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I couldn't let this blog wrap-up without a talk from the man who, after 261 issues and 27 years of continuous publication, wrote the final chapters in the story of the original Justice League of America, J.M. DeMatteis:
JLA Satellite: How did you end up writing JLA?
J.M. DeMatteis: DC editor Andy Helfer, one of the best editors I've ever worked with, said, "Hey, Gerry Conway just left Justice League and I need a writer. Want to help me out?" As I recall, I'd just left Marvel after being under contract there for a number of years and was happy to have the work.
JLA Satellite: When you took over the book, did DC already have its cancellation scheduled, and it was just a matter of getting to that point?
JMD: I believe the cancellation was already in the works. My job was to finish up the Conway story that was in progress, then go in and write the final storyline.
JLA Satellite: To me, one of the hallmarks of your writing is an inherent gentleness, even when there's lots of super hero fisticuffs going on (there have been some exceptions of course, like the "Kraven's Last Hunt" storyline). Was it difficult writing stories that were so grim and violent, like when Vibe and Steel were murdered?
JMD: Violence in super hero comics has always been a problem for me. I love the characters, I love the genre, I love the metaphorical power of the super hero; but there are times I've been incredibly uncomfortable with the "smash and punch and kill" aspects of the genre. (In fact I've got a new series coming out next year from IDW, The Life and Times of Savior 28, that faces the Super Hero Violence issue head on. It's a piece of work I'm very proud of.)
As for JLA: I suspect, although, honestly, I don't remember, that the discomfort was a little less so with that final storyline because I had very little connection to those characters. I never quite made an emotional link with Vibe and Steel. As I recall, the characters I was emotionally hooked into were J'onn (this was my first time writing him and he immediately became an all-time favorite) and Gypsy (primarily because of J'onn's emotional connection to her). Happily, they both came out alive.
JLA Satellite: Was it your choice as to which of the new characters got bumped off, or did DC say "Save Vixen and Gypsy, kill off the other two"?
JMD: My memory is that I was told which characters had to go and which would stay.
JLA Satellite: Was it difficult writing a book that featured mostly new characters, none that you created, that didn't have a lot of history behind them?
JMD: I suspect that, if I'd had more time to get to know the characters, I could have found the emotional hooks I was talking about earlier; but jumping in just to wrap things up made it much harder for me. So, yes, it was difficult.
That story was much more about my technical skill than emotional investment. Not my favorite way to write. That said, I tried my best to put as much genuine emotion into the story as I could.
JLA Satellite: As a writer, did writing the final issue of JLA have any impact on you (in terms of making comic book history--"Wow, I'm writing the very last issue of Justice League!") or were you mostly concerned with just getting to the end so the new book could be started?
JMD: I never thought of it as the "final issue" because, by then, I knew the relaunch was in the pipeline. What I didn't know was that I'd be an integral part of that relaunch and that it would be the beginning of a partnership with the great Keith Giffen that would still be going strong more than twenty years later. If there's one great thing that came out of the JLA assignment for me, it's that.
As a teenager, buying the final issues of my all-time favorite comic, I wondered just what the behind-the-scenes stuff was, so I'm jazzed that I got to finally find out from the man who was at the helm for the final case of the Justice League of America.
Of course, J.M. DeMatteis would go on to make an even greater contribution to the history of the team, but that's for another day and another blog. Thanks J.M.!
Growing up when I did, Gerry Conway simply was the writer of Justice League of America, always had been the writer, and always would be the writer. The JLA was under his authorship when I first discovered the book, and he was responsible for almost all the stories I think of when I think of the book.
Since Gerry had left the world of comics to write for television, he was (for me) tough to get a hold of, so I resigned myself to not being able to talk to him directly for the blog.
Luckily, he started his own blog, Conway's Corner, and through that I was able to contact him and ask him if we wouldn't mind talking to me for JLA Satellite.
He generously said yes, and I got to spend part of an afternoon doing something I never would have dreamed of when I was a kid reading his comics: sitting around talking JLA with the Gerry Conway:
JLA Satellite: After writing issues in between other writers like Martin Pasko, Cary Bates, how did you end up writing JLA full time?
Gerry Conway: Well, let's see...to begin with, I did those [early] issues during my second run at DC.
I worked at DC three separate times, first time was in the late 60s where I broke in, basically trying to get every assignment I could. The second times was after I had spent five years at Marvel, and I sort of brought in as a Great White Hope by Carmine Infantino, to offset the fact that Marvel was doing very well, so I was kind of a feather in his cap.
So they sent me around to write for a variety of different editors. I'd always loved the JLA, it was one of my favorite books growing up, so one of the editors I definitely wanted to work with was Julie Schwartz.
Julie brought me aboard to write some issues, and at that point he was casting about, trying to decide who was going to be the regular writer on the book.
I then went back to Marvel for about a year, maybe less, and when I came back to DC, it was under terms of an exclusive contract, for which they were going to guarantee me a certain amount of writing each month. By that point Julie decided he wanted me to be the regular writer for JLA.
JLA Satellite: I ask this of everybody--Len Wein, Frank McLaughlin, because unfortunately he's not around to talk about it--what was it like working with Dick Dillin? Even then, his run on the book was astounding, but nowadays, if an artist is on a book for six months, that's a huge deal...
GC: Dick was one of the old pros, he'd been around a long time, and the old pros, they looked at it as a long-term commitment. In fact, they were glad, because it meant they didn't have to hustle, and they could just concentrate on doing good work.
I never actually personally met Dick. We collaborated in the traditional DC format of me writing the scripts in advance, and they would be filtered through the editor, and the writer and artist, for the most part, unless they were personal friends, didn't connect up. It was kind of a hands-off system.
But as I worked with him, and I discovered what were his strengths, what he enjoyed doing, how could I focus my writing on things that would bring out the best in him.
He brought his own take to each of the characters without ever giving the sense it wasn't the same character [that you knew]. It as quite an accomplishment.
JLA Satellite: Did you have any expectation you'd be on the book for so long?
GC: You know, I actually enjoyed working on the book so much that it never occurred to me I would leave it [laughs]. Short of leaving the comic book business, I thought I would be writing the book. It felt like this was my home.
JLA Satellite: It certainly was an extraordinary run. I mean, as far as I ever knew, you always wrote the JLA!
GC: [laughs] I had written it longer than any other writer to the point I left--I wrote it even longer than Gardner Fox.
JLA Satellite: I was about six or seven when I first discovered the book around 1978, so you were The Writer, so, okay, Gerry Conway Writes the JLA, sort of a fait accompli.
GC: Yeah, it's just part of the Natural World. [laughs]
JLA Satellite: [laughs] Yeah, exactly--I was like "That's who writes this book." Anyway, something else I've wondered about--when you created Firestorm, he joined the JLA not too long after. Was that something you had in the back of your mind as you were creating him, that you'd use him in JLA, too, or was that sort of an accident?
GC: I didn't think of it in those terms. I believe I brought him into the JLA after his own title had been canceled.
JLA Satellite: Yeah, it was in between his book ending and his back-up strip in The Flash.
GC: I just wanted to keep writing him. I thought he fit into the group really well because they didn't have a really young member.JLA Satellite: That's related to something else I wanted to ask you, they would occasionally have these polls where they would ask readers "Well, who do you think should join?", and one time they asked, Zatanna was the #1 choice, so they said "Well, next issue she's going to join!"
I realize this is very obscure, but I'm sort of fascinated--how closely would you guys follow that? What would happen if the people who bothered to write in picked the most ridiculous character, and you'd be stuck with them?
GC: Well, I think we would've found a way to make it work, but the reality is the reason these characters would be the favorite choice is because that's the character we did the best, or had the most intriguing back story.
So, it wasn't likely they'd pick somebody out of left field.
JLA Satellite: [laughs] You'd be stuck writing Ragman or the Queen Bee or somebody like that...
GC: Well, you'd have to admit, that could've been kinda cool [laughs], to bring in somebody...and this is what happened later, after I left the book, that they brought in some really left field characters, and that can be fun, that can be a way to really pump up the excitement.
But I think we knew it was a fairly safe bet that we'd have the most likely candidates.
JLA Satellite: I had a contest on the blog, asking people to pick the best character who should've joined but never did, and someone sent in Shade, the Changing Man.
When I first saw it, I thought, that's the stupidest...but then when I thought about it, I thought, that would've been really interesting!
GC: Exactly.
JLA Satellite: To throw that bomb into the book like that, so I said, ok, that's the winner.
GC: Exactly, and it should be fun like that, otherwise why do it?
JLA Satellite: The three-parter you wrote, "When A World Dies Screaming" (JLA #s 210-212, drawn by Rich Buckler) was originally conceived (and promoted) as an all-new treasury-sized JLA comic. Any idea why it was scrapped? And whose idea was it to use it in the regular book a few years later?
GC: The treasury-sized books were dropped because of mediocre sales versus expensive printing costs. I don't know who thought to use it in the regular books later, but it certainly made sense not to waste the material.JLA Satellite: Why did you leave the book at #216, only to come back two issues later? I remember buying that on the newsstand and going--like I said, it didn't occur to me someone else could write the book--"Wow, what's going on here?"
GC: I hate to say it, but it's so long ago, I don't really remember the circumstances.
I know I was having some trouble at DC, in and around that period, and there was some interest in changing up the title in some way. I don't really remember the exact circumstances, I'm much clearer about why I left the book ultimately [laughs].
JLA Satellite: [laughs] Yeah, well, well get to that in second. But you left at the end of #216, co-wrote the JLA/JSA team-up with Roy Thomas [JLA #'s 219-220], wrote the ""Beast Men" story [JLA #'s 221-223], which was very intense, much more intense than anything I had seen in the book before. And then JLA Detroit kicked in not long after that.
What was the genesis for that change? Was JLA not selling well, so DC would've been open to that kind of experimentation?
GC: There was a sense, at that time, that they needed to shake things up.
It was right about that time that John Byrne was doing Superman [actually, that was two years later--Rascally Rob], new editors were being brought in, and regardless of what sales of the title was, they felt they needed a change.
The book had been doing very well. The sales took a hit when we did JLA Detroit, but before that I don't think they had been doing particularly badly. I think it had been doing fine.
But there was this sense that it needed sort of a revamp--and I didn't necessarily disagree, one way or the other, but I saw an opportunity to do something new for me--by that point I had been writing the book nearly ten years--but here was an opportunity to bring in some new characters, and it seemed like it might work.
And we had a new artist, Chuck Patton, and we had a new editor, and sense of, let's try something a little different.
It didn't work, and I think part of the reason it didn't work was the choice of characters, part of the reason it didn't work because of the collaboration between Chuck and myself was okay, but it never really sparked, it was a combination of things.
After five or six months, I'm not sure how long it lasted, but I was starting to campaign to change it back--"You know, this was an interesting experiment, but I don't think it's working. Let's go back to the formula that had worked and find some way to revamp it."
But by that point, they felt the problem wasn't with the book, it was with me. That was the problem, so they decided just to replace me.
JLA Satellite: I was going to ask you about that--you were gone in the middle of a storyline. All of a sudden, someone else was writing the book. There was no discussion of it on the letters page, and I remember thinking, what the hell's going on here?
GC: These things happen. I was burning out, as a writer. I had a lot of resentment over the way I was being treated at DC, by some of the people there. I felt I had been scapegoated for policy changes that hadn't anything to do with me.
I had been hired to put out a lot of writing--you know, that was what they wanted when they brought me on. And then I became criticized for...putting out a lot of writing.
JLA Satellite: [laughs]
GC: No one said, hey, we'd like you to cut back a bit and focus on a handful of titles, and we'll work with you on that. They decided I couldn't do it; I was old news and they didn't want to hear it.
They pushed me out; first they fired me off the editorship of [Fury of] Firestorm, then I was pushed off that book, which I had created, and then they took me off JLA, a book I'd been writing for ten years.
Then they basically started cutting my assignments without replacing the work that they had guaranteed me, and that they were paying me for. And then they wanted me to give money back!
At the end of the year, they had guaranteed me X number of pages, writing during the course of the year, and paid me for that, and then when they hadn't given me the assignments to do it, they said I had failed to deliver.
It became really rancorous, it was really bad--
JLA Satellite: Hard to believe you left to work in Television instead.
GC: Yeah, certainly, you get treated just as badly, but...
JLA Satellite: ...you're paid a lot more.
GC: I did go back and write for Marvel; they thought I was doing a pretty good job.
And you know, all the people that were involved with that are no longer with the company. Today, I don't have any resentment over it because its, what, twenty-five years ago? And I certainly had my share of the blame.
JLA Satellite: I specifically wanted to ask about Aquaman, because this [JLA Detroit] was a big moment in the character's history. Here was a character not in the book that much, and here he is taking the reins and taking charge.
When you were scoping out the plans for changing the book, was Aquaman someone you wanted to write more of, and this was the way to do it, or was it more of, "Hey, I have this idea to rejigger the team, and this character, because he's not appearing anywhere else right now, would be the most logical candidate"?
GC: Yeah, it was that.
The goal was to have a group of characters who could relate to each other, specifically in this title, and we could do continuity within this title. That's why I started focusing on Red Tornado, say, and Zatanna, for story lines before this because they didn't have series anywhere else. And it made it easier to develop personal conflicts and personal storylines.
It was hard to get conflict between Superman and Batman if they don't have that conflict outside the book.
JLA Satellite: Looking back over your run, I was reminded how much of Red Tornado's story you built up in JLA--you developed his relationship with Kathy, you introduced the orphan girl, his adopted daughter Traya; a lot of the stuff that people would use when they were writing Red Tornado. So I wondered if you were looking to do that for Aquaman.
GC: I really like Aquaman, I really loved the Steve Skeates and Jim Aparo run in the 60s. I thought what they were doing was just awesome.
So I thought he had a lot of potential, it's just at that time--it really makes no sense for an ocean-based character to lead a team that's based on a lake.
JLA Satellite: [laughs]
GC: You know, if you think about it, it's really dumb, but hey! It seemed like a good idea at the time.
If I had to do over again, and I thought about it the way people think about it today, I would've picked a character like Martian Manhunter, but he wasn't as interesting a character as he would become later on.
JLA Satellite: You did that two or three-parter, where Aquaman goes to look for Mera [JLA #'s 241-243], and he quits! He finally says, you know, I need to be with my wife and I'm gonna leave.
That was very abrupt, because he sort of burnt a lot of bridges with this group, saying "You need to have commitment, commitment", dragged them all the way out to Detroit, and then goes "Naah, I'm gonna leave."
I look back on that and realize that was probably wasn't necessarily something that was your idea, because they had the [1986 Aquaman] mini-series...
GC: At that point, I was being told what to do. My autonomy on the book--whenever I had any--probably ended around the time I left the book that first time, and after that I was basically trying to manage my way within the DC system.
I don't think [Aquaman leaving] would've been my goal, leaving a group he had brought together.
JLA Satellite: [laughs] Yeah, I have to say, when I read those issues, I was fourteen or fifteen, I was really mad--"Gerry, you've made Aquaman a big jerk!"
But they had that Neal Pozner mini-series that I really loved, just a few months later, and I eventually I figured, oh, okay, this was probably some edict from DC, saying, we gotta get him out of this book.
When you're a kid, you tend to think the writer and artist are running everything, you think everyone is Stan Lee and Jack Kirby, totally running the show. Later on, you go, ok, I see what's going on.
GC: Nowadays they coordinate things a lot more, and I think it works a lot better. But back then you had a very weak management team at the top of things, and you had editors that have never done this kind of work before.
JLA Satellite: I have one other nerdly question, and then I'm done with these sorts of questions--when you were coming up with the idea for JLA Detroit, a lot of the characters that bailed out were not appearing anywhere else--Green Arrow, Black Canary, the Hawks, was that your choice not to include them, or was it...GC: No, that was my choice, in one sense, I wanted to include new characters. The reason being, the template I wanted to use was the transition from the old Avengers to the new Avengers, around issue #20, where you had this group made up of the permanent Marvel superstars, it then transitioned to this group of new characters who were going to be led by one familiar figure.
JLA Satellite: Right, Captain America.
GC: I remember that's when the book became interesting to me. It allowed the title to be whole.
If I had used more characters from the general DC universe, they would've come in with their own baggage, their own personalities, and at that point I just wanted to write something that was essentially a new book.
That was the plan, but it never coalesced.
JLA Satellite: Wow, I've waited all these years to learn these things!
GC: [laughs]
JLA Satellite: Looking back...when I talked to Steve Englehart, he was really happy to talk about his year on the JLA. Because most of the time when he's interviewed, he's asked about his Batman stuff with Marshall Rogers or his Marvel work, but he was very proud of his JLA work, and he didn't get asked about it much.
Do you look back at your JLA run, and say "That was some of my best stuff"?
GC: There were a handful of titles I was really connected to as a writer and a fan, of course one being [The Amazing] Spider-Man, another was Firestorm, because I had created him and felt paternal about it, and JLA, because it was one of the first books I can remember being a fan of.
I can still remember the first three or four I bought off the newsstand, one with Kanjar Ro, or maybe even Despero, it was really early. And so I was always a fan of the book even though I lost track of it a bit when I became a Marvel fan.
I felt, you know, a personal commitment to it, and I really enjoyed writing the stories. I really enjoyed the "here's the group, let's split up into smaller teams" stories, I enjoyed coming up with the Crisis each year, trying to top the previous year. The more complicated...
JLA Satellite: Poor Dick Dillin!
GC: Yeah..."What can we do now?". That was a lot of fun for me...once I found a way to hook into individual characters and develop stories for them, like The Red Tornado, then it really felt like a personal book.
Plus it was an ego trip...after a certain point you realize, "Wow, I've been doing this longer than anybody...this is cool! I want to see if I can break some records..." So there was a certain amount of fun doing that.
JLA Satellite: Are there particular ones you look back on and think "Those were the best ones I did"?
GC: Yeah, I think most of those would be the "Crisis" stories I did, I'm particularly fond of the crossover with the western characters [JLA #'s 198-199] because that to me was fun...doing Jonah Hex [laughs]...it was strange doing that.
I liked the Red Tornado story lines...I don't remember specific issues, I remember story lines, arcs. It was fun.
JLA Satellite: Yeah. I've mentioned here before, and on your blog, that--and I am barely kidding when I say--that I think that JLA #200 is the single greatest piece of literature ever produced by Western Civilization.
GC: [laughs] Oh, wow. How old were you when that book came along?
JLA Satellite: Let's see...1981, so I would've been ten years old.
GC: I figured it would've been around that time.
JLA Satellite: This probably won't make the interview, but I have to mention this--years ago, I had a girlfriend who also read comics.
Now that's rare enough, but she didn't like superhero comics. I guess if you don't first find them as a kid, they don't resonate with you, so she couldn't understand why I liked them so much.
So one day we decide to exchange comics we each liked, and she asked me for one comic that summed up what I liked about superhero comics. So I bought her a copy of JLA #200.
GC: Wow.
JLA Satellite: So anyway, I give it to her, its in a bag and board, and she puts it off to side.
She lived in another part of the country, so we only saw each other every few months. I go back, a month or two later, and there's the book, in the same spot it was when I left, completely untouched.
And I thought to myself "This relationship's doomed! She can't find the time to read one measly 72-page superhero comic!"
And you know what? I was right! We eventually broke up.
GC: [big laughs].
JLA Satellite: I thought "How can you not read this?" Its so much fun, it moves so fast, the artwork is so nice..."
Really, I'm like, "If Gerry Conway only wrote one comic book in his life, this would be enough." This thing was the most tremendous comic ever.
GC: [laughs]
JLA Satellite: I'm going to leave it at that. I cannot express how much it means to me to get to talk to you. I appreciate all the work you did, its so beloved to me, I really appreciate you taking the time to talk to me for the blog.
GC: Oh, it's been a pleasure. Thanks so much for remembering.
I can safely say there probably wouldn't be a JLA Satellite blog without Gerry Conway. His run on JLA gripped my then-seven-year-old imagination, introducing me me to a world of heroism and camaraderie that has stuck with me, all these years later. This blog is in part a tribute to how much I loved those books, and Gerry Conway was the creative drive behind most of them. Thanks--for everything--Gerry!
To anyone attempting even a cursory history of the Justice League of America book, the name Len Wein looms large.
Not only did Len write the book, making numerous, long-lasting changes, but later he also was its editor, guiding the book during what some (like me) consider its finest moments.
Len was generous enough to talk with JLA Satellite and offer some of insight on his dual tenures with the World's Greatest Superheroes:
JLA Satellite: How did you end up writing JLA?
Len Wein: Honestly, at this late date, I no longer really recall. If I had to guess, though, I'd say that I was probably the next guy in line. I'd started doing some writing for Julie Schwartz by then, and we were getting along really well. Also, I made it a point back in those days to be in the office almost every day, so I could well have been the first guy to walk past Julie's office when he needed a new JLA writer.
JLA Satellite: Did you pursue the assignment? Did you always want to write JLA?
LW: I was always a fan of the book, but I don't think I rally pursued the assignment. With rare exception, I never really pursued any assignment. They usually came to me.
JLA Satellite: How was it working with Dick Dillin? You threw a lot at him right off the bat--33 heroes in that year's JLA/JSA team-up!
LW: Dick Dillin was one of the sweetest men I ever worked with. He was a real honey of a guy, big, bearish, in fact, he looked very much like Hendrickson from the Blackhawk book Dick penciled for so many years.
There was nothing I could ask Dick to draw to which he would not rise to the challenge. 33 heroes, 330 heroes, whatever I asked, Dick would draw and draw wonderfully. I imagine he might have muttered some under his breath over some of the bigger mob scenes, but he never complained to my face. I miss him to this day.
JLA Satellite: There were a lot of membership changes under your tenure. Elongated Man and Red Tornado joined, Phantom Stranger sort of joined, and Hawkman left. Was that your doing or were membership changes something editorial asked for?
LW: Actually, all the new members joining was entirely my doing. Julie just went with the flow. Oh, and thanks for noticing that the Phantom Stranger only sort of joined. He was offered membership but vanished, as per usual, without actually accepting the offer.
Over the years, other writers have just assumed PS was a member, but in my world, he never really said yes.
JLA Satellite: Did you have particularly favorite characters you enjoyed writing for more than others?
LW: I loved writing the Green Arrow/Hawkman relationship, certainly. It was probably the thing I was proudest for having brought to the book.
When I took over the JLA, it had always bothered me that these characters all got along so well. In fact, most of their personalities were almost interchangeable. I always felt that, like in any combat unit, these people would absolutely die for one another without a moment's hesitation, but wouldn't necessarily like one another at leisure.
Here was Green Arrow, the ultimate '70s radical Liberal, always at odds with the establishment, and there was Hawkman, interstellar policeman, epitomizing the establishment. These guys would never get along.
JLA Satellite: You brought back a lot of unused DC characters during your run--the Seven Soldiers of Victory, the Quality Comics characters, etc. Did you read those comics growing up and want to use those characters?
LW: I'd seen random issues here and there of many of these characters as a kid and thought it would be a kick to get to play with them. Bringing back the Seven Soldiers was just trying to find something big enough to warrant being the 100th JLA story. And I've always had a soft spot for the Quality characters. I mean, c'mon, the Human Bomb? How cool is that?
JLA Satellite: You were writing lots of comics at this time, most famously Swamp Thing, which was about as different from JLA as possible. Was one assignment harder, easier, more or less fun than the other?
LW: They both were fun and both had their challenges. As I went along with the JLA, I'd find myself coming up with new ways to challenge myself in the writing. I'd come up with the basic scenario for the issue, then figure out to break the JLA into teams. I got more creative as I went along.
One issue, I broke up the JLAers according to their costume colors. In another issue, I split them up alphabetically. I'd create the threat, then break up he teams, and then have the challenge of trying to figure out how, say, Aquaman and the Atom were going to defeat Darkseid. It kept the book fun for me and, thankfully, the readers as well, it seems.
JLA Satellite: You had a relatively long run as writer(about two years) on the title, and you were bracketed by a lot of different writers working on JLA. Why did you stop writing the book?
LW: As I recall at the time, I ran out of ideas. I'd done so many big stories, I was having a hard time coming up with smaller ones.
Also, Marvel was busily luring me away from DC at the time, so it became, in essence, struggle to find a JLA story or go write Spider-Man. Though now, after so many years, I'd love a crack at writing the JLA again.
JLA Satellite: Me, too! As editor, you presided over my--and a lot of people's--favorite era of JLA, roughly issues 185-220, including the blockbuster 200th issue. Whose idea was it to have such a massive 200th issue, with so many characters and artists?
LW: Oh, mine. After all, I had to come up with some way to top what I'd done with issue #100. As an editor, I'm incredibly proud of that issue. We had an amazing array of artists and Gerry Conway's script weren't exactly chopped liver neither.
JLA Satellite: You were editor when Dick Dillin passed away after drawing the book for so long. After that, there was a succession of artists doing the book for a few issues each--George Perez, Don Heck, Rich Buckler. Were these "try-outs" for each artist, to see how sales reacted, or was it based mostly on who was ultimately available?
LW: I seem to recall George doing the book for quite a while. In fact, each of those guys did a decent stint on the book. When Dick Dillin passed away suddenly, George Perez--who loves drawing mob scenes--became the obvious choice to do the JLA. When George moved on, other artists followed.
JLA Satellite: What projects are you working on now?
LW: Well, aside from doing occasional issues of The Simpsons and Futurama for Bongo Comics, I'm writing a video game that should be out next Spring and I just got back from New York where I talked to Dan DiDio about a number of new projects, though it's way too soon to speak about any of those.
I probably could've come up with another hundred questions for Len, but I decided the man has done enough for me already, as a JLA writer/editor, and now taking time to talk JLA with me for the blog. Thanks Len!
As soon as I heard the legendary writer/artist/inker Frank McLaughlin was going to be at the 2008 New York Comic Con, I told myself I would not leave there until I had gotten a chance to, at the very least, shake his hand and thank him for so much great work over the years, most especially as half of the team of "Dillin & McLaughlin" that was akin to "Lennon & McCartney" to me growing up.
I ended up with a lot more than that--I got a sketch from him for my Aquaman sketchbook, got him to sign my copy of JLA #161 (along with the cover's penciler, Rich Buckler), and got him to agree to do an interview with me for JLA Satellite!
I called Frank on a beautiful Saturday afternoon, and we got to talk about one my favorite subjects: The Justice League!:
JLA Satellite: What was it like to work with Dick Dillin? Did you interact much with him?
FM: It was really a pleasure working with Dillin. I would talk on the phone with him occasionally--I rarely went in to DC, we had a messenger here, and they used to take stuff back and forth every day, so we didn't have to go in.
That's why I never really got to see him--he would go in infrequently. Of course , the editor, Julie [Schwartz] didn't care; as along as we got the work done.
JLA Satellite: When Steve Englehart had the book's page count increased, they asked Dick Dillin, and he said 'no problem'; was that a problem for you, having to produce that much more work in the same period of time? That was a lot of work for you, too!
FM: My contract called for x amount of pages per week, and if it wasn't JLA, then it was something else. Dick, I don't know how he did it--he put a lot of work into his drawings.
He would take the logo, the JLA logo, every single tiny bit of it, and trace it onto the page, in pencil, and I had nothing to do with it--they [DC] would just put a paste-up right over it. I don't know why, all he had to do was an outline to indicate where it was. But no, he did the whole thing.
And it being a group your drawing, there's a lot of stuff in every panel.
JLA Satellite: Yeah! I'm looking at these pages, and there's so much stuff in them, and then you've got Gerry Conway and these other writers saying "This time, we're going to guest-star these fifteen other people."
FM: The life of a writer--I get upset when a writer tells me he's got Writer's Block; he can write something in two minutes, and takes an artist two days to draw it.
No kidding, one time we were doing a book for Dell [Comics]--Dick, myself, a guy named Maurice Whitman, a terrific artist--we all shared a studio with some other guys and we had this book that was late.
We had to get it on the train the next morning, and we had three or four pages to finish up. I think Vince Colletta had started it, and he couldn't finish it, so he called us, and Dick said yeah, we'll take it on.
It had to do with two armies fighting each other, I forget the title, it was a movie book, and we split up the pages, and there was one page that was going to take up most of the night--Dick couldn't do it, Whitman couldn't do it, they were working on the other stuff, so I wound up with this one page.
It was a scene of an army on horseback, get this--going across the desert with swords and shields and flags and--oh, christ, it wasn't drawn that well, I don't know who drew it, but he got about halfway in and you know, just kinda [makes 'whoosh' sound] dropped it in, you know?
It took me hours and hours to do this one panel--it was the whole page, or 2/3rds the page, and the book was very late. It was supposed to go the engravers as soon as they got it in their hands.
Well, I finished it with about an hour to go, and I was punchy by this time. So just for the hell of it, in back of the army, there was a hill, I drew a Sherman Tank--there was a gun, a turret, a flag, just for the hell of it.
This is supposed to be the 1500's.
JLA Satellite: [Big laugh]
FM: I was being a wise-ass. But guess what? Nobody caught it. We got a call from the publisher--"What the hell are you guys doing?!?" They didn't even look at it, it just went right to the engravers. But it did get caught--the engravers must have caught it.
JLA Satellite: Oh, I wish they had printed that! If you had told me they had printed that, I would've been like "I gotta go find that book!"
FM: Dick Giordano has the original art, it's been whited out, but I bet if you hold it up to the light, you could probably see it.
JLA Satellite: Getting back to the JLA, one thing I wanted to ask you about, I have seen very little Dick Dillin pencil work, if any...
FM: Yeah, I don't think there's any.
JLA Satellite: How complete was his stuff to ink?
FM: Very, very complete. Occasionally you'd have to leave something out where he overworked it, but that was rare. I would change little things that I thought needed it--very, very little. He did all the heavy lifting.
And I liked it doing it, and he liked what I was doing, which meant more to me than anything else. Julie Schwartz was not an editor for an artist as much as he was for a writer; he would look at stuff and say "that looks great, see you next week" or something like that. He would act gruff but he was a softie. Good editor.
We worked exclusively for him for a long time.
JLA Satellite: How did you end up inking the JLA book?
FM: Dick Giordano and I worked at Charlton, and then Dick decided to take a shot at being an editor at DC.
So I inherited the studio [in Connecticut], and we were working on DC books, and Charlton books, so we were up to our, you know, in work.
JLA Satellite: [laughs]
FM: One of the books Dick was working on was a JLA, and he decided to give it up. We had worked on it together, though he was doing the lion's share of the work.
And when he gave it up, he told me Julie would like me to continue on it, and I said ok, and I went in to see him, and I signed a contract.
JLA Satellite: Did you prefer penciling or inking, since you could do both?
I was under contract to ink so many pages a week, and it was a good deal. It's not that I can't pencil, its just that there's so much work inking--I was doing that [JLA], I was doing The Flash, a lot of things.
I would get called up by an editor who would say "I got a pencil job that wasn't what I expected it to be, can you...?" I was a doctor, know what I'm saying?
I was erase it, redraw it, and then ink it, and then the penciler wouldn't get any more work.
JLA Satellite: Why did you leave relatively soon after Dick Dillin passed away, and the book was given to George Perez?
FM: I did one or two issues, and then I said to Julie "you know, I think I'd like to move on." I was so used to what Dillin and I were doing together. I moved on a did a lot more other stuff.
It was a good change of speed at the time, inking groups was fast becoming not a favorite--there's too many people in there!
JLA Satellite: What are you working on now?
FM: I'm involved with Comic Mix; it's website with free comics, done by professionals. They've got five or six titles up there now, mostly reprints--stuff done by Mike Grell, Tim Truman.
But the stuff that's being produced as new stuff, which is what I'm working on now with [Dick] Giordano is called White Viper; and that should be starting up now.
JLA Satellite: Are you penciling it and he's inking it?
FM: The other way around; I'm writing it--actually I'm plotting and writing it with my daughter Erin, and Dick's penciling it. Boy, he's doing a bang-up job, too.
Talking to Frank was like sitting back and having a beer with a really cool uncle; albeit one that just happened to work on The World's Greatest Superheroes for almost a decade straight.
I thank him so much for all his great work, and for taking the time to talk to me for the blog. Thanks Frank!
Hot on the heels of our interview with Steve Englehart, comes Part 1 of a brief chat with legendary comics artist Rich Buckler, who drew a lot of the JLA covers from the era of the book we've been talking about in the last few weeks:
JLA Satellite: How did you get the job doing the covers? Did you go after the job or did DC call you?
Rich Buckler: At the time I was drawing Justice League [covers] I had some office space at DC. I was within shouting distance of Jack Harris and Julie Schwartz--and whenever a cover was needed, I was up for it.
JLA Satellite: Did anyone provide layouts, like Carmine Infantino used to, or did you do it all?
Rich Buckler: I think there were a couple of Flash covers that were sketched by Ross Andru, but all of the JLA covers were my own creations. I would be handed photocopies of some of the story pages and it was just left up to me to come up with a scene that worked.
I always preferred working up my own ideas. Sometimes I would work up more than one idea. But, usually, the first idea I'd come up with is the one that would be approved.
JLA Satellite: You were inked by a lot of different inkers on them--McLaughlin, Springer, Abel, Giacoia, Giordano--any one(s) you thought made for the best overall collaboration?
RB: My favorites were Frank Giacoia and Dick Giordano. I never knew ahead of time who would be available (either did the editors who assigned the work), so I never had a say about it. Every cover I did was drawn while I was working in the office. The deadline for it was always just a few hours.
I'm amazed, now that I think about it, that I was able to do so many of them and be consistent and keep up the quality!
JLA Satellite: Any particular favorites of the covers you did?
RB: I liked all of them, but probably my favorites are the ones inked by Frank Giacoia and Dick Giordano. Actually, one of the main reasons I got to work on this book is that I knew all of the characters really well. And that's because I'm such a fan at heart--I love these characters!
I call this interview "Part 1" because I intend to go back and talk to Rich again, this time asking him about the complete issues of the book he drew, #'s 189-191 and 210-212 (which are some of my all-time favorite JLA comics). Rich is very friendly and always makes time for my obsessive, nerdly questions, and for that I am deeply grateful. Thanks Rich!
Steve Englehart only wrote a year's worth of JLA stories, but what a memorable set of stories it was! Steve got to add a new member, bring back an old one, kill Superman(!), give frequently under-used members Aquaman, the Atom, and the Elonagted Man an adventure all their own, and if that wasn't enough, give the JLA a whole new origin!
Steve was generous enough to take some time and chat me with about his time writing for the World's Greatest Super-Heroes:
JLA Satellite: How did you end up writing JLA?
Steve Englehart: I had been doing The Avengers and The Defenders, and all this other stuff for Marvel, and then I quit Marvel, and I had no plan other than to Quit Marvel; that was the extent of it. But right at that point Jenette Khan had taken over at DC and she got in touch and said come on over and do stuff for us.
I said, well, I'm planning on leaving the country in a year and go to Europe and travel around, so I can only do it for a year. And she said that's fine, we need you to revamp The Justice League, we need to bring the Justice League up to speed with what Marvel is doing and you're obviously the guy, having come off The Avengers, to do it.
So we had lunch in New York and I said I'd be happy to do it, but I want to do Batman specifically, and that led on to me doing Detective. But the original concept was, fix the Justice League--y'know, give all these characters character, and so forth.
The other significant thing about all that was, once I thought about it, and if I'm supposed to give every one of these guys characterization and tell a story, I can't do that in a regular-sized book. I need something larger and I came up with this idea for a double-sized book so I could tell what turned out to be fairly expansive stories and get to spend time with each individual character as they showed up.
The final thing about that is, years later, Marvel asked me to do basically the same thing with the Ultraverse. They wanted to bring the Ultraverse back and some point and they wanted me to reintroduce all the main characters and it was the exact same situation so I wanted to use the exact same solution--a double-sized book.
Marvel said that would be completely impossible, and their reasoning was wonderful--they said that anybody who could draw that many pages a month is someone the fans don't want to see; anyone they want to see can't draw that many pages per month.
JLA Satellite: What was it like working with Dick Dillin? Did you have a lot of communication with him?
SE: One of the great things[about the book] was that I had Dick Dillin, and you know, Dick Dillin probably couldn't get arrested today, in today's market. But I totally enjoyed working with Dick, I always loved working with the guys who were around before I came along, that was roots.
And you know, you could say anything to Dillin--it's going to be twice as long, it's going to have all these characters in it, and we're going to this, that, and the other thing, and he'd say "fine", and he'd draw it! It was the old-time comic book approach to things--he was a journeyman in some senses, but he was also a guy who could do what was necessary to turn out that book.
As I said, I enjoyed working with him because of who he was, and because he gave me such nice pieces of artwork every month and told the story I needed to tell, and all in all, the book was a lot of fun to do.
For many years, Batman was the thing I did that everyone remembered, not the Justice League, and I remember doing interviews where I'd say "Now don't forget I did the Justice League, because that was kind of cool." It seems now with the JLA animated show, with the JLA getting its own series, the JLA has become more visible in people's minds...
JLA Satellite: Yeah, outside of comics.
SE: So now I do get asked about the JLA--still not as much as the Batman--but it[the work] has returned from obscurity.
JLA Satellite: I was amazed at those issues because, they were twice as long, and Dillin was still drawing all of it! He was on that book for something fourteen years, every single month, it's just an astounding run. And he did other comics besides that!
SE: The first major series I did was Captain America with Sal Buscema, and Sal is another guy who, you know, could draw anything well, no matter; he could have done the same thing--give him another twenty pages a month, and Sal could've done it.
And Joe Staton, who I did Green Lantern Corps with, was another guy. There are just some guys--I like all their art, I like every one of those guys--their Comic Book Artists. You say "this month, the book is twenty pages longer", and they'd say ok.
I do believe these days if you went to pretty much anybody, any artist, and say this book is going to be twenty pages longer, they'd drop off the book. People don't want to do that kind of stuff anymore, but Dillin was Old School. And you know, for everyone who says Old School sucks, I say no, man, I liked Old School.
JLA Satellite: When you sent the scripts to him, did he need further input, or was he so used to--I mean, he had drawn like a billion pages of JLA by then--did he immediately grasp what you were doing and run with it? Or was there a lot of back and forth?
SE: No, I don't remember if I even even spoke to the guy. Again, that's Old School comics--it was perfectly usual to send stuff in to the editor, like Julius Schwartz, who would then send it to the artist, and Julie would be the traffic coordinator.
Scripts are supposed to tell the artist everything he needs to know to draw the book. There are some people who say "they fight for the next five pages, you take it", and then you've got Alan Moore's scripts, which are like phone books. I lean more towards the former. Hopefully I gave Dick everything he needed; I think I did because I don't recall every hearing from him or Julie saying we need more explanation here. But I never wanted to put the artist in a straight-jacket by giving them too much to follow.
JLA Satellite: How much was Julius Schwartz involved in the plotting? I've read that in the 60s when he was working with Gardner Fox, he was almost co-plotting it, was he that involved by the time you got there?
SE: No. And you know, everything I knew about Julie at that time, was that--I mean, that's not all I knew, but that was his reputation. So I said to Jenette, if I'm in charge of these characterizations, and since I come from Marvel, where I was given free reign to do what I wanted to do, it doesn't make any sense to put me in a straight-jacket, and is that going to be a problem with Julie, and she said no, and then there wasn't.
Julie acted as a good advisor. On Batman, there was a situation I wrote where I had Hugo Strange beaten to death on-camera, and Julie contacted me and said I think this would be better off-camera, and so we did. And that's the one instance I can remember Julie coming in as an edtior, but that was his general approach, and I don't ever remember that happening on JLA.
There was never any problem between me and Julie, and we became good friends, and he went on to live another 107 years[laughs]. We were buddies, but I think everyone was buddies with Julie.
JLA Satellite: There were a couple of things you did, like when you added Hawkgirl[to the team], that was a permanent change that would presumably go past your year. Was that Julie's idea, where he said we want to add this character, or did you say, maybe we should add this character, or was it a collaboration?
SE: No, it was my idea. I was coming in as a professional comic book writer, and as a fan. The DC Universe was all new to me, in terms of writing it, but I'd always been a fan. And there had been letter columns, asking "why isn't Hawkgirl in the Justice League?" and the answer was always "well, we don't have people who have the same powers" but I was coming at it from my usual stand-point, which is characterization.
I'm like "These people are married. They came here from another planet, they're living together, they're married, he gets to be in the group and she doesn't get to be in the group, that's bullshit!" I was trying to look at these people as who they were, trying to build them into something better than they had been, characterization-wise, at least, so I thought she should join.
I thought having a married couple in there was a good thing to do, because you had Green Arrow and Black Canary in there, as the "dating" couple, so there were parallels, so I thought having her in there worked from a storytelling standpoint, and also made sense from the idea to reinvent these people, so they can stand up and be on the same level as The Avengers.
JLA Satellite: As a fan, I should formally thank you for that, because I always liked that they added her, I was thought it made sense, it gave a lot more to the book.SE: I got a letter once when I was doing Green Lantern [Corps] asking, how can you write characters when everyone has the same power? And, to me, it's not the powers, its the character, and whose using the powers, that's important to me, certainly.
And so I can see on a formalistic basis, you can't have two Hawk-people, but it's like, it doesn't matter, since they're two different people, that's the important thing.
JLA Satellite: You introduced a new character into the book, the Privateer. When took over the book, you said you only intended to write it for a year, did you almost write that whole year out with that in mind? Did you plan it out like, we'll introduce him, we'll bring him back, and then we'll have him betray the team, ior did you just start it and say, we'll see where it goes? Maybe he'll join, or was it more mapped out?
SE: No, it was pretty organic. The way I tend to do stuff is, some parts of my story I've thought several issues ahead--I'm never more than a few issues ahead, I don't start off thinking "I'm going to do this twelve-part epic". A lot of it is done on the fly, I'll be writing a story and I'll go, this thing here would be really interesting, and I trust myself to know what to do later when it has to payoff.
So that's pretty much what that was. I did the Manhunter story[JLA #'s 140-141], and at the end of it the Privateer says "I was wrong, I'm going away" and that was the end of that story. Then a couple issues later, I reintroduced him. I have to plead not remembering exactly, but if I had brought him back I must have had an idea about what I was going to do, because I didn't need another character...
JLA Satellite: [laughs] Right, yeah...
SE: It wasn't like throwing Mantis into The Avengers, or bringing in the rest of the Green Lantern Corps, so I may well at that point have said I've got five issues to go, where would I go with this? I honestly don't remember, so I can't say definitely, yeah that's what I was doing, but it seems most likely that's what I was doing, when I brought him back I had an idea of what I was going to do.
Even then, I'm sure I didn't know exactly how that was all going to work out. I remember coming up with the idea of the android, Red Tornado, understand it because an android would when nobody else would. I thought of that when I was doing that issue, how am I going to pull this off? Oh, this is how I get from here to there, and it's a good bit for Reddy.
That's always the stuff I'm thinking about, what's the story I have to tell, and how does that affect the characters. And as I worked through the year, I did what I was supposed to do--I did my Aquaman story, I did the Elongated Man, the Atom; all these people that hadn't been that important--I worked my way through the Justice League and hadn't done, you know, "The Ultimate Red Tornado Story" at that point, so that was a good way to tie that up.
JLA Satellite: I loved the fact that Aquaman, the Atom, and the Elongated Man got their own story[JLA #142], and it was, ok, let's focus on these guys and have them talk about that their not as "useful" as the other guys. So that was a character-based thing and "let's explore these guys for a little bit?"
SE: Yeah, well I did it everybody, and I came to this knowing what I knew about the guys in the DC Universe, so I knew that Aquaman, the Atom, and the Elongated Man were sort of the second tier of the group, and it would seem to me that they would know it, and yet one of the things I tried to play up in the Justice League was this sense was that...if you were a member, you were a member.
Nobody ever looked at Aquaman and said "You're second-rate"--he might have thought it, and if you hang out with Superman, Batman, Flash, Green Lantern, and Wonder Woman, you might think it, you know, so that's why he thought it.
I definitely said I'm going to do an Aquaman, Atom, and Elongated Man story, so that was one thing, and somebody said to me at the San Diego [Comic] Convention, "Are we ever going to see Mantis again?", so I thought "I can put her in the Justice League! That'd be bizarre."
So that's how I work--I think I gotta do this, I gotta do that, I gotta do this other thing; that leads me to this fourth idea, then I sort of throw them all together into something hasn't been done previously and go from there.
I focused on everybody, but I thought that was a particularly successful story, becaue you got to focus on them, and by bringing Willow into it, it kind of made it a special kind of story, so those guys got to star in a special kind of story, which they didn't often do, so it was kind of organic.
JLA Satellite: Was writing JLA fun? Obviously, when you got the Batman assignment, which you pursued, you really went to town and it's become a legendary run. But was it just as much fun writing something you didn't necessairily go after?
SE:Yeah, it was fun. Even though Batman was what I wanted, I liked the Justice League. And I basically felt what Jenette felt, which was they had been sort of marble statues. I think in the early days--Brave and the Bold, the Gardner Fox days, they were all sort of treated like these demi-gods who were somewhere off the Earth a little bit, in terms of anyone actually relating to them, but they were all stiff and marbleized.
Along the way, Denny O'Neil had taken his run at it, and Len Wein had taken his run, and there had been some loosening up, but they were still kind of off in the distance, I thought, so I really wanted to get in there and do what I do, which is characterization, and that's what Jenette wanted.
So taking each one and looking inside of these DC characters and figuring out how to make them viable was the kind of stuff that I as a writer like to do, so I mean there's no question I enjoyed quite a bit doing the Justice League. I mean, I wouldn't say any of those characters speaks to me on an attavistic level as the Batman, Batman is just this thing I really have a vibe for. Superman? Let's just say I have less interest in Superman, but I'm going to try and write the best Superman I can write. And try and write the best Justice League I can--think about Wonder Woman, think about Black Canary.
JLA Satellite: Were you privy at all to the sales? I know DC and Marvel generally kept that info away from the writers and artists, but did anyone say "Hey, there's been an uptick in the sales since you went on."?
SE: I did when Dick Giordano was in charge ten years later. Back in those days--DC in particular, Marvel in those days made no secret of the fact that sales were going up all the time. They didn't go out of their way to tell you what sales were, but it was generally understood.
DC took an opposite approach. DC's approach--and I know this because Neal Adams told me about it, because the same thing happened to him, before I came over there--DC's approach was "sales suck, you're lucky to have a job."
JLA Satellite: What a wonderfully creative atmosphere.
SE: Well, yeah, the only thing I remember from that era involving the Justice League and sales--although if it had done poorly, they wouldn't have continued to do it as a double-sized book, so obviously it was working out on its own terms, whatever that may mean--but I did go to Europe, so it wasn't until a year later that I came back to discover how well the Batman[run in Detective Comics] had done, so I went to Jenette and said "How about a bonus?"--I know it wasn't in my contract, but howabout a bonus for having done so well with the Batman, and she said "Oh, that stuff never sold."
JLA Satellite: [Laughs]
SE: So that afternoon, Marshall [Rogers] and I looked at each other and said "You know, for a book that didn't sell, it sure seems like everybody's got a copy." But that was DC's attitude, so nobody ever came to me and said sales are doing great, until Dick Giordano later said our Green Lantern sales had done really great.
JLA Satellite: One last thing I wanted to ask you about--the one issue you wrote where its the revised origin of the Justice League [#144], which as a kid I went "What the hell?" because it seemed like such a strange story--was that your bid to write a Gardner Fox-type story?
Because it reads like that--it's very old school, in the middle of a very different JLA book; you've got all these guys in it like Congorilla, and the Vigilante, etc. As a kid, I didn't understand that, but going back as an "adult", it reads like an homage to that earlier style. Was that what was in your mind?
SE: Absolutely. It was the "Untold Story" and I thought it would be fun to throw in everybody from the fifties, and since one of those were the Blackhawks, that was for Dick Dillin.
I tried very much to be true to those characters as they had been in the fifties and write them in that style--it was supposed to have taken place in the Brave and Bold era, so it definitely was an homage to DC in the fifties--not so much Gardner Fox, but DC in the fifties.
I really appreciate the legendary Steve Englehart, who has written so many comics I've loved over the years, took the time to talk to me about such a brief part of his career. It was a thrill to get to talk to him and get his thoughts on his memorable time with the Justice League. Thanks Steve!
