Mar­vel is an android. His com­ic debuted in 1966, pub­lished by M.F. Enter­pris­es, 13 years after Faw­cett pub­lished their last adven­ture of the orig­i­nal Cap­tain Marvel.

So what does this Cap­tain Mar­vel do? He seems to have a lot of the usu­al super­hero pow­ers: strength, flight, etc. But his real call­ing card is that when he says his mag­ic word (“Split!”), he can detach parts of his body at will and have them fly around and do his bid­ding. A unique pow­er, to be sure, but more than a lit­tle odd. To rejoin, he speaks his oth­er mag­ic word, “Xam!”

In look­ing for a fresh take on this Cap­tain, I thought it was such an odd­ball con­cept that it might have been bet­ter-suit­ed to Sat­ur­day Morn­ing car­toons. So I start­ed to re-imag­ine it as the kind of semi-comedic super­hero adven­ture car­toon that back then would’ve fit in well along­side Han­na-Bar­bera shows like Franken­stein Jr., The Impos­si­bles, or Atom Ant. Since those shows appeared as Gold Key comics, that seemed a good place for my re-imag­ined Cap­tain Mar­vel too.

Now That’s Just Darling!

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Darling Romance #1 ReworkedHey, every­body! It’s anoth­er com­ic cov­er recreation/reinterpretation. This time, it’s the cov­er of issue #1 of Archie Comics’ Dar­ling Romance. You can see the orig­i­nal cov­er here.

I’ve per­son­al­ly nev­er been all that big a col­lec­tor of romance comics, though the best of them have had some real­ly great artists. An inter­est­ing bit of his­to­ry: the guys who pio­neered the genre? None oth­er than Joe Simon and Jack Kir­by! Those who are only famil­iar with the more two-fist­ed, action-packed side of their work might be sur­prised to hear this, but it’s true. They launched the first romance com­ic, Young Romance, in 1947. And in the wake of its sales suc­cess, many oth­er pub­lish­ers fol­lowed suit with their own romance titles.

Simon and Kir­by’s work in this genre is unsur­pris­ing­ly ener­getic and live­ly. Many of the sto­ries go places one would­n’t typ­i­cal­ly expect a romance com­ic sto­ry to go. If you get the chance to see some of these sto­ries for your­self, it’s worth the time. I’m told it can be hard to track down the orig­i­nal comics, but thank­ful­ly, there are reprints avail­able in books like Young Romance: the Best of Simon & Kir­by’s Romance Comics, and it looks as though there might be oth­er sources on the way too.

Maybe I should talk a lit­tle bit about this Dar­ling Romance cov­er. I know noth­ing at all about this com­ic, but the cov­er image spoke to me. I thought it would be fun to take the orig­i­nal pho­to cov­er and do a draw­ing instead, push the mod­el’s looks even more in the direc­tion of Bet­tie Page. Also, I felt like giv­ing the whole thing a pulpi­er, hard­er-edged look. Just for fun. 🙂

20 Years

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Kirby WatchmenIt’s come to my atten­tion that today marks 20 years since the pass­ing of Jack Kir­by. That brings a lot of things to mind.

I know where I was when I got the word. I’d start­ed a new career, work­ing in ani­ma­tion, and was not quite into my first full year at it. I was work­ing at Graz Enter­tain­ment on X‑Men, for my first boss in the busi­ness (who I also con­sid­er a men­tor and friend), Lar­ry Hous­ton. In those pre-inter­net days, Lar­ry was the one who first got word, and passed it to us. Obvi­ous­ly, for those of us on the crew who knew and loved Kirby’s work, our minds and our con­ver­sa­tion were occu­pied the rest of the day.

When I got home, I had a sud­den com­pul­sion to go to the long­box­es, and pull out every com­ic I had that Jack Kir­by had worked on. Then I sur­veyed what was left. There were a lot of big holes! I could have gone even fur­ther and pulled out all the titles that he’d had a hand in cre­at­ing, and that would’ve left an even big­ger hole. There would prob­a­bly be few­er comics in the box­es than out of them.

Jack has most def­i­nite­ly left his mark on comics, whether peo­ple want to see it or not. And he’s left behind a great lega­cy of work in all kinds of gen­res that we can still enjoy today. I can say he cer­tain­ly enriched my life with his work.

RIP, Mr. Kir­by. Your work lives on.

Heads Up!

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Heads 1A sug­ges­tion was made to me recent­ly that it would be good if I were to do some kind of a post here that dis­played a num­ber of dif­fer­ent styles togeth­er, all at once. So this is what I came up with: a series of head shots, of dif­fer­ent types of char­ac­ters in dif­fer­ent styles.

It’s a pret­ty good exer­cise for an artist, I found. It makes you stretch a lit­tle bit, and it can be fun to see what you come up with. I think I may try this again at some point. Or maybe even a vari­a­tion on the theme: one char­ac­ter, dif­fer­ent styles. There’s a whole lot you can do with this idea.

She’s a Wow!

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Wow Comics 12 ReworkedHere’s a recreation/reinterpretation of the cov­er of Wow Comics #12, fea­tur­ing Mary Mar­vel. You can com­pare it with the orig­i­nal here.

Mary debuted in Cap­tain Mar­vel Adven­tures #18, where Bil­ly Bat­son dis­cov­ered to his sur­prise that he had a twin sis­ter, from whom he’d been sep­a­rat­ed at birth. It turned out that the mag­ic word that turned Bil­ly into Cap­tain Mar­vel also worked to turn Mary Batson/Bromfield into the super­pow­ered Mary Marvel.

Mary’s “visu­al father” was artist Marc Swayze. I was hon­ored to be asked to do an FCA cov­er fea­tur­ing Mary, as a trib­ute to Marc Swayze for what would’ve been his 100th birth­day. It was post­ed here a while back.

Reg­u­lar vis­i­tors to this site have heard me say before that when doing these recre­ations, I like to have some kind of fresh take or approach, so that I’m not just repeat­ing exact­ly what was done before. So imag­ine this, if you can: some alter­nate world, where Faw­cett did­n’t cease pub­lish­ing comics. Instead, they kept on pro­duc­ing new four-col­or adven­tures for Cap­tain Mar­vel and the Mar­vel Fam­i­ly. Maybe at some point in the late ’50s or ear­ly ’60s, Faw­cett licensed Mary to an ani­ma­tion stu­dio for a series, and Wow Comics was relaunched in sup­port. It was kind of what was play­ing in the back of my mind when I did this, at any rate.

I can almost hear the announc­er’s voice: “Boys and Girls! It’s time now for the adven­tures of Mary Mar­vel! The Shaz­am girl!”

Four Bananas Make a Bunch

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Let It SplitI’m sure most of you remem­ber the Banana Splits. They were that famous and influ­en­tial rock band that changed the face of the ’60s with their music; songs that have stood the test of time and are still with us today. Late in the band’s career, things had begun to get hec­tic and stress­ful. The mem­bers’ lives were head­ing in dif­fer­ent direc­tions. They were grow­ing apart; no longer the same wide-eyed kids they were when they start­ed out. But before they called it a day, they put out one final album: Let It Split.

Okay, not real­ly. I just made up all that stuff. Knowl­edge­able vis­i­tors will real­ize that what I’ve done here is a riff off the cov­er of the Bea­t­les’ last album, Let It Be, only recast with the mem­bers of the Banana Splits. Going clock­wise from the upper left, you have Droop­er, Flee­gle, Snorky and Bingo.

Yes, when I was a kid, I would watch The Banana Splits Adven­ture Hour. Fun times. I’ll even admit to hav­ing sent away for the Banana Splits Fan Club Kit. No Sour Grapes Bunch for me! No sir! Sing it with me now: “Tra la la, la la la la,…” 🙂

Qui est Cette Fille?

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BandetteI’m con­tin­u­ing with the theme from last time, talk­ing about good comics I’ve read recent­ly. The rea­son this post’s title is in French will become clear in a bit.

This time out, it’s Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover’s Ban­dette. From the moment I first saw art from this com­ic, I knew it would be right up my alley. But it’s only recent­ly that I was able to buy a copy. This is because up until now, Ban­dette did­n’t exist in phys­i­cal form. It was part of the Mon­key­brain line of dig­i­tal comics.

Here’s where I might sound like a bit of an old fogey, but I haven’t quite been able to cross over yet to pur­chas­ing comics that exist sole­ly in dig­i­tal form. I’m not anti-dig­i­tal media by any means! I love check­ing out my favorite web comics, and I love the fact that if I devel­oped a sud­den ran­dom crav­ing to buy mari­achi music at 2 am, I could pur­chase it instant­ly on iTunes. But even so, I can’t quite get past feel­ing a lit­tle odd over the fact there’s noth­ing phys­i­cal to show for those pur­chas­es. Feels a bit like buy­ing air, even though I know it’s not the case.

Any­how, in this case, I knew that as soon as Ban­dette became avail­able in phys­i­cal form, I’d want to pick up a copy. And I was not dis­ap­point­ed! Ban­dette Vol­ume One: Presto! is an absolute blast.

Her adven­tures take place in Paris (hence my post title). You might think from the visu­al that Ban­dette would be a super­heroine, but no! Actu­al­ly, she’s a thief! Albeit an incred­i­bly gift­ed one, (with “Presto!”, as she’d say) who occa­sion­al­ly comes to the aid of Police Inspec­tor Belgique.

Ban­dette is adorable, irre­press­ible, with je ne sais quoi and joie de vivre (and per­haps oth­er French phras­es that go beyond the extent of my lim­it­ed recall of my high school and col­lege French). You can’t help but like her! Some of it is due to the writ­ing (Paul Tobin dis­plays a tal­ent for giv­ing the dia­logue a French-feel­ing rhythm with­out resort­ing to pho­net­ic accents). A lot of it also comes from Colleen Coover’s art, which imbues Ban­dette with so much life and appeal, and spontaneity.

I’d think most read­ers junior high age and up (or old­er read­ers who are still some­what young at heart) will love this book. My only regret is that there isn’t a Vol­ume 2 ready to read right now! I’d def­i­nite­ly rec­om­mend check­ing Ban­dette out, if you get the chance.

Before I close, it seems appro­pri­ate (giv­en my tim­ing, and the top­ic) to wish all my site vis­i­tors a joyeux noel et bonne année!

Ban­dette is ™ and © Paul Tobin and Colleen Coover.