The Corner Box S1E18 - The Scott Dunbier Interview: Jack Kirby and Jim Lee

[00:00] Intro: Welcome to The Corner Box, where we talk about comics as an industry and an art form. You never know where the discussion will go or who will show up to join host David Hedgecock and John Barber. Between them, they've spent decades writing, drawing, lettering, coloring, editing, editor-in-chiefing, and publishing comics. If you want to know the behind-the-scenes secrets, the highs and lows, the ins and outs of the best artistic medium in the world, then listen in and join us on The Corner Box.

[00:31] John Barber: Hi, and welcome back to The Corner Box. I'm John Barber. With me as always

[00:35] David Hedgecock: Dave Hedgecock.

[00:36] John: We've got a special guest this time. Somebody that David and I’ve both known for a while, we both used to work with, and whose name you probably saw when you opened this: Mr. Scott Dunbier. Hi, Scott.

[00:48] Scott Dunbier: Hey, guys. How’re you doing?

[00:50] John: All right. I think we covered everything.

[00:53] Scott: Well, thanks for having me. I appreciate it.

[00:56] David: I am super excited to have Scott joining us this time, John. Scott's done, I think, more for the preservation of comic history and original art than probably just about anyone on the planet, really, with curation and creation of the IDW Artist’s Editions, or just the Artist Editions. He's done more outside of IDW as well, so I'm excited to dig in and get super nerdy about original art, and just talk about cool comic book stuff.

[01:27] Scott: That's very kind of you, and probably a bit exaggerated, but thank you.

[01:30] John: Also edited some very good and very important comics, and I would even go further, some of those are very important to me, beyond the scope of most people's, I don't know, I don't want to make this gushy because we actually do know each other. So, yeah, we should maintain this antagonistic relationship.

[01:52] David: Yeah. Scott’s also responsible for America's Best line, Alan Moore's books of Promethea, Tom Strong, League of Extraordinary Gentlemen, Top 10, spent a brief time as one of the main editors at Wildstorm, and then promoted to Editor-in-Chief for a time there as well. I think that ended when DC bought Wildstorm. Did I get that right, Scott?

[02:11] Scott: When DC bought Wildstorm, which officially was 25 years ago, two months ago, because we're in December now. October 5, 1998, was the official day of the transfer. That was the official day that we became part of DC. That's also the same day that I met my wife. What do they say? One door closes, another one opens. Getting back to your question, I started out at Wildstorm in a completely different capacity. Jim Lee is an old friend of mine, and we've known each other since, I think, we met in 1987 or 1988. We became friends. I never sold his art. He had an art dealer, and our relationship was not a business relationship at that point. We would get together when Jim would come to New York and go out and play some pool, and do stuff, have dinner, and then when Image started, Jim started asking me, he wanted to hire me. He wanted me to come out to California, and at that point, their offices weren't yet in La Jolla. They were in, I don't know, what's that area called, by Loving Hut?

[03:33] John: Scripps Ranch?

[03:35] Scott: I guess. Yeah, they were right across from Loving Hut. Mira Mesa.

[03:42] John: Okay. Oh, wow. Wow, really?

[03:46] Scott: Yeah, it was a small office. That was before they moved to La Jolla. A funny story about that one, too. Jim, maybe in 1992, started asking me if I wanted to work for him, to fly out and move to California and work for him, and it was interesting, but I was happy doing what I was doing, and I said, “Well, okay, but what would I do?” And in typical Jim fashion, “we'll work it out. We'll work it out.” And that wasn't quite the answer I was looking for, so I turned him down, and I turned him down again the following year, and then the year after that, it was funny, I actually flew out to California on some ComicCon business in February, because I used to have this giant balloon that I would have hanging from the ceiling in ComicCon, and I had to go and present it to the board of directors at Comic Con to make the balloon. 

[04:47] David: The actual balloon itself or just drawings?

[04:50] Scott: The concept of it, because I wasn’t going to spend the money.

[04:57] David: I can just Scott, coming into the room with a giant inflatable.

[05:03] Scott: So, a couple of months earlier, I had been talking to Jim. This is, I don't know, 1993, maybe, and I had started selling art for a new guy who I had found. I saw this guy’s stuff, and I thought, “Oh, this guy would be perfect to work at Wildstorm,” so I called up Jim, and Jim loved his work, and then said to me, “Okay, call him up and tell him that I want to fly him to San Diego, and you too, and we'll just hang out, we'll play some pool, and we'll talk,” and that was Travis Charest.

[05:49] David: Wow, really? Was he doing stuff at DC?

[05:53] Scott: DC and Marvel. He did this short Hulk Vs. Things story, and then the Flash Annual, and then he started doing Darkstars. Looking back at his work now, it wasn't very good, but it had something, and then later he became someone who I feel is one of the best artists to emerge in the last 40 years. Just tremendous stuff. Actually, I should say 30 years.

[06:21] David: I don't think anybody looking at that Darkstars stuff was thinking that. He certainly wasn't bad. I liked that Darkstars stuff. I was a fan, but I certainly wasn't looking at it, going “this guy is going to be Travis Charest someday. He certainly evolved at Wildstorm in a way that was incredible.

[06:39] Scott: The other odd thing about this story is, Jim took Travis and I out to lunch at Hard Rock Cafe, which I don't think is there anymore, in La Jolla. It was in the center of downtown La Jolla. We went to lunch. While we're at lunch, he's saying, “I've been thinking, maybe I'll look for offices in La Jolla. I like La Jolla.” This is before he moved to La Jolla, and we go out to the Hard Rock, and across the street is 888 Prospect, which is the La Jolla bank building, and he's like, “yeah, like this place,” and they had For Rent signs up, so he goes, “let's go and have a look,” so we just took the elevator up to the second floor. I mean, there weren't even walls up yet, and we were walking through what eventually became Wildstorm, and then, we went back to the Mesa office. There was a ping pong table, and Travis was playing ping pong, and he did a single character from Wildcats. I don't remember which one. Maybe it was Spartan. He did this really nice pinup and that was the first thing that wound up being, I think, in the first Wildcats annual. Might have been the only Wildcats annual. I don't remember.

[08:03] David: Wait, let me get this straight. You're sitting there, the three of you guys are chatting, and he just busts out an artboard and starts drawing?

[08:10] Scott: No. At that point, we were back in their studio, and there were probably 15 people there, and he just sat down at the drawing board.

[08:22] David: As someone’s request?

[08:24] John: You were sitting there for six weeks?

[08:28] Scott: No, no, no, no, John. Don't be silly. I don't remember. I think, maybe Jim had suggested it or something, and he sat down, and he drew the whole thing, and then, I think I might be wrong about this, Scott Williams wound up making it. That could be wrong. That's also the first time I met John Nee, who is one of my best friends, and although we weren't friends for a considerable amount of time until several years later. I was at that point an FO Jim. A Friend of Jim. In 1994, at Comic Con, Jim walked me around the new La Jolla offices, which at that point, from the six months prior, he had rented that space, and we were walking through what would be Wildstorm. At that point, there were two floors. It was half of the second floor and just a small bit on the third floor, but eventually it was downsized. So, we were just maybe two thirds of the second floor, and Jim would just say, “okay, this could be your office. This could be your office. This could be your office,” and I said to him, “Okay. What would I do?” And he said, “Okay, come out. We just bought this new Iris printer, which is now a Giclée printer. We'll do a whole line of prints, and you can sell art for the guys in the studio, and blah, blah, blah,” so the first thing I did was nothing at all like that, which is good because I wound up doing nothing at all like that anyway.

My first real gig was arranging European tours, because I told Jim, “There are so many different comic shops who’d love to have you guys. Why don't you arrange tours?” He goes, “great. Do that.” So, I reached out, I used to travel to European shows because of selling original comic art, so I would go to four shows every year in Europe. I would go one in England, I would go to two in Italy, and one in France. The biggest ones were Luca, in Italy, and Angoulême in France. So, I started arranging these tours, and basically, if we had six people going on a tour, we would do six stops, and each place would pay for one business class ticket for the artists, and me. What a waste of money that was, but we did some really great tours. We went to Leone, we went to Belgium, to Brussels, we went to Amsterdam.

[11:21] David: So, around that time, doing signings for Image comic guys, they were around the block. Was that how it was in Europe, too?

[11:32] Scott: It depended on the location. We did one store in Milan, and that would have been the biggest one. There were, I think, 1200 people lined up outside, and we were there for three hours, and the store owners started getting a little bit upset, because the guys were doing sketches, so the line was moving really slowly, and I remember going up to, the guy’s name was Nassim. I can't remember his last name or the name of the shop, but a great guy. Nassim was very concerned about all the people that were standing outside, still 800 people, and we were already over the time limit. We have three hours, and we're at four hours. I told him not to worry, and then at that point, I went over to the guys. I said, “Okay, we need to shut this down and go outside, and walk the line.” So, everybody just got up and started walking down two blocks, signing people's books just on the street. It was really pretty incredible, and I arranged, I don't know, maybe five tours, because there was that one, and one of the artists met his future wife at one of the signings. So, we did another tour later that was called the wedding tour, and we basically paid for our trip to Europe for his wedding. There was one tour that must have had maybe 25 or 26 people, and it was over the course of three weekends. So, we had two legs. The first leg was one weekend, the second leg was two weekends down, and that was a totally different group of artists, but it all converged in Paris.

On one weekend at my friend Frederic Manzano store Editions Deese, best store in Paris for American type comics, 8 Rue Cochin. So, we had everybody there at Fred's store. Actually, I don't think it was at Fred store, because this shop is pretty small. I think it was next door. He rented out the space, and there were two days of fun and mayhem, and we had a great time, had dinner with the great Tanino Liberatore at that particular event, at dinner one night, who's just a tremendous artist, but getting back to your question, I never met a tangent I didn't like. So, when I started at Wildstorm, my initial thing was that I would arrange tours, and I would also sell art and do prints, and I did prints, and I did sell some art, too. It wasn't quite what I was interested in anymore, and I remember one time saying to Jim, “you have all these artists working for you, but many of them are inspired by you,” and I said, “I think you should diversify and try to get different talent, not just get guys who look like you.”

There's a sort of a famous story among a very few people, about the first time I saw J. Scott Campbell's work. He's also called Scott and Jeff by different groups of people. I always call him Jeff, although he usually goes by Scott nowadays. So, J. Scott Campbell, Jim had sent me some faxes, back in ‘93/4, saying, “Oh, my God, look at this guy’s stuff. He's going to be huge,” and I called him back, and I famously said, “Man, I don't know what you see in this guy. This is not very good.” I've been proven wrong about that, and now he's just a tremendous artist. Jim finally said to me at one point, this is maybe mid-1995, “okay, smart guy. You know so much? You edit a book.” So, I did. The first one was the Gen 13/Max crossover, drawn by Tom Coker and written by Bill Loebs.

It's funny, I knew nothing about editing. I mean, I don't have an editorial background at all. There was an editor there named Sarah Becker. She was the editor on Gen 13, and then later, she wound up on a reality TV show called The Real World: Miami, and a bunch of us went down to Miami, there when they were filming, and I don't think any of us made it on the show, mainly because of me. They wound up filming me a little bit too much for my own peace of mind, and they wanted me to sign an additional, because we all signed waivers, but they wanted me to sign a 12-page waiver, and it just scared that shit out of me. So, I said no. So, they wound up not using us. I don't want those clips around, and it wasn't that bad, but anyway. Sarah, who is just a good and decent person, and truly one of the nicest people I've ever met in comics. She's out of comics now, but she's just a wonderful person. I love when I see her. She saved me completely on that book. She gave me, very generously, a tutorial on how to do it, how to put it together, because I mean, we didn't have very many experienced editors. At that point, I think it was just Bill Kaplan who was there. So, I wound up editing that book, and then I said, “Why don't we do a book with Adam Hughes?” And that became Gen 13: Ordinary Heroes. Adam came out to La Jolla. He was there for, I think, 10 months. Jim then made me editor of special projects. It was originally going to be editor of cool projects, but there were other people saying, “Oh, I guess my projects not very cool,” and then in 1996, a year after I got there, for some bizarre reason, Jim made me Editor-in-Chief, which was surreal. He didn't tell me about it ahead of time. He just called me and the former Editor-in-Chief into his office.

[18:09] David: That sounds uncomfortable.

[18:10] Scott: It was surreal. So, then I became Editor-in-Chief, and then when DC bought us, I became Group Editor, and then a year or so later, I'm not sure the timeline after that, I made a case that my position was closer to what Mike Carlin and Karen Berger were at DC, and they were Executive Editors. So, Paul Levitz made me Executive Editor of Wildstorm. I think that's the answer to that question.

[18:48] John: Now, for the second book you've edited. We'll just go through one by one, every issue. I do want to throw out, just for listeners, going back a few minutes, Loving Hut is a vegan restaurant near where I live, not whatever Loving Hut sounds like, and Scott and I both enjoy that restaurant and have run into each other there, and that's why he was using that as a reference, and we should again.

[19:12] David: I appreciate the clarification. Scott, going back just a little bit, you hinted that you were doing original art sales. What was that like for you? I don't really know that much about that part of your history. I'd love to hear.

[19:30] Scott: So, my first big career move was being a paperboy, and then after that, I worked in a deli in Los Angeles called Salies. My mom had moved out to California. My mom liked to move, and it was just me and her, and we moved out to California. Actually, do you want to hear my funny ‘how I met Jack Kirby’ story?

[19:49] John: Yes, of course.

[19:50] David: You should have led with that.

[19:54] Scott: Well, it's involved with Salies and being in LA. So, I was 15, we moved out to California. I wasn't happy about it. I'm a New Yorker. I was in 10th grade, going into 11th grade. I was going to graduate with my friends, and all of a sudden, we're moving to California, and I didn't have a license, and I never got one until years later. So, I used to work in this deli called Salies, and I worked there basically full-time. After school, I would work from, I think school got out at 1:50, and I would take the bus down Ventura Boulevard. I  used to go to this comic shop, and I would use the money from working at Salies, and I would go to this comic shop, it was called Fantasy Castle, and I remember going in there one time, and I had a stack of Jack Kirby comics, maybe 7/8/10 different things, maybe an early X Men, some Command D that was filling in holes on, maybe an Avengers issue, something like that, and so I go up to the counter, and the guy says to me, “Oh, do you like Jack Kirby? Even at 15?” It seemed like a silly question. Maybe I was 16 at that point, if I had a job, and it seemed like a silly question to me, and I said, “Oh, yeah. Sure. I love Jack Kirby,” and for some unknown reason, the guy said to me, “Well, he doesn't live that far from here, and he has a listed phone number.” I used to call up artists when I was a kid, going back to the time I was 12 or 13. I would call them up, because artists used to have listed phone numbers, so I would call up and beg for sketches. So, I have sketches by Alex Toth, and Harvey Kurtzman, and Al Feldstein, and Jack Cayman.

[21:55] David: Oh, hold on, hold on, hold on. You would randomly call these artist?

[22:00] Scott: It was a different world, man.

[22:02] David: You were 12 or 13 years old, and they would just mail you a sketch? Is that what was happening? Is that what you're telling me?

[22:08] Scott: Charles Schulz used to mail Peanuts dailies to people in the 60s. It was a different world. A completely different kind of place.

[22:19] David: This is the first time I’m saying I'm pining for the good old days. I don't usually say that. Legit, I am now officially pining for the good old days.

[22:31] Scott: So, I call the information, and sure enough, he had a listed phone number, and I called up and this gruff voice answers, and I said, “Hi, can I please speak to Jack Kirby?” And he goes, “I'm Jack Kirby.” I say, “Mr. Kirby. Hi, my name is Scott, and I'm a kid. I love your work, and I love Command D,” and we were on the phone for 20 minutes. I never even had a chance to ask him for a sketch. After 20 minutes, he says to me, “so where do you live?” And I said, “Woodland Hills,” and he goes, “I'm in Thousand Oaks. That's not that far. Why don’t you get your mom to drive you up here this weekend? Bring a stack of comics and I'll sign them for you, and then we'll get lunch.” My mom, God bless her, drove me up there that weekend, and while she was sitting in their kitchen, my mom and Roz Kirby drinking coffee, and smoking cigarettes. I think Roz was smoking. I'm not sure. I can't say that for sure. My mom definitely would have been. I was in the living room where Jack had his drawing board, which was right next to these sliding doors that looked out on his pool. They lived on a hill in Thousand Oaks with a really nice view. So, I sat there with him for a while. I brought an alpha beta bag full of 50 comics or something. Way too many.

[24:03] David: A disrespectful amount.

[24:04] Scott: I did not understand comic signing etiquette. When I pulled them out, Roz Kirby's standing there next to me, and she's looking at me pulling out everything, and she just rolls her eyes, and I had no clue, until a couple of years later, why she was rolling her eyes, but Jack Kirby sat there, opened each and every one of them, and signed the inside first page. On all 50, and then we had lunch. Tuna salad, maybe. We talked, and then it was time to go, and he gave me a portfolio that had been published, the Gods portfolio, and then he sat down, and he drew a sketch of Captain America waving, saying “Hi, Scott.” Let me tell you, when I sold that, I got a lot of money.

[25:02] John: There's some Scott's with some real money.

[25:06] Scott: No, of course I'm joking.

[25:07] David: You still have the comics?

[25:11] Scott: Some of them, but I don't know. Maybe not all.

[25:13] David: Yeah, I would think that they'd be a little beat up.

[25:17] Scott: The drawing of Captain America, it's the screensaver on my phone, and it's hanging up on the wall in our stairwell, and I honestly believe that that moment, that experience, changed my life. I believe it was transformative for me to meet him. I think that nobody can compare to Jack Kirby in terms of kindness, and the way he treated people. Also, I need to say that my experience was not unique. I've heard dozens, at least dozens of times, the same, or at least similar stories, that he would just invite people over to his house, and he was just such a wonderful, sweet man, who is the most important artists in comic history.

[26:08] John: I guess, when you're only drawing a book a week, you need to do something to fill the rest of the time. I guess, having people come over.

[26:17] David: On the weekends, so you can sign comics and draw more, and feed them.

[26:21] John: That sort of thing is great to hear. I don't think I've ever heard a bad thing about him. So, I feel like I better knock on wood or something. Oh, yeah, Scott is showing the picture from his phone, and it looks really nice. That's really good, too.

[26:39] David: Yeah, that's really good. That's a great sketch you got, man. He wasn't messing around. They say, don't meet your heroes, but for the most part, my experience in comics is that, pretty much, my heroes have been pretty cool. I don't know if that euphemism just isn't really super accurate or comic book guys are just maybe a little more affable, a little more social? I don't know.

[27:00] John: Thanks, David. Oh, you meant other people? I'm sorry.

[27:09] David: You’re my hero, John.

[27:11] Scott: I've met a lot of my heroes, and many of them have been fantastic, and others not as fantastic, but that's fine. I have two favorite artists from when I was a kid. One is Neil Adams. He was absolutely my first favorite artist, and the first piece of original art I ever saw was by him. When I was in fourth grade going to PS190 in New York City on 82nd Street. We lived on 87th and 2nd, and between my school and our apartment was one of the earliest comic shops in New York. It was called Super Snipe. This would have been around 1971, maybe ’72, and it was an incredibly tiny shop. The front of it was about as big as the office that I'm in right now.

[28:12] David: Massive. For our listeners, Scott lives in a mansion, it looks like. I can't even see the back. Well, we’re on Zoom. The back wall is so far away, I can't even see it.

28:26 Scott: Think of Citizen Kane.

[28:31] David: Basically, what we're looking at.

[28:32] Scott: Around the corner, they had an art gallery, and they used to have shows of comic art, and in the window on one of them was, and don't ask me how I remember this, a page from Batman 237 by Neal Adams, the page where Batman is walking through a party. It's a famous issue anyway, because it took place in Rutledge, Vermont, where this guy used to have famous Halloween parties, and comic creators would go to. So, this basically takes place there. So, that's the first time I saw a page of art, and Neil Adams was my favorite artist as a kid. Although, my second favorite artist at that point would have been a little bit later, and that's Walter Simonson, who was doing, with Archie Goodwin, a strip called Manhunter in the back of Detective Comics, which is, to my mind, the best short run of any comic book ever. It's a full, complete story, and it was unlike anything I'd ever seen before. Walter is truly one of the nicest guys in comics, and I'm happy to say he's one of my best friends at this point. He very rarely, unfortunately, does a book called Ragnarok at IDW, and I'd love to get him to do more. So, Walter, if you watch this, get back to work.

[30:09] John: That's why it's audio-only, because Walter is one of our biggest fans, and we don't want to stop him from his work. He can listen to it and work. It was really out of consideration for Walter. Man, I love Manhunter. That is one of my favorites.

[30:23] Scott: I was always very interested in art. I'll skip to when I was 18 or 19. I had been collecting sketches, and then I wound up buying a couple of pieces of art here and there. I think my first piece was at Super Snipe, because they used to sell art. There was an art dealer who lived near. I worked at this comic shop when I was a kid, called East Side Comics, which was an offshoot of West Side Comics, and there was a guy who used to come in, called Mitch Itkowitz, who was a few years older than me, and he was an art dealer. He still is. I’d go over and look at art in his apartment, because he also lived in that area on 85th and 2nd. So, I began buying art. I started dabbling in selling comics, and I made the very fast realization that selling art was a lot easier and not as heavy, and it was also more fun than selling comics. I mean, I love comics, but I don't love selling them. So, I started buying original art and reselling it, and in the mid-80s, I started selling art a lot. I wound up selling a lot of art in the mid-80s to mid-90s. I was one of the biggest comic art dealers, but luckily, I did eventually lose some weight.

[31:53] David: Did you come into art dealing with an eye for it? Or do you think you developed that eye as you went along dealing original art? You've got an incredible eye for talent, obviously. I mean, you walk into Jim Lee's joint with Travis Charest. I agree with you about the J Scott Campbell thing. I appreciate that other people like J Scott Campbell. I truly do, but I didn't really get it either when he first showed up.

[32:18] Scott: He’s now a tremendous artist. He really has evolved into a great artist. Well, thank you, David. That's very kind of you to say. I don't know why I have this weird knowledge of comic art. When I was very young, and when I say very young, I'm talking about 9/10/11/12, I just absorbed stuff like a sponge, and all sorts of comic art. That's the thing. Not just Marvel and DC. When I was a kid, we lived on 87th and 2nd, and it was a high-rise building. There was actually a pool on the roof, which was really cool for me, as a New York kid, but it would be closed during the winter, but I was a kid that was nine years old exploring, blah, blah, blah. So, I went up to the roof occasionally and just took in the view, and one day while I'm up there, I found a box of comics. I'm not even thinking, “Oh, these belong to somebody.” I go, “Great, comics,” and I took them home, and they were comics that were completely different than anything I'd ever seen before. It was a box of Undergrounds. So, I'm nine years old, and I'm reading Zap number one and Zap Zero and Despair, or maybe Despair was later, but I read all these things, and I found all these different artists that I'd never seen before, and probably not good stuff for a nine-year-old, but at the same time, I was reading the Steranko History of Comics. I was reading the Jules Feiffer Comic Book Heroes, is that what it's called? Also in 1972, East Coast comics started issuing reprints of EC Comics, Facsimile Editions, so that's how I discovered EC, and I just ate it all up.

[34:20] David: I'm just assuming it was the art that you were the most attracted to. I mean, that's how it is for me, especially at that age. The art was the thing that was really pulling me, and I liked the story, too, but really, the art was what was pulling me in.

[34:37] Scott: Well, I mean, it's hard for me to read a comic with bad art, but it's also hard for me to read a comic with bad writing. So, it's got to be a combination. Comics are about sequential storytelling. The stuff that I love, like Manhunter, what a great consolidation of story and art. It was perfect. It's funny, Louise Simonson has a devilish sense of humor. I was over at Greg Hildebrand, and Jean Scrocco’s home a few years ago on a scanning trip to the east coast with my son Alex, and Walter and Weezie were there, Walter Simonson and Louise Simonson, and we're talking about Walter’s work, we're sitting outside, beautiful view of this amazing lake. They have a ridiculously nice home, Jean and Greg. We’re talking about Walter’s work, and somebody says how nice Ragnarok is, and I said, “Yeah, I mean, Walter is doing the best work of his career, even in his 70s. The work is phenomenally good,” and Weezie looks over to me and she goes, “better than Manhunter?” And I stopped her, and everybody laughed, and I stopped for a second, and I said, “Yes. Yes, his work now is better than Manhunter, but Manhunter will always be my favorite.” That series, if anyone listening who hasn't experienced Manhunter, it is one of Walter's earliest things. Archie Goodwin was already an established writer and editor, and this was a finite series. It was six short stories, followed by a final full-length issue in Detective Comics, and it's just phenomenally good, but David, I think it needs to be a combination of story and art. You just can't have one without the other. It needs to be a full package.

[36:43] John:

This is a genuine question about this stuff or how you think about it. Something like Manhunter, especially to me, that's one of the ones that hit me, and what makes it work for me is how much, I don't know the right way to say this, but it's how much about the form of that comic is that it's not like I'm reading it because I love ninjas, and it's got ninjas in it. Ninjas are fine. Whatever, I don't really care, but what I care about is the way that it's a super compressed storytelling, where more happens in each, whatever, 8-page chunk that the story was told in, than you're going to find most places, but it doesn't feel compressed. It doesn't feel stuffed. It's just this really interesting way to tell stories. I feel like a lot of Goodwin's writing that I've read, which isn't everything, but I was reading some of the Warren stuff recently, and a lot of those stories hit me the same way. Not as effective a collaboration as Manhunter, but the Alien adaptation was like that, too. I don't care about movie adaptations. I care about the way they broke that story down and told it. It's not unique to Manhunter, but that is unique to certain kinds of comics or certain specific comics, probably a lot of Undergrounds, too. Victor Moscoso stuff was all about the form of comics or the visual operations of comics. Is that the stuff that hits a sweet spot for you, or that affected you then? Or am I talking about something totally different than what you're attracted to?

[38:09] Scott: I think you're absolutely right. I’m more interested in things that are, I don't want to use the word exciting, but you mentioned Victor Moscoso, who I first saw when I was nine years old, in one of those first issues in Zap, and that stuff was so different and unique, and the same thing is true about Manhunter. I mean, there were so many panels per page. I mean, they were doing a full comic worth of stuff in 8 pages, and then later on, I discovered Will Eisner, and the same thing. Obviously, Eisner comes from a background of, not a background of film, but he's a lover of film, and it's very interesting to see his evolution as a comics writer/artist, because he began doing comics in the late 1930s, and he created the Spirit in 1940, and then he went to World War II, and to me, the Spirit would be a footnote in comics history if Eisner did not take that break and then come back in early 1946, or I guess, late 1945, because he came back to the strip in January of 1946. So, obviously, he was doing it before, but the work he did, if you look at the Spirit from 1946, to 1950. ‘51 and ’52 have great moments, but he was doing other things at that point, but if you look at the Spirit from 1946 to 1950, it is truly some of the best comics ever done.

[39:52] John: Yeah, definitely. There isn't a ‘separate out the story from the Spirit, and it's really good.’ I don’t mean that the story is bad, but there isn't a ‘pull the story out, and this is a great short story that has been turned into comics,’ and there isn't a ‘take the drawing out and just look at the drawings, and those are perfect.’ It is that they're both meeting at this middle part where it's this pure comics part of it, the way I think about it, that falls into the same stuff that really attracted me to the medium of comics, and it really made me want to do that stuff. When I was a kid, I didn't have an interest more than comics. So, the comics I liked were the comics that reflected comics in an interesting way. It could be of superheroes, or whatever it was, and I still feel that way to a big degree. Although, I think I've probably widened my taste, or I can appreciate something where I'm just that, “The actual illustration of this is really good, as opposed to the comics-ness of it,” which I think, is a different thing than just rambling. I think.

[40:51] Scott: I know what you're saying. It's funny that you mentioned Scott McCloud, because I was always a fan of his work on Zot!, and also Destroy. That's a great book. It's funny, if you look at Zot!, I think it ran close to 40 issues. It was good, exciting, all readers ages-friendly comics, but the last eight or 10 issues, I think they were called the Earth Stories, because that's from another dimension and he comes to earth. Those are phenomenally good comics. I mean, Zot! was good, but it became one of my favorite arcs in comics, period, and that was because he was trying something different, because comics, honestly, the format is so wonderful, because you can do anything. Film is great, but comics are endless. You can literally do any story you want. It's just a matter of how good you are at it.

[42:02] David: The only limit is your imagination.

[42:07] Scott: I mean, look at someone like Emil Ferris, who, at the age of 50, had her first graphic novel published, and phenomenally good, and she won a bunch of Eisner’s, and deservedly so. A tremendous artist. Somebody who comes from a unique perspective. I mean, that's the stuff that I really am interested in right now.

[42:38] John: Hey, is this John Barber cutting in. We're going to take a little break. We're not done here with Mr. Dunbier, which rhymes. We did run out of time. So, we will be back next week, thank you, David, with the remainder of our interview with Scott. Hope you've been enjoying it. Thanks very much for joining us this week, and please come back next week, or possibly sooner. Might even get this up sooner. See you in the next episode of The Corner Box.

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