After San Diego 2002, I began to realize, this is a whole industry that’s very available to its public. You can go to cons and meet all your favorite artists. They’re all there, at the cons. And they’re all just sitting around, with nothing to do. You can just walk right up to them, and tell them how much you admire their work. And if you treat them like professionals and ask about hiring them to do work, even if you’re as yet unpublished like I was, and they have time in their schedule and are interested in what you have in mind, a lot of them will give you their emails to discuss possibilities. I was going home from San Diego with a few of my favorite artists’ emails. A bunch of them said they were willing to draw pin-ups that I could publish in my books. That’s pretty damn exciting.
I was new to the internet and computers, but going home I started fantasizing about all the artists I thought it would be just impossibly cool to get pin-ups from. Of course my two favorites are Mike Allred and Mike Mignola. I was beginning to think Mike Mignola was untouchable (which it turns out was not true), but I’d met Mike Allred both the years I’d gone down to San Diego. Even though, talking with him, it didn’t sound like I would be able to convince him if I tried, I still dreamed about getting a pin-up from him.
I think the whole thing that got my juices flowing about pin-ups was Mike Allred’s Madman book. I had noticed pretty early that he had at least one pin-up by a cool artist, every issue. I thought, That’s kind of neat. It shows he’s enjoyed by cool people in the industry, enough that they’re willing to draw pictures of his character that he can publish in his book. Sure, I’d seen pin-up books like Sandman, or an anniversary issue of Batman with a bunch of cool drawings, or Sin City, or a pin-up by a cool artist on the back cover of every issue of Wolverine. But Madman did it for me. He had so many GREAT artists, one after the other. He even put out sets of trading cards of all these great artists. But what really made me take note is when he started putting out a four-issue run of just Madman pin-ups. Every issue, I’d go, Holy Shit! He got THIS artist to do a pin-up! He got THIS artist too? It was overwhelming, all the great artists he got, and I thought that was so cool. I wanted my comic to be that cool.
At this time, I had asked Dick Ayers if he might do a pin-up of my character, Dick Hammer. In pictured Dick in military get-up — khakis and helmet — wielding a machine gun in one hand and a grenade in another, explosions and rubble and carnage all around him, that kind of thing. And I’d asked Dean Ormston about a pin-up of Dr. DeBunko, just standing and saying, “Of course there’s no such thing as monsters,” and behind him, and unbeknownst to him, a bunch of monsters creeping and slithering his way. But once I got home from my trip, and in a flash of dazzling clarity, I had this crazy idea.
Being so in love with Jack Kirby’s giant monster stories, and knowing Dick inked all of them, I imagined doing my own Kirby-style giant-monster story, and Dick inking them.
By “Jack Kirby monster story,” I’m talking about the late 1950’s to early 1960’s, right before the superhero craze hit, in books like “Tales to Astonish”, “Amazing Fantasy,” and “Tales of Suspense.” Comics were pumping out all kinds of genres at this time, trying to find something whatever would sell. So there were war, western, horror, romance books. “Kirby giant monster” was a sub-genre of horror. Stan Lee plotted, his brother Larry Lieber scripted, and Kirby or Steve Ditko pencilled a good chunk of the work. And then these books segued (I’m proudly snooty to have figured out the spelling of this word – pronounced “seg-waid”) into the Marvel boom of superhero comics. (You’ll recall that Fantastic Four number one has a giant monster bursting from the earth, and that characters like Captain America and Iron Man began in Tales of Suspense, while Hulk and Sub-Mariner and Giant Man began in Tales to Astonish, etc etc.)
I didn’t really know any of this at the time. I only knew that in the 1970’s, Marvel was reprinting these stories in books entitled “Where Monsters Dwell,” “Where Creatures Roam,” or “Creatures on the Loose.” I knew they were reprints, because the title pages usually had the footnote, “Originally appeared in _______” and maybe a date.
So back to the present. I was on vacation in Las Vegas, and I started to brainstorm these crazy plots for a Kirby-style giant monster story. I imagined all these different factions. Monster lovers, monster haters, hippies who believe peace includes monsters, Christian Fundamentalists who think monsters go against creationism, government G-Men trying to prevent the populace from believing in monsters, greedy journalists who create fake giant monster evidence for catchy headlines, scientists who try to make the public believe in giant monsters as a hobby, robots, armies out to destroy monsters, underground movements to protect them.
My original idea was for the lead to be “Dirk Danger,” but I decided later on that a woman lead would be better. I’m sure my wife, Elizabeth, must have come up with the name, “Doris Danger.” She’s great with those kinds of bad puns.
A lot of my early ideas stemmed from the “Men in Black” approach. I’d never seen the films or read the comics, but I was moderately familiar with UFO lore, and liked the idea of government boys hiding evidence and bullying or brainwashing the public so that they were afraid to speak out or didn’t remember what incriminating or dangerous sights they’d seen. Pretty soon (specifically, when I realized it was the premise of the movie – because I wasn’t familiar with the comic), I ignored or distanced myself from those kinds of stories.
I knew I wanted to have each episode begin by getting out of a cliffhanger, and end getting into a different cliffhanger. And I knew I would never resolve how the cliffhanger was escaped. Throwing continuity out the window was a part of the structure from the very beginning. Because when you watch episodic television, not on a full-season dvd package, but just on tv, there are always reruns interspersed and no particular order. And there’s always a week you just aren’t able to catch, for whatever reason. That’s just how it plays. You see an episode and don’t know what the hell’s going on, but you know that guy’s a good guy, and that guy’s bad, and you know the good guy will survive, and get in more trouble soon enough. And after you see a few episodes, then you realize, Oh, that’s why that guy did this in the first episode I saw. And that’s why they’re looking for this person. Now I get it. You piece it together as you go, and the longer you stick with it, the better you’re able to put the big picture together, and the more enjoyable it is. So my monster stories would be an exercise to see if you can do this with complete nonsense as its basis. With a complete lack of continuity.
So I sent Dick Ayers an email, and it was WAY too long, because I hadn’t sent emails before, and there was so much I wanted to ask and explain, and I talk way too much as it is when it’s about myself. So I brought all these ideas up, and he wrote back in like two sentences, saying he’d ink my monster stories. Wow!
This got me so excited, I whipped out the first five-page Doris Danger story within a couple weeks, and then I began hunting down other artists to see if they would draw a giant monster as a pin-up, that I could publish in my upcoming comic. I approached anyone I admired that I could find, at every convention I went to, and I began hunting them down online too. I was new to the internet. I was shocked. It’s amazing. Everyone had websites, and you could just email their sites, and a lot of these idols of mine would even write me back. Not all of them, but a lot of them. And a lot of them weren’t interested in doing pin-ups, but some of them were. And once I’d hunted down a dozen or so to contact, I was slowly starting to get pin-ups from a few of them.
Of course, once they saw Dick Ayers was inking my stories, that was a big incentive for them to join in. I felt like it really gave me validation. And the more artists I’ve gotten, the more other artists have been willing to contribute. It’s almost like a peer pressure thing now.
I would put out emails fairly regularly, either cold or to the people I’d met at conventions. Often, they wouldn’t write back, even if we’d made contact and they’d given me their info. Or sometimes, I would have to write a few times before they would write back.
I’ve learned now that it’s not necessarily anything personal when they don’t write back. They’re just busy. Or they have other priorities. I think a lot of the time, they keep my email in their inbox, and they’re thinking about it in the back of their head, but they’re so busy with other things, and then my email gets bumped lower and lower onto their list and eventually gets lost. And if I write and remind them, then they realize they forgot to get back to me, and that’s when they’ll write back.
I would always spend so much time trying to phrase my letters just so. I would write these way-too-lengthy letters out, and then read and re-read them, over and over. And I always said basically the same things to everyone, but still personally wrote each letter. It was such a careful, slow, exciting process for me. And then came the dreadful and nerve-racking wait for their reply.
If an artist took over a few days, I would start to have bouts of anxiety that maybe I said something that offended them, or bothered them. I would try to analyze what I’d said, and figure out if there were some way it could be read differently than my intent, since you can’t intone your sarcasm or humor. Unless you use emoticons, which I avoid. I would voice my concerns to my wife, and she’d always, say, “Would you relax. Wait for them to get back to you before you sweat it. They might not check their emails every week. They might be busy.” And sure enough, they usually wrote back shortly after, and I’d realize it was all in my mind. To this day, I still find myself suffering from this emailing paranoia, every letter I send out that I don’t hear from someone.
Lucky for me, I’ve been able to do pretty well financially as a guitar instructor. It’s a decent per lesson fee I charge, and since Elizabeth works for the State, we get all our benefits from her. So I’ve managed to have money to offer to all these professionals, to pay them for their pin-ups. A lot of people ask me my secret for getting pin-ups: That’s the secret. Money, and a lot of time hunting down and bugging way more artists than you get pin-ups from, over and over again. Being persistent, but hopefully not being harassing.
But Jesus it’s been expensive. It’s been so expensive, I’ve had to plan and think about who’s most important or cheapest or most convenient. I’ve had to pace who I approach, and when I contact them. And then I have to wait for a reply and a schedule before I dare try to contact another batch. But like I say, I feel really lucky that I’ve got a job that allows me to afford to do this. And of course, it’s all a tax-write-off, as long as I’m professionally publishing the artwork. And of course, if I can include keeping the art with the payment, it’s also an investment.
As a self-publisher, I have yet to make back even my printing costs for each book. And then on top of that, I’m completely out for the thousands of dollars I’ve shelled out for the pin-ups, which obviously haven’t yet paid off their own costs. And I haven’t even made a cent for myself. So I guess I could say my payment for self-publishing is knowing I’ll lose thousands of dollars an issue, but own some great original art. I’dstart learning all this when I began self-publishing.
Some of my dreams of comics artists I’d like to contribute to my book, besides Mike Mignola and Mike Allred: Bruce Timm, the king of Kirby style comics, in my opinion. I fantasized about him not just doing a pin-up, but an entire story. Steve Rude, who also does a fantastic Kirby. I fantasize about getting an entire story from Gilbert Hernandez or Mike Allred. I don’t bother to fantasize about getting a full story from Mignola, because I just assume it could never possibly happen.
Then I started fantasizing about getting a Dick Hammer or Dr. DeBunko story written by Alan Moore or Grant Morrison or Neil Gaiman, or an introduction to my stories written by them. Or getting a sketch of a giant monster from them — they’ve been known to do some drawings.
Other fantasies: Getting pin-ups from Kevin Nowlan, Brian Bolland, Tim Bradstreet, Al Feldstein, Bill Sienkiewicz, Frank Miller, Matt Groening, Michael Kaluta, all three of the Hernandez Brothers, Joe Kubert, Dave Sim, Barry Windsor Smith, Al Williamson, Frank Frazetta, Shag, Mike Ploog, Daniel Clowes, Neal Adams, Johnny Craig, Bernie Wrightson, Adam Hughes, Steve Ditko, Will Eisner. There are so many great artists out there. And so many who’ve passed away, who I missed…