[00:00:02] Intro: Welcome to The Corner Box with David Hedgecock and John Barber. With decades of experience in all aspects of comic book production, David, John, and their guests will give you an in-depth and insightful look at the past, present, and future of the most exciting medium on the planet, comics, and everything related to it.

[00:00:24] David: Hey everybody, welcome back to The Corner Box. My name is David Hedgecock and I’m one of your hosts and returning that making his triumphant return is my dear friend co-host

[00:00:34] John: Transformers Hall of Fame John Barber. Hey, good to be back. I Yeah, I forgot you guys recorded when I haven’t heard that one yet, John

[00:00:41] David: I don’t want to say that Chase is gunning for your job But I think Chase might be gunning for your job, man

[00:00:47] John: There’s a lot of jobs that he should be gunning for of mine Let’s just, I’ll borrow some other ones and I’m a deal too. You can take over some other things that I do. My dog pooped like five times between evening and morning. That’d be a great one, for instance. Sorry, that’s not what we’re here for. Go ahead, David.

[00:01:07] David: No, no, that’s exactly what we’re here for, John. John, you’re not the only legend on the program today. This is true. We have another legend of the comic book industry joining us today. with us today is a man who was, in my opinion, the career-defining artist of the Justice League in the late 80s and early 90s. I think he was, and he’ll have to correct me after this introduction, is the designer of Eclipso from DC Comics. Also, very formative artistic talent for Turok among hundreds of his mini-accomplishes as a superstar artist of the comic book field. of the most dynamic storytelling and unmatched command of anatomy of the past generation and current generation of comic book artists. This man has worked for every single major publisher including ominous press. Welcome to the show. Mr. Bart Sears.

[00:02:03] Bart Sears: Yeah. Wow. What an intro man. Thank you.

[00:02:07] David: Thanks for coming on the show Bart. We’re so excited to have you on the show today. I to Bart Sears comic books. Like Justice League Europe was incredibly formative to my early reading experience as a comic book guy. I loved that book more than anything. It was one of my favorites and it was almost exclusively because of the amazing art that you were delivering month in and month out on that title. And then you went on to do even more amazing things, but I thought it would be cool for our listeners to hear about those early days of your career and just kind of like hit the way back machine and hear how it all got started for you. What was the moment that you realized you could make a living drawing comic books?

[00:02:53] Bart Sears: - Honestly, I think I was 10. I decided that I wanted to draw comics full-time after seeing one of those Batman specials that had a Neil Adams or Night of the Wolf. And it was a werewolf story with Batman and the werewolf. And I always loved comics. I’d had them around forever. I had an older brother, so I don’t remember a time without comics. I just saw that and thought, you know, hell, I can do this and proceeded to spend the next 10 years figuring out how. But I was pretty lucky because I had a lot of talent. I sculpted a lot as soon as I got clay. So I had a real good idea of form and space that really helped with my knowledge of anatomy.

[00:03:32] David: You were sculpting before you were drawing?

[00:03:34] Bart Sears: Yeah, I love sculpting. If I could probably just sit and do anything, that would be what I would most likely do. Yeah, so I saw that and I just started pumping out, you know, drawings and trying to figure out how those printed pages came into being. I remember early on, probably at 13 or 14 or something, I sent some pages into Marvel and they sent me a very nice reply with some full-size, 11 by 17 copies of some pencil pages from various artists so I could see exactly what a pencil page really look like. Back then you had no way to see it.

[00:04:09] David: Oh wow, they were sending you like the 11 by 17 prints? They just mailed those to you.

[00:04:13] Bart Sears: Yeah, the nice letter and uh, I wish I still had it. That stuff I don’t have anymore. But that was really cool. So I was like, oh, this is what it looks like. Sometime around there, how the drug comics Marvel way came out and I got my hands on that. So that helped too.

[00:04:28] David: Because this is all before the internet, essentially. This was uh, mid to late 70s. You learn sort of the basics from that. I love Ross, Andrew, love Frezetta,

[00:04:38] Bart Sears: I love Busama, all those guys. So I would just, you know, pour over their stuff like you do when you’re a hungry young, want to be artist and just try my best to do it myself.

[00:04:51] David: One of the best pieces of advice I ever got as an artist, not that I ever achieved any sort of level that you did, or most people did in the comic book industry. Dan Fraga, who is from the Xtreme Studios, the Rob Liefeld School, he was at a convention and I was talking to him and I was showing him some of my stuff and he was very kind. He said, “Just get pieces of tracing paper and just put it over the comic books, the artists that you like and just trace it and you’ll learn more.”

[00:05:20] Bart Sears: So I think it’s that deal-in story. Really? For example, just to see how the lines were. I mean, you can’t just suddenly do anything in its final form. I mean, you’ve got to figure out how. When they teach painters, masters back in the day, they would set them in front of paintings and say, “Paint this.” And they would have to copy that painting. And you learn a lot by figuring out in the case of comics, what direction lines go, are laid down in. they lay, you know, you start thinking about why the lines are placed where they are, you start learning a heck of a lot.

[00:05:54] David: Did yourself taught then? Or did you end up going to sleep for it?

[00:05:58] Bart Sears: Right after high school, I went to the keyword school.

[00:06:00] David: Okay.

[00:06:01] Bart Sears: And the first year was pretty good. And then in the middle of the second year, about November, I just was sobering out. I hated to draw. So I dropped out, went back home to upstate New York. And my father was the manager at a moving company. So I got a job there and after about six months or so or I decided I hated it and I got a job drawing in a video game educational video game back in 1980 sort of at 84 you had to count each click was a piece of memory so I’d like have to draw a horse with 12 clicks or something because they only had mouses I mean there were no drawing tablets or anything like that it’s a three-month gig and they wanted to keep me on but I said, “Eh, I’m done with that.” So I went home and drew some sample pages, three sample pages, which I wish I had but I don’t. And knock on Marvel’s door, January ’85, a young Mike Carlin came out to meet me and he took me around to meet

[00:07:00] David: a bunch of editors and Larry Hama gave me work. Wow. Man, I feel like there’s a game, six degrees of Larry Hama that you can play with anything in the comic book industry. And you will arrive to Larry?

[00:07:14] Bart Sears: I’m working with him again now.

[00:07:16] David: Are you doing GI Joe, real American hero right now?

[00:07:18] Bart Sears: Oh, I designed these for, um, Asbro back in the day when Larry was doing all the GI Joe stuff and they hired him to write all the cops stuff, just like GI Joe, all the bios and stuff. Right. Right. Right. And, um, when big bad toys started bringing these out, they, um, hired me to do the art and they wanted to do the pages. I’m like, well, call Larry. So Larry’s writing the comic pages inside each one. - That’s awesome. - That’s amazing.

[00:07:47] Outro: (laughing)

[00:07:48] Bart Sears: - That’s pretty cool. It’s nice ‘cause we’re using the same sculpts that we did back in the day. They’re just, you know, making them much more joined.

[00:07:54] David: - Wow.

[00:07:55] Bart Sears: - You’re the cool.

[00:07:56] David: - That looks cool. - Do you remember what the story was?

[00:08:02] Bart Sears: - I think it was called Marvel Black and White. This was ‘85 and it was a story called Iron Rose. It was about two biker chicks. You drove motorcycles. Of course, the last thing I wanted to draw in my life was a female, because I really wasn’t very good at it back then. So I, you know, grew up drawing and coloring and Batman and all those guys. Then I had to draw motor motorcycles. It was brutal. There were eight page stories. The first one I penciled, drove it down in, handed it into him. He looked through him. He’s like, great. He hands it back to me. He says, go ink it. I’m like, free me. He’s like, just go ink it. So I went back and inked it and I hated it. Really hated. what he did on that. Because it wasn’t what I could see up here yet, you know, trying to get it out. And then while I was waiting for the next Iron Rose script, I did a sectors mini comic, Skulk and Tranquula. I don’t remember the sectors. Oh, yeah, I do. They had the bugs that you could put your hand in that the guys wrote on or blew on or whatever. So I did that. And that was fine. I had a blast doing that that was you know more straight superhero comics stuff And I got the second iron road with script and I beat my brains out pencil and Pat I mean I penciled the crap out of it took me forever Being like way too long, but I was determined not to turn it anything. I didn’t like I sent that in and I think it was way late and I just never contacted Larry again and Started working for TSR doing game books and stuff, which is where I first drew Wolverine Oh Wow for a TSR book. Yeah, those little paperbacks you choose your own adventure. Yeah, I remember those Wow Wolverine one I did a doctor strange one I don’t think I have any images of the doctor strange one I did and then I did a gamma world adventure book

[00:09:53] David: You know where you play gamma choose your own adventure. No, it was a you know regular module. Oh, okay module Oh, gotcha, gotcha, gotcha.

[00:10:01] Bart Sears: And I did a silver wolf book, but I didn’t finish all those drawings because at the same time my buddy Mark Pangton got hired at Hasbro right out of Keward School to design GI Joes. I don’t know if they still do this, but back in the day, the guys in-house would come up with a bunch of rough ideas and they would send all those rough ideas out to have them illustrated on, I don’t know, 18 by 24 boards or something. When they had them all done, they’d have a meeting with the owners and marketing and they’d line them all up in the meeting room on a wall and basically the owners would walk down and say, “Make this one. Do this one. We want that one. We want this one.” And that’s how they picked what GI Joe’s got made that season. So I ended up doing paintings for some of those GI Joe’s. I think I ended up doing about eight of them. Based on Mark’s design? Yep. Then they called me and wondered if I wanted to interview for a full-time job. So I said, “Sure.”

[00:10:57] David: So hold on, hold on. This is important part. Do you remember which characters you painted? Were those paintings used on the box art? Did you do the actual- No. No. So this was a concept art sort of painting and okay, it was just an internal, but they had you fully finish it.

[00:11:13] Bart Sears: Fully finished. Yes, they were fully painted.

[00:11:16] David: We’re going to totally digress for a minute. When I was working at IDW, we went to Hasbro because we were doing a big meeting. I think it was, might’ve been for the revolution stuff that we were doing. And, uh, one of the thrills of my life, literally one of the thrills of my life, we were walking, we were walking down this hallway at Hasbro and the original art paintings of a bunch of the original GI Joes, the original paintings are on the walls at Hasbro. It was very hard for me not to like grab one of those and run. Just everything that I had not to do that. I kept reminding myself that I was a professional and that I couldn’t do that. It wasn’t allowed and it was illegal, but I almost did it anyway.

[00:11:54] Bart Sears: You know what they did with most of the art, right?

[00:11:57] David: Don’t tell me they threw it away because I’ll admit it. Yeah, they threw in a dumpster. The only reason there’s any GI Joe art or

[00:12:02] Bart Sears: cops art or any of that toy art, I don’t know what the policy is now, but back then there were a couple guys in the company that knew when they were dumping the stuff and that night they would go dig through the dumpster and just pull out as much art as they could and that’s the only reason there’s any of that art any worse.

[00:12:18] David: The number of times I’ve heard that exact story in comic books is scarily high. How much our original art has been lost to the garbage dump like over the decades? It’s tragic.

[00:12:28] Bart Sears: Yep. I mean, someone has to take it out of the studio before it made it there, but that was probably a little more dangerous.

[00:12:37] David: Hasbro’s like, “These paintings are fantastic. Come interview. They hired you.” So you were a full-time…

[00:12:42] Bart Sears: I was a little pilot and a jeep driver with was orange and green orange helmet and uh can’t remember his name anymore and then uh my boss pulled me off and said we got something else for you so they gave me cops he pulled out these i don’t know seven eight drawings and they were all drawn from me to senior swipes from spider-man villains and yeah this is cops i think we called it Spock our in-house secret code word for it was Spock you know real leather So they said, “Go make up these characters.” So that’s what I did. I did the first two years while I was there at Hasbro and the third year I did Freelance after I quit. So I quit a year to the day. That’s how I got back into comics. I became friends with a marketing guy that had a marketing, Kurt Bazziguino. He was always real nice to market on. He’s a guy that just loved art, I think, and he loved toys. And he’s just a really, really nice dude. He brought around some kind of roughs of what they wanted to do with the cops’ package art. And I was like, oh No Well originally with cops they wanted to do them on that GI Joe buck You know the guy that had shoulders like me and I was like, mom, this is a superhero concept You know, he’s got to be you know heroic man. Let me design the buck for him and They came back later. They said yeah design three bucks for us a skinny buck. I broke buck and the big guy buck It’s like sweet. So I got to design those bucks. What is a buck? I’m sorry I don’t know what that is. The underlying joints are fixed in place. It’s different than toys now. Like there was a torso that was all one torso and then you would sculpt whatever over it. But under all the sculpts there is this block and it had firm spots and where the ball joints were or the swivel joints and you couldn’t sculpt over that. So you had sculpt everything around that. So I created those figures with the big shoulders and the wide heroic frame so that, you know, they look cooler than the skinny little GI Joes.

[00:15:09] David: You’ve got a very signature style, super heroic proportions in your work. Do you think that’s kind of where you fully developed that on the cops?

[00:15:18] Bart Sears: Probably, yeah. I didn’t ever really think it before, but that was the first time I was really drawing superheroes, you know, other than a little bit with TSR, professionally.

[00:15:28] John: I had no idea about this, but looking at the cops’ figures right now, this is what I was googling over here. It’s like, “Oh man, these look like your drawings come to life.”

[00:15:36] Bart Sears: Most of the heads were really well sculpted. There’s a couple clunky ones in there, but most of them were really well done and pretty much on point with what I designed.

[00:15:44] John: They look like toys from a later era. They look like action figures after people got real serious about that stuff. Well, the only other one that I recall at the time, there might have been a couple knockoffs, was He-Man.

[00:15:56] Bart Sears: He came out before them, but he was such a short dumpy guy. Yeah, I mean they wasn’t dumpy, but he was so short So squat, you know, he didn’t really have true portions, so He’s might have been the first that really had that comic book heroic feel to him They were really super popular. Well, hasbro screwed that up. I can tell you about that

[00:16:14] David: I think we absolutely want to hear how hasbro screwed something up back then toys are just sold like at christmastime

[00:16:21] Bart Sears: If you remember right, you know toys are us. I mean i’m sure there were some toys I was there Bart. I’m sure you were back when Toys R Us was around and other even smaller chains, but I don’t remember what month well before Christmas. They had to order how many toys they thought they might sell Christmas. And at the same time we were doing cops. They were doing air raiders now cops. They didn’t know. And so they had to pay a royalty to whoever stole all the John Arete seniors drawings. For some reason, I think it was mostly greed, to be honest, but they thought air raiders. I don’t know if you guys remember air raiders.

[00:16:56] John: Yeah, they were real tiny and they like, I don’t remember what somebody’s just talking to me about.

[00:17:00] Bart Sears: They had like one of those things you’d squeeze or press and it fire air out of the hose and they had little ships shoot off. It was the dumbest, most boring toy ever. They just were all in on it. So when it came time to order their print runs for the toys, they ordered a billion aerators toys because they thought it was going to be the biggest thing after GI Joe. And they really just did a minimal order of cops. And when orders came in and they started shipping, they couldn’t fill the cops orders because the cops orders were like 10 times what they printed. Oh, no. Now the aerator orders weren’t even close. There weren’t even a smidgen of what they printed. I remember you could go, Hasbro had a store where employees could go and get stuff like at cost or whatever. And it was just filled with areas.

[00:17:51] John: But you couldn’t find jobs. It was brutal. David and I have both been in Hasbro multiple times. I haven’t been there in like five years. It was still filled with them. Really? No, no, no. That’d be wild if they were still there. This was in Rhode Island.

[00:18:04] Outro: Yeah, yeah, yeah.

[00:18:05] Bart Sears: And they were there. And then the second year when that rolled around, I don’t know how they created it, But the toy stores were just like, no, they just didn’t order it then. So yeah, that, uh, that pretty much killed cops. But of course sent it out for the animation. So that was being done at the same time. But the toys came first. They used all my designs and spread all king. It’s funny how many people think the animation was first. I have to correct everyone.

[00:18:29] David: I know what the answer to this question is, but I don’t even, I shouldn’t even. Was there any compensation for all the designs that you did that were then used for animation?

[00:18:39] Bart Sears: Yeah, of course not. That latest, they owned everything outright.

[00:18:42] David: Son of a biscuit that makes me so angry. Double dipping, man. Every time I see a Jack Kirby t-shirt out in the wild, I’m like, these guys are double dipping. There’s no way Jack Kirby’s estate got paid for that.

[00:18:54] Bart Sears: Hell no. They were doing the DC comic. DC licensed it. Cops. So they had Doug Wench and Andy Helfer, who’s the editor, come up to meet with marketing to see what the line was about, pick up art and just get a sense of it so they could go produce a comic book. And I’ll have another Kirk story after this. But Kirk, Bazziguian, had a marketing and was like, “Harn, you got comic stuff, right?” I’m like, “Yeah.” He’s like, “Come sit in this meeting and bring your portfolio.” I’m like, “All right.” Wow, what a nice guy. That’s awesome. Yeah, he was a great dude. So I sit in the meeting and they’re doing all their talking and they’re finally done with their stuff. And health returns to me and says, “So you want to draw comics?” I’m like yeah, and he’s like you bring some stuff to look at okay, and I take out whatever I brought and he’s looking through it He’s like alright. Yeah. Oh, I think you probably do it. I got the chops off I’ll give you call like Tuesday next week This is like Friday, and I’m like alright, so I leave the meeting and he calls me I don’t know how this timing worked. Maybe it was a while later But he’s like he’s like I’m gonna give you an issue of cops issue for cops to draw He’s like don’t quit your job. This is comics. Most people don’t make it just do this job at night And you know, it’s issue four. We haven’t used, you know, started issue one yet

[00:20:17] David: I love that my leaders are saying this in the 80s and I’m still as an editor saying this in 2026 Don’t quit your day job. There’s not a lot of money in convo. Don’t quit your day job

[00:20:27] Bart Sears: He’s like so yeah, well then we’ll see where it goes. We’ll see where it goes. I’m like, alright so the next day I went in and quit and I don’t know if I had a week or if they just let me go. I can’t remember how it worked out, but the day that was actually my last day was year to the day that I was hired. I remember I had the same interviewer. I didn’t recognize him, but he recognized me that I had when I entered because when you started a company, I guess they have somebody in HR interview and then when you leave, they have somebody to interview you. All this weird real job stuff. He’s sitting there and he’s like, “Oh, I remember you.” Now when I got hired, I showed up with a bleach blonde mohawk and probably my Mickey Mouse glasses on.

[00:21:09] David: To a job interview, you had a bleach blonde mohawk.

[00:21:12] Bart Sears: This is my first day at work. And it’s reasonable. It’s already hired. If you’re supposed to harm. And he’s like, oh, yeah, so you only last a year, huh? I’m like, yep. And he starts looking through the folder and I have All my reviews are right at the top and I have two commendation letters from sculpting in different stuff and he’s like, “Oh, most guys 10 years don’t get any of these.” I’m like, “Yeah, whatever.” So let’s come like eat it pal because I knew he hated me when he heard me. That was pretty funny. The other Kirk Bazzigian thing was I was talking about when they had the the package manager. And I was like, you can’t, this just doesn’t represent the line. I said, I know a guy in New Jersey, I went to Qbird school with Mark and I both know him. Mark MacDab, why don’t you call him and he’ll send you a sample of something or whatever. So I think he’d do a really great job on this. And Kirk’s look at me, he’s like, all right, Pankton, I go home and we call up Mark and we’re like, Mark, this guy from Hasbro is going to call you. And he’s going to want to see a sample of your stuff to do all the package manager for cops. So I’m going to pencil something tonight. Mark’s gonna ink it tomorrow and we’re gonna ship it to you. You color that, we’ll use that as our sample piece. He’s like, “Alright.” So it all works out and that sample piece comes in and it looks like I think you might be right. And Mark and I are like, “Oh, we love it.” So they hired MacDab to do all the package art, the comps.

[00:22:41] David: All the coloring on it?

[00:22:42] Bart Sears: Be penciling and pennington inking and MacDab coloring.

[00:22:45] David: You worked with that same team essentially for a long time. So you met those guys at the Kubert School. They were both in my class. My brain is connecting so many dots John. Yeah, it was funny because on the package art the thing

[00:22:58] Bart Sears: they sent they had these guys with little shoulders and what I sent in was the cops figures and Marketing was freaking out because the bubble would go over the figure. I’m like, it’s a clear bubble. Who cares? So blue over the figure but they hated it They didn’t hire us for second year simply because of that even though that package looked awesome The figure will cover some of the iron. I’m like who cares? Yeah, you’re bubble and this is me arguing with marketing from inside. Well, I’m dirty. You didn’t yard work that there are you

[00:23:39] David: Helfer tells you don’t quit your day job. And so you immediately quit your day job

[00:23:43] Bart Sears: I go on my call Andy. I’m like, I just quit. It’s like

[00:23:47] David: Dude, so you put you on cops number four like immediately. Yeah, so I got one job. I wasn’t worried about it

[00:23:52] Bart Sears: I knew I was good enough and what the year away from comics doing illustration Or maybe it was a year and a half of doing Illustration and Hasbro stuff. So I mean it has bro. I spent most of my day Doing nothing because what I had to do was so minimal now Pennington was inking the full time So he would be in there inking whatever job he had and the boss didn’t care, but I just couldn’t bring myself to do outside work. So I would go home and go to our studio and pencil hat the man and then come back into work the next day. But Pennington, we just do it at work. Just drove me crazy. But there just wasn’t that much to do about my third or fourth week in me. It was my second week in Heinington and the other guy, Ron Rudat, the GI Joe guys, pulled sign said, “Slow down.” We’ve built a very nice system here. You’re ruining it for us.

[00:24:48] David: You know what, Bart? That is not the first time I’ve heard that as well. I’ve heard at least two different artists who worked in comics who then went to the video game space. And they got pulled aside and the same things happened to them where it was like, “Hey, you need to slow down because you’re making the rest of us look real, real bad.” And they’re like, “I’m just working at my regular speed. I can’t slow down much more than I am right now.” this on the podcast before and I’ll say it again, I truly believe this part. If you can make a living professionally making comic books, no matter where you are within the comic book industry, if you can make a living making comic books, you can literally work anywhere in this world in any business anywhere. It doesn’t matter if you know about it or not, you’re gonna walk in on day one and by day 10, you’re gonna be king of that business because comic books are the most

[00:25:36] Bart Sears: crucible of old toys. I’ve done illustration, toy design, concept art. I’ve done everything in comics is by far the hardest of all of them to do.

[00:25:47] David: I know. I’m telling you, if I knew a third as much about pizza as I know about comic books, I would be a multimillionaire. I’m not, I would be like rich beyond my wildest dreams.

[00:25:59] Bart Sears: A business where there’s money.

[00:26:01] David: Yeah, just anything besides comic books. Anyway, I’m digressing about. I’m losing the, I’m losing thread. Sean, pull it back in. Okay, Pops, and he helped for a while. I’m going down and fire at him.

[00:26:13] Bart Sears: - I finished issue one on time. It definitely helped that I knew through all the characters’ incident.

[00:26:19] David: - Now, what are you gonna do to tell you to refer to the reference?

[00:26:25] Bart Sears: - I finished that hand and he’s like, all right, I got another shoot for you. I’m like, great. He’s like, Pops number three. That should have been my first sign of what type of business comics was.

[00:26:35] David: You turned in that first issue too fast. How fast did you turn around that?

[00:26:39] Bart Sears: It was probably, that was probably a month.

[00:26:41] David: It was probably four to five weeks. Were you conscious of the deadline? Like, were you like, I’m going to get this?

[00:26:46] Bart Sears: Yeah. Oh yeah. I was going to let anything stop me now.

[00:26:49] David: You knew that I’m going to do some comic books for a while. Okay. So you were, you were all in, you were like, I’m going to press this guy and I’m going to, I’m going to get some steady work out of this.

[00:26:57] Bart Sears: Yep. Nice. So then I got to do issue three. I was issue three. I just did four. He’s like, “Well, Pat’s still not done with issue one. He started before me.” He’s like, “Yeah, whatever. Shut up.” So I did that issue. Then he gave me, I don’t know, six or seven covers or something to do for cops that I did. Then he gave me Spectre, I think it was 21. And he’s like, “You’re the new Spectre artist.” I’m like, “Sweet.” Which is like, again, I’m like, “Spectre.” Like, the worst superhero ever. You know, I don’t know. You know, but it’s like, all right. So he gives me Spectre and I’m going to be the new regular guy on it. I wrote Pennington into Ink It. Meanwhile, he still got his full time job at Hasbro, but he’ll just think during the day there. So I wasn’t worried about that. And it was five pages a week, pencil pages. And you can pick out that book and look at the first six pages and they look rapidly, vastly different from the last 18 pages. And I will tell you what. Yeah. Monday page done, Tuesday page done, Wednesday page done, Thursday page done, Friday page done. That probably worked a little bit on the weekend, fixing them up or finishing them off. Monday page done. I get a call Monday night about 6, 6 30. And it’s helpful. He’s like, “Hey, I need you to jump on something.” Like, okay, what is it? He’s like, “Well, this guy just quit. We got this big crossover thing. We need you to do issue three.” I’m like, “Sweet.” He’s like, “It’s 80 pages.” I’m like, all right, he’s like, you need to do eight pages a week. I’m like, okay, he’s like, features every hero or villain in the DC universe. I’m like, oh, I’m choking badly. But you don’t, you know, like Joe said, you agreed at every job you get, then you figure out how to do it. That’s the one thing I took away from Joe Kuber teaching at the Kuberts School. That’s how those guys survived and that was the mantra. There’s no work-life balance in their world. And so I didn’t grow up thinking about that either and I still have trouble with that. But anyway, I’m like, “Sweet.” He’s like, “You got to finish off this issue of Spectre and then jump on that.” I’m like, “Great.” He’s like, “All right, I need you in my office Friday morning coming at 11 a.m.” I lived in Syracuse that time, which is about five, six hours away depending on traffic and how you drive. So I’m like, “Yeah, I can be there Friday at 11.” He’s like, “I need you to bring pages in.” So yeah, sure. I’ll bring in whatever I have. He’s like, no, I need you to bring the pages in. I’m like, I just finished six. I’ll seven, eight, nine. I’ll bring in those pages. He’s like, no, you need to bring in all the pages. Oh, Jesus. I’m like, Andy, I just finished page six. There are 18 pages left in this story. He’s like, I know. I’m like, I have Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday. I have to get up at about 4 a.m. to make it to your office by 11 on Friday. He’s like, yeah. I’m like, that’s 18 pages. That’s six pages a day. He’s like, yeah, you can do it. I’m not Jack Kirby. What do you I what he’s like? Yeah, you can do it. Don’t worry about you’ll do it. I’m like There’s no way I can do ATB. So we go like this for about I don’t know it felt like days for me But it’s probably you know, 15 minutes and it’s like alright fine. I’ll see you Friday. He’s like, okay. See you Friday So Tuesday Wednesday and Thursday I penciled those last 18 pages Jesus and drove him in Friday and drove home with the script Which thank God was Keith given the script as you know, he drew all the scripts. Yeah, he gave me the thumbs

[00:30:15] David: Yeah, so how detail are those roughs that he gives you? It’s closed pin figures. They’re very clean

[00:30:23] Bart Sears: I have a actual original from one of the Justice League issues they accidentally set me on that beautiful tissue paper he worked on but They were very clean very clear, but very simple, but it was the layout I mean, you could easily follow the story without any question. I mean, the characters weren’t drawn. It was just could have been anybody. That kind of thing.

[00:30:44] David: So you got like maybe two and a half comic books under your belt as a professional at this point. You’ve done cops. Number four, you’ve gone to cops. Number three, you did some stuff over at mall, like an eight page over at mall that made you quit comic books for two years because, because of girls and motorcycles, then you’re like starting your first like ongoing professional gig. You’re one week into it and the editor who’s your only source of employment in this moment says, oh, just finish those 18 pages in three days. And then I’m going to give you an 80 page assignment. Oh, by the way, it’s late. And also by the way, it’s like next week. Is that where we’re at right now?

[00:31:25] Bart Sears: - Also I had to do the poster and all three covers in that time.

[00:31:30] John: - Oh, geez. I always wonder if we…

[00:31:32] Bart Sears: - Do you remember that big poster? with the alien head and the people running. You know who designed that? Matt Groening. - What? - What? - I guess Helfer was talking to him in a bar and he said, “Look, I got a great idea for the poster.” I had this little napkin with that rough design on it and Andy handed that to me and said, “Make this a poster.”

[00:31:51] David: - Wow. Matt wasn’t wrong. I remember that. - No, it was cool.

[00:31:55] Bart Sears: - It was a poster. - It was a very spiffy space alien movie. - That’s what they wanted, so.

[00:32:00] David: - The fourth comic book you ever drew was an 80-page giant that literally, literally the entire industry was hanging their hat on. It’s that insane part. What was that pressure like?

[00:32:11] Bart Sears: Didn’t think about it. Luckily I had, what I did was keep– Balls the size of an elephant. He did them on 8.5x11 paper, his thumbnail, drawings, whatever you want to call them. And I blew those up to 11x17, put a piece of paper down, rule out my borders and just start drawing right over. And it’s the only way I’ve got to do eight pages a week of that stuff.

[00:32:37] David: Eight pages a week. So you actually were able to keep the deadline though? Eight pages a week. Yeah, I’ve been hitting it all in ten weeks. Holy moly.

[00:32:46] John: Do you remember that book, John? Oh, 100%. Yeah, it was, I mean, it was the carlin that did the first two and he was-

[00:32:51] Bart Sears: He did the worst one, Giffen did the second.

[00:32:53] John: Oh, really? Yeah. Oh, did somebody else follow up from the third? Is it supposed to be three different artists? That was me. It was always supposed to be you? No, it was always supposed to be McFarland. Oh, okay. So it’s both. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. Yeah. Is that buddy got a Spider-Man? Right. Right. Right. Yeah. That’s what I thought. Yeah. Okay. Sorry. Yeah.

[00:33:09] Bart Sears: So Keith. Yeah. Yeah. So obviously the 10 weeks. He might have done Summit 2 and then Keith finished it. I don’t know how that worked out, but Keith either did Olive 2 or finished 2 and they just gave me 3 to do all my own.

[00:33:20] John: In a classic move, I would have been able to grab the paperback, but I think I moved it to somewhere else.

[00:33:24] Bart Sears: Go look at Spectre 21 sometime. Look at those first six pages and then look at the next AT. I felt really bad for Mark because he had to eat that crap. He was pretty new to comics at the time and that was just a brutal, brutal pencil to give.

[00:33:38] David: Was he able to save your ass a little bit at least?

[00:33:41] Bart Sears: I don’t know. I don’t even remember to be honest. I don’t know. I think I looked at that when it came out and probably never looked at it. That was a while ago. I still have a copy though. Nice.

[00:33:50] John: Did you go back and do the next issue with Spectre after that?

[00:33:53] Bart Sears: No. No.

[00:33:53] John: You were dying. But Ward was Justice League Europe. Yeah. Okay.

[00:33:59] David: now. You do 80 pages in 10 weeks. You’re a made man. So, so Helfer’s like, dude, I love you so much. Like here’s a launch book. Like how does he pitch that to you?

[00:34:09] Bart Sears: He’s just like, here’s your next thing. But here, there’s another one. I think I started November something like that. It was supposed to come out like the big summer release was just as the year of light, May or June or something, whenever their big summer thing was something like, “Great, I’ve got like seven months of lead time here.” Finally, the stuff was to say I felt pretty rushed after invasion and was looking forward to like, “Okay, I can work like a human now.” So I finished issue one, I’m starting issue two. Of course, issue one, I had to drop Paris. So I don’t know if you remember the splash page, that probably took me three or four days just to do that architecture. I’ve never been to Paris, so I had to look at books and pictures and try to capture that old world charm, which was not easy. But anyhow, I’m on issue two and I’m doing a convention in Toronto. Somebody comes up and they’re like, Hey, just leave your, I can’t wait to get it. I said, yeah, I know it’s a long time till mayor June River. It was, he’s like, no, it comes out March. Like what? I don’t know. It comes out March. But no, it doesn’t. It comes out like mayor, June or whatever. I knew it to be the time. He’s like, no, it was like in previews. I’m like, what? What are you talking about? Oh, you gotta be kidding me. So Monday I get home, call a helper. I’m like, when does Justice League Europe come out? He’s like, March, you’re behind, you have to work. I’m like, you asshole. So I was always behind on Justice League Europe because of course the schedule is like five or six months out and I never even had that. You would never know it. You crushed that book. Well, the funny thing is he gets a fill-in for, I don’t know, issue eight or nine And he calls me up and he’s like, “I need you to ink this.” I’m like, “What? It’s a fill-in.” You know, you gotta fix the faces. I’m like, “Oh, jeez.” So I ended up having to ink my fill-in. Oh, my God. So I guess I wasn’t that behind. But yeah, that’s comics. He also got me a raise like every issue of the first year I worked there. Oh, okay. You know, he was taking care of me on that end. And I was taking care of him on the other, I guess, so. Worked out okay.

[00:36:21] David: - At least he was doing that man. Sounds like he was a slave driver. Holy moly. So how many issues were you on, Justice League Europe? - 22 or 24 or something. - You had a nice run on there.

[00:36:36] Bart Sears: - Yeah, I was pretty burnt on it after a while, which is stupid. You don’t realize how good you have it until it’s gone. What I was getting frustrated with was, they started doing a lot of miniseries then. And I knew a lot of the guys doing them and they were making as much money as I was doing three issues a year as I was doing 12. I was really frustrated by that. And I kept begging Helfer to give me some kind of mini-series or something so I could make some extra money or get off the monthly and get into that. What I didn’t realize is they didn’t want me off a month because I could easily do a month. Right. So they didn’t want me going anywhere near special projects. So gave me the dark night. I told him I wanted a project I could spend some time on and actually, because my natural inclination was to be more illustrative than cartoony. You know, I wanted to render and crosshatch and kind of go nuts. So finally, after Justice League, he’s like, “Okay, you can start your Dark Knight thing.” I’m like, “Great.” So I’m all excited. I know I’m going to take a dip because it’s going to slow me down, patriot-wise. But I didn’t care. And I figured the longer I do this more illustrative work, the faster I’ll get at it too. So I finished the first page and I actually have a copy where I did that first page and the current first page, the printed one next to each other. But I was into page two and I had a few thumbnails out and Andy calls and he’s angry with me because I haven’t turned in more pages. I’m like, “Well, this is a project with no deadline.” That was what the agreement was. He’s like, “Oh no, it’s got a deadline. It’s coming out such and such time,” which was like, I don’t know, three months away, whatever it was, it was really quick. I’m like, “Andy, I’ve been busting my home, doing everything, and this was supposed to that could actually take some time on and have some fun with it. And he’s like, nope, gotta be done.

[00:38:22] David: I feel like a lot of your early career is just Andy Helfer lying to you.

[00:38:27] Bart Sears: He was definitely manipulating. But like I said, I didn’t mind so much because he’s also taking care of me. On the back end with, I had a young family and it was really helpful in the year for my income to almost triple, you know? So that was great. But I was pretty pissed about this. And he was really angry. It was so bad that I was called into a meeting with, I can’t remember her name now. She was kind of, I don’t know what her title was, but she was one of the bigger waves up there. She yelled at me for about two hours and I just stuck to my story and told her what happened and how it happened. And after two hours of her threatening me and all this stuff, she said, “Alright, you know what? Just don’t talk to Andy ever again. He’s done this before.” So I had to sit here for two hours getting grilled and yelled at by you and you knew all along. She’s like, “Yeah, you’ll just deal with the assistant and move away from Andy.” And what it was was Helfer wanted to do Piranha Press. And they told him he could do Piranha Press, but he had to get all of his DC projects off the books first. And my open-ended no-deadline project was the last one onto the books. So he couldn’t move Piranha Press till I finished that. So that was the impetus of it all. So anyhow, I used a number two pencil. I never sharpened it. Every other weekend, I was visiting my kids and I would pencil in the car because I had do so much. Radio editing to put a kick the ass out of that stuff. That stuff looks great. Dark Knight 21, 22 and 23.

[00:39:51] David: Yeah, I love that little three issue. Hitting there. I’m sorry, I ended that way for you guys. It was a good sound, but it was completely- It should have never happened. And we’re going to end it right there just for the moment, everybody. I hope you’re having as much fun with this interview as we had conducting it. And it went extra long because I had so many questions. So stay tuned for part two, where we dig into Bart’s time with Ominous Press. And what exactly is a monument comic? And a lot of other things. Bart was delight. We will get the next part up as quick as we can. Thanks everybody for listening. And we will see you next time on The Corner Box.

[00:40:35] Outro: Thanks everybody, bye. This has been The Corner Box with David and John. Please take a moment and give us a five-star rating. It really helps. And join us again next week for another dive into the wonderful world of comics.