San Diego Comic Con 2022

I went to San Diego Comic Con and recorded 18 panels.
I also took 81 pictures of pro’s, cosplay, some building advertisements and a few other odds and ends.

I felt some anxiety regarding this convention. It wasn’t the Covid, although there was that too, it was just the travel to and from the convention. The airport I fly out of (Toronto Pearson) has been the news a lot lately regarding flights being cancelled, luggage going missing and all sorts of bad stuff.

It’s also been 3 years since I’ve done this convention. I normally pack and prepare a lot for the con. I decided to bring noise cancelling headset with me so I could better hear what’s playing on my laptop during the flight. That worked well. Because I was afraid of my luggage disappearing on me I figured out a way to pack 5 days worth of clothes and stuff into a carry on bag that I normally use for 3 day trips. Apparently my bag was still considered too big for carry on they still took it, but I know it made it on the same plane I was on and I didn’t have to pay extra for it.

I made it to the airport 3 hours early as suggested by Air Canada. They told all to go into this lounge area where I saw people sleeping on the floor (eek!). They called out flights and if you were on them you then go to go through security. People trying to go through security early and get to their gates were yanked and sent back by staff. I saw this happening at multiple points through the whole process. Still, there was a backlog due to there not being enough customs agents available to process everybody quickly enough to make their flights.

The most nerve-wracking part was for myself and others going to San Diego was standing in a long lineup, looking at our phones and knowing we are not going to meet our boarding time. At all. We were wondering out loud will the plane take off half empty or will they delay the flight and let us get on? Thankfully the answer was to delay the flight an hour. After getting through all the various security checkpoints I ran to my gate and got on the plane in time.

I’ll say the Airport employees were doing the absolute best they could under trying circumstances. They were even calling out boarding times and pulling out people out of lines and rushing them to the front to try and get them on their flight on time. It was the customs that real bottleneck that was holding things up.

I had opted for the Early Bird special and got a hotel room at Sheraton San Diego Hotel & Marina, which I’ve stayed at once before. This time they put me in their Bay Tower which is around the corner from the main hotel. It has a nicer view and I liked my room quite a bit.

What I didn’t like about the hotel was the cost of a bottle of Pop was absolutely insane at $5.60. The Convention, which is also insanely overpriced is $4.50 for the same bottle. I did the customary trip to Ralph’s and bought some drinks and snacks for the rest of the week.

I had met up some friends at the hotel and we went to the convention to get our Covid clearance. I did download and use the Clear App prior to going to San Diego. We had made our way through the Marriott Marquis San Diego Marina and got our Covid wristbands. It was weird wearing those wristbands for 5 days straight and I wasn’t sure if it would hold up, particularly when showering, but it did.

San Diego Covid Wristband

As I’m coming from Canada I don’t get my badge mailed to me, so I got in line up to get my badge. That went through okay but I think the process was a little better in previous years with signs and more staffing. On Preview night the con was a late in opening up (advertised 6:00pm, but it was 6:30pm when they actually opened), which annoyed the crowd quite a bit, which then annoyed the convention security and staff. In this case I do fall on the side of those that paid for tickets and were expecting the advertised opening time for 6:00pm to be correct. San Diego is an expensive convention to go to and lots of people save up all year to go to the show. I don’t think you can blame them when they expect the show to open at the time the con said it would open at.

When I got in the first thing I noticed about the exhibition floor was the red carpet was no longer there. This was hugely disappointing as I have flat feet and spending a long time on them is hard enough, having to do it on concrete is much harder. I could only be on them for an hour or so before the pain got to the point where I needed to sit down. I normally make a point to walk the entire floor and see all the booths but decided I wasn’t going to do that this year. I was glad to read (from Gary Sassaman) that the decision to not do the carpet was one the convention center made and not Comic con. They were going to spray down the convention center for Covid and that would be easier without the Carpet. Here’s hoping next year the carpet is back.

The vast majority of the con goers were wearing masks indoors as required. Of course with that many people, you’re going to have people who take off their masks or pull it down under their nose once inside. On occasion I did see convention staff tell people that masks were required to be inside. Outside the con was a different story, as a whole lot of people took off their masks once outdoors, in restaurants/bars and at their hotel. It’s not surprising to hear a lot of people got Covid after the con, despite Comic Con doing their best to prevent that.

I’ve been to a few conventions this year prior to the Comic Con and I felt safe at Comic Con. The Toronto Fan Expo in March required masks as per the government mandates that were still in effect. TCAF had no mask mandate (and couldn’t due to it being a public library) but they had signs asking people to wear masks, which most people did. I just went to Montreal Comic Con for 1 day 3 weeks ago and there was no masks mandate and few people wore them. I just heard a dealer there that was wearing a mask got yelled at by people for it. He took off his mask and did the show without it and caught Covid. I wore a fresh N95 masks from the airport, at San Diego and back again and did not catch Covid.

Stuff I learned at comic con.

– Scott Bakula has a horrible New Orleans accent (according to a New Orleans con goer on the shuttle bus).
– Jim Starlin admitted to ripping off Darkseid to create Thanos (according to people from the Kirby Museum).
– DC wouldn’t do a follow up to Batman: The Cult despite it being a top seller. They wanted Bernie Wrightson to do a new Swamp Thing with Len Wein and that didn’t happen. Starlin re-did the follow up story as Punisher: POV.
– Digital lettering has certain quirks which are difficult to work around.
– If the 2000 X-men movie flopped, the Bankruptcy judge that was running Marvel was going to take rights to the Marvel characters and individually auction them off to the highest bidder.
– Little kids would write to DC Comics love advice letter columns and detail their sexual abuse by family members or members of clergy. DC felt they could do nothing about it.
– Barbara Randall Kesel is pretty awesome.
– Willy Mendez was a much bigger part of the underground comics than previously known and that hasn’t been acknowledged until Kim Munson did research her career and wrote and article giving Willy her due.
– Jimmy Palmiotti always has interesting stories to tell about dealing with Hollywood people.
– Joe Shuster may not have drawn the underground erotic art that has been credited to him.
– When Marvel was stonewalling on returning Jack Kirby’s art in the 1980s, using the argument it was custom practice that publishers kept the art, Frank Miller was behind getting DC to publish an letter saying it was their view that art belong to the artist, undercutting Marvel’s argument. This was surprising as Bill Gaines, still alive and running MAD Magazine under DC, was still adamant about publishers owning the art.

DC Letter to the Comics Journal regarding Jack Kirby's art return, printed in TCJ 105

I did a little bit of shopping at the con, but not as much as years past. One of the sad things about San Diego is the Gold and Silver section is shrinking. Less and less dealers are coming to the con and those that do often don’t have what I’m looking for and also aren’t interested in discounting very much. I can’t say I blame them, San Diego is an expensive show and it’s just not a show where lots of back issue buyers show up.

Another issue I’m finding more and more is something a dealer friend told me about many years ago. Some dealers don’t acknowledge the grade ‘Good’. Books that are in Good grade get labelled Very Good and stickered with Very Good prices. Then Very Good books get labelled Fine and so forth. I bought a couple of books that were higher in grade and price than I wanted to pay, just to reward the dealer for accurately grading and pricing their books.

I took some pictures of cosplayers and recorded some videos, particularly of a cosplay knight sword fighting which looked fun for those doing it.

I also took a video of this moving Baby Yoda, which was neat. I wondered if it might have been Grant Imahara’s (from Mythbusters) as he created one to send around to hospitals for sick children before he died, but didn’t bother to ask.

Unique for me this year was attending the Eisner’s and getting to sit at a table. In the past when I attended the Eisner’s, publishers and nominated creators get to sit at tables and get a free dinner. Pro’s that didn’t fit in either category sad it chairs behind the tables. As I was an Eisner judge in 2020, but there was no in person ceremony so I never got to experience that. The same thing happened with the judges in 2021. The Eisner’s (specifically Jackie Estrada) was able to get us 20/21 judges a table to sit at and enjoy a dinner, which a nice thing to experience.

As normal with the con, it was also nice to see and catch up with old friends and make some new ones. As usual with the convention, there are people who expect to run into and don’t and those you unexpectedly end up spending a lot of time chatting with. This year I was on a panel, the 3rd time I was on a panel at San Diego. I’m having to get used to public speaking again. Way back when I was in college (1992-1995) I had to do presentations all the time and got pretty good at them by year 2, but I’ve done extremely little public speaking in the years since. My old, had to learn as this doesn’t come naturally to me, public speaking skills have atrophied quite a bit. Ah well, I’ll get better if I keep at it.

I did walk around artists alley towards the last half of Sunday. That’s always one area that Comic Con can improve. I never understood why they place it at the other end of the convention away from where all the comics books are sold. I know a lot of bigger name creators don’t bother with artist alley at San Diego because they don’t make very much money there. Most of the bigger names usually end up getting their own tables either in the self publisher area, the original art area or just sit with their publisher tables. I have no desire to return to NYCC but I have to admit their artist alley section is really good and you’ll see plenty of well known creators there making money.

Then there was the flight home. This was also a little nerve wracking at I’ve been hearing horror stories about US airports. I got to the airport 2 hours early as per Air Canada’s instructions (8am Pacific time). I have to say, San Diego was extremely quick and efficient in getting people through security. I got through everything within a half hour, the quickest in any airport ever. The flight coming in was delayed by 3 hours though. That gave me time to work on my convention pictures and panel recordings. Went I got back to Toronto it then took an hour and a half to get my luggage through, which really sucked. I was planning on going to a restaurant I normally hit that’s just outside of Toronto. It was sadly closed by the time I got there and had to settle for McDonalds 24hour drive through. I got home just before 2am (Eastern) in the morning.

In the end, I really enjoyed going to San Diego and don’t regret going at all. The event takes a lot out of you, that I’m writing this almost a week later tells you how long it takes me to recover from it. I am thinking about doing another convention later on this year but I haven’t decided which one yet.

Under Appreciated Comic Book Artists

What if I told you the artist that co-created the following characters:

Black Widow
Hawkeye
Mantis
Wonder Man
Sunfire
The Swordsman
The Mandarin
Crimson Dynamo
Titanium Man
Immortus
The Collector
Count Neferia
Mr. Hyde
Cobra
Power Man (would later become Goliath, then Atlas)
Living Laser
The Porcupine
Firebrand
The Living Pharaoh/The Living Monolith
The Rainbow Raider
Nubia
Happy Hogan
Pepper Potts
Alex Summers (would become Havok)
Lorna Dane (would become Polaris)
Dr. Bill Foster (would become Black Goliath)
Captain George Stacy

…is perpetually viewed as a lesser creator?

Don HeckDon Heck doesn’t get the respect he deserves. People often compare Heck to Kirby, Ditko and other creators that were working at Marvel during the 1960s and I think that’s really unfair. I get people look at their respective art/storytelling and prefer Kirby, Ditko, etc.. to Heck and find him the lesser of the bunch.

My argument is regarding his ability to co-create popular, long lasting characters. Many creators have tried to do this, be it for Marvel, DC, or somewhere else. Most attempts fail at reaching the level of success that any of the above list of characters. It’s really, really hard to come up with a character that other writers want to use in shared universe, that in the hands of other creators are entertaining enough that readers will be satisfied enough with the comic they purchased and buy the next one. It’s not like you can tick off a series of boxes in a ‘create a popular character’ manual and get guaranteed success. Don Heck came up with a bunch of those characters, collaborating with a variety of writers and did it for damn near 20 years.

I think if you were to look at his accomplishments and instead of comparing him against Kirby and Ditko, and instead compare them against everybody else who worked in the comic industry from the late 1930s to today, you’ll find that there are only a tiny handful of creators that have done more in that regard than Don Heck has. Many who’ve done less get a more respect than Don Heck does and I’m not saying they don’t deserve their respect, I’m just saying Don Heck gets a lot less than he deserves. Heck gets compared to Kirby and Ditko and he is the only artist that gets compared that way. Nobody looks at say, Jim Starlin or Walt Simonson and decides they are lesser creators because they weren’t Jack Kirby. Nor should anybody do that and they shouldn’t also do that to Don Heck.

Iron CrossAlso, please note that list above is only a partial list of characters Don Heck created. Earlier today I was researching who created a character named Iron Cross. The character made its debut in Invaders #35, but wikipedia said he appeared in issue #36. Checking on Grand Comics Database and reading the actual comic made it clear the character first appeared in #35. Wikipedia also says Frank Robbins was his co-creator despite not having drawn either comic. Don Heck was the artist who drew the first appearance of Iron Cross.

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

So I reached out the writer/editor of the comic and co-creator of Iron Cross, Roy Thomas and asked him who co-created Iron Cross with him. Below is his response to my e-mail (reprinted with permission):

Hi Jamie —

The artist who designed and first drew Iron Cross was Don Heck, fitting since he was also the first story-drawing Iron Man artist. Much of THE INVADERS #35 is taken from the abortive LIBERTY LEGION #1 that was prepared but then never published as a stand-alone comic; I had Alan Kupperberg add the sequence at the start of the issue, which of course doesn’t feature Iron Cross.

Thanks for the kind words,
Roy

So add Iron Cross to that list of characters that Don Heck co-created. I recognize that the character is not very well known or popular compared to the list of characters above, but he has very occasionally been used by other creators since his creation. The last appearance (outside of reprints) that I could find was a 2011 mini series called Invaders Now! done by Alex Ross, Christos Gage, Caio Reis, Vinicius Andrade and Simon Bowland. A new version of the character was created by James Robinson and Steve Pugh for a 2014 New Invaders series.

Something that’s a part of the Eisner Awards that I really like is the Bill Finger Award. It’s for comic book writers who were under appreciated and is given to a deceased and living creator every year. I wish there was a similar award for under appreciated artists. Personally I think it ought to be named after Harry G. Peter, who we have proof co-created Wonder Woman but is not officially recognized as such. All American editors at that time really didn’t like Harry’s work and didn’t want him drawing the title and only got the job at the insistence of Wonder Woman’s co-creator William Moulton Marston. Among the artists I think should be considered for such an award is Bob Brown, Dick Ayers, Paul Ryan, Alan Kupperberg and Don Heck.

* Image of Don Heck comes from League of Comic Geeks.

Joe Simon Interview

Originally published in December 1999. Joe Simon was the first golden age creator I interviewed. Being a comics historian I was happy to have interviewed him. He was able to clear up a question I had regarding Kirby’s claim of Spider-Man’s co-creation. I did this interview via fax machine, which was a mistake. I sent a list of questions and Joe wrote brief answers in whatever space there was between the questions and sent it back. With one exception (Dave Sim) I never did another interview via fax machine again.

 

An Interview With Joe Simon

 
Hello everyone. I’m back and this month I have an interview with Joe Simon! For those that don’t know, Joe Simon is one of the Golden Age creators that laid the foundation of the comic book industry. He is the co-creator of Captain America and *many* other hot selling titles and characters in the Golden Age. The amount of successful comics he did with and without partner Jack Kirby would take up a monster amount of space. You’ll just have to trust me when I say he’s done some good comics. Anyway, most of these responses were given to us via fax machine. Enjoy!
 
Jamie: Two years ago, the wife and daughter of Jerry Siegel filed copyright papers to get Jerry Siegel’s half of the copyright back in regards to Superman and related characters. In April of this year the copyright office awarded the Siegel heirs, saying they now regain their half of Superman, meaning profits from all new Superman products should be split 50/50 between Time Warner (DC Comics) and the Siegel heirs. As a golden age creator, what is your opinion on this?

Joe Simon: Good for the Siegels!

 

Jamie: Apparently the copyright law for cases like the Siegel heirs are for characters that were created before they began freelancing with a publisher. How often was it that a freelancer created a character and “shopped around” to find a publisher for it?

Joe Simon: I can’t speak for other creators. No one ever offered such a project to me – None that was credible, anyway –

 

Jamie: There seems to be a long standing dispute about you and Jack Kirby getting released as Editors at Marvel back in the 40’s. Has either Stan Lee or Martin Goodman fessed up to how Goodman found out you were working for DC on the side?

Joe Simon: Not that I know of – This was over 55 years ago, Stan told me he can’t remember last week.

 

Jamie: Which editors did you enjoy working with the most over the years?

Joe Simon: Which editor? I can’t think of one editor I worked with as an editor. The various companies did have editors but we always acted as our own editor, so the question has no answer.

 

Jamie: Do editors still ask you to do fill in stories for them?

Joe Simon: No. I get many requests to do articles + reminiscences – I’ve been too busy –

 

Jamie: Today your involved with licensing characters you created. How did you manage to get ownership of these characters considering the time period they were created in?

Joe Simon: Through contractual agreements

 

Jamie: The most famous licensing agreement you have is over Fighting American, which Rob Liefeld uses for his Awesome Comics line. Have you read the Fighting American comics he’s produced and what do you think of them?

Joe Simon: They are pretty exciting, graphically – Nicely printed. Great coloring

 

Jamie: Do you have any other characters licensed out? If so which ones and where to?

Joe Simon: Yes. Several Including the Fly to Batfilms

 

Jamie: What is Batfilms and how will the characters be used?

Joe Simon: Batfilm Productions are executive producers for the Batman films. The Fly is expected to be used as he was in the comic books.

 

Jamie: What is the craziest character you created?

Joe Simon: Craziest character? Jamie, they were all crazy. Who else would fly around in colored underwear? I think the cutest was Angel in Boys Ranch. Did you know that we never got around to revealing or determining the real name of Speedboy in Fighting American. I like The Geek, a rag-doll pretending to be human. The Prez, an adolescent in the White House, just like the current occupant.

 

Jamie: Do you know why Captain America became so successful when the Shield, a similar character appeared first?

Joe Simon: In my opinion, Cap was far superior

 

Jamie: Have you been reading Captain America comics over the years? If so which writer/artists team is your favorite?

Joe Simon: No – Sorry I haven’t been reading them –

 

Jamie: On your webpage, Simoncomics.com you say you created the original Spider Man which was then used by Jack Kirby, and later re-done by Steve Ditko into the character we know today. Can you explain how all this happened?

Joe Simon: It’s in the website. Click on Web Magazine

 

Jamie: Do you believe that Jack Kirby pitched the idea of Spider Man to Stan Lee?

Joe Simon: Yes. He admitted to it – Ditko confirmed it.

 

Jamie: Today comic fans are learning about the behind the scenes politics and editorial/writer/artist disagreements within comic companies, and how they are affecting stories. Was that present back in the golden age as well?

Joe Simon: Constantly.

 

Jamie: In a book called Comics: Between the Panels they have a quote from you where you say all History of Comics are crap. Can you explain why?

Joe Simon: I don’t believe I said that. What I meant was they’re all derived from hearsay and old clippings –

 

Jamie: The Comic Book Makers seemed to be a big success for you and your son Jim. Do you plan on doing any more comic history books?

Joe Simon: Possibly. We may do a second version.

 

Jamie: here are a number of comics with a “Suggested for Mature Readers” label on them, telling non-typical types of stories in them. Do you think this is a good thing?

Joe Simon: We did it first with Young Romance – But it was just a cover gimmick to entice buyers. The contents were very tame –

 

Jamie: What do you think is missing from today’s comics that would really entertain the readers?

Joe Simon: I haven’t read them. Haven’t seen any for years. DC and Marvel stopped sending them.

 

Neal Adams Interview

Much younger me and Neal Adams – before he started charging for photo’s with him. Photo taken at 2005 HobbyStar Toronto Fan Expo.

Originally published in October 2008. I asked Neal about his role in helping Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster with the mid 1970s settlement for Superman. Some bits of information conflicts with Jerry’s version of events. Neal tells his version with more storytelling flair. I was also able to ask him about the Academy of Comic Book Artists, which was a short lived organized gathering of creators.

 

A couple of years ago I did a sit down interview with Neal Adams. We had a great hour long interview regarding his role in getting Siegel’s and Shuster’s 1970’s settlement with Time Warner and a few other topics. Sadly, I discovered my MP3 player was set up wrong and it didn’t record the interview. While at San Diego I saw Neal and he agreed to do the interview again. I also asked him questions regarding the Batman: The Dark Knight movie that had just come out just prior to the convention.

 

Jamie: When did you first learn about Siegel’s and Shuster’s plight?

Neal Adams: When Jerry Siegel sent a letter to various newspapers and organizations including the Academy of Comic Book Arts. I was the president of the Academy of Comic Book Arts and got the letter and read it. It was about 9 pages long and outlined everything that was happening to Jerry and Joe.

 

Jamie: I understand you took time off to be their representative to help them out?

Neal Adams: Well, obviously I could not be their legal representative, but it seemed like their legal representative was not getting the job done. Whatever they perceived the job to be or whatever Jerry and Joe perceived the job to be because they wrote this letter. Or Jerry wrote this letter. Clearly he was crying for help. And in crying for help he was saying they were not being helped by their lawyers who had promised they would intercede for them after a 15 year period where they were to remain silent and to depend on the legal system to return their rights to them. So the had stayed silent for those 15 years between the ages of 45 to 60 years old and now their lawyers weren’t answering their phones, according to them. They really had no answer to their question of how they would get what was promised to them.

So they called out for help. I realized that somebody had to do something about it and thought about who that somebody might be. It seemed to me that even if the newspapers responded, they would just write stories and for certain DC or Marvel wasn’t going to do anything about it. The people that owned DC weren’t going to do anything about it, I mean they might, but that was pretty much a long shot.

So really the question came down to who was going to help them? I felt I was in a better position than most people because while I was dependent on the companies for a certain portion of my income, I wasn’t fully dependent. I had a reasonable understanding of the situation finally and I could become involved. So I resolved myself the fact that this thing would not end this way and it had to end in a favorable situation. And that DC and their owners would be reluctant to deal with it that way so I had to somehow represent Jerry and Joe publicly to make the issue important. So I volunteered to do that. The boys had accepted my help, not my legal help, but my vocal help in the media and anywhere else I could get it. For the next 4 months I dedicated myself and my studio to undoing this tragedy. At the end, we did.

 

Jamie: I understand you got them on the Tom Snyder show?

Neal Adams: Yeah I had to go on the show myself because Tom was concerned that Jerry was too vehement and perhaps angry and Joe who was legally blind was too mellow and wonderfully pleasant. That created a kind of dichotomy between the two characters. He felt that I would be able to modify that to present a straight up story. So I appeared on the show, the boys appeared on the show and we did, I don’t know an hour or a half hour, I guess it was a half hour and discussed this. The boys appeared on a number of other shows. That sportscaster, Howard Cosell had a show at the time and they appeared on there. What I did was convince Jerry to come to New York. I hosted Joe to come in from Queens to be in these various interviews. I managed to convince the news stations that perhaps simply with petty cash they might convince the boys to stay in town long enough to get some kind of resolution to this. They cooperated to the extent that they could, they couldn’t pay them but they helped out as much as they could, so they kept the story alive. We worked pretty hard on that and like I said, we turned it around.

It took the help of the cartoonist society, it took I guess some people in the studio of good will, who helped out. In the end it turned out favourable for everybody. I told the Warner’s people from the beginning that it wasn’t necessary for this to become a controversy. They could have paid the creators of Superman the same amount of money they pay a good assistant or associate and they would be happy and there would be no problem. It wasn’t necessary to prolong this torture and make a blot on the face of the industry. And so in the end, perhaps because of pressure, perhaps because reason prevailed, they saw the wisdom of being reasonable and they agreed they would in fact not only pay the boys and give them medical insurance and give them benefits that one has when they work for a company. But they would also make them a part of their presentation of Superman, because now with the boys being taken care of they can introduce them at openings at where the movie was appearing and have them as guests at conventions. So in the end their reluctance to deal with the situation, when it turned around to being co-operative and being positive turned into a benefit to Warner’s and DC Comics. As I told them in the beginning that is what it would be.

 

Jamie: I remember you said before that the Tom Snyder’s show has never been rerun.

Neal Adams: Well, it’s a various odd thing. I don’t want to cast aspirations on anybody but I talked to Tom Snyder subsequently and he told me that they looked to run the show again and couldn’t find the tape. Which is… kinda odd.

 

Jamie: I know Jerry Robinson says he got involved after seeing them on one of the shows, thinks it was the Tom Snyder show.

Neal Adams: I think he got involved after I called him. (laughter)

 

Jamie: Really, you called him?

Neal Adams: Jerry Robinson was the President of the Cartoonists Society. And I decided I would enlist the aid of the Cartoonists Society and the logical thing would be to call Jerry Robinson. So I did, and asked if we could have some kind of meeting to see what the cartoonists society could do to help this situation. We had taken it quite a far distance, we had appeared on all these shows and had all these conversations and interviews. We were sort of getting to the end of the rope because Jerry had a heart condition and it really wasn’t good for him to stay away from his job and to endanger his health by staying in New York and staying under this tremendous pressure. Joe, on his part, because he was legally blind, was constantly banging his head on taxi cab doors as I was taking him from one place to another.

 

Jamie: Before when we talked you mentioned the Cartoonists Society got other organizations together and wrote a letter?

Neal Adams: Well, they proposed writing a letter. They had a meeting at what was called the Allied Chemical Building at the time. It was very nice. One big room with a big old table in it, a spotlight above the table, lots of space and they were having their meeting in this building and at the end of the meeting they proposed that they write a letter decrying the situation. Then they asked me if that was fine, if that was a really good idea. I kinda made a speech at that point. It was perhaps an angry speech. And I implied I suppose, that people in this room that I was speaking to, owed their living to Jerry Siegel and Joe Shuster. And that the comic book business certainly wouldn’t be what it is without Jerry and Joe. The concept of just writing a letter was not exactly what I considered to be the right amount of energy. Perhaps I said it in a little more angry way. Anyway, I got up and left. It was as I said, a rather long speech, about 15 minutes. So I said you guys do what you want to do, I’m leaving.

So on my way out there was a fellow by the door, reasonably well dressed, the place had a coat room. I was going to get my coat and there was a guy standing there. An Irish guy, or he seemed Irish to me. He stopped me and he said, “You know, that was a pretty good speech.” I said “Well, thank you but I don’t think it’s going to do any good.” He said “Well, it was a good speech anyways.” He says, “You know what you ought to do?” I said “I’m trying to do everything I can do, what you do think?” He Says, “Well you ought to hold a press conference.” I said, “Well, that would probably be a good idea but I have no idea on how to hold a press conference.” He said, “You know what building this is here?” I said, “The Allied Chemical Building on Times Square” (but it’s not the Allied Chemical Building anymore.) He said, “This is the headquarters of the International Press Corp.” I said, “Really? That’s very interesting.” And then he said, “Do you know who I am?” I said, “I have no idea.” He said, “I’m the president of the International Press Corps and if you want a press conference, you just say the word and you got it.” Whoa! So I took him by the arm gently and took him over to the Cartoonist Society and said Gentlemen this is the President of the International Press Corps and he’s offering to have a press conference for us. Within a reasonable period of time, in a few days we had a press conference. And it was.. a press conference tends to attract a lot of attention. And it did. Artists from around the country presented their point of view, some in anger, some in sympathy, and it received a lot of attention. At that point Warner’s seemed to feel that perhaps they be willing to make a deal. Not that they were reluctant to make a deal before but they seemed to be perhaps a little bit more anxious to make a deal. So we managed to put together a deal for Jerry and Joe. Maybe not the greatest deal in the world, but it certainly made it possible for Jerry and Joe to live out the rest of their lives in reasonable comfort. Which I considered to be my job.

 

Jamie: Do you remember what day that press conference happened?

Neal Adams: No, but you can probably look it up.

 

Jamie: You also told a story about putting more pressure on DC management and you going to Florida for a convention.

Neal Adams: Well, when we finally got down to negotiations and in the lawyers office there seemed to be problems on whether Jerry and Joe were going to get their names back on the strip. I had been very quiet about it because negotiations were going on between lawyers and business men. I noted that people were overlooking certain things. The representative for Warner’s asked me if there was a problem? I said, “No, but I think Jerry and Joe’s name ought to go back on the strip.” They said, “No, that’s not going to happen.” I said, “Well, I think it ought to.” So the question came up if that was a deal breaker. I agreed that in fact, it wasn’t a deal breaker. Jerry and Joe were too exhausted from this process that they had gone through to stop it, so I wasn’t going to make this a big deal.

I had a plan. Because I realized this whole thing was going to go south, the idea of putting their names back on. So I went back to my studio. I had been invited to go to Florida for a convention. So I talked to Jerry Robinson. I told Jerry, “Look Jerry, tomorrow you’re going to get some phone calls from the newspapers and probably from Warner’s.” He said, “Why are they going to call me?” I said “Well, because I’m going to be gone.” He said “What do you mean gone?” I said “Well I’m going to disappear.” He said “What do you mean?” I said, “Well I’m just going to go to Florida for a convention but I’m not going to tell anybody where I’m going. I’m just going to be… gone.” And I said, “And you’re going to get some phone calls.” [Jerry says] “What about?” [Adams says] “Well, you’ll see.”

So what I did then was, the newspapers were calling me to find out what was going on. I announced to them that the deal had been made, we’re fine. They said, “You’re happy, everything is fine?” I said, “Well, just about.” [Reporters] “What do you mean just about?” [Adams] “Well, In the end DC Comics and Warner’s have not agreed to allow Jerry’s and Joe’s names to go back on to the comic book character they created.” The newspaper guys would say, “Well how do you feel about that?” I’d say, “Well, how could I be happy about that? It’s their strip, they created it. It’s not going to cost the publishers anything to have their name on it, it’s just recognition that they created it. I don’t understand what the problem is.” They said, “Why are you letting it happen?” I said, “Well Jerry and Joe are in ill health and I can’t make it an issue, but I think it’s a damn shame.” After about 4 or 5 phone calls like that I went home, got on a plane and flew down to Florida.

So about mid-morning I’m with Jack Kirby with my family and his family and we’re in the lobby of the hotel and somebody comes running over with a phone. Said it was Jerry Robinson on the phone. So I got on the phone with Jerry and said, “So Jerry, what’s happening?” He said, “Go sit down.” [Adams] “Why?” He [Jerry] said, “Go sit down.” Fine, I go and sit down in a chair. He says, “Let me tell you about my morning.” He says, “Turns out all the reporters in town have been calling him and apparently Warner’s asking what’s this idea about their names not being on the strip.” I said, “Well I don’t know, I said the deal can go ahead. I just mentioned it along the way.” Well, he had just got a call from the Warner’s guy, who told him Neal Adams had disappeared from the face of the earth. And he’s been calling all morning because reporters keep calling and asking him about what’s going on about Jerry and Joe not having their name on the strip? And it’s not going to cost anybody anything? Why is it important? Why are they doing this? Why are they making them sign this contract? So he’s [Jerry] talking to the guy [Warner’s] saying “What’s going on? Where’s Neal?” [Jerry] “I don’t know, I don’t know what to tell you, I don’t know where he is.” [Warner’s] “Well, maybe you can help us. Maybe we can work something out and help settle the newspaper guys.” Jerry said, “I think you’re talking to the wrong guy. You’ve got to remember, I’m the President of the Cartoonist Society. We have syndicated comic strip artists all of which sign their name to their work. So I don’t think there is anybody I know that wouldn’t be in sympathy with the idea of Jerry and Joe getting their name on their strip again. I really think you’re talking to the wrong person, I can’t help you there. If anything, we are totally against this idea.” So the guy at Warner’s said, “Okay. Their names are on the strip again. Are you happy now?” Jerry said, “Well, we’re almost happy.” [Warner’s] “What do you mean, almost happy?” He [Jerry] said “You know, the guys have been through a lot. Wouldn’t it be nice, before they started receiving their money they got a little bonus to pay for their expenses, for the trouble they’ve been through the last several months.” [Warner’s] “What number were you thinking of Jerry?” Jerry named a number. The guy at Warner’s said “Fine. Anything else?” [Jerry] “No, I think that about covers it.” So Jerry managed to put the icing on the cake. Me, I was in Florida having breakfast with Jack Kirby and got to tell him the whole story.

 

Jamie: I know that you were involved with the Academy of Comic Book Artists. How did that start?

Neal Adams: I think there was a lot of rumbling going on in the field. There was union talk and other talk and the truth is, it was Jim Warren who came up with the idea. He thought there ought to be a group, an academy. Maybe he did it to stop the complaints going on, maybe it did it to show he was a good guy, I don’t know why. So it was really Jim Warren who started the whole idea and everybody agreed. Unfortunately or fortunately the publisher sorta tried to make themselves a part of it. In fact Stan Lee was the first President involved. Which seemed a little strange to everybody. It put a lot of pressure everybody. But Stan insisted he was a freelancer like everybody else. Nobody quite agreed with that, but after all he was in charge of hiring and firing 50% of the people in the business so one could hardly argue with Stan Lee. After he was no longer president, Dick Giordano became President and I was the 3rd President. All through that time we got things going. I did an awful lot of the work because I’m kinda a work horse. And I can’t say that Stan did anything. Stan was a figurehead, and a good figurehead in my opinion. The work, as usual, was rested on me.

 

Jamie: What were the things that was accomplished through the organization?

Neal Adams: We didn’t really accomplish much with the organization. The things we did accomplish were intangibles tangibles. First of all we put a shock and a scare through all the publishers. Because when people started organizing and getting together, the nature of doing that does scare the management. So we gained a certain amount of respect with the publishers. In fact there was a dispute between Marvel and DC Comics and they called upon us to settle it, and we did. We called a meeting and settled the dispute. I don’t actually remember what the dispute was at the moment, but that’s kind of strange if you can imagine, a freelance organization being in a position of settling a dispute. Another thing we did was during our first meeting, one of things I did was I went around and told everybody what my page rate was. Nobody wanted to talk about what their page rate was, but once they discovered what my page rate was they were able to compare page rates, they then made demands on their editors and publishers that they should be paid at least as much as Neal Adams. So when you form an organization like that you can’t easily make a super point about a solid thing like we went on strike and we got this. We couldn’t go on strike. But there were things that happened because people were listening to us. We were making changes within the group. Everybody was meeting one another that hadn’t met before. Jack Kirby had never met Joe Sinnott. So there’s these intangibles that you can’t easily codify but in fact were very, very important.

 

Jamie: DC contracts. I know DC is has been reprinting a bunch of your work.

Neal Adams: What do you want to know?

 

Jamie: I know when DC published Deadman reprints with your name on it…

Neal Adams: Well, what happened was DC was nice enough to pay me an additional royalty for using my names on the books. I say nice enough. Well, yeah, nice enough to capitulate at the end of a series of discussions. In which I never got angry. But they were still nice enough to work with me. And I think that’s a new attitude with DC comics. I think DC has gotten a lot more human, a lot better at doing business with individuals. And as a result they are now going to a project I call, printing all the rest of my crap. Which they call, DC Classics. So all the other stuff that didn’t appear in either Deadman, Green Lantern and Batman is going to appear in these three volumes. It’s pretty nice.

 

Jamie: Before you talked about lawyers and moral rights versus legal rights.

Neal Adams: I don’t think lawyers know very much about moral rights so I guess it’s not exactly a topic that I strenuously get involved in discussing. Lawyers seem to be, for whatever reason, they don’t seem to have that switch in their psyche that says even though this may be legal, it’s not right, and I ought to back away from this because it’s wrong. Right and wrong seem to be gray in the law. So a lawyer will more likely depend on the law rather than what’s right. I don’t think this is true, always with all lawyers, but it is a standard of the business of lawyering. To allow the bending of morality, their judgment of right and wrong to be satisfied by if it’s okay in the law. You see it on television all the time. You see television shows about legal firms who think it’s okay for somebody to get an award for, and use the word award as if it was some kind of prize, of an amount of money that is unrealistically high compared to the offense. So that the law firm may receive such a large percentage of that. So it’s not up to me to make these kinds of judgments that, when you watch these television shows. If the goal becomes to make lawyers rich and that’s the way it’s reflected on television shows, live in fancy apartments and drive fancy cars and to smoke cigars on their balconies, if that’s the goal of the legal business, that’s hard to believe it is a good system. It’s a very, very bad system. Making lawyers rich and destroying the lives of companies and individuals in unfair proportion makes no sense. I don’t know why. It’s sort of like when I was a kid they made the lottery unlawful and people were arrested and put in jail and then they made it legal, then had the state run it, and it paid for the educational system, especially in New York, and therefore it became okay. So why were all those people thrown in jail? I don’t know how that makes sense. I don’t know how people who spend their families’ money on the lottery are justified in participating in gambling on a regular basis. I just find it very odd that morality slides around so much under a system that’s essentially run by lawyers. It doesn’t make any sense to me.

 

Jamie: What are you doing with Continuity Studios lately?

Neal Adams: We’re doing a lot of work on the Internet. We’re doing CGI animation. New forms of what we call Animatics for the Internet that’s kind of an animation. We’re really busy producing what’s called content for the Internet. I wish we could put our signature on it all the time so when you are on the Internet and you see an animation of a refrigerator or interactive game play for selling or involving you in a new company’s product that we could say, “Hey! That’s ours.” But you really can’t at this point do that. We’re all over the place. Very few things are like comic books where you do your thing, sign your name and everybody knows you did it. Most everything else is kind of a group effort.

 

Jamie: Last question here. Did you see the new Batman movie and what did you think?

Neal Adams: I did and I loved it. It is based on to a lesser degree than I might appreciate on, “The Joker’s Five-Way Revenge” [Originally published in Batman #251]. Or at least that’s what the author of the story says. So it would be really hard for me not to like it. Also I believe in stories as stories and not just vehicles for superheroes to knock down buildings, or to dress up in funny costumes. So I would have to say this is my kind of Batman, probably, MY Batman.